There’s a Petition over at the Oz Ideas blog …. http://ozideas.wetpaint.com …. asking for ideas from outside those of The Chosen Few to be considered.

Hope it is useful anyway.

Might be many months before I get to civilization again – but thanks.

Real world needs keep intruding so the Counter Summit blog won’t be finished until next weekend.

“Postal address” for the referees, they ask? But not “email address”?

“Title”? I’m always tempted to write “Lord” or “Demi-urge”. Maybe I should do a Gough Whitlam and put “Comrade”…

Oh well, onto the good bit: “Please write 100 words or less on why you (or your nominee) should participate as a delegate in the Australia 2020 Summit.”

What would I say? Don’t know you from a bar of soap but so far as I know, you were never on the HIH or Ansett boards…. nor involved with Treasury or Defence Procurement or Immigration policy making …. two things that would get you in the door for sure. Seriously though, if you did put my name down, it would be very informative to see what happened next.

Asking for referees is definitely a Blast From The Past – strange indeed. My own problem is that I’m of an age where many who knew well my abilities and experience are now dead – offering to hold a seance for the selection panel to speak with them would go over like a lead balloon.

Yes that is strange too. A workshop/summit about The Future and they ask for pen-and-paper stuff. It may be that speech and hand-written communication is much better for making very subtle assessments about the nominees [if I were running the show, I might have done the same] …. or …. given the way Australia’s moribund “elite”[??] behaves, it’s more likely to be sheer control freakery plus ignorance of modern technology.

Theres a stench of game-playing about the way the whole show is running so far – the apparent minimizing of women participants for a start. And who said social darwinism was dead?

Apart from not being able to afford to go to Canberra for a dirty weekend – even if I had written a nomination, there is no guarantee it would have got there in time [we have standard snail-mail out here in the bush - not a yellow postbox within a bull's roar - that they haven't considered that issue is strange as well].

Why don’t you put in a nomination over the phone today [with a paper backup], explain what you have done and what your own vision is for policy making and just see what happens. [If you do get to the Grand Summit, bring us back a doggie-bag from the banquet, please].

Harking back to Pseud’s and your comments on 5th February. I would be tempted to omit gender or sexuality or ethnicity issues from my list too because, by now in the year 2008, these SHOULD no longer be areas causing great concern. [That they still are is quite another issue].

Wonder if this whole show might be to set up a Bunyip Aristocracy? [How's that one to keep the conspiracy theorists happy? ].

My dilemma is that the people who’ve paid most attention to my work in this field haven’t known me long. My “old” referees, the ones with respectable titles, aren’t across my recent work. Or am I worrying too much?

The nomination form is a bit strange, isn’t it! While I understand their need to streamline the application process, things like “explain in 100 words or less” are, as I’ve said somewhere before, a bit like a TV Week competition. Everything fits into the neat little boxes, so we can choose someone who thinks outside the box. [Bzzzzztt!]

Not having a working email address is inexcusable. It’s possible to choose and register a new Internet domain, purchase hosting, install a content management system like WordPress (which runs this site) and set up and test email addresses all in under two hours — I know, I’ve done it. My guess is that they didn’t anticipate the response levels.

And that comes back to the process. Why are they collecting all these paper and manually-filled forms? Why aren’t they using an online form which automatically puts the information into a database?

Okay. You’ve convinced me: I’ll Third or Fourth your nomination, if you like .

And if I win Lotto or find out that Kerry Packer was a long-lost uncle who included me in his Will, I’ll see you in Canberra.

Anyway. Good hunting.

Their nomination form surprised, perhaps alarmed, me. This is a forum/ summit about the future yet their nomination form has the Dead Hand Of The Past written all over it. Could have been worse, of course; they didn’t have questions like – “Wife’s name?”. “Religion?”. “Schools attended?” [to confirm previous question]. “Society and Lodge membership?”. “References?” “Father’s business or occupation?”

b.t.w., As a matter of courtesy, I tried to email the Australia 2020 Summit at their site and kept getting delivery-failure notification. Wonder how many others experienced the same level of customer service?

Meanwhile I’m trying to decide who should be my second referee for my own nomination. The first will be my long-term colleague Zern Liew, since he knows my work and my mind well(poor chap) and has the right kind of letters after his name to attract attention. But who else will appeal to the Thought Leader of Topic 9…?

@Neanderthalsis: Thanks for the more accurate statistic, much appreciated. I was relying on some rule-of-thumb figure that was sitting in the back of my head — is that a bad mixed metaphor?

I was saddened the first time I saw a chap needing his new employer’s help to fill out the Tax File Number Declaration form at a post office, since his own “functional literacy” wasn’t up to it. The System had failed him.

Ten years previously the figure stood at 47%, so in ten years we made a 1% improvement in adult rates; although PISA reading and writing results against set benchmarks for school students have been in decline over the same period (a 3% or so drop in 9 years).

The Survey results are freely available on the ABS website, just search for ALLS.

So make that 460 illiterates at the Summit…

Thanks for your info.

Didn’t apply to attend after all.

Did a cost-benefit analysis and the groceries-and-power-bill won out over a jolly weekend away. I simply couldn’t have afforded to go down to Canberra even if I had jumped through all the hoops of whatever the selection process is supposed to be.

Instead, I’ve started putting a horribly rough-and-ready Counter Summit on the internet. It’s aimed at the neglected people on the other side of the Digital Divide [but they don't have computers, I hear you say ] …. however, anybody at all can join in

It’s at

http://countersummitaustralia2020,blogspot.com

it’s nothing flash and it probably won’t work …. but it has the possiblity of becoming a sort of a minor alternative forum.

I just gave it a go, that’s all.