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Australian Youth Summit
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Australian Youth Summit The new Australian government ran a Youth 2020 summit for kids and we tried to get involved but weren't allowed because we're too young. You can read more about it at: www.australia2020.gov.au/youth There was also a summit for adults: Australia 2020. We're very grateful to Prof Will Steffen, who attended Australia 2020 and wrote this report for us. Prof Steffen is the Director of The Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU. He has degrees in Chemistry and specialises in global change. He is on various international advisory panels and is a visiting researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden. So he's a pretty impressive kind of guy! Professor Will Steffen:  "The 2020 Summit was a very interesting exercise in opening-up government and engaging people from all walks of life. I was impressed with the amount of time we had to discuss critical issues - in my case, how are we going to deal with the challenge of mitigating climate change? Our group had some strongly divergent opinions, and I suspect that some (many?) people in our group had not previously had the chance to debate issues with others who had strikingly different perspectives. Was the Summit a success? That depends very much on what you expected. From my perspective, I believe it was an outstanding success. I view it as important first step, but only a first step, in opening up government to a new style of democracy. Map of Sweden  Having lived in Sweden, the 2020 Summit was very much like a Scandinavian approach, moving away from the sterile, often destructive (and very polarised) approach of traditional party politics in Australia towards an approach that emphasises open discussion, ongoing debate and dialogue, and a movement towards a consensus approach to critical issues facing the country. We still have a long way to go to emulate the Swedes, for example, but the 2020 Summit was an important first step." Image thanks to: http://fennerschool.anu.edu.au/people/academics/steffenw.php |
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