Why Australia needs more heretics

An offer to visit the Australian Davos Connection’s Future Summit last week was too good to pass over. With the speakers list reflecting the cream of corporate Australia, it was an opportunity to hear where the country’s establishment sees the nation heading over the next few years.

The ranks of dark suits on arrival was impressive in a similar way to a colony of Emperor Penguins. One of the summit’s Twitter Crew asked “does the style and conformity reflect the thinking?”

Sadly the answer was “yes”. The Future Summit showed the Australian establishment is united in their opinions on education, innovation and our relationships with the rest of the world.

The most common point between all the Future Summit panellists is the current economic downturn for Australia is just a mere hiccup of a slow year or so, before we ride to greater economic heights on the back of a resurgent China.

While this view may turn out to be right, it went largely unchallenged. As did most of the other discussions on innovation, health, foreign policy and education.

We needed some heretics to challenge corporate Australia’s comfortable assumptions. Putting Steve Keen between Saul Eslake and Tim Harcourt would have been far more informative and entertaining than watching establishment figures reaffirming each others’ values.

Regardless of the criticisms, the Future Summit achieved its aims – participants received a window into the thinking of Australia’s political, academic, media and business elites.

I left with the impression that our institutions are less prepared for the long-term effects of the global financial crisis, climate change, peak oil, aging populations and the rise of China than they should be.

The Future Summit is a great idea and should have an important part in examining where our society and economy are heading. Unfortunately, it’s limited by restricting the speakers and panellists to the big end of town.

Hopefully next year there’ll be some heretics, entrepreneurs and young people on the panels with the opportunity to challenge our comfortable status quo. A few less suits wouldn’t go astray.

Paul Wallbank attended the Future Summit as a guest of the Australian Davos Foundation. He wore a nice grey suit.

Paul Wallbank is a speaker, writer and broadcaster on technology and business. He grew PC Rescue into a national IT company and set up the IT Queries website. Paul has a regular ABC spot on technology matters.

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