Ghost writers causing 2020 summit initial report to grow and grow into a little bit of Kevin on Earth?

This morning News.com.au referred to the Australia 2020 summit initial report as being 85 pages long.
The copy I downloaded last night was 38 pages long in a 40 page PDF format.
So did the News journalist make a simple counting error 47 pages in length or is the Rudd Government supplying the media with a padded document containing ministerial spin?
Will the final version of the summit report due out next month bear any resemblance to the collective views of those little summit mouseketeer groups?

The Great 2020 Hoax

I watched the ABC1 Sunday afternoon showing of Vision 2020 Summit and, its participant speeches and summations. A fascinating spectacle, of motherhood statements and sector wish lists often at odds with each other, revealing a truth which cannot be spun or hidden. 

 

The Australia 2020 summit does not speak for Australia. In fact, by no disciplinary yardstick in existence can it be said to speak for the whole nation.

A badly-worded, one question, single issue online newspaper poll has more chance of being reliably considered representative of a majority national view.

Which means that 2020 is a hoax, a piece of political theatre designed to make voters think that government is doing more than running on the spot.

 

When Kevin Rudd first made that throw-away announcement, of a national ideas summit to help set the political agenda, I was mildly amused at his nonsense.

Then I became slightly irritated on realising that no thought had gone into how this would be achieved and, that invitations to chair workshops were based on the usual suspects known to those in power.

 

By the time it became obvious that dominant groups had hijacked both the summit's agenda and who would be chosen to attend, I have to say that irritation had turned to pronounced annoyance.

Particularly when Rudd decided to ginger things up by so obviously manouvering a republic onto the list.

 

This metamorphosed into definite anger when it could be seen that most of those attending had not even bothered to do the most preliminary homework on the their own stated aspirational goals, as opposed to their 'new' ideas of which there appeared to be none.

Even a trawl through the published 2020 written submissions revealed a dearth of proposed solutions to the problems which face us as a nation.

 

But what induced my almost incandescent rage has been the many assertions (made by smug elite spokespersons during this summit) that these little mouseketeers actually represent the views of all Australia.

The only views these people can possibly represent are the views of those attending over the course of the two-day summit. That is, those who were chosen and could afford to attend by paying all travel and accommodation costs, as well as buying most of their own food and drink.

 

However, because the final documents produced by this summit will have had to be massaged by bureaucrats to produce a least a few facesaving practical 'solutions' from that pile of well-worn aspirational goals, these may more properly be said to potentially reflect the views of ministers and their advisers.

If the televised ministerial speeches unconsciously foreshadowing this didn't give the hint, then the Prime Minister's shameless herding of the working groups would.

 

So Rudd and Co. let us be clear about what was achieved at the end of the 19-20 April exclusive Canberra weekend.

Your government presided over the biggest, collective manual self-gratification gathering ever held in Australia's long history.

I suggest you approach the Guinness Book of Records for inclusion, because that will be your sole enduring demonstrable outcome from this great hoax.

Telstra rewarded for its support of Labor during 2007 election?

During the 2007 federal election Telstra actively campaigned against the telecommunications policy and business decisions of the Howard Government.

 

Is this part of Labor's reward to Telstra for services rendered?

In The Australian this morning.

 

DETAILS about Australia's telecommunications infrastructure, crucial for bidders pitching for the $4.7 billion national broadband contract, are not available from the Government -- more than a week after the request for proposals (RFP) for the bid.

In the week since the release of the RFP on April 11, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has been trying to assure the telco industry that the process being used to award the lucrative contract is not biased towards Australia's dominant telecommunications player Telstra.

But in the battle to win the $4.7 billion national broadband bid, Telstra, which wants an after-tax return on the network north of 18 per cent for its shareholders, appeared to win the psychological advantage when its media man Phil Burgess said the day before the RFP was released that the former government-owned monopoly expected to get the nod.

The timing and tenor of his comments sent a murmur through the telco industry but the release of the RFP a day later had some convinced that a deal had been done.

The three main criticisms from Telstra's rivals of the RFP for the open access fibre network are that it lacks public scrutiny for such a large investment of public funds, that it could entrench a monopoly provider and that it disadvantages Telstra's rivals in the bidding process.

The Australian understands that a number of companies are currently crafting letters to the minister expressing their concerns about the deal, and the CEOs of the G9 group of Telstra's rivals are planning to meet within days to discuss how to respond to the RFP.

The federal Opposition has also raised concerns about the inclusion of a gag order in the broadband tender which prohibits bidders from discussing it publicly. Opposition communications spokesman Bruce Billson says that he has received legal advice describing the gag order as an "extraordinary" inclusion in a government RFP.

"Legal opinion I have sought is also contrary to the claims from the minister's office that the gag order is common. I am advised it is quite uncommon in both private sector and government contracts," he says.

Australia 2020 - thinking glib

The Australia 2020 summit logo - something else Rudders asserts he owns.