2020 Summit .....

Outcome document ..............

My favourite bit of it :

Assert new leadership in global governance

On a sunny weekend, April 19/20, 1000 people came together to discuss what Australia could look like in 2020. The 1000 people were divided up into 10 groups of 100. My group focused on Australia's security and prosperity in the region and world. Bobi drove me to Parliament house nice and early.

Matilda House gave a strong Welcome to Country speech, starting with "Am I sposed to tell y'as to sit?" and ending with a call for women to risk being labeled mad and bad by speaking up loud and clear.

The first exercise in our group was to pretend it is the year 2020 and we are in taxi when Time Magazine calls up to do an interview on how the Summit had helped actually achieve something positive in 2020

We broke up into 15 groups based on this exercise, which tickled up the main themes over the next couple of days. It was an eclectic group of human rights folks, policing and terrorism experts, Chinese language teachers, Asia specialists, unionists, feminists, business folks, the former and current heads of the military. My first sub-group contained Martin Ferguson, a union guy, a lawyer, a teacher and me. It was the hardest one, others flowed a lot more easily. This one below was focused on security concepts and ended up isolating two main themes about internal community and individual security, and the other focused on energy, food and water security.

Here is Susan f rom the YWCA having her say. It was great to have some allies from yesteryear in the group.

It wasn't long before a woman stood up and noticed that gender had fallen off the agenda and announced the formation of a gender group, which came up with some ideas that were well received.

Here are some of the fabulouso feministas having dinner at the National Library foyer

The Foreign Minister hung out talking with us for quite a while; wouldn't you?

Geraldine Dooge, a journo had surveyed 80 of the 1300 submissions made to our group and summarised the main themes

The smaller theme groups of 100 came together for some plenary sessions in the great hall


The breaks were great opportunities to just introduce yourself to people and chat - some of them huuuuuuge people, like Julian Burnside. Here I am having lunch with him on the floor, compromising facial integrity with my smile to meet this fine fine man, a courageous brilliant lawyer. This was my most thrilling meeting. Walking up to Robyn Archer and telling her I loved her deeply and her songs were in my life and heart was also pretty good. She said she would teach me the Menopause Blues. I told her not yet baby cakes.


It was good to tell Julia Gillard, the Deputy Prime Minister about announcing at a breakfast with all the women Ambassadors in Geneva, including our Ambassador Caroline Millar, that on that day, for the first time in the history of Australia since invasion, we had a woman leader. This was when Kevin Rudd was signing the Kyoto Treaty. Yeah, okay, it was a sucky thing to do, but it was also true!

Journalists did interviews with folks about how it was going half way through

Hugh Jackman did vox pops


Back to work - here is feminista star Fiona facilitating a small working group of about 12 people that the Prime Minister rocked up to, which she handled very well! He sat next to me so I leaned over and caught him up on the fact that we were talking about how gender is relevant to all foreign policy, and how he needed an additional roving disarmament ambassador to help him be a global champion of nuclear abolition. That was absurdly good fun.

Robyn from Perth makes sure gender is in there

A draft structure of our document

Michael Wesley and Stephen Smith giving the final remarks for our session before we finished up and headed to the final plenary.

If you ever saw or heard our previous foreign minister, you would understand why this is an upper. I'm going to disagree like hell with him, no doubt, and be disappointed and saddened and angered, but in this pre-cynical moment, I'm enjoying that this is no downer in style, tone or attitude to NGOs.

For the final plenary, the four fabuloso feministas sat in the front row, because we could. It meant I got the best photos, and that we met Maxine, the woman who presented Little Johnny Howard with the ultimate humiliation of winning his seat, the second time in Australian history that a leader lost his own seat.

Kev gets the report, and beams at us loud feminists in the front row!

Imagine hitting a political meeting 5 days after giving birth. Cate Blanchette is clever, committeed and is more beautifully angular and graceful in the flesh, if you can believe it. We exchanged a smile while she was sitting onstage before speaking; I will live forever and ever.

Cate and some guy

Here are the co-chairs of the Indigenous stream, Jackie Huggins and Minister Jenny Macklin

Our mate Maxine

Julia and some guy


Okay, so what? A talk fest? A political spectacle? Maybe. But I don't underestimate the really good people that got together this weekend. These people felt pretty hopeful. It is dangerous and difficult to feel hope, almost devastating to feel it because you realise how long it has been since you had some. These folks seemed pretty determined to me to see things change. Kev and Co have been in 18 weeks, and there have been some signals and signs, like signing Kyoto, like some bold statements. They have made some big election promises, and they have set themselves up to have some expectant and watchful citizens through this 2020 process. It also felt like some kind of healing took place, a beginning anyway, because NGOs, academics and experts have been treated with total contempt for the last 12 years and might now be given a hearing and a voice by a government who might actually do some things to surprise us. On 1 July when 5 fiesty inspired and intelligent Greens hit the Senate, I'm sure they will be able to breathe some more life into the good ideas presented this weekend.