On Saturday, 1000 Of Australia's Best Minds Will Gather In Canberra For The 2020 Summit. But What About The Next Generation Of Thinkers About To Make Their Mark?

The Sunday Age

Sunday April 13, 2008

Stephen Cauchi

The Sunday Age asked Victorian universities to name their best and brightest students in each of the summit areas. Stephen Cauchi spoke to them about their ideas for the country.

PRODUCTIVITY AGENDA: EDUCATION, SKILLS, TRAINING, SCIENCE AND INNOVATION

SCOTT BULFIN, 31, PhD student at Monash Unversity

Education will be a major talking point at the 2020 summit, and Scott Bulfin, of Bayswater, has a few ideas about what should be discussed. Bulfin trained as a secondary school teacher and has spent his career working at government schools in Melbourne's east.

"I love teaching, it's my passion, but I always thought I'd do a research degree as well," he says. "I like the idea of making a different kind of contribution."

That project, conducted at Monash University, is called Being Digital in School, Home and Community, a national survey of 15 and 16-year-olds.

"It examines how young people use new media at school, home and in the community and the implications this has for their language learning in and out of schools," Bulfin says.

He believes the summit should focus on how to teach students in the new digital age, when young people spend more time on the internet, watching TV, playing video games and texting on mobile phones than reading.

"We must pay attention to what young people are actually doing with new media technologies . . . while some young people are more media savvy than their parents, educators have a prime responsibility to teach all young people to think critically about what they read and put online."

THE FUTURE OF THE

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY

SEAN CHUA, 33,

master of business student

at Melbourne University

Sean Chua came to Australia from Singapore to study architecture. He graduated from RMIT in 1994 but after three years in the field decided IT was more his bag. A consultant in the area for the past four years, Chua is now studying a master of business at Melbourne University part-time, with the aim of running IT in large organisations.

Chua believes improving broadband in Australia is essential. "Broadband is what you're going to get from a lot of people (at the summit)," he says. "I've had a lot of interactions with a lot of Asian countries over the last couple of years and the kinds of speeds they were getting compared to the speeds and plans we're running on . . . it's what developing countries in Asia were using many years ago."

He believes Australia needs to get its broadband act together quickly. "In Australia, you pay so much and get so much broadband," he says. "In a lot of other countries these days you find that people are paying a flat fee and getting unlimited use."

If broadband policy moves in the right direction, "and keeps up with a lot of the other countries, then that will really advance a lot of things in terms of technology".

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RURAL INDUSTRIES AND RURAL COMMUNITIES

LA VERGNE LEHMANN, 44, PhD student at Ballarat University

La Vergne Lehmann has lived in the Wimmera all her life, helping her family run a tourism business. Like many rural industries, tourism has been badly affected by drought. Lehmann remembers when, before the drought, the region's Lake Hindmarsh was one of the largest freshwater lakes in the southern hemisphere. "That hasn't had water in it for 10 years now," she says. "It used to have an inland sea atmosphere where people came for holidays."

She also remembers when the Wimmera River used to host rowing regattas and other events. "Now it's just a series of little puddles, it's in a shocking state," she says.

But can lack of water be turned into a positive? Her Ballarat University PhD is about valuing water in dry-land areas, particularly with regard to tourism operations. How can rural areas afflicted by drought successfully market themselves?

"Water is quintessentially associated with tourism activities, whether you're in a wetter area or a drier one," she says. "Once you don't have water, you've lost that ability to earn that kind of income." Therefore, it's a mistake for tourism operators in semi-arid regions such as the Wimmera to focus on water - because, unfortunately, there isn't much. "How then do you look at marketing without water? That's where my PhD is going."

Lehmann admits it's not easy to make a tourism virtue of drought. On the other hand, look at Egypt and Morocco - no one expects there to be a lot of water, notwithstanding the odd oasis. "Desert tourism is easier in a lot of ways," she says. "Our marketing is all wrong. We need to step back and look at how we market regional inland areas."

STRENGTHENING COMMUNITIES, SUPPORTING FAMILIES AND SOCIAL INCLUSION

Leanne Sheeran, 47, PhD student at RMIT

In the Australia of 2020, as today, both parents will be working. How do we look after the children?

This, one of the greatest challenges facing the Australian family, is the topic of Leanne Sheeran's PhD: "Mum's the Word; Exploring Early Motherhood." Sheeran, of Kilmore, has undergraduate, postgraduate and masters degrees in midwifery and nursing from La Trobe and Deakin universities. She works three days a week as a child health-care nurse with Mitchell Shire Council. And she's the mother of three teen-age boys.

"I'm seeing mothers in my centres who have stopped breastfeeding because they have to go back to work because interest rates have gone up. If we had paid maternity leave, they could stay longer with their babies."

Lack of maternity leave, lim-ited child-care places and the shortage of GPs in rural areas are some of the challenges fac-ing working mums. So what to do? "I would like to see our society put greater value on health promotion programs for women's and children's health, instead of problem manage-ment," she says. "We're educat-ing parents about birth, but not necessarily about the parenting that they'll need in the next 18 years. It's thinking outside the hospital and thinking of things that will benefit the country long-term. The more investment you put into childhood's early years pays out multiple-fold down the track."

Some of her other ideas include home help for women with postnatal depression, paid maternity leave for all women, more child care for women who choose to return to work, and more training for nurses and midwives in rural areas.

LONG-TERM NATIONAL HEALTH STRATEGY

Dionne Holland, 28, PhD student at Deakin University

Australia needs people like Dionne Holland to help meet the chal-lenges of obesity, depression and an age-ing popu-lation. Holland, of Montrose, became interested in health at her high school, Tintern, when a visiting dietician stressed the import-ance of good diet for overall health.

She finished an honours degree in food science and nutrition at Deakin, followed by a master's in public health. "It was probably at this stage that I realised my passion lay in more preventative health as opposed to curative," she says. "In pur-suit of good research I then took up my PhD."

Her doctorate focuses on how external agencies can work with schools to implement health programs. The earlier people are taught about good health, the better, she believes, but schools need help from out-side. "Schools are a fantastic environment to implement these projects but the only prob-lem is the curriculum is so over-crowded and the teachers are so overburdened that they don't necessarily have the skills and tools to implement these pro-grams."

It also means some radical curriculum changes. "Kids need to learn about health not only in PE, but they need to learn about it in maths and they need to learn about it in English."

OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA

Steven Kelly, 38, master of social health student at Melbourne University

Steven Kelly has not star-ted his PhD yet - in fact, he's only three months into his mas-ter's degree, focusing on Aboriginal men's health. But he has many ideas on what the 2020 Summit ought to be talking about.

Kelly, a Yamatji man from Western Australia, studied at Edith Cowan University, Perth, and at Charles Darwin Univer-sity in Darwin, completing a bachelor of arts majoring in anthropology in the first sem-ester of 2005. He moved to Mel-bourne this year to tackle his master's in social health, inspired by the dire state of indi-genous health in outback com-munities, which he believes is the number one issue for indi-genous Australia.

"Aboriginal people are dying from lifestyle diseases that are preventable. These people (medical graduates) are just not getting it," he says. "A lot of doc-tors coming through think Abor-iginal people get sick because of uncleanliness . . . they're just not exposed to what's going on.

"(Medical students), who are living a really privileged life, need to be shown exactly what's going on in these communities. They need to be taken out from their little bubble and put out in communities to do a stint to see exactly what's going on."

While more doctors - and indigenous doctors especially - are needed in outback com-munities, Australian medical faculties also need reform, he says. "Indigenous traditional doctors and health practices should be recognised and be accepted within the Western biomedical health system."

TOWARDS A CREATIVE AUSTRALIA: THE FUTURE OF ARTS, FILM AND DESIGN

Greg Creek, 48, PhD student at RMIT

"Philanthropy - that goes from funding films all the way to the smallest theatre group."

Greg Creek is talking about how the arts in Australia can thrive in the decades ahead. In the face of government cut-backs, tax laws in Australia must be changed, he believes, so the private sector can shoulder the burden.

Creek is an artist, special-ising in drawing. He also lec-tures in sculpture at RMIT's school of art while pursuing his PhD, which focuses on the link between political cartooning and the visual arts.

How he ended up so involved in art he doesn't know. He grew up with his family around Bendigo and the Wim-mera, but none of them had an artistic bent. He moved to Mel-bourne in the early 1980s - he now lives in Alphington - fin-ishing his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Victoria College and the Victorian College of the Arts.

Besides reforming tax laws, Creek believes Australian art can best be advanced over the next two decades by interacting with the world via the internet.

"Twenty years ago when I was studying, the notion of any-thing overseas was completely distant," he says. "(My students) have been doing some collaborative projects with universities in London, all based on the web.

"The great value of this is that they are going face-to-face in real time, young people talk-ing to each other. It makes a huge difference because it changes the perception of how we're seen overseas."

The 2020 Summit must dis-cuss how Australian artists and students can use the web to interact with the rest of the world, he says. "The students think we're all part of the one community rather than this div-orced, separate community at the end of the world."

THE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN GOVERNANCE

Zareh Ghazarian, 28, PhD student at Monash University

Even as a student at high school in Springvale, Zareh Ghazarian can remem-ber being glued to the television on election nights. His interest carried over to his ter-tiary studies: an arts/science degree at Deakin, honours in politics at Monash, and now a PhD in politics at Monash, specialising in the role of minor political parties.

Over the past 30 years, new minor parties such as the Democrats, One Nation, Greens and Family First have chal-lenged the ALP and the Coalition in the Senate. Ghazarian believes the big ques-tion in Australian politics is - do these parties enhance democracy? "Recent history suggests they do. In 1999, the Australian democrats played a crucial role in smoothing some of the hard edges off the Howard government's GST . . . and had the government needed to negotiate with a minor party . . . WorkChoices may have been a far more con-structive piece of legislation."

But how do we support the minor parties, and the political process more generally? Ghazarian, who lives in Edith-vale, believes the 2020 Summit should look at ways of ramping up political studies at primary and secondary schools.

"One of the key issues facing us is the level of community engagement with politics. Some people are intimidated by poli-tics or see it as being too boring. My research aims to make poli-tics more accessible to Austra-lians.

"Through education and understanding, citizens can be more active in the political pro-cess. This would help streng-then our democracy, and governance, beyond 2020."

AUSTRALIA'S FUTURE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING REGION AND WORLD

Larry Marshall, 54, PhD student at La Trobe University

It's little wonder Larry Marshall is interested in international politics. Born in Sri Lanka, he migrated to Australia in his high school years. After completing an honours degree in politics and economics at La Trobe University, he taught commerce and humanities at high school for 10 years before working in the Philippines for four years with Australian Vol-unteers Abroad.

Upon returning to Mel-bourne, he finished a master's degree in media and cinema studies. He currently juggles working for La Trobe's Centre for Dialogue, where he is under-taking projects involving the Muslim community, and a PhD in international relations.

He sees many threats to Australian and world security. "Climate change, nuclear dis-armament, the movements of refugees across borders, and the movement of financial streams of money that can kill an econ-omy or support it very quickly," Marshall says.

"Nuclear disarmament is a receding issue for many people but it's still one of the most cru-cial issues in the background which must be handled at a glo-bal level."

So what ideas should the 2020 Summit be canvassing to achieve a more secure world?

"I would hope that post-summit we could engage in a continual national dialogue. A real democracy doesn't only function once every three or four years," he says. "I think if a government thinks it has all the answers it's going to be wrong. (It must listen to) the voices of its most creative people, its insightful people, people who have been beavering away and working hard on a variety of things."

POPULATION, SUSTAINABILITY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER

ANITA FOERSTER, 32, PhD student at Melbourne University

She grew up in New South Wales, studied arts/law at ANU in Canberra, worked in Sydney with environmental groups like the World Wide Fund for Nature, and now lives in Woodend, near Melbourne, with her young family.

Foerster knows southern Australia well, and the importance to it of the Murray-Darling River system. Her PhD covers the legal and institutional frameworks for environmental water allocation in the Murray-Darling Basin.

"If we are really serious about a sustainable Murray-Darling system, then we need to set and implement ecologically based limits to water use now," she says.

"The 2007 National Water Plan proposes new sustainable diversion limits, but it will take 10 to 15 years before these are required to be implemented by the states."

Safeguarding river systems requires not only more water but, in this age of climate change, legal protection for that water. "Provision of a water regime that will sustain a basic level of ecological health should be prioritised to at least the same level as basic human needs during times of water shortage," she says.

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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