Students with 2020 Vision
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 5
14 July - 10 August 2008 ] by Andrew Devine
Senior academics were not the only University of Melbourne representatives to participate at the recent 2020 Summits held in Canberra in April.
Alongside experts in law, health, education, policy and the arts, current University of Melbourne students participated in the wide-ranging discussions across the two 2020 Summits:
• the 2020 Youth Summit for 100 delegates aged 15 to 24 years; and
• the Australia 2020 Summit where 1000 of the nation’s best and brightest individuals discussed the issues affecting Australia’s future.
Across 10 critical areas of discussion, the participants presented a strategy and long-term vision for the nation’s future.
Katie Dunlop, a current Bachelor of Arts (Honours) student, was delighted to be selected to participate at the 2020 Youth Summit.
“We were broken into policy areas to discuss and formulate a vision of how we would like Australia to be in the year 2020,” Katie says.
“I was in the Communities and Families policy group and was able to use the knowledge I had built up academically, from my Arts degree at Melbourne, and from volunteer experiences I have had, and continue to have, with community organisations over the past few years.”
By contributing at the Summit, Katie presented her vision for a Paid Parental Leave policy, which became one of the top 10 ideas from the 2020 Youth Summit, and wished to work with other delegates in actively preventing intimate partner violence.
Katie describes this issue as “one of the most horrifying blights on Australia’s social landscape” and came to be interested in the matter through her work at a women’s crisis refuge. Katie has been able to work this interest into her Political Science honours thesis which she is completing this year.
“Together with a team of other very passionate and diverse young people (at the Summit) we formulated the outline for a national, school-based Safe-Relationships education program that would educate young people about the issue, challenge the stereotypes of male and female sexuality and foster respectful attitudes to relationships.
“Our policy design fitted into a broader push by all 2020 Youth Summit participants that preventative approaches to Australia’s social challenges were needed.
“My personal experience of the Summit was very positive, largely because of the amazing delegates I got to meet and with whom I debated. Come 2020, there will be a lot of eager, compassionate, educated and able people ready to govern our society.”
In addition to her studies, Katie is continuing her 2020 Youth Summit experience by co-writing a chapter on the status of women in Australia in The Future, By Us, written by young people about their vision for Australia’s future. It will be released in early 2009.
WHAT WAS THE 2020 YOUTH SUMMIT?
The 2020 Youth Summit was held in the lead-up to the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra, at Parliament House on 12 and 13 April 2008 and was co-chaired by the Minister for Youth, the Hon Kate Ellis MP and Hugh Evans, Young Australian of the Year for 2004. The ten critical areas of discussion at the Youth Summit were:
• The productivity agenda - education, skills, training, science and innovation;
• Infrastructure - economic infrastructure, the digital economy and the future of our cities;
• Population, sustainability, climate change, water and the future of our cities;
• Future directions for rural industries and rural communities;
• A long-term national health strategy – including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population;
• Strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion;
• Options for the future of Indigenous Australia;
• Towards a creative Australia: the future of the arts, film and design;
• The future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens; and
• Australia’s future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world.
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