The primary focus of the Summit appeared to be presentation rather than the development of substance. Both presentation and substance are important, but even more important is maintaining the appropriate balance between the two. While substance becomes irrelevant if it is not able to be communicated effectively, the first priority must be the actual generation of the substance. At the Summit presentation reigned supreme and substance played second fiddle. This was manifest in the structure of the Summit and its reporting.
On the structure side, too little time in the two days was dedicated to substantive debate of the issues. While the opening and closing sessions were justifiable, there were also two so-called plenary sessions of the full group of 1002 which in reality were ‘chat shows’ performed for television. These were a complete waste of the time of the participants, who were press-ganged into constituting an audience. Even if these spectacles were regarded as essential to the public involvement aspect of the Summit, there was no need for a captive audience of 1002 people who could have spent their time far more productively. Even the most charitable would be hard-pressed to describe these sessions as public education. For the most part, they wallowed in the shallows of the superficial and puerile. When the chat show host asked his guests ‘What do you find embarrassing about Australia?’, one prominent Minister sitting in my row muttered ‘this’ and led a walk out, which I gratefully joined.
No doubt some participants enjoyed the chat shows and were happy to indulge in celebrity spotting. Others, however, felt used. Having given up their time for the purpose of contributing their expertise and ideas, they instead found themselves allocated the part of a television audience in a public-relations exercise. This squandering of goodwill was unnecessary. It was also an own-goal for a government fighting against claims that the Summit was nothing but a superficial talk-fest.
The other major problem arising from the focus on presentation concerned the use of facilitators and the translation of Summit recommendations into a more ‘presentable’ form. Whenever the sub-groups produced substantive recommendations that were then put to the larger groups of 100, the wording of the recommendations was stripped of substance by the facilitators so that the recommendations were meaningless and incomprehensible to the larger group. As a consequence, the plenary sessions of the groups of 100 descended into confusion and ambiguity, with members of each sub-group trying to explain what they had really decided. Many recommendations were lost in the resulting chaos.
At one stage the Governance group facilitator said that what was being proposed had to be reduced to a T-shirt slogan by 4pm. He was only half joking. The professional facilitators were working under the imperative of having to produce a slick and neat presentation by an extremely tight deadline. However, in many cases they had no expertise in the subject matter and their stripping of detail from proposals rendered them little more than vague platitudes, frustrating the participants.
Even worse was the fact that the final recommendations of the Governance group — fought out in a frantic and chaotic final session — were not correctly incorporated in the report presented to the Prime Minister. For example, the report listed as one of the top ideas of the Governance group: ‘Introduce an Australian republic, via a two-stage process, with Stage 1 ending ties with the UK while retaining the Governor-General’s titles and powers for five years. Stage 2: Identifying new models after extensive and broad consultation.’
In fact, the Governance group decided that first a plebiscite should be held on the question of whether or not Australia should become a republic and that if this were successful, then there should be a process of public consultation and involvement to determine what model for a republic would be later put to the people in a referendum. This discrepancy is not one of emphasis or interpretation, but substance. It arose because the focus of the facilitators in the limited time available was on the presentation to be given in the final session, not the text of the report.
The mantra at the Summit was (and continues to be) not to worry, because everything has been taken down and will be recorded in the final report. However, as those focused on presentation well know, the crucial point was when the media reported the outcome of the Summit to the public immediately after it concluded. The public record has now been written. No matter how many corrections or complete reports are later issued, the public perception of what occurred has already been created, and will not be shifted.