Our next generation of thinkers has its say
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
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 %26#133; 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.”
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.
THE FUTURE OF THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY
SEAN CHUA, 33, 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.
master of business student
at Melbourne University
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 %26#133; 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, 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.”
PhD student at Ballarat University
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 %26#151;
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 %26#151; 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, In the Australia of 2020, as today,
both parents will be working. How do we look after the
children?
PhD student at RMIT
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 teenage 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, limited child-care places and the
shortage of GPs in rural areas are some of the challenges facing
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 management,” she says. “We’re
educating 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, Australia needs people like Dionne
Holland to help meet the challenges of obesity, depression and an
ageing population. Holland, of Montrose, became interested in
health at her high school, Tintern, when a visiting dietician
stressed the importance of good diet for overall health.
PhD student at Deakin University
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 pursuit 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 outside. “Schools are a fantastic environment to implement
these projects but the only problem is the curriculum is so
overcrowded and the teachers are so overburdened that they don’t
necessarily have the skills and tools to implement these
programs.”
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, Steven Kelly has not started his PhD
yet %26#151; in fact, he’s only three months into his master’s
degree, focusing on Aboriginal men’s health. But he has many ideas
on what the 2020 Summit ought to be talking about.
master of social health student at Melbourne University
Kelly, a Yamatji man from Western Australia, studied at Edith
Cowan University, Perth, and at Charles Darwin University in
Darwin, completing a bachelor of arts majoring in anthropology in
the first semester of 2005. He moved to Melbourne this year to
tackle his master’s in social health, inspired by the dire state of
indigenous health in outback communities, which he believes is the
number one issue for indigenous 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 doctors coming through think Aboriginal
people get sick because of uncleanliness %26#133; 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 %26#151; and indigenous doctors especially
%26#151; are needed in outback communities, 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, “Philanthropy %26#151; that goes from
funding films all the way to the smallest theatre group.”
PhD student at RMIT
Greg Creek is talking about how the arts in Australia can thrive
in the decades ahead. In the face of government cutbacks, tax laws
in Australia must be changed, he believes, so the private sector
can shoulder the burden.
Creek is an artist, specialising in drawing. He also lectures 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 Wimmera, but none of them
had an artistic bent. He moved to Melbourne in the early 1980s
%26#151; he now lives in Alphington %26#151; finishing 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 anything
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 talking to each other. It makes a huge
difference because it changes the perception of how we’re seen
overseas.”
The 2020 Summit must discuss 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 divorced, separate community at the end of the world.”
THE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN GOVERNANCE
Zareh Ghazarian, 28, Even as a student at high school in
Springvale, Zareh Ghazarian can remember being glued to the
television on election nights. His interest carried over to his
tertiary 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.
PhD student at Monash University
Over the past 30 years, new minor parties such as the Democrats,
One Nation, Greens and Family First have challenged the ALP and the
Coalition in the Senate. Ghazarian believes the big question in
Australian politics is %26#151; 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 %26#133; and had the government needed to
negotiate with a minor party %26#133; WorkChoices may have been a far
more constructive piece of legislation.”
But how do we support the minor parties, and the political
process more generally? Ghazarian, who lives in Edithvale, 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 politics
or see it as being too boring. My research aims to make politics
more accessible to Australians.
“Through education and understanding, citizens can be more
active in the political process. This would help strengthen our
democracy, and governance, beyond 2020.”
AUSTRALIA’S FUTURE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY IN A RAPIDLY
CHANGING REGION AND WORLD
Larry Marshall, 54, 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
Volunteers Abroad.
PhD student at La Trobe University
Upon returning to Melbourne, 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 undertaking projects
involving the Muslim community, and a PhD in international
relations.
He sees many threats to Australian and world security. “Climate
change, nuclear disarmament, the movements of refugees across
borders, and the movement of financial streams of money that can
kill an economy or support it very quickly,” Marshall says.
“Nuclear disarmament is a receding issue for many people but
it’s still one of the most crucial issues in the background which
must be handled at a global 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.”
