(I just wrote a letter to the local paper asking why our local member suddenly felt that banning bongs was going to improve our community. It’s about as logical as banning skydiving equipment, or shot glasses.)

In the yarts, for instance, putting an extra three hundred mill a year into the ABC (still a low amount for that kind of broadcaster) will be seen to have very useful ripple effects, and come to the surface. My bet is, it will survive, but with caveats about accountability.

Then the ALP has the rest of the year to work out how that could actually work, to create the proposal. (I would suggest that a public ceremony in which various senior broadcasters promise to be humble with the money, cross their hearts and hope to die, is not going to be enough).

Me, I’d be using performance indicators in the shadow of a guillotine, but that is why I am blogging on a rented flat and Mark Scott is at the 2020 summit.

FWIW, Pyne’s general conclusion about the summit was correct, even if the maths wasn’t accurate (and to be pedantic: his maths was accurate - though his underlying assumptions were not)

Some people will have multiple ideas, some ideas will be the same. Aren’t they also considering submissions from non summiteers?

Fact is, it doesn’t matter whether people get 39.6 seconds, 6.6 minutes, or even 66 minutes it’s still a waste of effort (in fact, all this organising into groups is going to cut down talk time as well). Each of the ideas is then presumably discussed, brainstormed, modified, discussed some more and voted on. In the end, each suggestion will be either vague aspirational BS, or direct requests for more money/intervention/support for pet projects.

The way some people in this thread are talking, you’d think you actually consider this whole fiasco a useful exercise.

In a quick pass, I couldn’t find too many from people actually involved in the Yarts, and I denied myself the pleasure of reading what they said on other topics lest my own arts brain, trained by now on the blogosphere, went completely on the fritz.

But there is a pretty fair variety of responses on the question of a creative nation. A drumbeat to fund the ABC and SBS better, but a continuing line about throwing the whole thing to the marketplace as well.

The ABC has gone into this noticeably well armed with a battle cry statement of eleven pages about running a good service with decent Australian programming. Don’t be surprised if this turns out to be a coup for Auntie..

I’ve seen at least two wikis set up:

http://ozideas.wetpaint.com/
http://2020ideas.pbwiki.com/

Of course… that’s assuming 1000 people = 1000 ideas. Is it only one idea per person?

It also assumes unique ideas per participant. I imagine that everyone going into the arts & culture stream, for instance, has a variant on the single idea of “more money, please”.

If they did, it would be a good starter for continuing/annotating the discussion, adding in hrefs to particular submissions of interest and documents both within gov.au and the outside world.

I wonder if the 2020 folk talked to AGIMO first about collaborating in the 21st century? Probably not… too sensible.

Based on the problem description — having to account for people being born and dying each year — your question sounds like a job for calculus.

It’s a pity I’m not very good at it.

POT: Hey Kettle, your BLACK!

Just wondering.

Hopefully as a result of this piece, Tony Jones et al (or production managers) will have handy calculators when interviewing Pyne (et al) on Lateline.

And in punning mood, given politician’s penchant for post hoc spin, perhaps it will be best to give them a calculator that does Reverse Polish Notation.