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The end of the Forum
Dec. 3rd, 2006 07:59 pmWe have a Report and have presented it to a Minister and my three day policy jaunt is over. This last post (hark, I hear a trumpet playing) is more about stray comments than any more insights into global warming. We are all rather more than tired, but we completed everything with reasonable aplomb. The Institute of Sustainable Futures people were very good to work with and made the whole citizens' jury thing very effective, which is much more than it sounds. Somehow they managed things so we produced a policy paper in three days, and none of us were experts on the subject. Very impressive stuff.
I was a bit more useful today than the other days. I like patterns. Finding them and drawing them together and putting words to them was something I could work on. Other people were good at that, too and a couple of people were real whizzes at it. I have an increased respect for farmers especially. A couple of them had some of the best insights of the whole process.
In fact, the whole rural contingent enriched our report immeasurably - they added a bunch of important insights that we all needed to hear. I also found out that the 250 official residents of Binalong make *exactly* the same bad jokes about their town name as I do. I really, really want to visit Binalong properly now, and I have a friend there, to boot. I made several new friends - I really like people who are intelligent and thoughtful and *care* and have senses of humour. There were lots of them on our jury.
Let me find my notes and give you some stray comments I noted. From here on in there is neither order nor logic in my post.
The Minister to whom we presented was John Hargreaves. There was no rapport between him and us, which was curious. We assumed there was (since we had enjoyed everyone else's company) and when he turned up before we were ready, someone told him to "Go away. We don't want you yet." (not one of the organisers - they were unfailingly professional - in fact they were so professional they laughed at *all* my jokes.)
And he did and he was nice about it, but things just didn't click. He was addressed politely as 'Minister', which was *not* what happened with earlier dignitaries. Hargreaves was not 'one of us'. So much was he not 'one of us' that I analysed his speech style to find out why. He uses a bunch of well-tested Bush techniques, including filling gaps in argument with reassuring platitudes that lead nowhere; and with hokey sayings; and making his conversation sound homey by dropping consonants off the end of words. This wasn't the right audience for that, I suspect.
At one stage my group started considering the implication of energy audits for shearing sheds.
At another stage John Hargreaves fell into science-fictional reality. He started talking about "mutant canola crops coming into our city and eating our busses." Yes, he did say a lot of the right things, but for some reason he alienated us. It was fascinating to watch. It was also fascinating the watch people's faces when someone prefaced a question with "Minister, I'm actually from New South Wales." "Oh, sorry about that."
On an almost-unrelated note, there was general agreement from those who had been a position to read it, that the literature on the back of the toilet doors in the Legislative Assembly is particularly good.
We had a couple of corrections to misperceptions this morning. Bega Shire has just started the CCP process and Eurobodalla is at milestone 2 while the ACT is at milestone 4.
Our jury had superpowers of stickyness - those sticky papers stuck wherever we wanted whenever we wanted.
In the final edit of our paper the word 'fora' lost out to 'forums'. Someone commented that two of us preferring the Latin form was insufficient.
And all the rest of my notes have been processed into the policy document, which I haven't yet got. This means that, as of this moment, I am officially returned to normal existence.
I was a bit more useful today than the other days. I like patterns. Finding them and drawing them together and putting words to them was something I could work on. Other people were good at that, too and a couple of people were real whizzes at it. I have an increased respect for farmers especially. A couple of them had some of the best insights of the whole process.
In fact, the whole rural contingent enriched our report immeasurably - they added a bunch of important insights that we all needed to hear. I also found out that the 250 official residents of Binalong make *exactly* the same bad jokes about their town name as I do. I really, really want to visit Binalong properly now, and I have a friend there, to boot. I made several new friends - I really like people who are intelligent and thoughtful and *care* and have senses of humour. There were lots of them on our jury.
Let me find my notes and give you some stray comments I noted. From here on in there is neither order nor logic in my post.
The Minister to whom we presented was John Hargreaves. There was no rapport between him and us, which was curious. We assumed there was (since we had enjoyed everyone else's company) and when he turned up before we were ready, someone told him to "Go away. We don't want you yet." (not one of the organisers - they were unfailingly professional - in fact they were so professional they laughed at *all* my jokes.)
And he did and he was nice about it, but things just didn't click. He was addressed politely as 'Minister', which was *not* what happened with earlier dignitaries. Hargreaves was not 'one of us'. So much was he not 'one of us' that I analysed his speech style to find out why. He uses a bunch of well-tested Bush techniques, including filling gaps in argument with reassuring platitudes that lead nowhere; and with hokey sayings; and making his conversation sound homey by dropping consonants off the end of words. This wasn't the right audience for that, I suspect.
At one stage my group started considering the implication of energy audits for shearing sheds.
At another stage John Hargreaves fell into science-fictional reality. He started talking about "mutant canola crops coming into our city and eating our busses." Yes, he did say a lot of the right things, but for some reason he alienated us. It was fascinating to watch. It was also fascinating the watch people's faces when someone prefaced a question with "Minister, I'm actually from New South Wales." "Oh, sorry about that."
On an almost-unrelated note, there was general agreement from those who had been a position to read it, that the literature on the back of the toilet doors in the Legislative Assembly is particularly good.
We had a couple of corrections to misperceptions this morning. Bega Shire has just started the CCP process and Eurobodalla is at milestone 2 while the ACT is at milestone 4.
Our jury had superpowers of stickyness - those sticky papers stuck wherever we wanted whenever we wanted.
In the final edit of our paper the word 'fora' lost out to 'forums'. Someone commented that two of us preferring the Latin form was insufficient.
And all the rest of my notes have been processed into the policy document, which I haven't yet got. This means that, as of this moment, I am officially returned to normal existence.