Communities in Control

“As we're increasingly realising, social connectedness and a shared political discourse which honours the common good are all fundamental to a functioning society and economy. Yet there's pervasive foreboding that these things are falling away in our society. Faith in our major institutions, including our democracy continues its steady decline both here and in other Western Democracies. This talk will explore the ways in which inequality is more than a simple material phenomenon. It will argue that politics as currently practices is losing its capacity to address these concerns, and explore an alternative from which our political system could borrow - in which people are represented by citizens juries or councils - selected by lot as they were in ancient Athens. It will also explore the ways in which such a system might be more hospitable to solving our social problems."

In 1997, law professor Martin Krygier delivered his Boyer lectures, Between Fear and Hope: Hybrid Thoughts on Public Values. Then Professor of Law at UNSW, he finished his sixth lecture with a call for his listeners to enroll in the Conservative-Liberal-Republican-Communitarian-SocialDemocratic International Party (Sydney branch) – a tolerant multi-ideological party that he believed could cope with a turbulent multicultural Australia. Twenty years later membership of that party still hovers around one, but the problems Professor Krygier foresaw then – national narcissism, doctrinal rigidity, populist despotism, ethnic exclusiveness, willed blindness to injustice and humiliation – have indeed come to pass. Chancers and confidence tricksters still hawk simplified and inadequate answers to wicked problems. His remedies – civility, communalism, institutionalised values – are ever and always under threat. Professor Krygier could see back in 1997 where Australia was pointing, and he’s had 20 years to think it over and tweak the model. If you’re looking for an explanation of how we got where we are now, and how we need to respond, this is the place to come.

“Everyone is entitled to a healthy death!" However good our public health care, however careful we are of our diet, however low the road toll falls, the all-causes death rate is, eventually, 100%. However far off the horizon looks for you now, we’ll all have to go through that vanishing point, and we should all take an interest in the boundary conditions. Andrew Denton wants Australians to be informed consumers at the end of life – empowered participants in a national conversation. We die as we live: in society, bound by rules, enmeshed in politics. Let’s talk it all through. It’s the biggest social justice issue of your life.

Imagine waking up blind. One moment you can see, the next your vision is made up only of childhood memories. At 16, this became a reality for Ben Pettingill when overnight he lost 98% of his eyesight to a rare genetic syndrome. While the shock then grief of losing one's eyesight cannot be discounted, once Ben processed his new reality he realised that he had to make a choice that would define the rest of his life. Too many people have big ideas or dreams but lack the motivation and direction to bring their ideas to life and make their dreams reality. Ben believed that a blind man could see, and his miracle was the activation of 'true vision'.

Testosterone Rex is that familiar story that tells us that risk-taking, competitive, promiscuous masculinity evolved in males to increase their reproductive success, and is therefore built into the male brain and fuelled by testosterone. This belief that "boys will be boys" can (subtly or otherwise) encourage, excuse or exculpate behaviour and patterns that impede progress to healthier communities. But Testosterone Rex is based on outdated science, Cordelia Fine argues. As The Guardian put it, this "is a debunking rumble that ought to inspire a roar.

"When nonsense is repeated often enough – especially by well-paid lobbyists, commentators and businesspeople – it can start to seem as though everyone believes that black is white, or up is down," Richard Denniss writes. "After enough exposure to econobabble, you might even come to think that the best way to help poor people is to give tax cuts to the rich." Richard's having none of it. His mission in life is to bust the myths peddled by people using mangled economic language to conceal the truth. There's never been a better time to learn how to speak econobabble. Richard Denniss has the phrasebook.

There’s more than one way to win a spat – and if you’re working to create change in yThe Institute of Community Directors Australia, you need to be adept at all of them. Politics is a competition of ideas, and the community sector can’t shy away from that, it must be in the thick of it. In this session we’ll hear from weary veterans and charged-up crusaders on how to mobilise the grassroots and get them rallied and ready for the many battles ahead.

Dr Sandhya Ramrakha on the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study.

Once you get a notion in your mind, it can be remarkably hard to shift it. Chris Sarra has spent his career fighting the strongly held assumptions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people hold about themselves, and those foisted upon them by others, in a bid to nullify their life, educational and health-limiting effects. His Stronger Smarter Institute puts into practice his belief that higher expectation relationships will create stronger, smarter classrooms – and healthier communities.

At a time when politics seems increasingly negative and our society hopelessly divided, Rebecca Huntley believes we’re more fortunate than we think, and have more in common than we know. While many of our politicians are becoming more conservative, both in their policies and their ambitions for the country, the Australian people – almost all of us – want to see real social change, she says. We are more generous and more progressive, and more alike, than we think we are – and we are better than our day-to-day political discourse would suggest.