This short essay is my pre­sen­ta­tion at the inau­gural The Pub­lic Sphere to be hosted by Sen­a­tor Kate Lundy at the ANU on 7 May 2009.

Despite liv­ing in one of a rel­a­tively few nations with com­pul­sory suf­frage, the elec­torate largely remains woe­fully unin­formed about the polit­i­cal process — how elec­tions actu­ally work, the dif­fer­ence between and respec­tive pow­ers of the lay­ers of gov­ern­ment, and the ser­vices pro­vided by and oblig­a­tions of each.

Largely, the leg­is­la­ture is lit­tle bet­ter in the reverse direc­tion. “Non-​​core” promises are bro­ken in the name of polit­i­cal expe­di­ency and world-​​affecting poli­cies and pro­grams our nation ought to be tak­ing the lead on are pushed aside in order to curry favor with pow­er­ful indus­try lob­bies and a few fringe-​​dwelling Sen­a­tors who hold the bal­ance of power.

In a nation where it is in everyone’s best inter­ests to work together, we have gov­ern­ments who con­tinue to pro­claim bipar­ti­san­ship, yet barely man­age to hold it together in the face of internecine feuds. They declare they know what is best for us in a man­ner that is one small step away from Nanny Stat­ing at its worst and we have an exec­u­tive that favors a Byzan­tine, impen­e­tra­ble bureau­cracy defined by a pub­lic per­cep­tion of hol­low men in grey suits over really under­stand­ing what their employ­ees and more impor­tantly the pub­lic truly wants.

Today, we’re speak­ing about the poten­tial social, cul­tural and indus­trial impact of an increas­ingly fast and widely dis­trib­uted access to broad­band in this nation. Despite the recent announce­ment of the NBN, sup­pos­edly bring­ing 100Mbps fiber-​​to-​​the-​​home to a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the nation, my view is the pro­posal is an order of mag­ni­tude in speed too slow and by the time it has been imple­mented, will be a decade out of date.

That said, there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties to be gar­nered by the pro­vi­sion of high speed broad­band to the peo­ple of Aus­tralia. But, con­comi­tant with that tech­nol­ogy, a truly Kuhn­ian par­a­digm shift must occur in the cul­ture of the leg­is­la­ture and the bureau­cracy of this nation in order to fully realise the power of an informed, engaged and empow­ered society.

We live in a geo­graph­i­cally dis­persed nation. Our fam­i­lies and gov­ern­ing struc­tures no longer inhabit a close, day or two’s ride from our wat­tle and daub huts. Rather, we live in a 24×7×365, always-​​on world where our vil­lage truly is global. And, despite con­tin­u­ing to declare our­selves a clever coun­try, we con­tinue to suf­fer a drain of intel­lec­tual cap­i­tal over­seas and an increas­ing frag­men­ta­tion of our social infra­struc­ture. In a world where we can be and are increas­ingly hyper­con­nected, we face the very real risk of polit­i­cal, social and cul­tural hyper­iso­la­tion if we fail to par­tic­i­pate as indi­vid­ual and as a society.

In his incred­i­bly impor­tant work, The Expe­ri­ence of Mid­dle Aus­tralia [1], Michael Pusey of UNSW states, “…change has depleted the the resources that were once pro­vided by… older, denser forms of asso­ci­a­tion.” In a hyper­con­nected world, under­pinned by a util­ity pro­vided, equi­tably dis­trib­uted, high speed broad­band net­work, our abil­ity to read­opt these denser forms of asso­ci­a­tion, then made sus­tain­able by tools such as social net­works, become real­ity. We become the true global vil­lage, as much the neigh­bor to the bloke next door as some geo­graph­i­cally remote but by asso­ci­a­tion, close, neigh­bor with whom we share an inter­est of some sort.

Already, we see this hap­pen­ing in our own lives as we increas­ingly turn to trusted sources for infor­ma­tion, turn­ing our back in increas­ing num­bers on the for­mal media which has yet to catch up with this engaged super-​​community. We empower our­selves to make bet­ter, more informed deci­sions and to take action on those decisions.

Yet, gov­ern­ment is falling behind. And why? Because, largely, gov­ern­ment by its very nature is not built to oper­ate in a 21st Cen­tury that has more or less invoked Gilmore’s Law on the exec­u­tive and in places, is not far off doing the same to the leg­is­la­ture. We will “route around the dam­age” and do for our­selves what gov­ern­ment seems inca­pable or unwill­ing to do for us.

What needs to hap­pen, and hap­pen soon, is a rad­i­cal reimag­in­ing of the way in which gov­ern­ments engage and con­verse with the pub­lic. It’s no longer nec­es­sary nor suf­fi­cient, to make procla­ma­tions from on high. The con­stituency wants, and parts of it are demand­ing, an engaged, two-​​way and ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion with both politi­cians and the pub­lic sec­tor. In places, this is already hap­pen­ing. In the UK, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of local gov­ern­ment bod­ies and an increas­ing num­ber of national bod­ies are engag­ing one on one with the pub­lic. In the US, too, gov­ern­ment bod­ies are increas­ingly engaged with the pub­lic they serve.

How else do you account for an over­sub­scribed, atten­dees capped at 500 peo­ple, event that took place in Wash­ing­ton DC just a few weeks ago? The Gov­ern­ment 2.0 Camp was a resound­ing suc­cess in attract­ing politi­cians, pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and a wide range of informed and engaged oth­ers and open­ing up the con­ver­sa­tion that must occur to input and par­tic­i­pa­tion from any inter­ested party, and not just those who can afford lobbyists.

So too, in the UK and US politi­cians are engag­ing online with the vot­ers they serve.

Yet, in this coun­try, despite a few strong exam­ples, the largest part of e-​​Government and e-​​politics is still see­ing the world as just another place to make procla­ma­tions and tell peo­ple what is good for them and at which CWA meet­ing a politi­cian is turn­ing up at next.

This must change. And soon. Or we risk an even more dis­con­nected and apa­thetic elec­torate than we have now.

When politi­cians and pub­lic ser­vants truly seek to engage in an ongo­ing, per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion with the pub­lic they serve, I believe we will have the oppor­tu­nity to see a mas­sive increase in pub­lic under­stand­ing of gov­ern­ment. Along­side that, I believe we will see an atten­dant increase in an abil­ity to get things done, with the pub­lic sec­tor and the leg­is­la­ture work­ing hand in hand with an informed, engaged and empow­ered community.

In a hyper­con­nected world, we can be more informed than ever before, by more sources and from a broader opin­ion base than ever pre­vi­ously possible.

We can be engaged in our com­mu­ni­ties; local, national or global.

We can empower our­selves and oth­ers to know, to under­stand, in ways just not pos­si­ble before the advent of broadband.

And we can act on that infor­ma­tion. In an informed, engaged and empow­ered way.

  1. Pusey, Michael, The Expe­ri­ence of Mid­dle Aus­tralia, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2003, p. 135, ISBN 0521658446