I asked Aborignal Leader, Pat Dodson what countries looking at Australia’s summit might want to change if they were to run a similar program.

Dodson liked the summit’s format, but suggested it could have been longer. He felt that ‘cross-fertilization’ of ideas would have made it even stronger.

He’d like to see citizens participate right through summit preparation, the process and during policy implementation.

“How to leverage the indigenous position through issues such as sustainability and globalisation - instead of treating aboriginal people as problems and an impost on the bottom line, actually starting to look at the capitalisation of the aboriginal position.

Listen to Pat Dodson

At the conclusion of the summit I interviewed people from as many ’streams’ (topic areas) as I could. As I was putting my microphone away, Robyn Slarke approached me and asked to be heard - how could I refuse? Her passion for social justice and concern for the plight of women in Australia’s neighbouring countries is obvious.

Listen to Robyn Slarke (Part One)

Listen to Robyn Slarke (Part Two)

Professor Peter Brooks from the University of Queensland found the process “extremely exciting” - he believed the big health ideas - moving to a prevention agenda - greater flexibility in financing - and making sure that we have a workforce that’s sustainable, all made the list. He thought the process could have been improved through cross-stream conversations.

Listen to Professor Peter Brooks

Professor Graham Brown from the Nossal Institute for Global Health. He’s a big advocate for Australia to take a greater responsibility for the health outcomes in Australia’s neighbourhood. “We can’t have a civil society without a healthy society”.

Professor Brown believes that the big idea from his stream, Health, was the concept of a “Health Equalities Commission” would be powerful in addressing key issues in indigenous health, outcomes for people with disabilities and the elderly.

Listen to Professor Graham Brown

Lucy Macali was part of the productivity stream. She works with the National Assocation of Disability Employment Services.

“I feel satisfied that my points were heard - they didn’t make it on the ‘one slide’ at the end, but the full document will have the points that I made.”

The diversity was tricky to reconcile, but Lucy felt the facilitation was excellent and the document captured the big ideas of the room. Lucy would have liked to see “Universal Design Principles in policy development and in the construction of the built environment. Universal Design is about the built environment meeting most of the needs of most of the people most of the time. It’s not about having special places for wheelchairs… In America they call it ‘visitability’ - you can visit everywhere because everywhere is welcoming to you. If everyone can have access then we can have more productivity.”

Listen to Lucy Macali