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Losing the ideas game

By Graham Ring - posted Tuesday, 18 November 2008


It strikes me that some of the commentary on Indigenous Affairs in this country has become so poisonous - not just among the media, but among sections of the Indigenous leadership itself - that the very object of the game has been forgotten.

I'm assuming that we all want all Australians - blackfellas, whitefellas, believers, atheists, even Carlton supporters - to lead happy, healthy, productive lives of their own choosing.

Perhaps this is over-simplifying things a bit, but I reckon the jumping-off point must be somewhere around there. The verbal stoushes should be a means to an end - not an end in themselves.

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So I'm going to suggest that, starting tomorrow, we all go anonymous. We'll ban by-lines, and damn dinkuses. We'll make politicians and presenters wear bags over their heads, and have their voices faffed-around by those weird machines when they go on the telly. Ditto for people in positions of leadership.

Then we'll introduce a register of ideas. You will simply send a note describing your idea to the Federal Ideas Registry and they'll issue a serial number which would subsequently be used to identify your idea. No names need ever be mentioned.

For example, I firmly believe that blowflies should be issued with sterile socks to minimise the spread of disease. I'd register the plan and it would become, say “idea number 666”. When people wanted to discuss it they could just refer to “idea 666” or “the socks on blowflies plan”, without even mentioning the name of the genius who came up with it.

Because if it was introduced as “that cretin Ringy's idea about ...” then that's where the problems begin. Not because the assessment of my mental acuity is so terribly far off the mark, but because it predisposes listeners to conclude that the “socks for blowflies” idea is not a winner.

The “no names - no pack-drill” approach would mean we'd have to confine discussion to the idea itself, and that would be a Very Good Thing. We'd have to ignore irrelevancies like the height, football affiliation and dress sense of the individual who proposed it, and simply assess the idea on its merits.

They'd have to be pretty small socks but.

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First published in the National Indigenous Times, Issue 165, on October 31, 2008.



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About the Author

Graham Ring is an award-winning writer and a fortnightly National Indigenous Times columnist. He is based in Alice Springs.

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