Will Emmett is chief executive of Left Right Think-Tank, which aims to give youth a louder voice in public debate. [WHO] Will Emmett, policy activist and potential political leader
[WHAT] Young people are dissatisfied and disenfranchised - and powerful
[HOW] Reject ideology, create a platform for ideas - and act, don’t whinge
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THE world has been shocked and frightened by the riots, mass criminality and collapse of decency that have turned districts of England's biggest cities into seething centres of savagery. It has been the antithesis of the participation upon which democracy, the fulcrum of freedom and human rights, is based.Whatever dissatisfaction and despair emerge in the analyses that precede a systematic political and policy response, the violence and destruction on those streets have only served to undermine the legitimacy of the perpetrators.
The democratic freedoms and institutions that have evolved in places like Australia and England are treasures for which people elsewhere in the world remain prepared to fight and even to die. Think of the Arab Spring. Think of the fall of the Iron Curtain. Battles have been fought to allow people a chance to entrench the very liberties and security that have been trashed in parts of England in an orgy of looting and sheer bastardry.
Those frustrated young people in England, many of whom are the victims of economic exclusion and injustice and worse at the family and community level, have stormed along a path that is as self-destructive as it is outwardly vandalising.
There is another way. It is epitomised by Will Emmett. The CEO of Left Right Think-Tank is showing and telling how young people can grab the future. Young people have more at stake in politics and policy than any generation, yet their voice is not often heard. It can be a voice as articulate and creative as the recent street stupidity in England has been gormless and destructive.
Emmett is in The Zone to discuss how Left Right is independently and gracefully creating and ventilating the ideas of the generation that will take its place at the helm of our governments, businesses and institutions.
''We have a very, very important voice in the political process. We are certainly not naive enough to believe that we are the only ones who have a voice in the political process, or that we are the only ones that care about our future, or that we even have the skills or knowledge to shape or design our future.
''What we do believe, though, is that no one is more invested in the future than young people. No one is more invested in decisions that are made today than young people. And someone born today, they may not have a voice, but what we decide today on how we develop our infrastructure, for example, or how we plan our cities, or how we bridge the divide between cities and regional centres, it's not going to affect the people who are making those decisions. It will affect us, young people … Young people do have a right to have their voice heard in decisions that are made today.''
Left Right was set up less than four years ago, born of disenchantment and disenfranchisement. ''We have picked up on the fact that young people are not just disengaged with young politics, with Young Labor and Young Liberal, but they are also disengaged with politics in general. And it's not just young people who are disengaged with politics in general. Everyone is becoming more disengaged with the political process, and with the policy process.''
Emmett discovered Left Right serendipitously - a random email lobbed into his inbox at university. The idea of participating in developing policy ideas resonated immediately. It seemed at once a way to apply the knowledge he was gaining by studying economics and to assert his right to have a real say in how our nation evolves.
Left Right has an unimpeachable intellectual pedigree, in part derived from the patronage of Peter Shergold, formerly the nation's most senior bureaucrat, and one of the most experienced policy thinkers around. It is backed by a number of universities and other donors, including the Foundation for Young Australians, one of the most thoughtful and active supporters of national initiatives for young people (see link below).
The core beauty and strength of Left Right is that it is non-partisan, and that donors and supporters have, as a matter of sacred principle, no influence on policy positions. It is driven by ideas and research, and eschews ideology. Ideology is so often a barrier to creative thinking, proscribing proper debate and preventing the creativity and agility required to solve social and economic issues in a world moving at a dizzying, exciting pace.
At a time when voters and commentators have expressed disdain for the paucity of weighty political discourse and policy, and when the national membership of the major parties is less than that of some football clubs, Left Right offers an alternative. National elections are determined by swinging voters, that small percentage of people whose vote must be earned, not presumed. Left Right can be seen as the natural home of the young swinging voter.
''The way Left Right operates, its role as an organisation, is to enable a group of young people to consult with other young people, to consult with experts. Left Right has an incredible network of experts, incredible people who give up their time to consult with us on developing policy and take into account all the best research, what the experts are saying, what young people are saying,'' he says.
''That group of young people then creates the policy recommendations. What Left Right does as an organisation is enable the education process, to set up a framework and to ask the questions. And the question we're asking in infrastructure development, for example, is where will we live in 2030? Young people are sometimes concerned about where they will live when they leave home, but I think the more important question is where will we live in 2030, the way our cities are developing.''
Left Right will not take a position on an issue until the hard work has been done; the research, the debate, the fact-checking. It is focusing on four policy areas it reckons are crucial to Australia's long-term prosperity: infrastructure, higher education, governance and economic sustainability. Emmett discusses each in our interview, the full transcript of which is at theage.com.au/opinion/the-zone. You can also explore the issues at Left Right's website and facebook page, links to which are below.
Emmett sees economics as the sibling of political philosophy, rather than a dry, numbers-driven exercise. He views markets as the most fair and efficient way to allocate resources, the most socially just way to create the wealth needed to finance government and public policy.
''I don't believe that the role of government is to just provide certain base things - the ability to live freely in a community and a right to education, a right to health care and all those givens.
''A metro system, for example … could be paid for by putting a huge tax on cars. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I see that as something that's not against free markets either … There are certain things that we can do to make our lives happier when we are able to work together to do things like building a public transport system.''
It's all about resources for the future, thinking beyond the next election, doing what's right and prudent; not merely what seems to be popular at the time. That means, for example, investing the proceeds of a mining boom.
''A perfect example is the National Broadband Network. It's something that the government is paying for and they're paying a huge amount of money for it. But with the way the world is going, I see a National Broadband Network is going to become as important as local roads. Everyone expects that the government builds and pays for local roads. And I don't see how that is any different with the National Broadband Network.''
We could do worse than see Emmett eventually enter parliament. But he's not interested, unless and until the system becomes more inclusive. He's working on that.
http://leftright.org.au
http://facebook.com/leftright.org.au
http://fya.org.au
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