Please consider assisting Australia21

Some of you will know I chair an organisation called Australia21. We’re an independent, not for profit think tank promoting fair, sustainable and inclusive public policy through evidence-based research.

We tackle real-world social issues and environmental problems that defy simple solutions (so-called “wicked problems") and we think there are a lot of issues right now that need some evidence-based discussion, especially in this era of fake news and spin.

That is why I am posting this end-of-financial year request for your help.

Even though we run on a very tight budget, we’re able to achieve a great deal, thanks to our reputation as a respected non-partisan think tank, the expertise of our high-level hands-on Board and the pro bono contributions of the diverse networks we’re able to draw on. (All our Board members are listed on our website: www.australia21.org.au/evidence-and-expertise/our-people/our-team)

Last financial year we mobilised around 1300 hours of pro bono work including contributions from 45 external experts from around the country. This year we’ll exceed that with a long list of work on complex issues. For example, over the last 12 months we’ve:

-   finalised our third report on illicit drugs that Jeff Kennett and Bob Carr launched for us in March. This was an important step forward, because the senior law enforcement officers who put their names to it came to the conclusion that law reform is essential to saving lives and minimising harm from drugs. The media follow up and discussion since has helped to move the debate about illicit drug policy along;

-   launched a volume of essays on trauma-related stress in Australia drawing out the diverse groups of people affected and the huge cost to individuals and Australian society PTSD poses;

-   followed up with a large roundtable meeting of first responders (police, ambulance, fire and emergency services, and experts on the issue from Defence) to talk about better ways to respond to PTSD in our front line emergency responders – we’re writing up the report now;

-   run a multidisciplinary roundtable on the potential for algal farming to contribute to food and fuel security – we had scientists, business people, government policy makers, and a politician in the same room talking about what’s possible and how we might make it happen. The report is due for launch by Senator Janet Rice in August;

-   run a forum on mindfulness, empathy and compassion and launched the Mindful Futures Network, a venture that will provide a national space to map and develop the application of mindfulness, empathy and compassion at a systems level, particularly to improve the health and proficiency of Australia’s public and private organisations. UK MP Chris Ruane, who pioneered cross-party and public service mindfulness training in Britain helped launch the Network at our webinar in May;

-   run a Young Australia21 group, feeding their ideas into our projects;

-   through our Young Australia21 group and in collaboration with the Australian Lions Drug Awareness Foundation finalised and are about to launch a conversation pack aimed at starting discussions with young people about drugs and drug policy;

-   started work on a project looking at young people and the future of work – Making our Future Work – where we’ll seek to add to the research base by talking directly to young people about how they feel about the future and work, to provide insight for policy makers across a range of policy areas;

-   supported an Adelaide primary school to pilot a drug awareness education program inspired by our 2014 Smarter about Drugs forum for young people; and

-   started discussions for a project called ‘Imagining Equality’ canvassing possible solutions to growing inequality in Australia, following from our 2014 inequality roundtable and report.

We need funding to support and promote these projects, and to run our very effective small office.

-   We have the equivalent of one half time staff member managing our office and operations, raising funds, supporting projects and managing volunteers. Salary and organisation overheads cost us around $70,000 a year.

-   And we’ve identified we need to invest in expert communications help so our work is spread far and wide in the public arena. Our collaboration with a communications expert over the last six months has really paid off – the launch of our illicit drug report is a great example with solid media coverage and comment lasting well beyond the day of the launch helping to move public debate along in this area.

-   For each project that communications expertise costs us around $13,000.

We don’t receive any large government or corporate funding. We rely on project specific grants, and support from our donors. We need help to continue doing this work and this year we’re running an unusual end of financial year donations drive. A group of very generous supporters has pledged to multiply donations made to Australia21 in the next two weeks.

-   The first $21,000 we raise from 16-30 June will be multiplied 5 times thanks to our generous matching donors.

-   Every $1 donated will unlock $5. And if we reach our goal of $21,000 in the next two weeks we’ll release $105,000 for Australia21 to continue its work.

-   The drive is running for the last fortnight of June (16-30 June) and all donations of $2 or more are tax deductible.

There are a few ways you can help us.

-   We would very much appreciate any donation you could make, however big or small. We’d love to reach our $21,000 goal so we unlock the maximum of $105,000. Every contribution will make a difference. You can donate by going to our website www.australia21.org.au and clicking on the yellow donate button. Or you can go directly to our online donation site at www.givenow.com.au/australia21, donate directly to our bank account (bsb: 313 140, Account No: 2319 3882) or send a cheque to Australia21 Limited, PO Box 3244, Weston  ACT 2611. I can send you these details.

-   We don’t have a marketing budget for this drive so we’re relying on networks and word of mouth. I would be grateful if you would pass this message and the link to our short video https://youtu.be/8nRnHpS3w0g on to your own networks and help us reach out to a broader community.

-   Do you know any philanthropists that might be interested in our work? Would you be willing to talk to them and put us in contact?

We’d appreciate any help you can give us. Thanks!

Additional information

·        Australia21 Board members work directly on projects: running roundtables and forums; forming discussion networks and project teams; talking to politicians, researchers, policy experts and analysts, business leaders, young people, and people experiencing first-hand the issues we explore; writing reports; organising logistics; working with the media.

·        Running a roundtable costs about $61,000, and mobilises around $100,000 of pro bono work.

·        $127,000 would allow us to run the whole Making our Future Work project including four workshops with young people, a roundtable meeting, and a report. We’d mobilise about $83,000 of pro bono work.

Afghanistan is a wicked problem

Over the last thirty years there has emerged a substantial literature on so-called “wicked problems”. This is the class of problems that may be considered highly resistant to solution, by contrast with so-called “tame” problems, those that might be technically complex to solve but can be tightly defined and a solution fairly readily identified or developed.

The terminology was originally proposed by H. W. J. Rittel and M. M. Webber, both urban planners at the University of California, Berkeley, USA in 1973. In a landmark article, the authors observed that there is a whole realm of social planning problems that cannot be successfully treated with traditional linear, analytical approaches. To the extent that they can be modelled mathematically the mathematics is non-linear: everything is connected to everything else, and there is acute sensitivity to initial conditions.

There is a good succinct summary of the characteristics of wicked policy problems on the Australian Public Service Commission website here. In brief, these characteristics are:

-  They are difficult to define clearly: different stakeholders have different versions of what the problem is, and there is usually an element of truth in each of those versions.

-  They have many interdependencies and are often multi-causal. Often, there are also conflicting goals and objectives within the broader policy problem. This means that solving them requires coordinating inter-related responses, and accepting trade-offs between conflicting goals.

-  Attempts to address wicked problems often lead to unforeseen consequences. This arises from the complex connections between the component elements of the problem.

-  Often they are not stable: the nature of the problem is changing while the attempt is being made to fashion and implement a solution.

-  They are socially complex and it is their social complexity that often overwhelms the efforts to solve them.

-  They hardly ever sit conveniently within the responsibilities of one organisation.

-  The solution to wicked problems involves changing behaviour of some or all of the stakeholders.

-  Some wicked problems are characterised by chronic policy failure.

A most important characteristic of wicked problems is that they have no stopping rule, i.e., no mechanism for deciding whether to stop or continue a process on the basis of present and past events. Another is the fact that every attempt to solve a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation” because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error; every attempt is significant.

Some researchers make a distinction between wicked problems and super wicked problems. The latter have the following additional characteristics:

-  Time is running out.

-  There is no central authority.

-  Those seeking to solve the problem are also causing it.

I think there will be ready agreement that the Afghanistan problem has the above three characteristics, so if it really is a wicked problem, it is clearly a super wicked problem.  When one looks at the characteristics of wicked problems as outlined at the beginning of this essay, it is easy to discern the key elements in the Afghan situation: different perceptions of what the problem is, multi-causality of the origins of the problem, interconnectedness between the important elements of the problem, conflicting goals and objectives within Afghan society, the nature of the problem keeps changing, they are socially complex, they don’t sit within the responsibilities of any one organisation, there is a fundamental need for behavioural change amongst most of the stakeholders, there is certainly chronic policy failure, and there is certainly no “stopping rule”, no protocol that tells us when it is time to give up and go away.

The question is what to do about it, and the purpose of this essay is to try to establish a basis for thinking about the problem in a manner that might point the way to a solution.

If it is accepted that Afghanistan is a wicked problem, it may well be productive to consider the generic approaches that have been taken to the solution of such problems.

Efforts to solve wicked problems usually involve one of the following three approaches:

-  Authoritative, in which an attempt is made to reduce the complexity of the problem by placing responsibility for solving it in the hands of a few people

-  Competitive, in which the opposing ideas are left to battle it out, with a requirement that the adherents of each viewpoint put forward their preferred solutions

-  Collaborative, in which an attempt is made to engage all stakeholders in order to come up with a solution that is best for all.

Authoritative approaches would seem to be ruled out if it is agreed that Afghanistan is a super-wicked problem. There being no central authority sitting above the whole problem (unless perhaps all the parties were to agree to place the problem in the hands of the United Nations and to abide by the outcome), there is no-one to select the smaller number of people who will come up with the solution on behalf of all stakeholders.

That circumstance could change, of course, if there were to be a genuine ceasefire and the various parties appointed a number of delegates to negotiate a solution that everyone would be prepared to accept and abide by.

The competitive approach is in effect what we are locked into at the present time, with the different ideas about the preferred solution being backed by force of arms (often financed by the drug trade or covert assistance from foreign governments pursuing their own agenda) and organised violence.

A collaborative approach seems to represent the only hope. As Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told Congress in September 2008, we cannot kill our way to victory.  What is needed, Admiral Mullen said (see Fox News report here):

... is better Afghan governance, more foreign investment, a viable alternative to the poppy farming, greater cooperation with Pakistan and more U.S. nonmilitary assistance.

That sounds to me like the start of a collaborative solution, with the notable absence of any reference to engaging the opposing forces, especially the many insurgents (David Kilcullen’s “accidental guerrillas”[1]) who are not fighting us out of religious or ideological antipathy – they are fighting us because we are in their country, or their valley, or their village.

In future posts I will attempt to explore in more depth what a “collaborative approach” in the relevant sense might look like.

One point I would make at this stage. The NATO forces have to make a clear choice between a collaborative solution and a competitive one. In a competitive solution the focus of the military effort will be on attacking the opposing forces. In a collaborative one, the focus will shift to protection of the population and avoidance of the collateral damage and collateral recruitment to the opposing forces occasioned by “targeted” military strikes gone wrong. We cannot have a collaborative solution with a little bit of killing our way to victory thrown in. If we want to solve this thing we are all going to have to take a deep breath and deal with some very unpleasant people. But then, we have done that before.

Reference:

[1] David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford University Press 2009.