source : the age
The right question can leave a person pondering for days. The right question, at the right time, can change a life. It can spark a thought that leads to the formation of a strategy, a business or a movement. The ABC obviously recognises that power, given it has framed its latest promotional campaign around questions.
Journalism is, in part, about harnessing the power of questions asked of the right people, in the right way, at the right time. It is often the simplest, most direct questions that have the greatest impact.
When my colleague Bevan Shields, then the Europe correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, asked French President Emmanuel Macron “Do you think he lied to you?” he wouldn’t have expected an equally direct answer, but he got one.
“I don’t think, I know.”
Those five words of diplomatic dynamite, said about then-prime minister Scott Morrison after Australia cancelled a submarine-building contract with France in 2021, has been pinpointed by some as the moment Morrison’s leadership “started unravelling”.
Journalists don’t have a monopoly on questions. We just have the established networks and access to ask them of the right people.
Some of the best questions we ask come from our subscribers and contacts. Comments on stories, letters to the editor, and direct feedback to journalists and editors are rich with excellent questions we should be asking.
At the risk of sounding obsequious, the intelligence and passion of our subscribers was one of the motivating factors for putting on our public forum, the Melbourne Assembly, which you have been hearing about in recent weeks thanks to my newsroom colleagues. Click here to explore the trove of stories on the topic.
The Melbourne Assembly, presented by The Age in partnership with the University of Melbourne, is now little more than one week away and I’m thrilled with how it has come together. We have some seriously impressive people lining up to share their thoughts on what Melbourne needs to do to continue thriving as it hurtles towards becoming a city the size of present-day London by the middle of this century.
We have assembled a depth of expertise that has the potential to live up to the event’s tagline by generating crucial conversations for the future of our city.
We’ve made sure that participants at the assembly have the same opportunity as our journalists to ask the right questions and spark a conversation that could help shape Melbourne’s future. All participants will have access to an app that will allow them to suggest questions to our moderators in real time, so they can be put to our speakers and panellists. We are aiming for genuine civic engagement.
That means real dialogue with some of the world’s leading thinkers such as two-term New York mayor Bill de Blasio and 15-minute city pioneer Carlos Moreno.
Then there are Victoria’s decision-makers. The people with the power to shape our state and its institutions. Premier Ben Carroll, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson and Lord Mayor Nick Reece will all be speaking – and listening – at the Assembly.
They are complemented by a line-up of local speakers with serious clout. Among them is Carolyn Evans, the newly minted vice chancellor of the University of Melbourne, who will be speaking in one of her first public appearances since taking on the role.
Across four key pillars of the event, we have assembled a depth of expertise that has the potential to live up to the event’s tagline by generating “crucial conversations for the future of our city”.
Our Shaping the City panel, hosted by The Age’s city editor Cara Waters, features a former premier who reshaped our state and one of the sharpest public policy minds in the country.
On the Education and Innovation panel, hosted by acting business editor Supratim Adhikari, we will discuss some of the biggest challenges of our generation with leading thinkers on education and the people aiming to realise the untapped potential of our city’s collective intelligence.
Healthy Places and People, hosted by Channel Nine news anchor Alicia Loxley, will pose tough questions about the place we live and whether the environment is set up for Melburnians to thrive. Those questions will be answered by the people building our cities and making sure they run the way they should.
We will finish with a discussion about Sport and the Arts, hosted by Waleed Aly, which should be as entertaining as one would expect of any discussion about Melbourne’s cultural capital. That discussion will hear from the people leading our city’s most important cultural precincts and institutions.
To read more about the program and our speakers, or to buy a ticket if you haven’t yet done so, head to the Melbourne Assembly website.
Speaking of the power of questions, I want to leave you with the question that got me thinking this week. One of our panellists asked me: “What does success look like for the Melbourne Assembly?”
Like Shields’ Macron question, it was simple and direct. And it left me thinking about the answer for days. Ultimately, I arrived at this one: “It will be successful if, in five or 10 years, we can look back and say it was the moment when a conversation started that ultimately resulted in some public good.”
