Thought transference
Brisbane News, February 10-16, 2010
Article by Phil Brown
When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd established the Australia 2020 Summit in April 2008, he put ideas at the top of the national agenda. Since then ideas have become, well, sexy.
There are festivals devoted solely to them, while nonfiction books often outsell novels and people seem genuinely interested in thinking deeply about things. Such as how are we going to get out of the mess we’re in and create a sustainable future?
This is the sort of stuff that occupies CEO Professor Bruce Muirhead and his team every day at the Eidos Institute, a Brisbane-based think tank specialising in public policy and social research.
“A think tank based in Brisbane, some people might suggest that’s an oxymoron,” Bruce says, laughing.
“It seems some people still have that view of us. I was watching Good News Week the other night when a news item mentioned the Queensland Brain Institute. One of the panellists said, ‘hold on a second … The Queensland Brain Institute?’”
We’ve put up with these sorts of digs for decades. But as Bruce points out, “We have a prime minister and a treasurer from Queensland, a premier who is very influential and an impressive group of universities. Eidos is still young, but it’s a good time to be establishing a think tank in Brisbane.”
The Brisbane Institute, established in 1998 and mainly funded by the University of Queensland, blazed the trail here but the Eidos Institute (www.eidos.org.au) seems to be the flavour of the moment. Mention its name in government or academic circles and people nod, knowingly. Yet, when I was invited to one of the institute’s lunches late last year I’d never heard of the organisation. The institute has drawing power and guest speaker on the day was Deputy Prime
Minister Julia Gillard, who talked about the recently launched My School website.
“We were fortunate to have Julia here,” Bruce says. “That platform gave her the opportunity to launch her first responses to criticism of the idea of the website.”
Another influential guest last year was British Labour politician and former cabinet minister Alan Milburn. He announced last year he was quitting politics, which left him free to talk in his Brisbane address about how government should change to meet the demands of the 21st century.
“When he was here, Alan Milburn also noted the lack of think tanks in Australia and said it wasn’t a good thing for democracy,” Bruce says. “Hopefully, there will be an increasing number of them in future.”
More lunches are planned featuring Joe Hockey (April), public intellectual and former adviser to Tony Blair Charles Leadbeater (May), and Phillip Adams (June).
Mind you, Eidos Institute is much more than just a think tank. It’s an organisation funded by universities (10 at this stage) that encourages collaborations between them and other universities, government and experts in a variety of fields.
It’s an independent, not-for-profit company and governments are increasingly relying on its expertise and research networks to help shape public policy.
“The first job we were asked to do, before we were formally established, was to evaluate the Prep Year pilot in 2004
for the Queensland Government, to establish whether it should be implemented state-wide,” Bruce explains.
After Brisbane Grammar School, the University of Queensland and Griffith University, where he became a professor of education, Bruce learnt the practicalities of collaborating in the education sector. He helped establish alternative schools in Queensland, and the UQ Boilerhouse, on the Ipswich campus, a community engagement centre helping solve local social and economic problems using “engaged scholarship”.
“It brought together politics, psychology, social work education and other disciplines to solve problems,” Bruce says. “That’s what we are doing now, on a larger scale.”
The foundation works in Europe, the US and Africa but has only a small staff of six working out of the Brisbane school of Arts building in the city. Make a note of the name Eidos Institute, you will hear much more about it soon.
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