The Press Council’s Mexican standoff
Dr Mumbo has been a fan of the can-do campaigning attitude of new Australian Press Council chairman Professor David Weisbrot.
However, he fears that while his calls for the government to send a “high level delegation to the Open Government Partnership’s Global Summit” are very noble the government may struggle to take him up on the challenge.
You see the summit is in Mexico City, and starts tomorrow (October 27).
Should the government look to send a delegation at this late stage it could get them on flights at 10am tomorrow which would get them in at 1.10pm – in time to make the last half of the first of the three days of the summit.
And while it would cost $1,774 for the round trip in economy, Dr Mumbo fears the ‘high level’ requirements of said delegation would mean they would have to travel business class at least.
The problem is there’s only one business class seat left on that United flight, costing a cool $13,300 for the round trip.
That could cause disharmony in the ranks, and indeed threaten the whole ‘partnership’ spirit of the conference before they even get there. If you’ve flown economy on United you’ll know what Dr Mumbo is talking about here.
And then there’s the other problem of actually getting a place at the conference in the first place.
According to the website: “Unfortunately, due to size restrictions, participation will have to be decided on a participant’s relevance to the conference.”
And that’s with pre-registration.
So while Dr Mumbo applauds the spirit of the release and the calls for more “transparent government” he fears that even with the best will in the world, this may be a stretch too far.
