Five priorities, five proposed actions
→Building the conditions for belonging, participation and trust
The Summit demonstrated that Australia does not lack ideas. It lacks a sufficiently shared and accountable framework for action. Every element below is open to amendment through this consultation.
Priority 1
Rights and responsibility
What must the system guarantee?
From the summit
Across the discussions, participants consistently emphasised the importance of rights, obligations and institutional accountability.
Proposed action
Establish a rights and institutional responsibility framework for social cohesion
Name the duty bearer for each obligation, and examine the case for a positive duty to prevent racial discrimination across employers and other institutions. The form of any wider rights instrument remains open. Any legislative response should be developed alongside the relational and place-based approaches the summit identified, not as a substitute for them.
Priority 2
Reach
Who are we failing to reach?
From the summit
A more challenging question, raised independently across four sessions, is how to connect with those who remain outside the reach of existing institutions and programs.
Proposed action
Invest in the local infrastructure of reach
Strengthen local government, neighbourhood organisations, libraries, schools, workplaces and third spaces, while requiring institutions to examine and strengthen where, how and through whom they engage, with particular attention to people not reached through existing networks.
Priority 3
Participation
How do people contribute?
From the summit
Recognition of overseas skills and qualifications was the strongest evidenced proposition of the summit, raised across five sessions without a recorded contradiction.
Proposed action
Unlock skills and remove barriers to participation
Begin with recognition of overseas skills and qualifications, build pathways into civic and community leadership as well as employment, and examine the material conditions that restrict participation.
Priority 4
Accountability
Who owns the outcome?
From the summit
Listening is not complete until people can see what changed because they spoke.
Proposed action
Apply the accountability architecture to every Roadmap commitment
Each commitment carries a named accountable leader, a lived-experience partner, the resources required, a baseline, a measure of progress and a transparent method of reporting, and participants are told what changed because they contributed.
Priority 5
Narrative
What story enables all of this?
From the summit
The summit moved beyond a call for better stories. It identified structural features of the information environment.
Proposed action
Develop and promote an ethical storytelling framework, and a structural response to the information environment
Build the framework on informed and continuing consent, cultural safety, co-authorship, fair recognition and the right to review or withdraw. Alongside it, develop a structural response covering platform incentives, algorithmic amplification and media responsibility, together with a tested public narrative of belonging and contribution.
