Betty was one of the 1000 Australians from various walks of life invited to share their ideas to bring Australia to 2020 and she said the experience was worthwhile, but sometimes disappointing.

“The whole experience was exhilarating, but it did have its good and bad parts.”

Betty said she was thrilled to be involved with the summit, and was pleased to see something of its kind happen in this country,

“The fact the summit actually occurred is one of the best things to happen to this country, to have people from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds come together to come up with ideas for their nation was a wonderful thing to be a part of.”

Betty said the main problem with the summit was disorganisation, with participants not able to prepare for workshops they were told about hours before they started and many ideas were also lost in the process.

“The Prime Minister emphasised that he wanted innovation from the workshops, but that didn’t come through as much as it should have, while some very valid interests were raised by people in the workshops a lot of these ideas were smothered in the process.”

Betty opened the first health session of the weekend speaking about health and transport in rural areas, but she was disappointed that her points were lost over the weekend and didn’t make it to a book of suggestions presented to Kevin Rudd at the end of the summit. “I was disappointed that a lot of issues relating to health and aging in rural communities weren’t given proper consideration, when I spoke to 2UE’s Steve Price after the summit he asked if I thought there should be a separate summit on aging, I definitely think there should be, this country is ageing and our concerns need to be heard.”