​​​​​​​Bass Coast bid to make Nobel Prize 'more relevant'

WHAT do Bass Coast Shire Councillor Ron Bauer and the Nobel Prize have in common?

Nothing, or apparently nothing, until the Bass Coast Shire Council’s December meeting agenda came out last Friday, on the eve of the presentation of this year’s Nobel Prizes, in Stockholm, on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

In a genius stroke of good timing, by Cr Bauer and the shire council, there’s a Notice of Motion in the agenda for next Wednesday’s council meeting, offering some advice, to the Nobel Committee, on how they can update their stuffy, old awards.

The motion, to be voted on by council, goes something like this:

That a motion be placed on the agenda of the next MAV meeting stating that the MAV petition the office of Prime Minister to write to the governing authority of the Noble Prize in Sweden to include a new category “Sustainably of the Planet” in their award list.

The new category will go right up there alongside the Nobel Prize for Medicine, the Nobel Prize for Physics, Chemistry, Literature and of course the Nobel Prize for Peace, which this year goes to Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate from Belarus, shared by ‘Memorial’, a Russian human rights organization, and the Centre for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian organization.

As background to this week's meeting, Cr Bauer said he believes the awards' list could do with some updating.

“The Nobel prize was established in 1901 with the categories reflecting the important issues of that time: Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Medicine. In 1968 Economics was added.

“We now live in the 21st century and our understanding of sustainability and climate change has made this an area of the utmost importance. This motion asks the Australian Government to bring the relevance of the Nobel Prize into the modern world by asking the Governing Board of the Nobel Prize to introduce this new category,” according to Cr Bauer in the shire agenda.

“As the saying goes, no planet, no other prize matters,” he said.

Cr Bauer also wants the council to take action locally too, by introducing a new category into the annual Bass Coast Citizen of the Year awards for the person or organisation making a significant contribution to “Sustainable Practices”.

Presented in the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, this weekend, are the following awards to the new Nobel Prize laureates:

• Svante Pääbo for physiology or medicine. Dr Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist, won for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.
• The prize for physics was shared by three men, Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, for their work in quantum technology.
• Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K Barry Sharpless shared the award for chemistry for the development of click chemistry and bio-orthogonal chemistry.
• The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to the French novelist Annie Ernaux, at 82, the 17th female writer to have won the prize since it was formed in 1901.
• Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate from Belarus, shared this year’s Peace Prize with Memorial, a Russian human rights organization, and the Centre for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian organization.

Revealed at the end of Cr Bauer’s background explanation is a plan to move the Bass Coast Shire Council’s “Australia Day” awards to May, “to align with National Volunteer Week”.