STUCK? JUST CALL A SUMMIT

WHEN Bob Carr promised during the last NSW state election campaign
that he would call a drug summit he followed a growing trend in
political life. While Carr's 270-person, five-day summit has some
individual features, such as its emphasis on "experts" and tours to
treatment and referral centres, it is part of a pattern.

One aspect of the pattern is that they are frequently called during
election campaigns. John Howard committed himself to calling the 1998
Constitutional Convention, on which the Drug Summit was apparently
modelled, during the 1996 federal election campaign. Thirteen years
earlier, during the 1983 election campaign that brought him to office,
Bob Hawke promised to call the National Economic Summit.

At the time Hawke's move was controversial. In the eyes of Katherine
West it was an important element in what she called "the revolution in
Australian politics", a scenario in which Hawke had changed the
relationship between governments and the community.

According to West, the thrust of the Hawke Government was "management
and control rather than representation of the full range of community
opinion". Since then summits have become more common. Hawke used them
frequently, including the unsuccessful 1985 Tax Summit, and others
have followed suit.

What explains this predilection for summits? What political role do
they serve? What relationship do they have to parliamentary politics?

Summits are firstly about politics. They are political vehicles for
those who call them. Prime ministers and premiers expect political
benefits.

On the one hand they serve a function much like a commission of
inquiry, showing that the party in government is attentive to an issue
while buying time to work out what to do. This positive function is to
advance the Government's interests.

Hawke wanted to set a new agenda and to outflank his opponents. So did
Howard. The negative function is to exercise damage control by not
allowing the issue to get out of hand. Hawke had to bring the business
community on board. Howard had to have some new initiative to counter
Paul Keating's ascendancy in the republic debate.

On the other hand there is something new and significant about
summits. The advent of summitry is a reflection of a growing awareness
that the traditional models of community representation are not enough.

Parliamentary representation of interests and pressure group politics
are not sufficient. It is recognition that governments must at least
be seen to be involving the community more.

It is a new style of "managed openness" in the conduct of public
affairs. The mantra of the Drug Summit for the major political
leaders, Carr, Kerry Chikarovski and George Souris has been openness:
"open minds" to new approaches.

As such summits are a slap in the face to the existing process: to
Parliaments dominated by adversarial political parties, to
public-service departments that provide advice and to traditional
pressure groups that articulate interests. Summits are an admission of
political failure. They are especially an admission that some major
issues are beyond Parliament's ability to cope.

The public like the look of summits. They like the fresh new faces.
They like the community involvement. They like the emphasis on seeking
agreed results that they contrast with the point-scoring of
parliamentary politics. They like the apparent absence of adversarial
politics.

But summits also have weaknesses which turn on their connection with
what remains the mainstream political process. The public also likes
results and ultimately only the Government and the Parliament can
produce results.

Just how effectively any summit is connected to the mainstream
political process turns on the type of summit. They are not all the
same. Some have greater community involvement while others emphasise
parliamentary representation: the stronger the former, the greater the
summit's community legitimacy.

The Constitutional Convention benefited from elected rather than
appointed community representatives, whereas the stronger the
parliamentary representation is, the more plugged into the process the
summit will be.

Generally community representatives are handpicked and there is always
public consternation at the in-built bias of the selection process and
the obvious omissions. This was the case at Hawke's Economic Summit
when many community groups were excluded in favour of the troika of
government-business-unions.

This was the case at the Constitutional Convention with Howard's
choice of delegates, though criticism was softened by the fact that 50
per cent of the delegates were elected.

Carr's Drug Summit has been a carefully managed exercise. Though the
presence of former federal National Party leader Ian Sinclair and
former Victorian Labor Premier Joan Kirner as joint chairs was a
gesture in the direction of the non-partisanship that worked so well
under Sinclair's chairing at the Constitutional Convention.

Nevertheless, it has been less successful than the Constitutional
Convention in avoiding party politics. Despite offering his MPs a free
vote, National Party leader George Souris delivered a hard-hitting
political speech in his opening address that severely restricted room
to manoeuvre.

Summits like the National Economic Summit and the Constitutional
Convention made significant political contributions, both symbolic and
substantive, to the advancement of their respective issues. The Drug
Summit may do the same. Let's hope so. Ultimately though it must pass
the test of delivering a political initiative. Politics rules.