So, will it be just another gabfest? Another piece of Canberra window-dressing and pollywaffle?

I’m talking about the Australia 2020 summit conference that Prime Minister announced at the weekend. A gathering of 1000 Australians to chart the future of this country for the next decade and beyond.

Will it be another gabfest? Actually, I don’t think so. I think it should be applauded, supported and encouraged.

And I don’t think it shows weak leadership by a new Prime Minister when he sets up a gathering of the so-called ‘ best and brightest’ for ideas about where we should go and why. And where we should NOT go and why.

Rudd says ‘It’s time to shake the tree a bit and see what the nation’s got to offer’.

Actually, I was encouraged by the words of the man Kevin Rudd has chosen to be co-chairman with him of the summit over the April 19 and 20 weekend. Melbourne University Chancellor Glyn Davis.

He says he wants a range of view from a wide range of people ‘not just the usual suspects’. The summit won’t be padded with narrow special interest groups. He wants older people and younger people and not just the ‘ national elders’.

Davis says ‘We will be making sure there are alternative voices not the same old people. We want to make sure there is genuine disagreement. It’s not worth doing if there aren’t lots of contesting ideas.’

And I agree with him. We’ve had Canberra summits before with not much in the way of positive results.  Professor Davis – who will not be paid for this job – led that APEC Forum on Education called by then-Prime Minister John Howard last year. And that sank without trace.

Before  that we had ConCon which was a con.– the Constitutional Convention stacked and manipulated by John Howard on the way to the doomed vote for an Australian Republic.

In 1983, as a fresh new Prime Minister Bob Hawke called his Economic Summit where a lot of options were thrown about and Treasurer Paul Keating  backed Option C which would have included a GST. The Silver Bodgie scuttled that with a nocturnal meeting at the Lakeside Hotel with Bill Kelty.

Of course the first summit was  in 1891 when delegates to the Australasian Convention to consider how the colonies should federate and draft a suitable constitution for the nation.

And they got it wrong. They should never have allocated Senate seats in a way that gave a few Tasmanians – to this day – the same clout as heavily populated Victoria and New South Wales.

As Prime Minister Rudd says ‘Let’s shake the tree’. The year 2020 aint that far away.

Monday, February 4, 2008