KEY POINTS:
A change of government is a good time for a national stocktaking. The new Australian Government's "2020 summit" last weekend involved academics, scientists, business, industry and community leaders, Aborigines, artists, youth, one or two film celebrities and some "ordinary Australians with good ideas".
Their agenda covered the economy, its productivity, education, population, science and innovation, climate change, water, sustainability, rural industries and communities, national health, arts, governance and security. Working groups on each subject were asked for one "big idea", to be accompanied by three policy proposals, one of which could be carried out at next to no cost.
It sounds like the strategic thinking exercises familiar to any large organisation these days and probably suffered the same fault: away from their daily work participants can be detached from reality. One of the "big ideas" to excite the Rudd summit was an old one: the Australian republic. It was cheered to the rafters by the 1000 summiteers, though when last put to the nation's voters it was decisively rejected.
The Howard Government's republican proposal foundered, partly on the former Prime Minister's personal opposition, but mainly on its failure to devise an acceptable presidency to replace the monarch. Mr Rudd's summit seems not to have grappled with that detail in its enthusiasm for another referendum, perhaps at the 2010 federal elections.
If a republic was supported at that poll, a further referendum would be held to choose the "model". Essentially, whether a presidency is to be elected by the people or appointed by Parliament. There is no doubt an elected office is the popular preference, but an appointed head of state is more suited to a system of parliamentary government. Until republicans solve that conundrum, their resolutions are cheap. But Mr Rudd has gained a mandate to re-open the debate if he desires. His Government is not committed to act on all, or any, of its summit's enthusiasms, but for all that the exercise sounded worthwhile. The new Government can use it to focus the country's mind on big themes of progress. If National is elected in New Zealand this year, it ought to consider something similar. The party would come to power with few important policy commitments on the evidence so far. It has promised to retain Labour's social innovations and renounced further privatisation of state-owned assets. Leader John Key says he does not want to fight the election on yesterday's debates, he wants to move the economy into a new phase.
Exactly how he might do that, or where he wants the economy to be are questions unlikely to be answered clearly by the election. If voters want a change of government, as polls suggest they do, Mr Key will not risk his fate with proposals that would not get a fair hearing in the heat of an election campaign. Quite likely, his intentions will remain too inchoate for much discussion until he is in a position of power. That is the point at which a public conference could serve a double purpose. It could set the direction for economic development and give the country a new sense of cohesion.
The Lange-Douglas Government 1984 economic summit conference achieved the second goal, if not the first. The present Government's early strategic exercises were confined to a selected business group that met for a few years in Premier House and Auckland University's "Knowledge Wave" initiative. Neither seized the public imagination. Mr Rudd's summit sounds more promising. The test will be whether, a week from now, anyone remembers it.
