Are we allergic to ideas?

There seems to be a strange disconnect in the political psyche: journalists and the people alike keep asking for policy, something to be done about the big issues of our time, whether that be climate change, the health system or education. Yet the most public attempt to gather these ideas and have a conversation about them, the upcoming 2020 Summit has been largely derided as a stunt, a cynical 'rubber-stamping' exercise and a replacement for the ordinary political process.

These comments seem premised on the idea that while our politicians may have muddled along to the point of near-crisis in many of our institutions and industries, somehow they will right the ship without any assistance from the outside world. Worse, any such body chosen to assist them amounts to some kind of intellectual quisling regime, not really contributing anything and only granting legitimacy to the preconceived policies of the government.

So either Rudd and the ALP have no ideas at all, or they have plenty and just want the imprimatur of the 'best and brightest' to put them beyond political reproach. This amounts to a vote of no confidence that either Rudd is incompetent and merely a master manipulator or that he is a fascist of high order. Both conclusions seem wide of the mark. The mere act of calling the Summit suggests a willingness to listen to the ideas of others, whereas former PM Howard would be lucky to listen to his own deputy, let alone those outside his ideological echo-chamber. At least two of the co-chairs have had successful careers on the other side of politics. Before anyone trawls up Howard's bipartisan Constitutional Convention, remember that he was forced into the republican debate by his predecessor's enthusiasm, and he became increasingly enthusiastic to scuttle the whole thing by supporting the 'No' case.

There is another possibility that Rudd actually believes that community elders can prove a source of wise counsel and ideas for the future. We hear a lot about intellectual capital and the like, so what on earth is wrong with actually using it? The normal policy making channels favoured by the political process include a lot of party hacks of limiting degrees of intellectual skill and life experience. Calling on the thoughts of such a diverse range of people from a multitude of perspectives can only add to the cross-pollination of ideas.

It seems strange that Rudd's policies on indigenous health and education and climate change have met with suspicion, long -term targets in search of a strategy. Yet at the same time, the implicit aim of the Summit is to produce possible intermediate steps to reach these and other long term goals. To criticise one of these arms in isolation is fair, to criticise both is verging on the cynical.

The Summit is not being set up as some permanent vehicle of policy development but as a mega-symposium, with participants sharing their somewhat abbreviated pitches, the distillation of a great deal of research, reflection and thinking. The entire exercise will cost the taxpayer next to nothing and could produce all sorts of ideas to throw into the future policy mix. The expectations of the Summit should be proportionately low, and then we may be astonished at what may flow from it. We may find out then whether we are in fact allergic to ideas and having to think for ourselves rather than delegating the task to our assorted politicians.