Australia’s experiments with drug summits
DRUG REFORM, POLICY, POLITICS
Australia’s experiment with drug summits
By Ross Fitzgerald
Jan 24, 2025
Australia’s first official meeting referred to as a ‘drug summit’ was convened on 2 April 1985 in Canberra by Bob Hawke, the then ALP Prime Minister.
Officially known as ‘The Special Premiers’ Conference’, Prime Minister Hawke met with the six state Premiers and the Northern Territory Chief Minister. (The ACT was not represented as this meeting took place before the ACT had obtained self government).
This meant that the heads of five Labor governments met with the heads of three conservative governments (Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory). It was the first time since WWII that the heads of all Australian governments had met to discuss any matter other than finance. The 40th anniversary of this important event falls in three months, but its importance will almost certainly be overtaken by the forthcoming federal election.
When Hawke announced in parliament in September 1984 that the Costigan Royal Commission into the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union would not receive additional funding to enable a further extension, Opposition Leader Andrew Peacock accused Hawke of covering up his mates involved in drug trafficking.
Hawke rejected the accusation tearfully. Hazel Hawke later explained in a television interview that her husband was so stung by this accusation because their youngest daughter, Rosslyn, had become addicted to heroin and any suggestion that her husband could in any way be involved in drug trafficking was extremely hurtful.
In late 1984, Hawke’s Labor government was seen to be struggling, possibly because the Prime Minister was distracted by serious problems in his family. Hawke called an early election for 1 December 1984 with a long campaign period. In response to questions about Australia’s drug problems in a Perth radio interview, Hawke said that, if his government was returned at the election, he would convene a drug summit after the election.
This set the health bureaucrats in Canberra to work in preparation. Among the materials developed for the summit was a short document proposing that Australia’s official national drug policy henceforth would be ‘harm minimisation’. This meant that the paramount aim of Australia’s drug policy was no longer total prohibition. Instead, in a dramatic shift, the objective would become reducing or minimising the harm from drugs. Despite his well publicised personal battles with alcohol, Hawke attempted to keep alcohol out of the Drug Summit but the Health Minister, Neal Blewett, and his allies managed to include it.
After the federal Labor government was returned in 1984 but with a reduced majority, a drug summit was held in 1985. It lasted a whole day and covered a wide variety of issues. A National Campaign Against Drug Abuse was approved. Many sensible reforms were endorsed, funding for drug treatment and support was increased, and wide ranging governance structures were developed. As a direct result, Ministers and government officials in health, law enforcement and other areas began meeting regularly. These arrangements continued for many years, but were then slowly dismantled.
Despite the above, the 1985 drug summit was widely seen by health experts as successful. In particular, Australia’s new commitment to harm minimisation meant that responding effectively to the severe threat of HIV Infection spreading among people who injected drugs and from them to the general population became a little less difficult. This was primarily because the reduction of drug supply was no longer the only objective that was considered to be important.
Like many other countries, Australia had great difficulty responding to legal and illegal drugs with effective policy. As remains the case today, adversarial parliamentary politics provided little benefit. Numerous Royal Commissions and special enquiries have been conducted but their recommendations were usually rejected.
While Australia’s first drug summit involved only senior political leaders meeting privately, subsequent summits have helpfully included people from diverse backgrounds discussing drug policy publicly. This meant that there has been widespread media coverage of different points of view.
In January 1999, two months before a state election, NSW ALP Premier Bob Carr announced that NSW would hold a drug summit if his government was returned at the forthcoming election. The Carr government was re elected, and a 1999 NSW Drug Summit proceeded in May over 5 days in the NSW Parliament. Members of parliament, researchers, clinicians, law enforcement, parents and some with lived experience, including myself, were involved. Appropriately, discussion about reducing the harms caused by alcohol was part of the agenda.
The Drug Summit, which generated widespread media coverage, especially about a proposal for a Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, produced 172 recommendations. All except for 3 were approved by Cabinet. These 169 included a recommendation to establish a centre in Kings Cross where people could inject drugs without risk of legal sanctions and with immediate health support if needed. This proposal attracted the lions share of media interest in the Drug Summit but many other sensible and effective reforms were approved and implemented.
In August 2001, with a state Labor government in power, Western Australia conducted a community drug summit which recommended expanding the needle syringe program and approved modest reforms to legislation covering the recreational use of cannabis. However these reforms were largely reversed by a subsequent conservative government.
In December 2024, on the initiative of ALP premier Chris Minns, a NSW Drug Summit was held over four days, with a day each in Griffith and Lismore, and two days at the Sydney Convention Centre.
Before the March 2023 elections, Minns as the Leader of the Opposition, supported a Drug Summit, pill testing, decriminalisation of drug use and possession of small quantities of drugs and reform of cannabis laws. But after becoming Premier, Minns argued that he did not have a mandate for these policy changes.
After the Drug Summit, the NSW Health Minister Ryan Park announced the approval of pill testing in time for it to become operational over the summer music festivals, which have yet to commence.
The two co chairs of the meeting, Labor former Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt and Liberal former Leader of the Opposition John Brogden, are preparing a report including recommendations which is likely to be released in April 2025, and will later be considered by Cabinet.
Drug policy is an issue many governments still find difficult. This is because after many decades of relying heavily on law enforcement to reduce drug supply, drugs are more available than ever and in increasingly dangerous new varieties. Politicians remain terrified of a community backlash against even modest shifts in emphasis from drug law enforcement to drug treatment, social support and harm reduction.
The proven benefits of drug law enforcement are very modest, while the cost of customs, police, courts and prisons are extremely expensive. Community attitudes increasingly favour greater support for health and social measures, including harm reduction. Veteran drug law reform advocate Dr Alex Wodak AM correctly argues that “the attraction of politicians to expensive measures intended to restrict the availability of drugs have not only failed again and again, but made a difficult situation much worse. Government are addicted to failed policies, just as some people can’t stop using drugs that make their lives a misery.”
In Australia, history shows that drug summits offer a greater chance of achieving modest reforms in an area where conventional adversarial politics, Royal Commissions, and special inquiries have achieved little at great expense.
Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History & Politics at Griffith University.
His most recent books are a memoir, Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey; the ninth Grafton Everest political satire, Pandemonium; and a four pack of Grafton Everest’s adventures, The Ascent of Everest, co-authored with Ian McFadyen. All three are available online from Amazon and Booktopia, and direct from Hybrid Publishing in Melbourne.
John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations, January 24, 2025
Professor Ross Fitzgerald AM
0419 661869
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