When Bob Hawke decided to host a summit in Canberra on the economic future of Australia, shortly after his election as prime minister in 1983, most thought it was a window-dressing gimmick by the flamboyant showman politician. “This consensus is bullshit,” the New South Wales Labor premier Neville Wran declared. “It won’t work.”

But it did.

Hawke had been elected on Labor’s promise of “reconciliation, recovery and reconstruction”, which was diametrically opposed to the confrontationist policies of the Coalition government. The nation was ready for change, and what might have been a window-dressing gimmick made things possible that had once been unimaginable. It nurtured the seeds of the policymaking and investment that grew to transform Australia.

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While we can now see that some of the eventual costs were too high, at the time it changed the national climate, consensus and tripartite became the new buzzwords. There was a sense of possibility in the air.

Ever since, Labor politicians have played with the model. The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is a student of history and picked up the baton to bring together people and organisations with opposing views to hear each other out and be heard by those not in the room. A crucial element is the being heard, of making public what would otherwise be private conversations by lobbyists about the desires and demands of their clients.

Once it is in the open, even if hedged in bureaucratic and corporate language, the challenge is finding the middle ground that satisfies enough to provide a stable foundation. This was where Hawke........

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