This event has been years in the making, but even the man who wanted it won’t show up

Compare the pair.

Less than a month ago, Chris Minns was at the International Convention Centre in Darling Harbour for a social media summit he organised with South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas. The event, a two-day gathering across both states, had international experts flown in to speak and was promoted widely by Minns and his office in the lead-up, including two opinion pieces in the Daily Telegraph.

By contrast, Minns will not be at the Griffith Leagues Club on Friday for the opening day of the drug summit. Nor will he be there for the second in Lismore, on Monday. He won’t be alone.

NSW Premier Chris Minns will not attend the opening of the drug summit on Friday.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Some organisations in Griffith, including the council, have complained about not being invited. Advocates have raised concerns about a lack of access to the event, including for the media, and some in the drug reform advocacy space are concerned that the summit has become little more than a box-ticking exercise as the event has approached with little fanfare.

Joe Coyte, executive director of The Glen, the largest Aboriginal community-controlled drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in NSW, called it “the drug summit that you have when you don’t really want to have a drug summit”.

The government says criticisms of the summit are overstated. Minns pointed out on Thursday that sometimes there are simply time and space constraints: “There’s been no effort, certainly no concerted effort, to lock anybody out.”

They also reject comparisons to the social media summit, pointing out the drug summit will be held across four days, not two, and as a result will probably generate as much or more attention. Minns will be at the summit when it comes to the ICC in Sydney and will speak at the event.

But it is an unfortunate preamble to an event years in the making. While in opposition, successive Labor leaders promised to hold drug summits, including Minns.

In 2019, when he tried, unsuccessfully, to become Labor leader for the first time, he promised to hold one while still in opposition and behind closed doors argued passionately for the legalisation of cannabis. Closes allies including Transport Minister Jo Haylen and Housing Minister Rose Jackson, have in the past been staunch advocates for drug law reform.

In other words, it might seem like the type of event the government would want to champion. But since becoming premier, Minns has often indicated drug law reform is not a priority, including by questioning the effectiveness of pill-testing while ruling out a trial before the summit.

On Thursday, after a parliamentary inquiry that included government MPs backed an overhaul of cannabis laws which would ultimately lead to legalisation, he said he couldn’t support it because he didn’t have a mandate for it.

An iconic photo on the front page in 1999 convinced then premier Bob Carr to hold a drug summit. Two decades later, NSW Labor is holding another one.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“I can’t introduce a policy of that magnitude without asking for voters’ support,” he said. “As a result of that, I’ve got to manage expectations. That’s not on our agenda, that’s not something we’re going to pursue.”

This is a fair statement, and one which leaves open the option for plenty more reform in the space between the status quo and wholesale legalisation. On the issue of changes to roadside drug-testing laws which mean people with medical marijuana prescriptions can still be charged, he said it would be something the government may consider.

The summit, he said, was a chance “to hear evidence that will challenge government policy, things that I may not necessarily agree with, or my colleagues might, but I might not, we want them around the table. We want to challenge the prevailing system.”

However, the problem for drug reform advocates, as Minns also acknowledged on Thursday, is that governments in NSW usually don’t listen to them.

In recent years, various parliamentary inquiries, coronial inquests and special commissions have all come to roughly the same conclusions – that criminalising drug possession makes the problem of addiction worse, not better, and that health interventions, including pill-testing, are at least worth trying.

They are all gathering dust, with only minor reforms to show for them. It is for that reason that the last drug summit, in 1999, has taken on an almost mythic significance for drug reform advocates, given it was and remains such an aberration in NSW politics. A room full of politicians, not only listening but actually doing things they recommended.

It is lost on no one in the space that in the 25 years since, the bold reforms which came out of it, including one of the world’s first medically supervised injecting rooms, there has been little action.

If this government is not serious about major reform, they may not get a similar opportunity soon.

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