Summitry goes beyond the cocktail diplomacy

It is fashionable to dismiss the Commonwealth as insignificant. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher once said privately its leaders' meeting should be renamed the "Compulsory Handouts Onto Greedy Mendicants" gathering.

Granted, on the surface it is largely a hangover of British imperialism and based on identification with a fairly loose set of principles, such as democracy and world peace. But the Commonwealth is the largest multilateral gathering Australia is a part of, besides the United Nations.

A grouping of 54 countries, five of whom are part of the powerful G20, it accounts for 2.1 billion people, or almost a third of the world's population. It covers every continent and every ocean of the world, holding true to the old saying that the sun never sets on the Commonwealth.

So playing host to its biennial leaders' meeting is a big deal for Australia. But one we almost missed out on.

This year's gathering was meant to be held in Sri Lanka but security fears prompted former prime minister Kevin Rudd to somewhat spontaneously offer Australia as host. It was thanks to the lobbying of former foreign minister and local boy Stephen Smith that it ended up in Perth.

October's CHOGM will be the biggest ever diplomatic gathering held in Australia - almost three times as big as the 2007 APEC summit held in Sydney - and the biggest event for Western Australia since the 1962 Commonwealth Games.

Premier Colin Barnett says that CHOGM will attract more than 4000 people to WA, resulting in a direct economic impact of $42.5 million additional expenditure in the State from visitor spending and by the Federal Government.

But the outcomes of these gatherings are never in the economics. They just provide the basis for a digestible reasoning to the public instead of the more ambiguous and nuanced foreign policy objectives.

The last gathering was held in the Caribbean hideaway of Trinidad and Tobago and its former Central Bank governor Winston Dookeran accurately predicted at the time, "I do not think it would have any immediate value but hopefully it will assist us by building better diplomatic relations".

Indeed, relying solely on the economic benefits of summitry at the expense of other objectives can be a dangerous game.

Trinidad and Tobago allocated $235 million to host the gathering but costs blew out when they were required to lease two opulent cruise ships as floating hotels to cope with the influx of cocktail-drinking diplomats.

Trinidad and Tobago's new Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, says this cost blowout was a major reason for her election.

It highlights the toxicity that can infect these gatherings in the public mind-set in the absence of concrete and identifiable outcomes. Instead, all the public often see is the cost and the inconvenience of additional security and traffic chaos.

This makes it all the more important for the Gillard and Barnett governments to clearly identify the foreign policy benefits of the gathering.

To begin with, it provides a chance for Australia to host some of the world's most important leaders. They will include Britain's David Cameron, India's Manmohan Singh, South Africa's Jacob Zuma and Canada's Stephen Harper, presuming he wins the coming election.

In some of these cases - and given the distance - you can expect some of them to add a bilateral schedule on the sidelines of the gathering. And just like a dinner party, it would be strange for our guests to arrive empty-handed.

The Queen and Prince Phillip will be there, "if we are still standing after the long flight" she said last week.

It also provides a platform to showcase Australia and to more vigorously prosecute our foreign policy objectives within the agenda.

The gathering will provide a perfect staging ground to lobby member states to support the Gold Coast's bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games, not to mention our campaign for a seat at the UN Security Council, which desperately needs the support of African members.

You can also expect refugees, climate change and even Afghanistan to be on the agenda Australia puts forward.

By hosting the gathering Prime Minister Julia Gillard will also take over from Ms Persad-Bissessar as the Commonwealth's chairperson-in-office for the next two years. This isn't as valuable to Australia as it would be to a developing state, but it will still put another arrow in our diplomatic quiver.

When pressed on it last week, Ms Persad-Bissessar was quick to point out her time as the Commonwealth chairwoman had resulted in "a very high level, multi-billion-dollar energy contract to be signed with Ghana and had businesses and corporations come in that would not have otherwise".

She said it had also provided unprecedented access to the Commonwealth's institutions.

The Commonwealth at first glance can seem an archaic and outdated institution, and therefore understanding and explaining its significance to our place in the world will be a critical challenge for our State and Federal governments.