John Roskam is to be commended for giving the benefit of the doubt in suggesting the Australia 2020 Summit is bipartisan..a closer look at the selection of participants will reveal it is not at all..it's just the old "usual suspects"!This time last year every member of federal parliament speaking during the debate on the abortifacient drug RU486 lamented Australia’s highabortion rate. The same concern had been expressed on the front page of a Melbourne newspaper, by Australia’s Governor -General Michael Jeffrey. Because of this high rate of abortion, current available demography reveals 4,000,000 Australians are missing from our landscape and the life of our nation. The recent call and gathering momentum for an international moratorium on abortion demonstrates such concern is not confined to Australia. I would have thought the inclusion of this issue and representatives well versed in it, would have been an imperative for the coming 2020 Summit. Instead Dr. Caroline de Costa, best known for being the first to gain a licence to use the kill pill RU486 has been invited. The unborn children she subjects to this human pesticide will never see 2020. Nor will 1,080,000 Australians if the present annual abortion rate is maintained. Instead of a voice to speak for those Australians yet to be conceived and born, the voices at the 2020 Summit will include those of former premier Joan Kirner, last seen supporting the legalisation of abortion from the public gallery of Victoria's Parliament, Julian Burnside supporter of every human right except the first, the right to life, as well as abortion supporters Drs. Mukesh Haikerwal and Rob Moodie. Shame on the Summit 2020 for excluding a voice for those who cannot speak for themselves.

An interesting article. I don't often agree with the IPA but this yabber fest is PR driven. You can bet the Howard Government's achievements will be discounted much as Howard did so cleverly to the Keating Government.

The invitees will feel 'a bit special' as they sit in the Great Hall or wherever but Rudd, et al know that the double demons of rising inflation and interest rates are where the real problems lie. It'll be photo op heaven ...for a while.

Prepare for a Budget from hell. Oh yeah, Denny, this article was about a yabber fest, not abortion.

A meeting of the left and leftist, I fear.

I rather thought the Summit was about where we are headed in the future, and not for the purpose of apportioning kudos or brickbats for past actions. Hence I think it is appropriate that past governments/actions be left out of the discussion. An ALP Love Fest? Possibly. But I wasn't aware that one had to be a Labor voter to gain inclusion. Was that question asked? I don't think so. If, however, the majority of the idealogues are Labor supporters, then so what? It is the present Labor Government that is taking us into the future, (though for how long is not known), so there seems some appropriateness in this.

Andrew Bolt is running a slightly more shrill campaign bagging this event as well - he cherry picks the names from the list - we then get the "Aha!! caught you" revelations advising us it is a set up and another chance for Rudd to grandstand - granstanding is however what most of our PMs have done from time to time - so what

Bolt bangs on about agenda setting and the like ,, David Marr, Phillip Adams et al are held up as champions of the left - very tiresome really - this author has a slightly different spin suggesting the integrity and guts of the participants are some what lacking.

Others have even been critical that the AMA doesnt have a formal seat at the table - even though the crowd is sprinkled with MDs - and a former president is attending - all that not withstanding the fact that the AMA is not the most representative of bodies - there are others like the DOctors Reform Society - they dont have a seat either.

I've read the list - there are some "conservatives' - quite a few in fact - in the crowd as well - but every on has vested interests so the author is entitled to ask the question -

I for one am interested to see what comes out of it - particularly given that thinking and critical analysis has been absent from governance at a federal and state level for a very long time.

Other members of the IPA are going. I wonder how they reconcile their own attendance with Roskam's love-fest claim?

Perhaps Roskam and all his "right"-thinking comrades at the IPA and in the Murdoch media are suffering from sour-grapes envy because the IPA and the CIS (the bottom-line Chicago boys) etc etc are no longer the ideas and policy factories for the government---boo-hoo.
As for that Dolt who writes for the Herald, the less said the better.

The thing the conservatives seem to be terrified of are ideas, thoughts, plans and notions other than flogging off the china to pretend we are all well off.

Sour grapes from the silly IPA that has not put forward a thought nor a plan since they invented themselves with funding from the world's biggest polluters.

"It’s difficult to be sceptical about Kevin Rudd's summit of Australia's "best and brightest". " Yeah, right. You can just tell how difficult it is for Howard-apologist Roskam.

Roskam, you lost. You lost because Howard was a divisive and heartless liar, finally caught out on Workchoices. You knee-jerk supported the loathsome little rodent. Just for a little while, you and your creepy colleagues should have the humility to simply shut up.

The conference is ignoring the elephant in the corner of the room.
Of all the future problems peak oil is probably the closest and most severe
yet it is being ignored and an applicant from the Association for the
Study of Peak Oil & Gas was refused.

I think that says it all.

The summit is designed to re-establish touchy-feely folderol and the politics of victimhood as the parameters of political argument for the next decade.

The summit is designed to be a fuselage of bullets fired in the eternal war of politics. Keveryman is nothing if not an astute political operator.

Howard operated in a decade of individual advancement and economic wellbeing(the times will suit me); Rudd however nailed his colours to the mast when he introduced himself to us as the son of a dirt farmer(or was that a sharecropper), forced (briefly) to live in puddle in road before being forcibly educated with the pineapples of wrath into the language of the authoritarian.

Really, who can take this bonzai-ed bureaucrat seriously?

Roskam's comments about the Summit and Rudd's election based on having "all the answers" is disingenuous. There was much complaint about the previous government's lack of consultation with the community and here we have our first opportunity.

In the spirit of democracy, the Summit provides a forum for people other than the usual suspects to provide input to our future. It might be a talkfest but if even one good and workable idea comes out of it or a policy is sharpened or fine-tuned to be more inclusive, it will be worth it.

There are some glaring gaps as Bazz said - it is remiss that issues of peak oil are not included on the list.

Let's hope the Summit is not a one-off as far as community consultation goes and is just the beginning of greater community participation (and not just for a select few). And that the Rudd government continues to seek advice from the people on the frontline particularly in relation to social issues, hardships faced by pensioners and carers and the larger issues like climate change, peak oil, globalisation and sustainability.

While taking on board some of the comments above, I tend to be cautiously optimistic about the Summit and recognise the intent of this government to engage the community in talks.

Only history will tell if the Summit was a waste of time or a constructive exercise that led to some worthy outcomes. A leap of faith maybe but let's wait and see.

Let us not forget that successful candidates were nominated by others.

I’d like to know who selected whom and what terms of reference did the 'secret selectors' use?

This Summit will be still born. The fall out from it will echo right through to the next election and I suspect this is exactly its true intention.

We will find ourselves debating ideas that never got up, and trying to work out how the so called "best and brightest" got things horribly wrong.

One need only examine the questions put to participants in the Indigenous forum. Cleverly crafted to guide discussion - not toward innovation or reform - but consensus and or dissent on existing policy and practice. No real movement forward, just careful and incremental steps sideways down the same blind alleys.

The ideological parameters have been set, herd in the sheep, throw in a wolf or two just for fun - and make sure the Murdoch press have lots of free and unimpeded access.

Hey presto, lots of rich compost! Bonapetite!

Kevin Rudd went to the Australian people with "a plan for the future" which is proving ever so evasive to materialize.
Instead we are given circuses such as Commissions, inquiries, seminars, summits and other wimdfests that stargaze ten, twenty and even fifty years ahead that are bound to keep journalists and lawyers happily employed today.
But come the NEXT federal election the Australian people will hopefully ask the question that Peter asked of Tomlinson "... give answer - what ha' ye done?"
Neither The PM nor his treasurer have handed down a national budget and we have one due in a matter of weeks.
And what do they do?
They take an extended overseas gallavant then come home and organize a hot air gab fest at which the barber's cats can strut their stuff.
It is all one hell of an extravagant diversion from the mundane every day issues of the cost of rent, housing, petrol and groceries which KevinR and WayneS belted the Howard government over the head with.
Oh! by the way KevinR, what about one more inquiry?
How about an inquiry into the legality or illegality of Wayne Goss' cabinet shredding the Hiner inquiry documents while YOU were his Chief of Staff?

I'm glad to see someone else knows about "Shredgate" the scandal that never happenned because the evidence got shredded.

Amazing how many people who were implicated in this re-invented themselves as upstanding citizens and public servants.

The phrase 'social justice' rolls off their lips so natually its disgusting,.

Well now its over.
I watched as much as possible on ABC2 and two or three Foxtel channels.

I personally have come to the conclusion that the whole exercise has
been a colossal waste of time and money to give a group of people
a loverly warm feeling.

Geraldine Douge out did herself in a fawning praise of Kevin Rudd.
She absolutely gushed.

However the really significant thing was the stage management of the show
that completely ignored the elephant in the corner of every groups
room. I speak of course of the complete ignoring of the effect on
their proposals energy depletion will have between now and 2020.
Every single proposal will one way or another will be very adversely
affected by the energy decent that we are facing.
One of the few suggestion that was peak oil compatible was to put
more emphases onto public transport. There was nothing about the
long distance transport of food that I heard on the sustainability
group. Fuel was just not a problem to them, they were all keen to cut
down on fossil fuels, but did not realise they would be faced with
a cut down anyway with a timing not of their own planning.

Yes, the majoirty of them would have been mesmerised with their own selection and presence at the Summit.

I heard Rudd say something like 'you can't expect to solve anything in two days' - which for me is code for - Lets cherry pick whatever is politically worthwhile and dump the rest.