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.