Three ideas from the summit that are not new but need promoting and extending are: the Golden Gurus volunteers, artists in schools and closer links between business and schools. Not re-inventing the wheel, just more spin.

Kevin Rennie
http://laborview.blogspot.com

Let's not judge anything quickly yet.

Let's wait for the PM'S report before making a final judgement.

However, even with the three ideas mentioned by Andrew in his article
it sounds as if the Summit did achieve a great deal.

I'm optimistic about Australia's future under the current leadership.

REPUBLIC NOW!

Congratulations to Summiteers Bob Debus and Maxime McKew. Get on with the Republic! Preferably within two years, not by 2020!

The Minimalist idea of a two stage process is ridiculous. "Do you want a Republic?" and then "What kind of Head of State?" The voters could rightly ask "Just what kind of Republic do you have in mind for us?" Tell us first!

Other strange Minimalist suggestions have been aired. The same mistake was made by the ARM in the early 1990s. We need a Maximalist, strategic plan for the Republic, now.
The Republic issue was only very superficially debated in the 1990s. The only topic of debate was the Head of State issue and even since the loss of the 1999 Referendum very few groups have failed to develop a strategic plan to talk about "What kind of Republic? In 1999 research clearly indicated that the voters lacked sufficient information. An education revolution? How about a booklet about Republican and constitutional options in everybody's post box, to begin with, now.

There is a very strong case for rewriting the entire Constitution. Some examples: replacing the dysfunctional federation with a much better decentralised system of governance; replacing the electoral regime (single-member districts) with proportional representation - party list system; doing away with dysfunctional aspects of the Westminster system (in particular that Ministers should be in and off the Parliament, resulting in functional amateurism of government throughout Australia); introducing a Bill of rights: creating reserved seats for Indigenous representatives in Parliament; limiting the powers of the executive government in dragging Australia into silly wars without popular or even parliamentary approval, changing the procedure to amend the Constitution (section 128) to include popular initiative and recall like in Switzerland; safeguarding the environment by entrenching protective guarantees in the Constitution, recognising the right of women and minorities in the Constitution; committing any Government to protect the sovereignty of the nation, both in terms of political and economic sovereignty.

My book is about a Maximalist Republic.

Klaas Woldring, author of How about OUR Republic? BookSurge 2006

I didn't watch it all, but from what I did see on MSM and elsewhere prompts me to paraphrase a line from "Jesus Christ, Superstar." - "They're very strong on what and where, but not so good on how."
Now that the gummint has a raft of proposals let's test it's ability to consolidate some kind(s) of policy by taking the suggestions and turning them into practicalities. I believe that will illustrate the success or not of the summit.

Nuggetty little ideas did not a successful Summit make.

The absence of big ideas on underlying issues made it a dismal failure.

We need a strong society with a strong rule of law, good governance and a reasonable quality of life for most of us, for all the little ideas to take root and grow.

If we don’t have the basics, then we can forget about achieving significant improvements in the better distribution of wealth and health for various disadvantages sectors of society.

If these basics are under imminent threat of going into decline, then we may as well forget about the small side issues altogether.

Well, there is a very real and present threat to the very basic values of our society, and indeed to the very fabric of society, which underlies every issue discussed at the Summit. It is rapidly rising fuel prices, or the energy crunch, or peak oil or whatever other name you want to give it. This, in combination with the mindless drive for rapid continuous economic and population growth, constitutes one issue that far outweighs everything else put together.

And Andrew didn’t even mention it in his article.

The “frission of happiness” could only have been felt by narrow-minded naïve people who either believe that our utterly cheap-oil-dependent society can continue on its merry way in the face of rapidly changing oil-price-driven economics without any negative effects, or are able to completely blank out the enormous elephant in the living room.

Used to agree with the authors sentiments once upon a time, until l stopped reading my own agenda into a simple ceremony that is about remembering the price of humanity's ultimate failing. Its simply a case of 'lest we forget', much like say not forgetting genocide (ww2 nazi germany).

Unfortunately folks have a tendency to complacency and there's no harm in teaching kids to look both ways before crossing and to maybe reflect upon that flower laden telegraph pole we just passed.

The author says "Anzac day is a day of delusion: we have created a day of celebration of nationhood when we need a day of recognition that war is nothing but the ultimate human failure." Now, thats not in the least bit delusional. Especially considering that society and civilisation (ha) itself is built on a foundation of blood and bones.

Maybe the author is deluded in denying some of the more base characteristics of humanity. It aint all peaches and cream and no amount of romanticism will make it so.

Replace federation with something much better.

The "new federalism" or "cooperative federalism" discussed at the Summit cannot be a long term solution. The moment one state has a coalition government federal-state relations will again be a major bone of contention.

The reality is that the fiscal federal and state imbalance is huge, the range of conflict areas immense and the powers of the state governments declining. National decision-making in important public policy areas is very slow and costly. We have heard all the reasons why federalism should be "repaired", "fixed" etc from the conservatives. Mr. Rudd should not waste time trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

It is particularly nonsensical to argue that federation provides a good decentralised system of governance. Effective decentralisation policies should be introduced at the NATIONAL level to de-metropolise Australia. Some 80% of the population live in the big cities and the imbalance continues to grow. One major problem for Australian federalism is the centralisation of government at the state level, centred on the state capitals. The fate of regions adjacent to a metropolis, like NSW Central Coast and Illawarra to Sydney, is in serious danger because the state planners basically treat them as spillways for excess city population. What is needed is massive and sustained intervention by the national government, like subsidies and for low taxes for business, housing and rent assistance, salary loadings, etc. and decentralisation of government itself. This would involve strengthening local government; and recognizing constitutionally the regional organisations of councils, the 64 that are now voluntary adjuncts to the Cinderella of the current ineffectual three-tier system of federal governance.

Tackling the federation is NOT a question of just "streamlining". In particular the ALP COAG love-in should NOT stand in the way of real reforms. This is a real danger because the ALP State Governments are now all in favour of maintaining federation. Vested interests in a ramshackle structure! The Twomey/Withers Report, commisioned by them demonstrated that very clearly. Start talking about transitional measures to overcome the vested interests, the first step to get the states on side.

Klaas Woldring

1. George Bush has announced some time ago a similar sort of project re medical records and the idea has been around for some time.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6876192

2. Voluntary work for students is really paid work once it alleviates a debt. Who would pay for this, the taxpayer?. Students can volunteer now. What this is doing is turning voluntary work into paid work. A bad idea.

It was a dismal failure.
It ignored the elephant in the corner ie peak oil.

There will be no loverly proposals being pursued when we are scrambling
to change our mode of living, transport and food by 2020.

Not one single group of 100 made any reservations about how peak oil
may affect their proposal.
This alone defines the failure of the summit.

Sometimes I wonder if there are any public policy ideas, let alone good ones, that originated in Australian minds without stealing most or all of the substance from overseas.

Unrelated question: Does this forum allow BBCode or have any other way of placing into my post, for instance, italics?