Late Wednesday night, Rudd gave his Government's long-awaited response to the summit and appropriately many of the responses were just as wishy-washy as some of the ideas considered.

This was exemplified by the reply to the most widely supported idea that came out of the summit, an Australian republic.

''The Government recognises the priority placed on constitutional reform by the community. The Government is committed to ongoing reform of our constitution where appropriate and will draw on the input of the summit in thinking about future possible proposals for constitutional change,'' the response said.

Huh?

Ironically, one suggestion that survived was ''eliminate jargon in governance and bureaucracy''.

This is an idea the Government will ''consider further'', even though its response suggests otherwise.

''The Government recognises that new approaches to workforce planning are fundamental to ensuring that the Australian Public Service (APS) is responsive, agile and well-positioned to support government in the 21st century. With this in mind, the APS is taking steps to identify current and future capability requirements and implement strategies to make sure they are met,'' it said.

Again, huh?

There were another four similar paragraphs in the Government's response to this and 15 other suggestions on public sector reform.

Rudd selected nine ''big ideas'' the Government will focus on. There are some good things in there, such as sending civilians to help in emergencies, setting a goal of developing the first bionic eye and encouraging retired people to pass their knowledge to younger generations.

Then there are others that would likely have happened anyway, such as an ABC children's television channel, broadband network for technical colleges, scholarships and training for environmental and Asian learning, and encouraging business to talk to schools about what skills they want future workers to have.

And by and large, they just aren't that ''big''.

It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that some of the more adventurous suggestions were gently killed off. The Government took the safe options on calls for same-sex civil unions and drug legalisation, and it will also not abolish the states, introduce an opt-out scheme for organ donation or require parliamentary support before going to war.

Perhaps the most telling response was to this suggestion, ''Change the rhetoric on 'working families'. Many non-working families are disenfranchised. The largest family type is single people.''

Although ''working families'' has since been replaced by ''early and decisive action'' as the Government's favourite catchphrase, it listed the idea under ''no further action at this time'' but did add ''all family types are important''.

There is also an element of disingenuousness to some of those ideas accepted.

For example, one idea was to ''require more teachers to be science and mathematics literate, to enable them to excite kids with the subjects' potential''.

The Government agrees and lists it under ''key ideas being taken forward'', but goes on to say it is providing incentives to encourage maths and sciences graduates to teach not quite the same thing.

Rudd has suggested that, if he is re-elected, he'll hold another summit.

Hopefully he does, but let's also hope he has learned a few lessons from the first one.

If he is just after some good ideas, then he could skip the talkfest stage altogether and just get people to send in their proposals. He got 8800 submissions last time and while they would not all have been useful, surely at least a handful were worthwhile.

But getting all those experts together and talking things through should be a good thing but only if it is managed properly.

For a start, he could get rid of the focus on consensus.

The summit should have been about getting specific suggestions of things the Government could actually do, rather than getting broad principles like ''be good to one another'' and trying to solve every problem at once.

Perhaps instead of letting other experts water-down and broaden ideas until they have become meaningless, you could allow the originator to decide whether he or she wants to amend their idea after hearing all the suggestions.

If you wanted to stop really bizarre proposals with no support, then just make a requirement that at least five other people support it, otherwise it gets scrapped.

And who cares if the next suggestion to get support is diametrically opposed?

The Government, after all, is there to govern and ministers are paid to make choices between competing good ideas.

Or is that not really the point of it all?

David McLennan is The Canberra Times' parliamentary bureau chief.