KEY POINTS:
It seems a lot for 12 good ideas, but there you are. Today and tomorrow an eclectic mix of 1000 Australians - plus a few New Zealanders - will gather in Canberra to map out the kind of country they want to see in 2020.
New mum Cate Blanchett will be there, with fellow actor Hugh Jackman, New Zealanders David Kirk and Ralph Norris, and a bevy of Australia's academic, medical and business elite, sports stars, broadcasters and the like.
Among the glitterati will be a heavy loading of indigenous leaders, community workers, tradesmen, folk from the suburbs and young Australians, selected from 8000 applicants to take part in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's first mammoth production: the Australia 2020 Summit.
"The mix [includes] a lot of Australians you might want to characterise as ordinary Australians - stay-at-home parents and so on - who were interested in ideas, and a number of those have come through because they have something really important to contribute," co-chair Professor Glyn Davis, vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, said at the release of the list of participants.
Together they will develop a set of proposals in 10 key areas that will shape Rudd's political agenda into the next election and beyond.
"If we can shake out of the tree a dozen good ideas we'll have done much better than simply sitting in Canberra and listening to the odd public servant and a few people who roll in our doors as lobbyists," Rudd told the Seven Network's Sunrise programme.
Neither would it be simply a cacophony of talking heads. "This is not a talkfest for the sake of a talkfest. What we want from this gathering of the nation's brightest and best is to put forward options for the nation's future, to produce summary documents which we will then consider in the second half of the year."
Rudd, who has made a virtue of listening to the people, can clearly see the political capital in trolling the nation's collective intellect for new and crucial directions, and to be seen to embrace its conclusions in key, over-the-horizon policies that extend far beyond the three-year federal electoral cycle.
Despite cynicism over the summit and its participants, Rudd has ensured the involvement of the federal Opposition and a vast span of political, economic and social thought. His credibility will require a real, non-partisan response in the national interest.
This early in his term, Rudd has the stature and authority to make it work. His politics of inclusion, and the pace at which he has instituted major reforms - or set the processes in motion - have given him one of the sweetest post-election honeymoons in recent history.
Rudd is preferred as Prime Minister by a record 75 per cent of voters, if opinion polls are to be believed, and his Labor Government has opened a devastating lead over a Coalition Opposition torn by doubt, anger and internal dissent that seems likely to oust its present leader, Brendan Nelson.
Rudd has divided Australia's future into 10 key slices, each to be considered by a separate panel of about 100 delegates: productivity gains through education; skills, science and innovation; the economy, population, sustainability, climate change and water; rural Australia; health; stronger communities, families and social inclusion; indigenous Australia; the future of the arts, film and design; governance, democracy and open government; future security and prosperity.
"There are no right or wrong answers in this," Rudd said this week. "We want an open debate, an open deliberation on options for the future, and then the Government will respond in the unfolding of its 2009 agenda."
Getting this far has been no small task. Rudd wanted people selected on their individual merits, not because of their connections.
To choose them, he set up a steering committee of 10, plus Professor Davis. Its most public feature was the inclusion of Blanchett. She added star appeal and a touch of human drama with the birth of her third child days before the summit, and focused attention on the fact that, initially, she was the sole woman on the body that would decide who took part.
Never one to miss a good photo opportunity, Rudd this week missed the funeral of Labor stalwart, former Senator John Button, because of a Cabinet meeting but found time to pop in and congratulate Blanchett on the arrival of Ignacious Martin, 3.6kg.
Blanchett confirmed she would be at the summit but with help - Rudd appointed author and academic Dr Julianne Shultz to co-chair the session on creative Australia.
Rudd had earlier run into serious flack over the fact that Blanchett was the only woman on the steering committee, although she was later joined by Jackie Huggins, a distinguished indigenous historian and author.
Despite Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's defence that seven co-chairs of the summit's 10 working groups would be female, women's groups hammered the steering committee's composition. It was, said Eva Cox of the Women's Electoral Lobby, a "white Anglo blokes" club.
They were heavy blokes: Bankers Association chairman and former Westpac chief executive David Morgan, former Macquarie Bank executive director Warwick Smith, former senior federal bureaucrat Roger Beale, former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, Queensland Medical Research Institute director Professor Michael Good, World Vision Australia chief executive Tim Costello, News Ltd chairman John Hartigan, Professor Michael Wesley, an expert in international affairs at Griffith University.
Even so, 51 per cent of the participants they picked are women.
But their list was still not out of the woods. Despite the inclusion of two former Coalition Government ministers in the steering committee, plus the head of a bankers' group not known for its fondness for Labor, conservative commentators slammed the summit as a left-leaning gabfest.
Opposition leader Nelson, describing it as a "dog's breakfast" dominated by the centre-left, will attend, but will voice no opinions. Conservative News Ltd columnist Piers Akerman wrote that the summiteers appeared to have been selected for their "compliant opinions".
More trouble surfaced when The Australian revealed that a number of star summiteers had been named before they had agreed to attend.
And some have drawn parallels with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's ill-starred Cool Britannia. A famous image from 1997 showed Oasis bad-boy Noel Gallagher shaking hands with the Labour leader at No 10 Downing St, glass of champagne in hand.
Five year later Gallagher lamented: "If I could be arsed to vote now, it would be for the Liberal Democrats."
A number of Australia's brightest are no-shows this weekend, including Australia's second-richest man, media and gambling billionaire James Packer, the High Court's first woman judge, Mary Gaudron, former High Court Chief Justice Anthony Mason, Telstra chairman Don McGauchie, and Nick Greiner, prominent businessman and former Liberal Premier of New South Wales.
But the list remains impressive: more than 260 professors and doctors, male and female, of a broad range of fields and disciplines, business and community leaders, social and indigenous activists, religious leaders - though Rudd had to hold a special Jewish mini-summit because of this weekend's Passover - and a bevy of "ordinary" Australians with good ideas.
Among the luminaries are marathon runner Robert de Castella, former defence and East Timor intervention chief General Peter Cosgrove, Qantas chair Margaret Jackson, former All Black and Fairfax chief executive David Kirk, News Ltd director Lachlan Murdoch, son of media titan Rupert, former Air NZ chief and now Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ralph Norris, and Seven Network boss Kerry Stokes.
There's also Aboriginal activists Pat Dodson and Noel Pearson, Mandawuy Yunupingu, reconciliation advocate and lead singer of rock band Yothu Yindi, actor Hugh Jackman, and The Secret Life of Us television star Claudia Karvan.
For Rudd, they represent the future. "We can either drift into the future or we can take hold of the future with our own hands [and] seize the day."
