Australia PM asks nation to agree on vision

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has asked his countrymen to set aside differences and agree on a vision for the nation's future, warning that without imagination it will "perish" within decades.

In the leadup to a weekend summit of 1,000 of Australia's brightest minds, bringing Hollywood together with scientists, artists and lawmakers, Rudd said Australia had for too long held its ambition to be a global "middle power" in check.

"I believe a small country occupying a vast continent in a region as wildly disparate as our own has no option other than to plan for its future. Without a vision, the people perish," Rudd said in a speech in Sydney late on Wednesday.

"Excessive caution and a fear of failure should not hold us back," he said in a speech full of sweeping symbolism styled on the early years of Britain's Tony Blair.

The 2020 Summit, to he held at Australia's parliament, aims to solve the country's most pressing problems and plan for decades ahead, dealing with drought and climate shift, health, education, continued economic growth and national security.

A brainstorming session on the arts will be headed by Cate Blanchett, less than a week after the Oscar-winning actress gave birth to her third child.

Rudd's centre-left Labor government, which last November ended almost 12 years of conservative rule, has been marked by symbolic initiatives, including an historic sorry to Aborigines for past injustices and ratification of the Kyoto climate pact.

Rudd also appointed the first woman governor-general in 107 years of nationhood, bolstering republican hopes the country will in a few years sever constitutional ties with Britain's monarchy.

While critics have panned his bookish personal style, Rudd's government has dramatically shifted course from that of former prime minister John Howard, pulling combat troops out of Iraq and axing the detention of refugees on small Pacific islands.

The changes have been a hit with voters, infusing the national mood with a palpable confidence, while making the workaholic Rudd the most popular leader for 20 years.

Rudd, a former diplomat, will on May 13 face his next challenge with his government's first Budget, hoping to combat voter perceptions that Labor are poor economic managers with an expected surplus topping A$20 billion (9.5 billion pounds).

"It has been the absence of such agreed national goals over the last decade that has seen us waste the great dividend that has flowed to Australia through our record terms of trade," Rudd said in his speech to the Sydney Institute.

Australia is in its 17th year of economic expansion, with Chinese hunger for its abundant resources fuelling 3.9 percent growth last year in the A$1 trillion economy.

But with the economy at full stretch, a jobless rate at 34-year lows and ageing infrastructure, the 2020 summit will also discuss how to maintain growth and combat 4.1 percent inflation.

"In the century ahead, it's not unreasonable for Australia to aspire to be the best place on earth to live, to gain an education, to work and to raise a family," Rudd said.

"We can also be a nation with a sense of wider purpose, not a nation turned in on itself and occupied only with its own future."