It is important that the British Prime Minister has convened this conference.
It is important that you as women and men of good mind and good heart have come to this conference.
It is important because billions of working people around the world - including among them the least powerful in the world - actively depend on the success of the political project for which we stand.
The project for which we stand is a good project.
The values for which we stand are good values.
Because we are so bold as to believe that the betterment of humankind is not the stuff of ideal dreams - but instead is the stuff of concrete political action.
We should have absolute confidence in the central organising principle of our project: that the advancement of open economies and the advancement of human decency are not irreconcilable propositions.
These are in fact mutually reinforcing propositions as - complementary pathways to positive human freedom.
Ours is always a more difficult political task than the conservatives:
* Because at base their proposition is that the beginning and end of government is the maintenance of free markets;
* that human dignity can only be obtained through the agency of those markets;
* and that any concern for those who have no dignity should be through the agency of private philanthropy rather than concerted public policy.
We by contrast stand for open markets - while having a clear-cut recognition of when markets fail.
A clear-cut definition of public goods - a definition that includes:
* the security of our peoples;
* the proper and impartial regulation of our markets;
* the provision of universal education, of universal health;
* the provision of a humane safety net; and
* the proper protection of the planet as the self-evident commons of our collective humanity.
And also a clear-cut definition of our responsibility to ensure all are included in the opportunities our polities, economies and societies provide: in other words that we are in the continuing business of challenging the limitations placed on people's potential by the circumstances they inherit.
Or as David Miliband has said: progressive governments should always see themselves as insurgents - never as incumbents.
In other words, that an essential part of the DNA of progressive politics is our rolling assault against endemic social and economic exclusion at home and abroad.
That, of course, is the other element of our political project: we are at heart internationalists.
The values for which we stand do not mysteriously stop at our national borders or in Australia's case, the continental shelf.
We hold these values of security, freedom, fairness and the preservation of the planet to be both self-evident and universal.
That is why I am an enormous admirer of the leadership Gordon Brown has provided the world on two of the great projects of our time:
* The war on global poverty;
* And acting with urgency on the great moral and economic challenge that is climate change.
The Prime Minister's contribution on these two great questions over much of the last decade has been global progressive politics at its best.
Just as your collective presence here today at this conference is also global progressive politics at its best.
Because, at our absolute best, we are a movement of hard heads and soft hearts.
The Contestability of Ideas - a battle cry for progressive politics
Not only should we be absolutely confident of the values for which we stand.
We should be equally confident in the ideas we advance.
And in the politics we prosecute.
We must always join the intellectual debate against our ideological opponents - and we must prevail.
We must engage in the academy.
We must engage in the community.
We must engage in public policy.
We must engage in the brutal business of party politics.
We must engage in the media.
That, once again, is why I would like to acknowledge the Prime Minister's leadership in revitalising the Progressive Policy Network through this conference.
We are, by instinct and by intellectual inclination, a movement that is passionate about the debate of ideas.
I want to say to you today that the new Australian Government which I lead is well and truly open for business when it comes to the ideas debate.
No-one has a monopoly of wisdom in this domain.
That's why in mid-April I will convene an Australia 2020 Summit.
The Summit brings to the national capital our best and brightest minds in search of the best ideas for the country in ten key areas:
* The Productivity Agenda - education, skills, training, science and innovation;
* The future of national infrastructure;
* The challenges of population, sustainability, climate change and water;
* Future directions for rural industries and rural communities;
* A long-term national health strategy - including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population;
* Strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion;
* The future of Indigenous Australia;
* The future of the arts, film and creative design;
* The future of Australian governance, including renewed democracy, a more open government, the structure of our Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens; and
* Australia's future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world.
I have appointed a non-government panel of ten leading Australians to in turn select a thousand of our brightest and best - 100 per challenge area - to spend a weekend speaking to government rather than government speaking at them.
So in this spirit, if any of you at this conference have policy ideas, proposals or submissions you would like us to consider, then the invitation is real: send them to my office.
We will respond in time to all of them.
I say again, when it comes to ideas and innovation, Australia is now very much open for business.
The New Australian Government
The new Australian Government is pro-market, pro-business and pro-globalisation.
The new Australian Government is also implementing a fairness agenda aimed at maximising equality of opportunity for every individual to pursue their life opportunities to the fullest - as well as providing a proper safety net for all without undermining individual incentive.
At the same time we are also re-engaging the international order with a view to making our own contribution to the great challenges that confront our region and the world.
We have been in office for only four months today - but we've been busy:
* On our first day in office, the Government ratified the Kyoto Protocol and we are now active participants in the Bali Roadmap on climate change;
* On the first sitting day of our parliament, I extended an apology to the stolen generations of Indigenous Australians, and have begun a policy program of closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life opportunities in Australia;
* The Government also has commissioned its first White Paper on homelessness and is looking at how to invest in compassionate, pro-market solutions which deal with this gaping social challenge;
* The Government has concluded an historic agreement with the state and territory governments of Australia to establish a single national authority to manage Australia's major inland river system - the Murray-Darling - whose future is threatened by the impact of over use and climate change;
* The Government has also embraced a comprehensive productivity agenda based on a radical re-investment in education, skills, training, research, innovation and infrastructure - not just to provide the best platform for growth for the 21st century but also the best platform for opportunity: our objective is clear - to build in Australia the best educated, best skilled, best trained workforce in the world;
* And the Government has also just enacted legislation to put in place a fair and flexible workplace relations system - one that balances flexibility for employers with protection of workers' rights and entitlements.
* Furthermore, on the question of Indigenous policy, I have decided that each year in Australia's Federal Parliament the first working day will be marked by a Prime Ministerial statement reporting on progress in closing the life expectancy gap, progress in closing the gap on infant mortality and mortality of children up to five, and progress on closing the literacy and numeracy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Each year we must know as a Government, as a people, and as a country if we have made progress closing this gap.
We should not underestimate the size of this challenge.
Many Governments with the best of intentions have failed in their attempts in the past.
But the time has come for the debate to move on from intentions and focus on outcomes, because in this endeavour outcomes are what really matters.
This annual statement will greatly increase pressure on my Government to make progress towards closing the gap. That is exactly why I am announcing it.
There is no reason that in Australia today, a successful developed nation with a modern and prosperous economy, there should exist a 17 year life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians.
Internationally the Government has been active in re-engaging the United Nations (we have just announced our candidature for the UN Security Council after a 25 year absence); re-engaging Europe by developing a new Partnership Framework with Brussels across the breadth of the global agenda; and re-engaging our own region including through new forest agendas with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and a determination to tackle the development deficit that now exists across the Pacific island states through our new proposal for Pacific Partnerships for Development.
Globally we will partner with the United Kingdom on the Millennium Development Goals given Australia's new commitment to increase official development assistance from 0.3 per cent of GNI to 0.5 per cent.
Just as globally we will now be working with the UK on climate change.
Australia's voice has been too quiet for too long in the councils of the world.
Instead Australia will now pursue an activist foreign policy in partnership with our allies, our region and the multilateral forums of the United Nations.
Future Agenda
The global, national and local agendas confronting progressive governments around the world are replete with challenges.
As a movement, we can turn in on ourselves - but protectionism in all its forms is the enemy of working peoples.
Or we can embrace the challenges of globalisation:
* argue the case for openness;
* celebrate the opportunities it provides for working peoples;
* deal decisively with market failure where it occurs;
* act compassionately, effectively and with dignity with those damaged by globalisation (and let us recognise there will always be some) so that they can participate afresh;
* foster a dynamic culture of innovation across our societies and economies as the platforms for economic transformation for the future;
* continue to reform our system of government and government service, so that our citizens lie at the centre rather than the inflexible behemoths of official bureaucracy;
* and work in partnership with others to reform our institutions of global governance - particularly given the new challenges facing the UN, the Bretton Woods machinery and global financial markets.
Progressive politics must always embrace the future, not retreat to the insularity of the past, to forge a new politics of the centre that embraces both the empowerment of peoples through open economies and the opportunities created for people through the agency of a compassionate state.
The challenges we face are great.
But the narrative we have to offer is good - tempered by the experience of government, but always tested by the innovation of those beyond government.
And over the year ahead, I look forward to working with you in writing the next chapter of progressive politics and policy.