A year ago, more than 1,000 Australians gathered in Canberra to be part of the Australia 2020 Summit - an important event in the Rudd Government's first year in office.
The Summit participants came from across the Australian community to help shape a vision for the nation's future and to explore new ideas and ways to meet the major challenges that lie ahead.
Many others joined in the conversation through local Summits across Australia, a Youth Summit, more than 500 School Summits, and we also received 8,800 submissions.
The Summit generated 962 ideas during an extraordinarily lively, engaged and incisive conversation.
The Government has already acted on many of these ideas, including:
* Commencing a major review of Australia's Future Tax System;
* Implementing a broad program of reform of Commonwealth cooperation with the States and Territories;
* Releasing our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; and
* Releasing a major new White Paper on Homelessness.
Tonight, the Government is releasing its response to all 962 ideas.
Not only did the Summit support, influence or cause the Government to re-evaluate a range of existing priorities and commitments, it also proposed a number of practical new ideas.
Tonight, the Australian Government can announce that it will immediately begin work on nine specific ideas from the Summit:
* A Deployable Civilian Capacity to respond to emergencies in our region;
* First steps towards an Indigenous Cultural Education and Knowledge Centre;
* Mentoring in the Workplace to facilitate the passing of knowledge between skilled mature age Australians and business and the community (Golden Gurus);
* $50 million for research towards the development of a bionic eye;
* A Prime Minister's Australia Asia Endeavour Awards Scheme to support scholarships for students in Australia and Asia and deepen cultural understanding;
* A dedicated ABC Children's Channel;
* A Business and School Connections Roundtable to enhance opportunities for business and schools to partner together to improve educational outcomes;
* A Skills for the Carbon Challenge initiative to equip workers and businesses with skills for sustainability; and
* A Vocational Education Broadband Network to build a single post-secondary high speed broadband network, connecting the Australian training system to a similar network to that currently serving universities.
These initiatives reflect the range, strength and quality of ideas emerging from the Summit.
Other ideas will be studied in ongoing policy processes, while some ideas are better taken forward by other groups.
The 2020 process was just the beginning.
The Australian Government is committed to an open style of government that engages the community and welcomes new ideas as we work together to address the challenges of the future.
The Government is undertaking Community Cabinets across Australia and is developing a wide range of community engagement strategies to ensure it remains in contact with the community and continues to be open to new ideas and different points of view.
The Australia 2020 Summit - Government Response is available on the Australia 2020 website.