Australia PM asks nation to agree on vision

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Ruddhas asked his countrymen to set aside differences and agree ona vision for the nation's future, warning that withoutimagination it will "perish" within decades.

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

"I believe a small country occupying a vast continent in aregion as wildly disparate as our own has no option other thanto 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 usback," he said in a speech full of sweeping symbolism styled onthe early years of Britain's Tony Blair.

The 2020 Summit, to he held at Australia's parliament, aimsto solve the country's most pressing problems and plan fordecades 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 CateBlanchett, less than a week after the Oscar-winning actressgave birth to her third child.

Rudd's centre-left Labor government, which last Novemberended almost 12 years of conservative rule, has been marked bysymbolic initiatives, including an historic sorry to Aboriginesfor past injustices and ratification of the Kyoto climate pact.

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

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

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

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

"It has been the absence of such agreed national goals overthe last decade that has seen us waste the great dividend thathas 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, withChinese hunger for its abundant resources fuelling 3.9 percentgrowth last year in the A$1 trillion economy.

But with the economy at full stretch, a jobless rate at34-year lows and ageing infrastructure, the 2020 summit willalso discuss how to maintain growth and combat 4.1 percentinflation.

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

"We can also be a nation with a sense of wider purpose, nota nation turned in on itself and occupied only with its ownfuture."

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)