Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced his intention to gather “1000 Prominent Australians” for a consultative project focused on Australia’s Future. He’s keen to look “beyond the ranks of ministers, politicians and public servants …and see what the rest of the nation has to say.”

The PM’s website advises that Vice chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Professor Glyn Davis, will head up the steering committee to select the participants, and will co-chair the summit.

The project has the potential to be a fantastic futures/foresight exercise. I’m really curious about the models and methodologies that are going to be used. I’m hoping members of Australia’s futures community secure roles both as participants and in the event’s process development and planning.

Basically, 100 experts will be chosen for each of these ten broad topics:

Economy
Infrastructure
Environment & population
Rural Australia
Health
Family and community
Indigenous Australia
The arts
The future of government
Australia’s security and international relations

According to the PM’s media release, a 10 member non-government ’steering committee’ will select the 1000, who will be “…drawn from business, academia, community and industrial organisations, the media and include a number of individual eminent Australians”.

This is one to watch. Read more at the PM’s release.