But that’s exactly what the Hawkesbury’s own Sara Goldsworthy experienced while mixing with some of Australia’s key thinkers and personalities at the Prime Minister’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on April 19-20.

The former Bede Polding College student now lives in Canberra, and was invited to participate in a focus group discussing the summit topic ‘Australia’s future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world’.

From April 19-20, she participated in focus group discussions on how Australia can best respond to and engage with other nations.

Ms Goldsworthy, 24, met Mr Rudd during the summit when he came to sit in on her focus group’s discussion, joking with the Prime Minister about having to wait his turn to speak like everyone else.

“He took it really well,” she said. “You could see that he actually really enjoyed the process.”

Ms Goldsworthy was nominated to attend by a friend, after recently graduating from the Australian National University with a Master of Arts degree in international relations with first-class honours.

Ms Goldsworthy said participating in the summit was a great honour, and an opportunity to meet a diverse range of thinkers.

“There were just so many people, with so much experience,” she said.

During the summit, she put forward the suggestion that Australia should play a greater peacekeeping role in our region, similar to the role Norway has played in past international conflicts.

“That was one of the things that went onto the agenda that went to the Prime Minister,” she said. “I think conflict resolution skills are absolutely crucial to every type of interaction you can imagine.”

Ms Goldsworthy also had the opportunity to meet Environment, Heritage and the Arts Minister Peter Garrett, actor Hugh Jackman and former Australian Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove.

“They’re all very down-to-earth,” she said. “Even though they’re such high profile people... you could see they had a lot of respect for all the people there.”