Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama held the first meeting of the New Public Commons Roundtable at the Prime Minister's Office.

The purpose of the meeting, established based upon Prime Minister Hatoyama's policy speech at the 173rd session of the Diet, is to broadly permeate a new public commons and its outlook among citizens, businesses, administrative bodies, and other circles in society, and to discuss the direction in which Japanese society should be moving and how systems and policies ought to be for the society to advance in that direction. Discussions took place at today's meeting on the procedures of the meeting, among other matters.

In his opening address, Prime Minister Hatoyama said, "Together with the people of Japan, I want to position a new public commons, the essence of the new government, broadly in Japanese society. It was with this wish that I inaugurated the Roundtable Meeting. I would like to further expand the new public commons to make it a breath of fresh air in Japanese society, and I call on your frank opinions in this regard."