1998 will be a year of prosperity and opportunity for Australia.
Australians can enter the new year in the knowledge that the nation's economy is the strongest it has been for 25 years.
The Government's policies, which have produced low inflation, low interest rates, sharply reduced national debt, and high economic growth, have enabled Australia to weather the economic turbulence which has swept through parts of Asia.
Significantly those policies led to the creation of 145,000 jobs in the last quarter of 1997.
Moreover prospects for further employment growth are the brightest they have been for several years.
1998 will also be the year in which Australians can debate and embrace fundamental reform to our taxation system. We need a new and better taxation system for the 21st century.
The Constitutional Convention, to be held in February, will be a once-in-a-century opportunity for a broad cross-section of the people who comprise modern Australia to examine the relevance of important features of our present Constitution.
Approached in a constructive, mature and forward-looking fashion by all participants - which I am sure it will be - this forum will be an invaluable vehicle for national stocktaking.
Most importantly those traditional Australian values of persistence, mateship, voluntary effort and optimism will again sustain us in all aspects of our national life.
I wish all Australians a happy and fulfilling new year.
31 December 1997