Australia Day is a time to celebrate our nation's past achievements.
And it's a time to embrace our nation's future.
This is a great country, rich in heritage and unlimited in its possibilities.
We should be deeply proud of our country.
Proud of Aboriginal culture, which represents the oldest continuing culture in human history.
Our explorers and our pioneers - brave men and women who settled this vast continent.
Our men and women in uniform who have given their lives and their service to defend Australia.
Our farmers, factory workers, business leaders; those who have fought for the rights of working families; our artists, our sporting heroes.
Our immigrants who have contributed so much to the diversity and vitality of Australia.
And then there is the family - the core and continuing unit of our society, which has underpinned so much of our national life together.
I am proud of this nation's past achievements.
And as Prime Minister, I am optimistic, supremely optimistic, about what our nation can achieve in the future.
As we look to the future our task is together is this, to build a modern Australia - an Australia capable of meeting the challenges that are being thrown at us for the future.
Because the challenges we face are great:
* an uncertain economic outlook, globally
* an increasingly competitive world, where we now face highly educated, highly trained, highly skilled workers right around the world;
* new threats to our security;
* unprecedented pressures on our health system,
* our ageing population;
* the great challenge of climate change;
* and how to achieve effective reconciliation, so that we can all move forward together - Aboriginal and non Aboriginal Australia.
These challenges are great.
But as a country we have faced great challenges in the past.
And as a people, we have always prevailed.
We have prevailed because of the enduring set of values that have shaped us as a country.
Values of independence, values of freedom, of resilience, enterprise and hard work.
At the same time, values of looking out for one another, of mateship and compassion.
And the value of a fair go for all - that great Australian value.
These values remain the bedrock of our nation - they have forged our past and they will fortify our future.
As we go forward into the future we must draw on these values to build a modern Australia.
A modern Australia capable of meeting head on the challenges of the future.
A modern Australia secure, competitive, compassionate and creative - that becomes even more the envy of the entire world.
And why? Because in one country we are capable of combining two ideas: that working for ourselves and our families is not incompatible with working for our community and our country.
This is the great ethos that is Australia.
But the truth is we can only build a modern Australia by doing it together.
We must draw together the nation's talents, the nation's ideas, the nation's energies to imagine what the nation can still become.
Government is not the fountain of all knowledge.
If we are to build a modern Australia to face the challenges of the future we need to harness our best brains, our best ideas, all for the national good.
And that is what we must now do.
I am an optimist about Australia's future.
Let's together seize the opportunities that lie before us.
To realise Australia's potential as a nation - and the individual potential of every member of the Australian family.
Therese and I and our family would like to wish everyone a very happy and a very safe Australia Day 2008.