Here in Australia we do get impacted by global economic events. But we should have some confidence that our economy has got strong underlying fundamentals.

I know people are looking at whats happening in Washington and then they also look at events in Europe, in Greece and Portugal and other places and worry about that.

Australians can trust me to get the job done. They can have the confidence that in the heart of the circumstances I will win through in their interests no matter how relentlessly negative the leader of the opposition is.

One of my prized possessions is still the prefect's tie that I got in this school. I keep it with me. It was the first leadership position I ever had.

Over the Christmas period, I spent time with both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and you listen to stories and tales of how hard it can be when it's really hard, and I think we easily all talk ourselves into the proposition that it's never been as hard as this. Well it's been hard in the past. It's been really hard. So you keep doing it and, the more you do it, the more you gain strength and confidence that you can do it.

As our economy faces up to potential labour shortages due to our ageing population and as it moves to a new level of sophistication to compete with the rest of the world, we're going to need every Australian on board pulling their weight, rejoining the workforce, gaining new skills. Writing off individuals and communities suffering from poverty just creates a dead weight for our economy to drag along.

He will always know as we know now that in the heat of battle he did not fail when mateship and duty called.