Try harder every day to be better than the day before.

So in many ways for me, having lived through what I've lived through, and endured what I've endured, I've got more confidence that I can do the next bit - and there's something sustaining about that.

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.

We encourage China to engage as a good global citizen and we are clear-eyed about where differences do lie.

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.

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

Including everyone in the economic, wealth-creating life of the nation is today the best way for Labor (Australian Labor Party) to meet its twin goals of raising national prosperity and creating a fair and decent society.