Afghanistan must never again be a safe haven for terrorism.

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.

Our nation is well equipped to make the transition. We have an abundance of natural resources like wind, natural gas, solar and geothermal.

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.

We see community organizations as major service providers and economic drivers rather than as recipients or distributors of charity, and coordinators of volunteers. Today they constitute what's referred to as 'the social economy'.

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.

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.