Kevin Rudd

But Australia faces additional regional and global challenges also crucial to our nation’s future – climate change, questions of energy and food security, the rise of China and the rise of India. And we need a strong system of global and regional relationships and institutions to underpin stability.

The Australian Government’s decision to take on the dominant funding role for the entire public hospital system is designed to: end the blame game eliminate waste and to shoulder the funding burden of the rapidly rising health costs of the future.

On Australia Day 2010, as we enter this second decade of the 21st century, Australians can be optimistic about our future, but we cannot afford to mistake optimism for complacency.

To be a member of the Labor Party is to be an optimist – optimistic about the future of Australia, optimistic about the ability of government to make a difference.

I deeply believe that if the Australian Labor Party, a party of which I have been a proud member for more than 30 years, is to have the best future for our nation, then it must change fundamentally its culture and to end the power of faceless men. Australia must be governed by the people, not by the factions.

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.

Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great commonwealth, for all Australians – those who are indigenous and those who are not – to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.