Your Excellency, Premier, distinguished members of the Australia Day Committee, distinguished guests, fellow Australians and Mum. Greetings and thank you for the great honour you have bestowed upon me in allowing me to speak today.

How today shall I rejoice as a citizen of Australia?

Unrelated images from the last few days:

A searing 39 degrees day. A gaggle of waxed Greek youths, a friend of mine included, more body hair than a herd of Yaks at altitude, duck-dive in Port Phillip Bay for a wooden crucifix hurled from St. Kilda pier by a Greek orthodox bishop, shrouded in black and sweltering like Demis Roussos on Centre court.

Two burning days before. The asphalt backways of Geelong. Availing themselves of a road works detour, two small children, say nine and seven, freckled and thirsty, furtively waiting at a card table outside their suburban home, a hand made sign propped up "Horse Manure. 70 cents a Bag. Two for $2.00." Spelt 'MANYOOR'.

Hovering in a crowd of holiday tans and mobile phones watching a Portsea beach bathing box the size of my wife's handbag sell for a king's randsom.

Imbibing outside Tolarno's, Fitzroy St, St. Kilda, engaging in a chat with the local aboriginals. Homeless, squatting in the empty building next door, everyone of them related to someone else - Ernie Dingo's cousin, Gary Foley's nephew, Lionel Rose's younger brother. It's like an audience warm-up for "This is Your Life". They're arming me with unrepeatable dirty jokes for use in my Australia Day speech. Bemoaning Jabiluka. Not knowing where it is. But knowing what they haven't got.

Exploring with my kids, Tommy, Jimmy, Steph and Madeleine, the banks of the Barwon River. Pretending to catch a Redfin, skinny-dipping and recounting for them, more or less, the story of William Buckley the escaped convict who for thirty years wandered the rivers and coastlines near Geelong as a member of the Wathaurong Tribe, the first real link between our penal colony roots and our indigenous citizens.

A black and white photograph of me hugging Dad just before he died: Dad, who would be proud as punch to see me here talking on this great occasion, celebrating this nation he loved so much, this nation of lawns he mowed so vigorously, and of family holidays to wineries he explored so enthusiastically and from which he sniffed Bill Chambers Special Shiraz and across which he dragged sprinklers and kicked footies and bowled leggies.

Today, more than any other day of the year, this year more than any other in the millennium, each of us reflects on our own personal experiences and perspectives which comprise our own personal tapestry of "being Australian." We reach for the clues to that which binds us together. We search for the soul of our nation.

Our nation is more than the piece of land on which we stand. And we as citizens, are more than mere occupants. On this special day as we approach the turn of the Millennium, more than ever we ask 'What is it to be Australian?'

On this special day, as we approach the Centenary of Federation, we ask, 'What makes us as Australians special or different?' 'What makes us, as Australians, belong?'

Do we find this common bond of 'belonging', of 'Australianness', in some common ethnicity? Clearly not. We are a manifestly diverse society represented by over a hundred different racial, ethnic or national groups. Do we find it in a common place of birth? Clearly not. Nearly a quarter of our people were born overseas.

Do we find it in any common religion or perhaps a shared past. Partially, but not compellingly. Because of our multiculturalism, many of our citizens share no common history or cultural memory.

Do we find it in a common landscape, in the simple fact of nationhood? No. Our land is as diverse as anywhere on earth, from the lush tropics of the Daintree to the red deserts of the Mallee to the cappuccinos of Chapel Street. And so too are each of those communities, held together by a loose federation of states; each profoundly different and unique.

No. Isn't what binds us together as Australians, what makes us belong, here more than any other place on earth, not a common past - we are too diverse and too complex for that - but a shared present? Isn't what binds us as Australians together, a shared understanding of our bounty and a shared hope for our future?

Isn't what we cherish as Australians, the freedom to choose - to choose to come to this country, to choose to build this nation, to choose to fashion our continent, too choose our own identity?

Isn't it that what we cherish, more than what we say, in the way we say it, the process of moral discourse; the acceptance of a free and common language of public engagement. In a nutshell, isn't what most binds us together as Australians not so much what we've done as much as what we are yet to do?

One year ago in our nation's capital one hundred and fifty two representatives from all over our nation met at a Constitutional Convention. For me the Constitutional Convention chrystalised these unique Australian attributes of 'belonging'.

It was in the very purpose of the Convention - the way in which we, as a young people would choose to come together, confident and hopeful, to critically examine and re-examine our system of government and issues of how we live our lives.

It was in the diversity of those who came together: Kooris; Torres Strait Islanders; men and women; the young and the septuagenarians, war hero's; and Chardonnay sippers; citizens from every ethnic background, Asia, Europe; citizens who have chosen to come here and fifth generation Aussies.

And what struck me most were two things.

How, in the meagre space of a hundred years our nation has changed, changed almost unrecognisably for the better. Where a hundred years before, our founding fathers stood, all male, all white, all politicians, all middle aged and beyond, all British and Irish by birth or descent; today we bloom in our diversity. A diversity our founding fathers could never have dreamt of. Or accounted for. For which they could never have designed.

And secondly, and more importantly, that despite our diversity and the volatility of opinion that flows from those who are different, the Australian way involves an innate respect for each other, an innate equality in the way we engage in public discourse. The real triumph of the convention and of our nation is in how these people, our people - as diverse and passionate in their advocacy and beliefs as Bruce Ruxton and Phil Cleary, Malcolm Turnbull and Moira Rayner, Tim Costello and Peter Costello - would come together, many never having met each other, would come together with no rules or procedures, and in the space of two short weeks, invent a system; engage in real dialogue; respect each other and each other's hopes for a future; listen and be listened to; invent and demonstrate pristine grass roots decency and democracy.

The triumph of how we described ourselves as Australians, then and always, is not in what we resolved, important though that be, but in how we resolved it.

On this day of celebration we celebrate our Australianness and our duties as Australians not merely in what we have done but in what we have yet to do.

Today more than any other day we reflect with gratitude in the past, on the men and women before us who have built this nation. And we are profoundly thankful. But equally today demands we look to the future.

This nation, like the very earth we stand on, like the people here who breathe and eat, laugh and cry, is not static, frozen, complete. We know it is not sufficient merely to put a day aside to unfurl a flag, to reflect on the work of others and to pass this off as nationhood.

This nation is not built. This nation is under construction. Our forbears were not the only builders. We are all the builders.

Important though it is, our nationhood is not merely to be found in musty text books recounting men in white tights planting a flag. Nor in sepia photographs of our founding fathers, bearded and resolute, debating at Corowa. We plant our flags. We define our debate.

Today more than any other day, we reflect that nationhood is not a thing observed, a ritual, a ceremony. Nationhood is merely not a day of vacation to annually revel at the handiwork of others. Nationhood is not merely an annual trip to a museum to behold the rusty relics passed down from father to son as though they bear the force of icons.

Nationhood asks not what we remember of others, but what others will remember of us. Nationhood imposes a duty on every one of us who uses it, who lives within it, who breathes it, who consumes it daily; a duty to shape it, to judge it, to maintain it, to repair it, to renew it, to complete it.

We fail as citizens and we will fail as a nation if we pass on this precious thing simply as we found it.

On this special day each of us is charged to ask. 'Is this the best our nation can be?' 'Is this the most just and compassionate and complete society we can construct?' 'If we were building our great nation afresh, today, from the beginning, what would we choose to build?' And if our answer differs in any way from the Australia we inhabit today, then why do we tolerate anything less?

I read with great sadness that the last of the original Anzacs in New South Wales, Frederick John Kelly, died a few days ago. A man who saw action in Gallipoli and on the Western Front and who for four of his one hundred and two years, fought in a foreign war for this country and so helped to forge one of the strongest threads of our national identity.

Daily the papers ask 'where now is the Anzac spirit?'. On talk-back radio, in cabs people wonder how can we stir to the drums to which they marched? How, today, can we test our citizenship, serve our country, as they did before us?'

At one level, the spirit of the Anzacs is about sacrifice. For many, it was the ultimate sacrifice.

But on another level, the lesson of the Anzacs is about active citizenship, the willingness to participate, the ready desire to perform a public duty, to define by action, my nation, my community and myself. Not simply by the passive observation of others, nor by the mere celebration of the handiwork of those who have gone before, but by my own personal direct, active citizenship.

Our nation is made strong by challenges. The test of our identity, the price of citizenship is how we respond to those challenges.

Fred Kelly and our Anzacs responded to a challenge from without, to fight in a World War they thought threatened their world and their beliefs.

Equally, nations can be tempered and our citizenship tested, by challenges from within. America, Spain, Germany, France, most great nations of the world have grown strong from within. We have not suffered a war against slavery or the abolition of a ruling monarch or the destruction of a despot. Yet I believe that history now challenges us from within, tests us with grave issues that will define our nationhood as much as at any time before. The grave issues that face us and for which our drums beat are more subtle.

Reconciliation. What do we as a nation say to our indigenous people? How are they included as citizens? For them the answer of belonging can't be found in the past two hundred years. For every native of this land there is little in the past two hundred years that gives them a sense of belonging. Not in the destruction of their traditional societies. Nor in the declaration of Terra Nullus. Nor in their exclusion from citizenship. Nor in their denial of the right to vote. Nor in the policies of a breeding assimilation; Nor in higher death rates, suicide rates, infant mortality. No. For them, the clue for belonging to this nation is in the present. Our test of nationhood is in what we do now.

The issue of the republic. This year we will all be called upon to vote at a referendum to determine whether Australia will have an Australian as head of state.

If you'll allow me to put my two penneths worth on this for just one minute. I fervently believe its timely that at the turn of a new millennium and following a century of our Federation as a nation we take yet a further step to reflect our evolution as an independent, strong and vital nation.

The change from British Governors' General to Australian Governors' General; the removal of the power of the British Imperial Parliament to override Australian laws; the change in our national anthem; the abolition of the British privy Council as the highest Court of Appeal in this country; the very act of Federation itself - every one of these steps, said the naysayers, would sunder the very fabric of our society, destroy our Australian way of life. Yet life goes on. We grow. Each has been an important part of our evolution as a mature, confident independent Australia.

It has been said that just as all of us love this country more than any other; that we should love it too much to allow our Head of State, the most noble honour we can bestow upon any one of our citizens, to be shared with any other country. It has been said that today each of us is honoured to say "I'm an Australian!" Our head of state should say the same.

To those who oppose an Australian Head of State, I would urge you to consider that this will be but one further step in our continual evolution. Don't fear the word President. Or Republic. The President of Australia will simply be our Head of State with the same powers we've always given to a Governor General. The Republic of Australia will simply be our nation, the same nation we call home, with one of us as the Head of State. Don't be baffled by lawyers who say that the constitution can't be tampered with. Our constitution, good though it is, is not beyond improvement. It was written by people who came a hundred years before us who did not presume to write for today. Who specifically included a mechanism for change. Who expected change. Daily its flaws and shortcomings are exposed. Daily the High Court is filled with lawyers arguing what our Constitution means and how it can be made relevant to a rapidly changing, rapidly evolving Australia. It is a document that is meant to be tampered with and touched and felt and challenged and revitalised.

The greatest safeguard you have, that we as a nation have, is not the words of the Constitution itself - we ought not draw swords at commas and fullstops - but in the Australian people who breathe life into it. The spirit in which we interpret it. The Australian society in which it resides. A constitution is a chameleon. Ultimately, its only power is drawn from the character and virtue of the people who choose to empower it. The Australian Constitution, however watertight and nit-picked transmutes into a different governing instrument in the hands of a military dictator in an impoverished African nation. Or in an Eastern European country. Or in a South American state. Our Constitution, word for word is no guarantee of law or order or justice, merely because it says so. No. Our ultimate protection is in the institutions and attitudes and love of justice, of our very Australian society which will breath life into that constitution and invest it with that authority - or not. Our greatest constitutional protection is our active citizenship. Our greatest protection is us.

I ask you to consider how a Head of State might better describe us and heal us if it were one of us. If it were a woman. If it were an indigeneous Australian.

We are faced with a unique opportunity to make history. When I wake up on the morning of a new millennium, I want to tell my kids that we listened to the call of the drums, we took an active part and answered the challenge to help make our nation better. That we didn't simply pass this thing on as we found it.

Enough of the republic.

There are other great issues too. The role of immigration. Our place in the region and the world. And perhaps as critical as any, how we as a society can be rich not merely in wealth and infrastructure, but in care and compassion.

At the end of the day you may not share my views. Half my family don't. But whatever your view, what's important is that it is borne of active citizenship. That we care. That we don't make decisions based merely in acquiescence, in ignorance, in putting it into the too hard basket.

Today, as we celebrate the Anzac spirit, let's renew it in ourselves by our active citizenship, in our willingness to take responsibility in shaping our country and our community. Let us celebrate in a citizenship which doesn't attribute responsibility and blame to the faceless others who run the country but engages in our real community, in our street, in the issues that face us daily in our own lives.

How today shall I rejoice as a citizen of Australia?

• I rejoice in the memory of all those who have fought or died for this country.

• In the pioneers who battled on unknown land.

• In every Hawthorn premiership.

• I rejoice in the hamburger shop on the Geelong freeway where all the truckies stop and my kids get free chips.

• In the Long Room at the MCG and, before your eyes, the very bat wielded by the Don.

• In a people who are proud to compete but are not burdened by history.

• I rejoice in all those that have seen this land with fresh eyes - the slit of Nolan's Kelly, Arthur Boyds brides and Whiteley's women.

• The joy of Sandy Stone and the melodies of James Morrison.

• I rejoice in the lookalike Con the Fruiterer who sells bananas at the Port Douglas market every Sunday.

• In the defiance and inspiration of those who walked away from Port Arthur and Ash Wednesday.

• In going away and loving this place more every time I come home.

• Most of all, I rejoice in a society that is just, vital, compassionate and full of hope.

Today, I rejoice in the honour it is to say that I am Australian. Thank you.