What the nation s newspapers are saying today, Thur Dec 31

AAP General News (Australia)
12-31-1998
What the nation s newspapers are saying today, Thur Dec 31

SYDNEY, Dec 31 AAP - The year 1999 must be when Australia begins to build a new, dynamic
economy based on investment in education, The Daily Telegraph says today in its final
editorial of 1998.

The Sydney paper said the old paradigms that drove economic growth in Western countries for
200 years had broken down.

The exchange of ideas and skills would be the staple trade of the new century, in economic
terms as powerful as the industrial revolution 200 years ago.

In the US high employment in computer and multi-media technologies had transformed
California into an economic titan, via proper investment in skills and knowledge.

In Australia there had been no federal increase in education in 10 years, where instead
there should be a commitment to lifelong learning.

The Sydney Morning Herald editorial said while the euro might not yet have a catchy name,
it represented an historic marker on the road to European integration and Europe's
transformation to being a superpower - although a United States of Europe was not a foregone
conclusion.

The euro showed that integration was possible without committing to political unification.

It showed closer cooperation between Australia and New Zealand and even a cross-Tasman
currency would not lose distinctive cultural identities.

The Herald also noted that the cliche about the "glorious uncertainty" of cricket was never
more aptly verified than n the last session of the Melbourne test, described by Peter Roebuck
as "one of the greatest cricket matches ever played".

The Australian's editorial today said that while anxiety and apprehension had marked its
beginnings, 1998 had been a year when forecasters and expectations were turned on their heads.

The editorial exampled the Federal Election (disappointing for its lack of substantive
policy vision), the trials of Ireland and other trouble spots, the Asian and Russian economic
melt-downs, and Australia's own fallible essential services.

"Jokes about Sydney's contaminated water dried up when Victoria ran out of gas for two
weeks ... Brisbane suffered power cuts. ..."

On the eve of 1999 the word was clearly a less-safe place, although the science of genetics
offered hope for the future and the third technical revolution.

"Yet at the end of 1998 there is a simple lesson - expect the unexpected," The Australian
said.

All in all, 1998 was a good year for Australia and showed that its people were able to
grapple with serious difficult issues and generally get it right, The Courier-Mail's New
Year's Eve editorial said.

"It was the year in which we were supposed to lose the plot," the paper said.

"The doomsayers predicted a year of economic turmoil fed by the buffeting winds of the
Asian financial storm and social unrest stirred up by Pauline Hanson and her followers."

This could have led to a race-based election and world condemnation.

But the Courier-Mail said that the challenges of 1998 were accepted and Australia
refocused.

"Australians are resilient and adaptable, something they have proven in what has been a
year of living successfully."

The Australian Financial Review said that 1999 should see a search for coherence.

No nation was an island in an age of instant communication and globalisation, its editorial
said.

Australia's domestic, regional and global economic and security interests were indivisible.

A major challenge into the 21st Century would be achieving coherence and consistency across
these crucial policy areas.

On economic, business and trade fronts Australia had boosted its reputation as being
prepared to take hard decisions for long-term gains. Australia had been active in multilateral
diplomacy.

"The domestic, the regional and the global need to form a seamless, coherent whole in order
to ensure Australia's place in the 21st Century is the challenge for the Howard Government as
1999 looms," The Financial Review said.

The Adelaide Advertiser said in an editorial that 1998 was filled with unexpected events,
as Australians paused hesitant on the cusp of the century and the millennium.

Few assumed how close would be the result of the federal election or that within months of
a fairly narrow victory, Prime Minister John Howard would be riding high on the back of a
resilient economy.

President Clinton's progressive, sex-driven humiliation might have been predicted, even the

fateful step of formal impeachment, it said.

"But it would have been a bold, and lonely commentator who asserted that this highest of
political dramas would be acted out in front of a population which was either indifferent or
actively supportive," the paper said.

The rise of One Nation was calmly and decisively repudiated by the Australian electorate
and there was a profound lesson for those who doubted the collective wisdom and decency of the
Australian people, the Advertiser said.

The Herald Sun said in an editorial that caution must be exercised in the Victorian
government's sale of the holdings of the former Gas and Fuel Corporation.

"Those organisations seeking to make money from distributing and selling gas to Victorian
households must show that they have the expertise to do the job well," the Melbourne paper
said.

Taxpayers would rather get less than the projected $1 billion for the asset than have it
sold to a company which stints on maintenance and is short on service, it said.

"Voters would not forgive a government that sold an asset from which gas supplies became
cut off or were disrupted on a regular basis."

At the end of the American century, the dependence of other countries on the United States
is greater than ever, The Age said in an editorial review of international affairs.

Asia was in crisis, Europe absorbed in its own problems and the collapse of the Soviet
Union had left just one superpower, the Age said.

The rest of the world's dependence on what happens in the US is one of the many bizarre
aspects of the sexual imbroglio that has led to the impeachment of US President Bill Clinton,
it said.

"American prosperity has continued to underwrite global economic activity, especially in
ailing Japan," the Melbourne paper said.

"If the US does not wield power as arbitrarily as some previous world empires, it is
because its own political traditions have generally been hostile the the arbitrary exercise of
power.

"In the uni-polar world, other nations will have to hope that the American tradition of
constitutional democracy does not wither."

AAP cjh

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS THURSDAY, Dec 31, 1998

1998 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.