Time to enjoy the freedoms that others would abolish
The Christmas rush is at an end; peak hour traffic jams have shifted to the coastal highways and last week's anxious wait for school and university results is over. Boxing Day, for Australians fortunate enough to be at the beach, is the start of the summer hiatus. If Christmas has a bit more atmosphere in snowy climes, Australia's follow-through is almost impossible to beat, even as southern states swelter, far north Queensland prepares for a possible cyclone and Victoria battles bushfires. The reassuring rituals change little from generation to generation - surfing and beach cricket; the dash to the big sales; a good book or a new DVD; beer and prawns in front of the Boxing Day Test; following the yachts from Sydney to Hobart and soon, watching the world's best tennis players slog it out in Brisbane, Perth, Hobart, Sydney and finally Melbourne at the Australian Open. 
For many this is also a time of return to the bush and a culture of ease captured by the great Les Murray in his poem The dream of wearing shorts forever, which starts with the lines: "To go home and wear shorts forever / in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate, / adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, / to camp out along the river bends / for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife, / a fishing line and matches, / or there where the hills are all down, below the plain, / to sit around in shorts at evening / on the plank veranda".
Apart from the necessity of slowing down once in a while, it would be a mistake to dismiss the "silly season" as a mere indulgence. Its tangible economic benefits are essential to the economy and employment, especially in the depth of a resources export slump. As a tourist destination, our comparative advantages - unsurpassed beaches, the Great Barrier Reef, the outback, diverse cities, vineyards, indigenous culture and winter snowfields - need to be pitched to the emerging middle Asian market as energetically as our agricultural exports. Boosted by the lower Australian dollar, international visitor numbers to Australia increased in the 12 months to   September 20 to 7.2 million, with a healthy 18.8 per cent rise in the numbers arriving for holidays.
Malcolm Turnbull's mantra "there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian" is highly applicable to the tourism, hospitality and leisure sectors. Like retailing, however, those sectors need a break from the arcane and outmoded system of penalty rates that are strangling smaller and mid-size businesses. Unsustainable penalties are the reason so many restaurants, convenience stores and other small shops will be closed for the next week or more and why some hotel operators find it cheaper not to have rooms cleaned and turn away customers on Sundays and public holidays.
As this newspaper reported last week, check-out operators working over the Christmas and New Year period will pocket almost $3000 for 10 days of standard eight-hour shifts. Those whose employers cannot afford to open, however, will go without pay, as will business owners unable to make ends meet. Despite its modest suggestion to replace Sunday penalties with the Saturday rate but leave existing public holiday penalty rates intact, last week's Productivity Commission report has already drawn an irrational, near-hysterical response from trade unions and the opposition. If the Prime Minister is to make his mark as an economic reformer in the new year, he needs to give priority to a more flexible industrial relations system.The chance to take a breather is also a good time for Australians to take stock of our place in the world and the freedoms we take for granted. The persecution of those wishing to celebrate Christmas in Brunei - those who faced $20,000 fines or up to five years in jail for doing so - were a stark reminder of what is at stake in the struggle with Islamism. Innocent as they are, many of the pleasures Australians will enjoy this week - casual summer clothes to beat the heat, television, music and a drink or two - would earn a punishment in regimes determined to impose their theocracies across more of the world. It's a reminder that the precious freedoms of the Australian way of life are there not only to be enjoyed but to be reflected upon and defended.