We have much to celebrate as well as challenges to face
There is no single quality that gives Australia Day its meaning; there are many. It begins with a low-key and friendly celebration of nationhood. True, flag-waving has become more common but it's done in a playful way; prickly or aggressive nationalism is not in our character. Much of Australia Day is given over to leisure, to lazy outdoor sports and barbecue-fuelled feasting; Australia is an international centre of excellence for leisure. But Australians are also increasingly aware of their cultural and scientific legacy, just as the poetry of Les Murray celebrates inventions such as the stump-jump plough. More recent innovations include the black box flight recorder and WiFi technology. 
Australia has also profited by marrying social cohesion with a confidently multicultural society grafted on to the Anglo-American roots of our political system. We are an open, pluralistic society and not willing to compromise such achievements, especially not in the face of Islamist terror. Australia is home to many achievements but also to serious challenges. It's forgotten now but more than 100 years ago commentators predicted a similar trajectory for Australia and Argentina. Both were energetic agricultural exporters of the South with much-admired cities and a wealthy population enlarged by European migration. But by 1930 Argentina's politics was broken; it began to combine economic weakness with authoritarian rule. Australia remained a model of stability and (for much of the time) prosperity. Less than a year ago, however, our editor-at-large Paul Kelly declared Australia's system of politics "dysfunctional". He wrote: "There is little sign the political system can address the nation's problems: a fractured budget, unsustainable spending programs, unproductive industry, entrenched inequity and insufficient infrastructure." In   September, Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister and began, with some early success, to rewrite the rules of politics. He proposed to respect the intelligence of the electorate and not to play media games whereby politicians are called upon to rule in or out various measures. He emphasised the positive, embracing as exciting the disruptive technologies that others fear. It's understandable that he has set out to restore confidence after five years of bruising federal politics.
Yet it's also true that we face a reckoning. We are living beyond our means; we have suffered a massive turnaround in our terms of trade and yet we indulge in historically high levels of public spending. Our growth, like global trade, is sluggish. We, more than most countries, have reason to fear the unpredictable economic slowdown of China. Is Australia's political system up to the task ahead?
Jennifer Westacott, chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, outlined some key challenges in these pages on Saturday: "Australia Day 2016 is a good time to pause and ask ourselves: how positive do we feel about our nation's place in the world and our capacity to realise these opportunities?"How confident are we that our children and grandchildren will enjoy the same quality of life as we do, or something even better? ... 2016 must be the year of action, because a decade of missed opportunity ... will compromise our living standards, our wages growth, our public finances and our capacity to provide a decent safety net". And Ms Westacott was worried that "as we move into another election year ... the momentum we have begun to make will be compromised by a renewal of short-termism and destructive political point-scoring". Let's prove her wrong.