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Prompted by the upward-racing mercury in Melbourne, which has turned proud defending Australian Open tennis champions into heat-stricken quitters, The Times of London has mischievously questioned whether Australia should be allowed to host major international sporting events. With its leader writers clearly limbering up for the northern summer with a spot of pre-Ashes Aussie-baiting, the paper notes: "Sooner or later you have to face up to the only sensible conclusion: Australia is no place to host international sporting tournaments; except maybe the world kangaroo long-jump."

The truth is that it has been a strong few months for Aussie-hosted sporting events, with the attracting recording crowds in South Australia, the Australian Youth Olympics Festival in Sydney attracting record number of young competitors, and the most riveting of Test series between the hosts and South Africa.

In recent weeks, the Melbourne Age suggested that the Victorian capital was , although John Coates, the Aussie Olympics supremo, quickly shot down that trial balloon and said that Brisbane was the next in the queue.

But is Australia aiming for one global sporting event too far, with its bid to host the 2018 World Cup? The Rudd government has pledged $A45.6 million to the Football Federation Australia to help finance its lobbying campaign.

The FFA believes it presents a compelling case. It says that if Fifa is serious about promoting the game in the Asia-Pacific region, then Australia would be an ideal venue. It already has an infrastructure of world-class stadia, along with the organisational expertise that brought you the Sydney summer games, the superlative Olympics. It also harbours a polyglot population, drawn from all corners of the planet who would be sure to greet the tournament with great enthusiasm.

The nay-sayers raise the time difference problem, with kick-off times that won't work too well for European television viewers, and the tyranny of distance for travelling fans.

Then there's football's geo-politics, which make even the machinations of Chicago look like the Little House on the Prairie.

With the southern hemisphere poised to host the next two tournaments - South Africa in 2010 and Brazil in 2014 - the Fifa President Sepp Blater has suggested it go for 2022 instead. The President of the FFA, Frank Lowy, who would be 92 by then, said Australia would stick with 2018. England is aiming for 2018, while Portugal and Spain looks set to launch a combined bid. The Aussies hope that Uefa, soccer's most powerful voting bloc, will be split, and it will sneak up at the back post in the final minute and nod in the winner. But tackling its Asian rivals, China and Japan which seem set to mount bids, is likely to be an even tougher challenge.

Some wonder why the Rudd government is prepared to spend over $A40 million at a time when the federal budget is almost certain to head in deficit, when the odds are stacked so heavily against Australia.

As for the heat argument, I'll leave that to the leader writers at The Australian, who have risen to the challenge from their Murdoch-owned sister paper in London. If heat were such a problem, they observe, then why did the great British hope Andy Murray make an unexpectedly early departure, which was blamed partly on a cold?

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It must be bad. Kevin Rudd is cancelling a foreign trip.

The Australian Prime Minister was supposed to be in Davos, Switzerland, this week attending the , but instead he will remain, for the most part, at home dealing with the world economic downturn, or the GFC (standing for Global Financial Crisis) as he prefers to call it.

There's a back to school/back to work feel in the air, and the thinking in the prime minister's office is probably that it would have looked bad for Kevin Rudd to head off to the talkfest in Europe, especially after all the criticism that he already spends too much time outside of the country. (Though he will attend the Pacific summit in Papua New Guinea, where is topping the agenda).

The economic outlook for Australia has worsened significantly since the run-up to Christmas, fuelling speculation about whether the government will introduce a second stimulus package by the end of the month.

Kevin Rudd has already announced a $A4 billion stimulus plan for the building industry, with the aim of safeguarding 50,000 construction jobs.

What impact the first stimulus package had - a pre-Christmas $A1000 hand-out to low income earners, carers, and pensioners - is a matter of ongoing contention.

There's evidence to suggest that many Australians used the money to pay off credit card bills rather than generate new spending. A survey conducted by the found that most recipients used the money to ease their debt.

There's other evidence to suggest that the money did not have as much of a stimulative impact as the government would have liked.

The state of Victoria, for instance, saw record pokie (gaming machine) takings in December, which anti-pokie campaigners blame on the government's pre-Christmas cash injection.

Adding to the sense of gloom, the holiday season has seen a headline-grabbing report from a highly-regarded consultancy, , which predicted that the Australian economy would be certain to go into recession and that New South Wales, the country's most populous state, was already in one.

It said that the resources-fuelled boom was unwinding "scarily fast", and raised the spectre of "the sharpest deceleration that Australia's economy has ever seen".

The slowdown in China, Australia's leading trading partner, is the main problem, the report said, and the slackening demand for Australian minerals and resources will have a major impact on the federal budget, since corporate profits are so closely allied with commodities prices.

Access Economics said the federal budget was "buggered".

has already announced the closure of its Ravensthorpe nickel mine in the once-booming Western Australia, and said it may have to suspend operations at the Yabulu nickel refinery because of the collapse in the price of nickel.

In November, Western Australia's unemployment jumped more than any of the country's other states to 3% - although it still remains below the national average.

If Western Australia is in trouble, then you can be sure other states and territories, which do not benefit to the same extent from mineral deposits, will be experiencing it tough, as well.

Australia seems certain to experience an export slump, given that all ten of its major trading partners - in order, China, Japan, US, South Korea, Singapore, UK, New Zealand, Thailand, Germany, Malaysia - are either in recession or on the verge of it.

As we've noted before, Australia managed to avoid recession during the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and the dotcom bust in 2000. But the odds of it avoiding a recession this time round seem to be receding with every new report, confidence survey or set of economic statistics.

UPDATE: As we've reported , Prof Mick Dodson, the indigenous leader, has been made Australian of the Year, and has immediately sparked controversy by calling for a national conversation on whether Australia Day should be celebrated on January 26th, which marks the arrival of the British first fleet into Sydney Cove.

As Professor Dodson points out, there are many Aborigines who look on it as "Invasion Day".

There are some lively exchanges of views and . I would love to hear yours.

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Tough times call for infectious viral marketing campaigns. I dare say you've heard of Tourism Queensland's attempt to lure visitors to its shores with a global publicity blitz dressed up as a job advertisement, purportedly . Then there was the supposedly love-struck Sydney woman, who turned to YouTube in her "search" for a dashing stranger who she'd fallen for at a Sydney cafe, where she claimed he had left his jacket. Rather than being a modern-day Cinderella, she turned out, of course, to be an actress employed by a clothing company to promote its latest line.

My favourite viral campaign of the southern summer silly season, though, comes from the Australia Day Council of New South Wales and features our old friend "Advance Australia Fair" Ahead of the celebrations marking national day, it has invited people to take the Advance Australia Dare, singing the anthem in whatever way they see fit. There's a , a , a , and even a . I offer these musical turns as some light-hearted holiday relief to escape from Australia's economic woes, a federal budget which is "buggered", according to an lavishly-quoted report from Access Economics, and the swathe of job losses in the mining industry.

I've been intrigued, and a little surprised, by the government-sponsored marketing campaigns that set out to boost participation in Australia Day. In a country as patriotic as this one, you would have thought they were superfluous. Certainly I've never had to twist arms to get the BBQ fired up.

For all that, the chirpy young bureaucrat who tours the sun-dried suburbs looking for residents who spent last year's national day couch-bound rather than slaving over a hot barbie are rather funny. So, too, his Australia Day checklist, which exhorts patriotic, True Blue Aussies to exercise their constitutional right to give dead arms, make a disparaging remark about English cricket and overcook a variety of meats on a semi-hygienic barbeque.

Forgive me if I don't do the former, but I'll certainly be hurling the odd crustacean in the direction of a flaming grill.

PS. On the larrikin debate, I agree with your comments. At the risk of being a "dobber", that definition was slipped in by London. This definition works for me: "The tradition of irreverence, mockery of authority and disregard for rigid norms of propriety".

Happy Australia Day.

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Great to see Chris Lilley getting the international recognition he so richly deserves for the comedy series, Summer Heights High, ABC's laugh-out-loud mockumentary set in a suburban high school. It's showing on HBO and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Three, and getting rave reviews. You can watch snippets .

The almost-as-funny precursor to the series was , which chronicled the search for the Australian of the Year. Filmed again in mockumentary style, it featured an eclectic cast of characters, all played by Lilley himself. There's a housewife from Western Australia born with one leg shorter than the other, who plans to roll from Perth to Uluru; there's the bespectacled Chinese physics prodigy who wants to leave the lab behind so he can star in a stage show about Aboriginal Australians, Indigeridoo; and there's the famous-for-five-minutes policeman from Queensland who saved a group of children drifting skyward in an inflatable bouncy castle - the ideal launch-pad, he reckons, for a lucrative career in motivational speaking and self-promotional merchandise.

Suffice to say, the real Australians of the Year are noticeably less comic, and have usually been drawn from the mainstream of Aussie life rather than plucked from its odd box. Now, with Australia Day fast approaching, we are close to finding out who will be this year's recipient.

Casting an eye over the previous 52 winners (you can get the full list ) offers an intriguing perspective on the Australian national character, which is both reinforcing and revelatory.

The world of sport is best represented, with 12 winners. So no surprises there. Three of those have been successful Australian cricket captains (Allan Border, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh), and winning Olympians feature prominently. There are four gold medallists, although the country's most successful Olympian, Ian Thorpe, has so far missed out. The winter sports do not get a look-in, perhaps because of the regional and fragmentary nature of winter sports. Even the legendary John Eales, one of the few players to have won the Rugby World Cup twice, does not make the list.

The arts get what's perhaps a surprisingly good look-in, with 10 recipients. This is a particularly eclectic bunch, from the Nobel prize-winning author Patrick White to Paul Hogan, and from the internationally renowned opera star Joan Sutherland to John Farnham, the Cliff Richard of Australia.

Scientists are also well represented, with nine recipients (including three Nobel prizewinners). Proportionately, so, too, are the military, with three, and environmentalists, with three (the most recent being Tim Flannery, who used the platform offered by Australian of the Year to criticise the environmental policies of the former Howard government).

Six winners have been indigenous Australians, three of them sportsmen and women (the 400m runner Cathy Freeman, the tennis star Evonne Goolagong Cawley and the boxer Lionel Rose).

The list has a degree of ecumenical balance, with two churchmen, an Anglican and a Catholic. But elected politicians do not get much of a look-in. Neville Bonner, the first Aboriginal person to sit in the Federal parliament, is the only one on the list. Businessmen also get short shrift. The entrepreneur Dick Smith and Alan Bond are the only two (although Bond's award had more to do with bankrolling success in the America's Cup rather than his money-making skill). There's no place for the moguls Kerry Packer or Rupert Murdoch, nor their fathers.

Only one "public intellectual" has been recognised, the renowned Australian historian Manning Clark. But, then, larrikins (an Australian term for a boisterous, loutish, or otherwise badly behaved young man) do not get much of a look-in, either. Paul Hogan is the only comedian to have been honoured. Had Barry Humphries received the award you could have got a larrikin, a public intellectual and a woman all in one fell swoop. Anti-authoritarian figures, like Shane Warne and Dennis Lillee, have also been overlooked.

Australian emigres, like Clive James, Germaine Greer and the writer Robert Hughes have not made the grade. Neither, for that matter, have Australia's most globally successful entertainers of recent years, Steve Irwin, The Wiggles or Kylie Minogue.

Men have been honoured more so than women, but Australians of the Year are usually far from ocker (rough and uncultivated). An early recipient was the ballet dancer, Sir Robert Helpmann.

I suppose all this raises a few questions, which I'd love you to weigh in on. Are there any glaring omissions? Who should be this year's recipient? (The cricketer Glenn McGrath is among the finalists.) And, I guess, should there even be an Australian of the Year?

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The outgoing US President George W Bush has already rewarded the former Australian prime minister, John Howard, with a sobriquet: "deputy sheriff". Now he has bestowed upon his friend and close ally America's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I know I run the risk of repetition, for we revisited the Howard Years just before Christmas. But, as one writer has already noted, the White House ceremony where Tony Blair was also honoured did have the feel of a requiem for the end of an era, so I wanted to give you the chance for a final word on both Messrs Howard and Bush.

I guess Australian opinion on the subject will fit into three broad categories. We could call the first the "Latham School," after the former Labor leader Mark Latham who repeatedly used the term "arse-licker" to describe what he considered to be an overly intimate relationship between the American and Australian leaders. Clearly, there are many here who hated the idea of Aussie diggers serving in Iraq, and were infuriated that the Howard government echoed the climate-change scepticism of the Bush White House and who believed that John Howard did not do more to secure the release of David Hicks from Guantanamo Bay. To them, perhaps, the presidential medal of freedom is more a badge of personal and national shame.

Then there will be those in what might be called the "Downer School," after the former Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer. Like his boss, Mr Downer supported the Bush administration out of conviction and calculation. He not only thought it was right to back America from a moral and ideological perspective, but that it was politic - or geo-politic, I suppose - to do so. Members of this school could construct an argument that John Winston Howard is Australia's most significant and influential ever global player (I suppose you could also make a similarly strong case for Rupert Murdoch on that front), and that he would never have achieved this measure of international influence had it not been for his unrelenting support for George W Bush. The "Latham School" counter-argument would be, I suppose, that there's not much point having a seat at the table if all you bring to the discussion is a rubber-stamp.

Finally, I guess, there's what might be called the "Apec School," named after the diplomatic talking shop, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. This group might include people who probably think it's sensible to have a close and happy economic and security relationship with America but that Australia should also improve its relations with its Asian neighbours and that it should not be slavish in its support of Washington.

This is close to the kind of foreign policy that Kevin Rudd pursued in the final months of the Bush era, as was illustrated over the Christmas break when Canberra turned down a request from Washington to resettle 17 Chinese detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

An enormous amount of Australian energy has been focussed on winning medals and the international recognition they deliver. But is this a decoration that Australia would rather leave well alone?

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So another Aussie legend decides to hang up his sweat-drenched Baggy Green, and the name of the brutish batsman Matthew Hayden can now be added to those of his fellow retirees Justin Langer, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath.

Arguably the most successful batsman to open the innings for Australia (and from a statistical standpoint, definitely so), the Queenslander was one of the central reasons why Australia became such a dominant force in world cricket. Belligerent from the off, he scored runs at such a blistering, Blitzkreig-like rate that he could set the tone for a match in its opening session and single-handedly demolish and demoralise the opposition. Just as important, when he was firing he put so many runs on the board at such a rapid pace that it helped give Australia's bowlers more than enough time to claim the twenty wickets that it usually takes to win a test match. Hayden had the capacity to bully, and he was one of the reasons why Australia came to be so feared.

In one-day international cricket, Hayden set the Australian record, when he scored 181 not out in 166 balls against New Zealand in 2007. He also holds the record for the fastest century in World Cup history (66 balls) at the 2007 World Cup.

Seemingly struggling with an Achilles injury, which gets harder to shake off at the age of 37, he was a shadow of his former self during this summer's test series against New Zealand and South Africa. Against the Proteas, he averaged under 20 runs in each of his scratchy innings, and top-scored with just 39 in what turned out to be his final test innings. It was a sub-standard performance given that his test career average is 50.73. In retiring from the game, perhaps one consideration was preserving his 50-plus average.

At the start of the season, the Australian selectors' original plan was to play in Hayden in the forthcoming tour of South Africa, and then the Ashes. But last week he was dropped from the one-day side, and the selectors indicated that his place in the test team was by no means guaranteed. Then the chairman of the selectors, Andrew Hilditch, publicly blamed him, along with the other senior players, Michael Hussey and Brett Lee, for the defeat against South Africa. Clearly he wanted to end his career on his own terms rather than having the selectors do it for him. He said his moment of realisation came at the weekend when he was picking wild tomatoes with his young daughter. Like the other retiring greats, he says he just knew.

Because he decided to prolong his career and went out below his best, his departure is very different from those of his illustrious colleagues. When Warne, Langer, Gilchrist and McGrath announced their retirement, there was no question that Australian cricket had been weakened dramatically as a result. Conversely, given Hayden's recent form slump, his departure might ultimately strengthen the side.

There's certainly no shortage of replacements. For the Test side, the 20 year old New South Welshman Phillip Hughes is the most exciting of prospects, although Phil Jacques, who scored a century in his last outing for Australia, probably has first call. Then there's Chris Rogers, who has been averaging over 80 this season for Victoria. Michael "Mr Cricket" Hussey also made his name as an opener for Western Australia, should the selectors want to elevate him in the order.

In one-day and Twenty20 cricket, of course, there's the talk of the nation: David Warner, who announced himself in pyrotechnic fashion at the MCG on Sunday night, with a hurricane-like innings of 89 in just 43 balls. Justin Langer said it was like watching a highlights package, while Ricky Ponting likened him to the great Adam Gilchrist. His headline-grabbing feat was all the more remarkable since he made his debut for Australia without having ever played a first-class match.

Technically speaking, Australia remain the best test playing nation, but Hayden's departure is but another reminder of the loss of its super-power status and that cricket is no longer a unipolar world.

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After the feel good fun of the New Year pyrotechnics, the kind of hangover that could last long into 2009 - and perhaps beyond. Following seventeen years of uninterrupted growth, the Australian economy is battling to stave off recession. After sixteen years of dominance, Australia's cricket team is no longer the envy of the world. After fifteen years of rising visitor numbers, Australian tourism is braced for a once-in-a-quarter-century blip, with .

The IMF expects global commodity prices to fall by a staggering 23%, which is obviously terrible news for the all-important mining sector. No wonder the Anglo-Australian mining giant, Rio Tinto, has announced that 14,000 members of its 112,000-strong global workforce will lose their jobs. Japan, Australia's leading export destination, is in recession. Growth in China, Australia's largest trading partner, is expected to fall to a 19-year low.

The Australian government is about to go into deficit, with a recent Treasury report forecasting that tax revenues would fall $40 billion short of the original projections. The collapse of the property market, a rich source of tax revenue, means that all the states, with the single exception of Victoria, are likely to slump into deficit, as well - even resources-rich Western Australia.

Kevin Rudd remains well-liked at home, but his cautious 5% greenhouse emissions target may have dented his popularity abroad. Perhaps he will not strut the global stage with quite the same self-confidence, or, his critics would suggest, quite the same self-righteousness. The economic slowdown has placed unexpected constraints upon his government, which has already impacted its environmental policies and could have a similar impact on his educational programmes (especially the funding of universities).

The sweet and sour reviews and below-par box office figures for Baz Luhrmann's Australia could serve as a leitmotif for the country as a whole. Even the summer weather has been a bit unreliable and dodgy.

For all that, recession is by no means inevitable. Many of the country's leading economists are projecting growth in 2009 - between 1.2% and 1.4%. There's also good news for debt-ridden home owners, with interest rates expected to fall further, from 4.25% to as low as 3% by mid-year.

On other fronts, 2009 could be a year to savour. In cricket, we've got an Ashes series to look forward to, which is unlikely to match the quality of the 2005 vintage but could be equally tense and gripping. There are scores to settle on the upcoming tour of South Africa, as well.

Later this month, the champion cyclist Lance Armstrong will be making his comeback in the Tour Down Under, and perhaps we'll get to see another Federer/Nadal classic at the Australian Open.

Come September Cate Blanchett, will be packing them in Sydney when she plays Blanche Du Bois in Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire" and, after a year's absence, the Chaser Boys will be back on ABC (is it possible to construct an argument that's Kevin Rudd's enduring popularity has partly been due to a Chaser-free first year in office?).

Many Australians will no doubt have ushered in the New Year on the beach, hopefully swimming between the flags - those iconic red and yellow markers which indicate where the churning waters are at their safest. But 2009 could well be an outside of the flags sort of year, with many Australians forced out of their comfort zone and subject to forces which are beyond their control. I hope that all of you will manage to keep to your heads above water.

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