Happy holidays indeed. It shouldn't be offensive to anyone to wish a Merry Christmas on December 25, regardless of religious belief (or lack thereof). Instead of denying the spiritual significance of Christmas Day in nations of predominantly Christian heritage, we should be embracing the religious celebrations of other faiths when they arise.

Christmas Day is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, traditionally believed to have been born on December 25 in Bethlehem. Regardless of whether you accept the events as fact or meaningful allegory, Christmas is a celebration of the values espoused by Jesus as an adult prior to his crucifixion. Christian values being, of course, embraced to differing degrees by many faiths.

As December 25, 2004 enters its last hour here I do hope all of us have had a great day. Dianne, Adara and I certainly have. But against this backdrop we must not lose sight of the hardships facing millions upon millions of people around the world. Sadly, many of these cases do not even rate a mention in our media, or to our political leaders.

Disease, especially HIV/AIDS, run rampant around the world. The wealthiest nations give little more than lip service to the elimination of poverty in the poorest countries. The Geneva Conventions relating to wars are flagrantly disregarded by the United States in their prison camps in Iraq and Cuba, while outlaws in Iraq use online video as a medium to convey the most barbaric of acts towards innocent men and women in the name of bankrupt ideologies. Islam is a valid and respectable religion - the interpretation espoused by these fanatics is not.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur continues, while the world's worst conflict since 1945 - that in the Congo - appears to be flaring again. Jesus' birthplace, Palestine, is a land of people dispossessed for more than half a century and kept in perpetual indignity by an Israel that wields the bulldozer as a weapon of mass destruction.

In Australia, our national moral fibre is at threat of unravelling by a government that conveys, by its behaviour, that it's OK to be selfish, OK to lie, OK to be inhumane to those worse off than us, OK to be a nation of arrogant xenophobes. Does John Winston Howard even know there's a war going on in the DR Congo? Well, they don't have a cricket team, so how could he?

As our government's relationship with its indigenous brethren degenerates towards a Hansonite policy of "mutual obligation" - we'll give you a petrol bowser if your children wash their faces twice a day - its inhumanity towards refugees becomes ever more repugnant. The case of the Bakhtiyari family, Afghan asylum-seekers about to be deported to Pakistan because our government claims that is their true nationality, is truly appalling and an embarrassment to those of us who have faith in the generosity of Australians.

Make no mistake, John Howard is the most un-Christian prime minister of Australia in my lifetime, and that includes the self-styled agnostic, Bob Hawke.

I'm sorry about making a Christmas message sound so bitter and negative. I have faith that good sense and humanity will prevail, but there may yet be a lot of damage along the way before this happens. A huge responsibility rests on the shoulders of those political and corporate masters who have the power, and often misuse it.

I'll put together some coverage of Christmas 2004 in the next day or so. Merry Christmas to you all.