Crowds crammed vantage points for Sydney Harbour’s world-renowned pyrotechnics as revellers around the nation saw in the new leap year with traditional glee.

Victorians partied hard to usher in a new year and police were pleased with crowds across the state after half a million gathered in Melbourne’s CBD to watch fireworks displays.

It was an overwhelmingly safe and enjoyable evening for most of the public, Assistant Commissioner Mick Grainger said.

“We saw great crowd behaviour at suburban and regional community celebrations, with people taking responsibility for their own behaviour and looking out for their friends,” he said.

“There were only a small number of people who did the wrong thing, but they were dealt with swiftly by police, so the atmosphere was in no way spoiled.”

Police arrested 33 people forassaults, sexual assaults, traffic offences and a robbery and responded to 64 fireworks-related incidents, several of which resulted in serious injuries and fires.

In Tootgarook on the Mornington Peninsula, a 57-year-old woman was hospitalised after her house went up in flames believed to have started after fireworks and flares were set off in the street.

Police are treating the fire as suspicious.

An explosion at a Mill Park house left 11 people hospitalised, one with life-threatening injuries.

The fire is not being treated as suspicious. 

A 48-year-old Altona woman may lose an eye after an illegal firework struck her face at Altona beach.

“We saw some serious injuries tonight,” Mr Grainger said.

“If you’re prepared to play with illegal fireworks, be prepared for the consequences of that.”

The night’s festivities over, another year of uncertainty has dawned with hangovers from 2023 of extreme weather, cost-of-living woes, unaffordable housing and sovereignty conflicts.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has at least said he was “hopeful and optimistic” about Australia’s economic conditions in 2024.

He pointed to falling inflation, jobs growth and wages increasing, and he flagged further cost-of-living relief measures for lower and middle-income earners in the new year.

Others have got their crystal balls out to make predictions on the nation’s fortunes in 2024. Here are a few:

ECONOMY

* The Reserve Bank will lower the cash rate by 0.75 percentage points in the second half of 2024, as inflation returns to its two-three per cent target range earlier than the RBA has forecast, Commonwealth Bank’s chief economist Stephen Halmarick says.

* He also forecasts home prices to rise by five per cent in 2024, following a 9.6 per cent growth spurt since troughing in February 2023.

POLITICS

* Political analyst Malcolm Mackerras predicts Labor will hold on to the Victorian seat of Dunkley in a federal by-election resulting from the death of Peta Murphy.

* He dismisses speculation of a federal election in 2024. 

* He predicts Labor will hold on to power in both territory elections, but the party will lose office in Queensland under new Premier Steven Miles in October.

WEATHER

* The Bureau of Meteorology’s long-range forecast (to March) includes unusually high temperatures for much of Australia and below median rainfall across much of the north and west. 

* For January above median rainfall is forecast from southern Queensland to eastern and central NSW, and into western Victoria.

COVID-19

* University of NSW’s Professor James Wood and other academics, writing in The Conversation, expects the latest Omicron wave to be over early in the summer holiday period. 

* Then they say it’s “plausible” for Australia to follow the northern hemisphere in settling into an approximate seasonal pattern of COVID infections.

OLYMPICS

* Nielsen’s Gracenote data business is relying on Australia’s swimmers to lift the nation to its best Olympic performance in 20 years with 50 medals overall – sixth behind the United States, China, Great Britain, Japan and host nation France. 

* Australia is predicted to pick up 15 gold medals to rank seventh on that score, with the Netherlands pipping it by one gold.