[clean-list] translation of Haskell newtype?

[Brian Rogoff]

Hi,
    What's the recommended way to translate code using Haskell's newtype
into Clean? For those who don't know Haskell, newtype is a performance hack 
in which a type with a single strict unary constructor specially named by 
"newtype" is isomorphic to some other type. This could allow us to work around
the restriction that you can't define instances on type synonyms. Is it
necessary to worry about this at all, or does the Clean compiler optimize
this special case? 

-- Brian

PS: I didn't mean "performance hack" in any disparaging way.