Extract

One sunny morning back in 1963, a young Sydney journalist picked up a pen, closed the door of his study, and sat himself down at his desk. 

Like many a writer before him, Donald Horne had promised his publisher a masterpiece. A manuscript that might sway the fate of nations. A book that could help change the world. With its penetrating insights and crisp, biting prose, Anatomy of Australia was not just going to take on Australia’s ruling elite. It was going to take them right down. 

But before that, though, I’m betting that Donald discovered a need to clean up his desk, and then find a few extra pens. That creak in the door may have also needed addressing, right away, which would have required a quick trip to the store. And since he was down there already, it would have just made good sense to pick up some milk, post a letter, get petrol and attend to one or two minor chores. Procrastination is often associated with laziness, but it is actually a lot of hard work. I suspect that by the end of that first week, every square inch of Donald’s house would have been swept free of dust and every one of his socks would have been folded in pairs. 

But by the end of year, Donald didn’t just have an alphabetised bookshelf and a complicated new system for ironing his shirts. Unlike many writers before him, he had actually written himself a nice, shiny book. 

And what a book! A searing indictment of Menzies Australia; a scathing critique of our smug, shallow culture. If any of its readers had ever wondered if they might have any faults, then Donald was here to put all doubts to rest. He was here to hold up a mirror to Australian society. And he didn’t expect people to like what they saw. 

Essentially a series of essays, Donald’s basic thesis was that Australia was like a spoilt, lazy child. A child who has had the good luck to inherit a fortune from Mother England in the form of peace, wealth, art, democracy and the rule of law, but who has taken this inheritance for granted and never done much for themselves. A child who has never had to work. A child who has never had to fight. A child who has never had to think, learn or grow. 

The result (in the early 60s, at least) was a ‘nation without a mind’: a nation of ‘mediocre’ ‘philistines’ who ‘show less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society’. Or, to quote the famous late-addition line which gave Anatomy of Australia its last-minute name change: ‘a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck … and live on other people’s ideas’. 

‘A bucket of cold saltwater emptied onto the belly of a dreaming sunbather,’ The Lucky Country was surprisingly well-received by the public. (Much like that time I won an argument with my partner. Though she did change her mind back again the next day). Nothing less than a commercial sensation, it sold out completely in under a fortnight and remained a best-seller for more than four years. A ‘classic of pop-sociology’, it is still remembered and quoted today. 

Might this not rather suggest that Donald was wrong? That he was actually living in a nation of self-critical intellectuals? A nation dedicated to self-analysis and growth? 

No. It suggests that he had a good title. The thing about classic books, as we all know, is that most people don’t really read them. But a good title can really catch on. Think ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, ‘time machine’, ‘catch 22’, ‘Sophie’s choice’. All well-known phrases that are used all the time … by people who have not read the books. Which is perfectly acceptable, provided you remember one thing: you can’t judge a book by its cover. Mice don’t turn up in Of Mice and Men and that whole ‘catcher in the rye’ thing is some kind of metaphor. Actual rye grass is not involved in any way, just as there are no actual mockingbirds in To Kill a Mockingbird or fruit in A Clockwork Orange. 

By the same logic, there was nothing in Horne’s title that was supposed to be positive. It was supposed to be darkly ironic. It was intended as a term of reproach. 

Instead, here we are. In a land we all call ‘The Lucky Country’. A phrase that, somewhere along the line, we apparently just decided to completely accept at face value and embrace as a cute badge of pride. ‘I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase,’ Donald complained decades later, about the nickname that became his chief legacy. Instead of a brutal wake-up call, his book had accidently ended up giving Australians a brand-new reason to feel slightly smug. A brand-new way to essentially say ‘no worries’. A brand-new reason to think ‘she’ll be right’. 

But here’s the thing, folks. Maybe … just maybe … she will actually be right. Maybe our nation’s nickname isn’t rubbish at all. Maybe we really are lucky? 

Why? Well, for starters, just take a look at the place. It’s beautiful. It’s warm. It’s got fresh air and clean water. And it’s far away from the world’s warzones. 

Better still: it’s absolutely massive. We’re talking 7,692,024 km2. That’s about 5 per cent of the world’s total land area. And 5 per cent that’s home to only about 0.3 per cent of the world’s total people. England, for purpose of illustration, has about 434 citizens per square kilometre, while China has about 149. Down here in the Lucky Country, we have around about three. That is a lot of elbow room. That’s a lot of big houses and a lot of big yards. And a lot of big parks and a lot of a big pools and a lot of big beaches and forests. Plus footy ovals. And tennis courts. And golf courses. And bike tracks. And places to bowl or play basketball. Australia is incredibly fortunate to be a nation of wide, open spaces. A nation of clean, green places where people can jog and ride and swim. Or, if they prefer, put a shrimp on the barbie. 

We’ve also got plenty of places for people to build, dig and farm. Australians all let us rejoice, for we truly are the lucky country when it comes to the fruits of land. We have copper and gold and meat and wheat; we have wool, iron and coal. There’s golden soil and wealth for toil and our home is girt by sea. Our land abounds in nature’s gifts and we are young and free. 

But however lucky we may be to have these resources, we are also lucky to live in a place that’s (more or less) very well run. Whatever Australia’s economic failures may have been in the 60s (and however much the mineral boom may have helped us out since), I think it’s fair to say that Donald’s spoilt child has been growing up pretty fast. It’s been thirty full years since our last real recession: thirty years of smooth, steady growth. No other OECD country has been able to achieve this. In fact, they haven’t even come close. The Australia of today is essentially far more prosperous and successful than any of the many nations that Horne felt were outdoing us. 

I would also say that Australia has become a well-rounded adult, not just a well-off one. Exhibit one: our wealth is (fairly!) evenly distributed. We’re pretty egalitarian, compared to most countries. Whether or not they can afford to eat smashed avocados, pay off their mortgage within the next 100 years, the ‘average Australian’ is actually better off than the average citizen of any other country, according to data from Credit Suisse. And if you’re below average, we at least have a welfare system that’s not a complete joke (though some would say that it’s well on the way). 

And Australians aren’t just very wealthy, we’re also very healthy, with the world’s fourth-highest level of life expectancy. That’s thanks to a healthcare system that’s not only free but – in world terms – absolutely first class. Our public schools are good (and probably won’t get you shot), while our universities are not only affordable, but attract students from all over the world. 

I could go on and on. So I guess I may as well. For all the sensationalist headlines you sometimes see in the tabloids, Australian society is extremely harmonious. Our neighbourhoods are safe, our crime rates are low, our different communities are all pretty cohesive. You’re much more likely to see 

people from different ethnicities laughing and chatting and having a drink, than exchanging works or getting into a brawl. 

Racism, of course, remains a real issue – but it’s hard to think of a place where it doesn’t. And it’s easy to think of places which clearly have it much worse. For all the work that’s still to be done, I think it’s safe call Australian multiculturalism a monumental success story. At least half of us are migrants or the children of migrants but we function as one sweet whole. A single, proud and tolerant nation. United in our contempt for New Zealand. 

And all that’s just for starters. We’re also lucky to have stable government; great wine and beer; excellent cafes; first-class restaurants; fresh fruit and vegies; superb meat and seafood; good theatres and bookshops; beautiful animals; the Great Barrier Reef and God knows how many beaches. Throw in rubbish-free footpaths, pot-hole-free roads and the fact that George Pell is now dead, and it’s really no wonder that both the Economist Intelligence Unit and the UN’s Human Development Index rank Australia so highly. They say we’re the world’s second-best place to live. 

In short, we really are the lucky country. The Australia Donald described has long since evolved but there’s a good reason why we still have the nickname. Australia has real problems, which really do need addressing, and I’m not just talking about that last album from Shannon Noll. But they’re not really problems that you’d notice about in most Third World countries. Or for that matter, most countries, full stop. 

Living in Australia is like winning the lottery. Or, if not a lottery, then at least a chook raffle or some office sweep. Set aside stuff like the Logies, and men who wear Lycra, and we are actually are all very lucky to live here, even if it doesn’t feel like that all of the time. 

And quite a few of us are luckier still. As the rest of this book will establish with Economic Intelligence Unit-style rigour, Australia is not just home to a world-class standard of living. It’s also home to some world-class flukes. Call them strokes of lucks. Call them acts of God. Call them windfalls or twists of fate. 

Personally, I call them useful material for the book which I promised my publishers an embarrassingly long time ago. Material which I’m going to start writing about right about now. Just as soon as I clean up this desk.