After 60 years, are we finally grasping the implications of the ‘Lucky Country’ malaise?

Perhaps unsurprisingly to many and much to the continued shock of my poor wife, Christmas in my family involves what we will colloquially refer to as “robust political debate” about the year that has been and the key issues faced by the individuals that make up my immediate family.

In between the mouthfuls of turkey, ham, potatoes and my mum’s delectable pav, we discussed how difficult the past year had been, driven in large part by the mounting cost-of-living pressures (a central bug bear of my brother’s, particularly as his chosen profession is increasingly in the crosshairs for government), stagnating economic opportunities for young Australians (something my sister and her boyfriend, in particular, were at great pains to explain) and a broader malaise and belief that the country was not the same one we grew up in.

Uncharacteristically, I sat and listened as my siblings spared with my parents over the challenges they face and their lived experiences were at first acknowledge then subtly explained away, at least to some degree, finally, following a sigh from my wife, I jumped in with a single line, “I guess the Lucky Country just isn’t that lucky anymore”.

After all, we’d done all the right things, worked hard through school, got a trade (in my brother’s and sister’s boyfriend’s case), went to university and got professional qualifications (in the case of myself, my wife and sister), yet we all feel as though despite our best efforts, we just can’t seem to get ahead.

This sentiment was reflected across the “Friendmas” events my wife and I attended with both our respective, yet distinctly separate friendship groups, all of whom are in the same boat to varying degrees, with similar feelings of being fundamentally let down at best and betrayed at worst.

Now why am I writing about this? Well, because in a moment of seeming divine serendipity, just days after the “robust political debate” around my family Christmas lunch table, The Australian published a piece by Henry Ergas and Alex McDermott, titled Sixty years on from Donald Horne’s instant classic, has The Lucky Country run out of luck?, in which the pair detailed the challenges facing the nation amid growing recognition that the Lucky Country’s luck is well and truly running out.

Upon reading the piece and I have since read it a few more times, it was nice to see that my parents’ generation was beginning to understand the scope of the challenges not only facing Australia domestically, but also, more broadly on the global and regional stage as the world continues to transition from a monopolar world to a multipolar world.

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A nation built on a ‘gambler’s luck’

Front and centre of Ergas and McDermott’s thesis is an understanding of Horne’s own central thesis, that being that the moniker of the “Lucky Country” was meant as a term of derision, not necessarily out of malice, but in an effort to elicit a “call to arms” from the Australian people to embrace the inherent greatness endowed by our wide brown land.

The pair articulated this, explaining, “Perhaps most arresting was the argument that went with the title’s assertion. Australian life, combining scepticism and ‘delight in improvisation’, had resulted in dependence on a type of gambler’s luck. As circumstances shifted, Australians’ ‘saving characteristic, ‘the gambler’s coolness’ ’, had helped them to ’change course quickly, even at the last moment’.

“But the aim of those swerves had always been to ‘seek a quick easy way out’. Now that strategy needed to be reconsidered.”

This strategy, or lack thereof, is now well and truly the chicken coming home to roost. This becomes only more apparent as the Indo-Pacific becomes increasingly contested, robust and potentially volatile, something that despite rhetoric over the past couple of years, the nation and successive governments have failed to properly account for and respond to.

However, it isn’t without precedent, as Horne’s Lucky Country came at a time of immense economic, political, societal and geostrategic upheaval with echoes of today, Ergas and McDermott explained, “The Lucky Country packed many punches – and they landed at the perfect moment...

“Since the end of World War II all the major European empires had ceded or lost control of the lands and people to Australia’s immediate north. As British, Dutch and French imperial power in Southeast Asia collapsed, new nations – including Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam – were born and ancient ones, such as Burma and Thailand, reshaped. Behind them lay ‘the brooding power and intelligence of the new China, a land with whose people’s desires and plans our own future is deeply entwined’.”

This historic shift echoes the current changes in the fabric of the global and regional balance of power and reflects, more broadly, the challenges domestic policy making has faced in responding to the shift in the global balance of power and the domestic decline many Australians are increasingly facing. Where contemporary Australians and policymakers face resistance is in the nation’s de facto strategy of “she’ll be right” or, as Horne described, a “gambler’s luck”.

In order to overcome this, we also need to avoid falling into the trap that befell the nation following the release of Horne’s book six decades ago.

Misunderstanding, naivete and arrogance got us here

One of Donald Horne’s own criticisms of the way the nation embraced and coalesced around his book was the complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation of what was meant by the moniker that is the “Lucky Country”, where he meant it almost as a term of derision, but Australians and successive governments have used it as a term of endearment, meant to lull the public into an almost hubristic view of the nation and its place in the world.

Detailing this, Ergas and McDermott explained, “Horne would complain ever after that its title had been misappropriated and misunderstood. But it is hard to deny that the title itself made the argument palpably clear.”

Rather, Horne was scathing of the nation’s development and self-appointed stature as a “mature nation”, which Ergas and McDermott explained, saying, “Australia’s journey to nationhood as a process of maturation. Nurtured under the shelter of Britain’s wing, foresight, hard work and inspired guidance had allowed the infant nation to grow into a strapping adult, capable of standing on its own feet.

“Horne knocked that narrative for six. Australia’s prosperity and stability were not, he argued, the result of increasing national maturity, much less diligence and determination. They were due to sheer good fortune. To make things worse, it was a good fortune the country didn’t deserve – or know how to use.”

One of the central pillars of Horne’s thesis was his belief that “The problem wasn’t the bulk of ordinary Australians, who weren’t a bad lot. It was ‘the people on top’. Our leaders and elites were second-rate provincial mediocrities who had got stuck in a groove some 50 or 60 years earlier and never budged out of it, even as one generation passed to another and still another.”

Unpacking this further, Ergas and McDermott explained Horne’s intentions and efforts at provoking Australians into charting a far more ambitious future for the nation, saying, “Thanks to them [our leaders and elites], the nation was in a time warp, living out a fantasy that bore no relation to its realities – or its challenges.”

The pair added, “The proper national metaphor, in Horne’s eyes, was not a maturational shift from boisterous youth to fully fledged adulthood; it was a leap from childhood to premature senility. Without ‘a radical overthrow and destruction of the prevailing attitudes of most of the nation’s masters’ the decades to come would likely witness ‘a general demoralisation; the nation may become run down, old-fashioned, puzzled, and resentful’.”

This has unfortunately led to Australia’s economic, political and strategic hubris and arrogance and an increasingly misguided belief that Australia, its people, its economy and way of life was immune to the broader shifts in the global and regional environment, after all, we had managed to dodge the worst of the economic, political and strategic conflagrations of the 20th century.

Ergas and McDermott summarised this shift in the national psychology, saying, “The belief that Australia’s prosperity was the result of good fortune rather than entrepreneurship and aspiration became one of the left’s key illusions. It framed Whitlam’s disastrous economic policies, which assumed the Australian economy was ‘indestructible’; it has recurred in recent years as successive Labor governments have dismissed mining, low-cost energy and agriculture as mere residues of earlier ages. The blind luck thesis had a natural appeal to the new elites who, in the decades after Whitlam’s fall, committed themselves to the fundamental remaking of Australia.

“So did the overestimate of the merits of technocratic bureaucracy and the underestimate of the merits of Australian traditions that permeates Horne’s work. In that respect, Horne was right: the Baby Boomer generation changed Australia. And it was armed with the Whitlam-Horne vision that its leading scions became the new establishment.”

It is hard to disagree, particularly as Australia, for the large part of the last half century, has enjoyed a period of economic, political and strategic stability seemingly confirming the misinterpretation and misunderstanding behind Horne’s “Lucky Country” moniker.

Yet now, at home and abroad, the realities of the global transitions in economic, political and strategic weight is becoming increasingly apparent, yet Australians and our leaders seem content with continuing along with the “status quo” because after all, she’ll be right, right?

Final thoughts

For generations of Australians in the early to middle stages of their careers, at the time that they should be settling down and starting families, our system is unavoidably stacked against them.

Is it any wonder alternative methods of political engagement, policy making, and economics are attractive to people when they are promised the world for little to no effort?

At the same time, we have seen a corresponding rise of social, cultural dislocation and disconnection coupled with individual aimlessness and the resulting impact on personal identity and mental health among younger Australians.

By helping to provide a rallying call – creating a compelling narrative full of excitement, opportunity, and purpose – policymakers can help reverse the trend of stagnation and decline, allowing Australians to turn the tide and build a resilient and competitive nation for this era of renewed competition between autarchy and democracy.

Equally, we must be focused on expanding and enhancing the opportunities available to Australians while building critical economic resilience, and as a result, deterrence to economic coercion should be the core focus of the government because only when our economy is strong can we ensure that we can deter aggression towards the nation or our interests.

If we are going to emerge as a prosperous, secure, and free nation in the new era of great power competition, it is clear we will need to break the shackles of short-termism and begin to think far more long term, to the benefit of current and future generations of Australians.

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..