Edition 28
Still the Lucky Country?
- Published 1st June, 2010
- ISBN: 9781921656163
- Extent: 264 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm)
When Donald Horne coined the phrase ‘The Lucky Country’ with a large dollop of irony, he was pleading for changes to the institutions and attitudes that had made Australia complacent.
The time is right for a re-examination of Australia in an international context, of what we can expect in an era of globalisation and climate change.
Marcia Langton looks at life beyond the Great Divide, where mining companies hold sway; Kathy Marks follows the trail of the new gold rush; Glyn Davis assesses Horne’s contribution; and John Keane explores the way Australians have made their own luck. This edition will be essential reading in an election year.
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In this Edition
The other charge of the Light Brigade
LATE ON A February night in 1916 Ernest William Keefe, a trooper training with the Sixth Australian Light Horse Depot, was shot through the right cheek and killed by the Metropolitan Police at Sydney's Central Railway Station. For much of the day thousands of...
Out of the ordinary
THE LUCKY COUNTRY by Donald Horne is among my treasured Australian books. When first tempted to open its covers, as an undergraduate student of politics, long-haired and lined up for conscription to Vietnam, I found myself attracted to the unsettling question posed within the...
Inside the tent
IN 2009 I ATTENDED two large sixtieth-birthday parties. Each celebrated a senior woman academic who had attained considerable recognition and seniority within her profession and the larger intellectual milieu. Both women spoke to mark the occasion: one, of her sense that reaching sixty was...
The endless seminar
‘The only kind of revolution possible is a cultural one. Simply to change the people in control of parliament or of the means of production is no revolution. It's a coup d'etat.' - Dr Jim Cairns. Discuss.SO BEGAN A 1980 exam paper set by Donald Horne...
The politics of prosperity
‘Luck always seems to be against those who depend on it.'THIS IS A lucky country. The challenge is to keep it lucky, and the danger is that thinking we are fortunate may make us complacent about real and ever present vulnerabilities. Avoiding the worst...
More than a gift from the gods
THE CONCEPT OF comparative advantage is perhaps the single most powerful idea in economics. It is taught to every undergraduate and printed in every introductory textbook. It has all the hallmarks of a great theory: simple, non-obvious, logically irrefutable, with sweeping implications. And adherence...
The resource curse
Shortlisted, 2010 Australian Human Rights Commission Awards, Print Media Category; Longlisted, 2010 John Button Prize, Articles and Essays; Shortlisted, 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, Literary or Media Work Advancing Public DebateKARRATHA AND ROEBURNE are neighbouring settlements, one a port and mining dormitory town on the coast...
The ace of spades
Selected for Best Australian Essays 2010 THE ACE OF spades is the highest card in the deck, and is also the death card, used as such by American troops during the war in Vietnam. When an artist places this card in a painting, the viewer...
Home is where the heart is
COME CLOSER WHILE I tell you this. Let me whisper in your ear. No one likes a dissenter. No one likes a deserter. I can't say this too loudly. So huddle up while I tell you a secret.I am leaving Dorothea Mackellar's sunburnt country...
Facsimile days
I TOOK TO to running. I ran a lot – shaved nearly five minutes off my best time over seven kilometres. There was plenty of time to stride out on Sydney's Bay Run in the long winter of 2009. It was one of the things...
Songlines and faultlines
K: Kartiya, desert term for white personK: Kumanjayi, word that substitutes for a name that can't be spokenWHEN K RANG the station to see if they needed her to bring anything, the manager said, ‘Yeah, good, can you pick up a couple of cartons of bread...
Tears of the sun
Selected for Best Australian Essays 2010 AS YOU FLY out of Perth, heading east, the wheat and sheep country cushioning the world's most isolated capital city quickly recedes. The already sparse signs of settlement diminish, and soft yellows and greens give way to the harsh...
Joining the pack
WE SIT AROUND the kitchen table like Jesus and his disciples, except there are only six of us and Jesus is drinking too much red wine and swearing a lot. There's Jayne, Simmo, Sally, Geraldine, Flinty and me. And Bernie, of course: our Jesus....
The angry country
Selected for Best Australian Essays 2010THIS IS WHAT we know about the death of Jai Morcom.On the morning of 28 August 2009, Jai, a fifteen-year-old Year 9 student, was involved in a fight at Mullumbimby High School, in far northern New South Wales. After...
From dwarves to giants
A SUMMER EVENING on the veranda of the old Minmi pub, a cooling uphill breeze, the beers cold and poured with the perfect head by publican Bill. It's the early 1970s and I am here as half of a ‘blow-in' couple, residents of only...
The ends of the earth
LASTING A GOOD part of a minute, the sound was akin to the roar of two hundred horse carriages furiously ridden over cobblestones, writes James Palmer, surveyor of the newest southern colony, in January 1839. I made inquiries of one of the natives who indicated...
The lunar coast
I WAS SEVENTEEN when the tide went out. I felt it in my lungs. At the height of its run, my breath snared in my chest. I clutched my school shirt, gasped.‘Lee?' Alex gripped my shoulder. ‘What's wrong?'I saw my agony mirrored in his...
Still here
ENORMOUS THINGS ARE in the water now. Bull sharks roll below the surface and carp with whiskers like whips slip under the house. A great swatch of brown cloth, the water won't break – it just bulges and inhales as if it were a...
Expectation Valley
As you rein in your bronc on the high ridgeoverlooking Hadleyville or Pobrecito or Wranglerit is coming on dusk or it's already early nightand your eyes squint shrewdly as you take in the scene;it's been a long ride from Wherever and you wonder brieflywhat...
Coffee at Coledale
you escape from home during a real estate inspection,a table outside chedo's special: croatian spit roast.focused on perfection, you adjust chedo's doormats,move the sea-blue dog bowl one-half centimetre to the right.a white cab glides to a stopa woman in slippers and a belted coat steps...
Featured Contributors
Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is an award-winning Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. Her first novel, Steam Pigs, was published...
Marcia Langton
Professor Marcia Langton was appointed Foundation Professor of Australian Indigenous Studies at University of Melbourne in 2000. She has...
Glyn Davis
Glyn Davis AC is the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. A former Vice-Chancellor of Griffith...
Jonathan West (dec.)
Jonathan West returned to Australia after eighteen years at Harvard University where, after gaining his master’s and doctorate degrees...
