What is missing in this rose coloured, excuse making, justification of the status quo, essay, is equal opportunity, and an equal starting point.
That's the real fair go!
Yes sure, the cream nearly always rises to the top, except that which has been homogenised, by years and years of under-privilege and "officially sponsored" disadvantage?
Children who grow up in a house, where there is no wage earner, invariably become part of the phenomena, refereed to as generational poverty and or, post code poverty traps.
We are not by any measure, a third world country, nor a we short of, or shy on natural resources!
What we do have are the invariable apologists, who trot out their "statistics" and say, there look, some of us are doing comparatively well, therefore quite endemic disadvantage can be simply ignored?
This claimed in spite of the fact, if our common wealth were to be equitably distributed, every man woman and child would be millionaires.
We need to claw back our economic sovereignty, if would begin to start to address the all to often ignored or glossed over disadvantage; and areas of youth unemployment more than triple the current national average!
Moreover, record personal debt levels, does not equate to increased wealth! Rather just the opposite and often tenuous positions, just waiting for the inevitable rate rise, to visit bankruptcy.
Fair go used to mean not kicking a man when he was down, now it seems to mean turn your back and routinely ignore it; or, be very devious or patently partisan, and apply it to a selective success story sample and serendipity, rather than the great unwashed?
Rhrosty.

Great article Ben, don't pay any attention to Rhrosty & his communistic ideas. For god sake Rhrosty, when will you get the idea that effort & ability should be rewarded, & sloth should be penalized.

I told my kids as primary school students that they could be & do anything they wanted, provided they wanted it more, & were prepared to work harder for it, than the few other million people they were competing with.

I had to go guarantor for one when she bought her first house at 20, while still doing her BSc, & I just had to help one pay the Removalists bring her furniture back from Darwin. They are right now just where they deserve to be in relation to the effort they have put in.

Another couple of siblings in close family, one near owns his home, & drives around in an old Holden, the other has traveled the world, skied the best slopes, owns nothing, but drives a 4 week old up market SUV bought on minimum deposit. I guess Rhrosty will expect the public to supply this one with public housing in the future, as the poor dear doesn't have his own.

If I had wanted to be, I'm sure I could have been Prime Minister. Oz would be much better off if I had, but I was not prepared to do all the lying & cheating that is apparently necessary, or put in the effort.

If a horrible lying immigrant child, of the wrong sex, can get to be PM, surely anything is possible.

Dear Hasbeen,

I wish that I could agree with your and the author's
take on things.
However experience proves to tell a different story.
Polls have recently shown - that the same resume
can be sent to various companies and depending on the
name the applicant gives - job interviews are granted,
or not. Applicants with Anglo names get priority
over foreign sounding names. Don't even mention
Middle-Eastern or Asian names.

From my own experience - I've known people who were
talented, intelligent, hard workers, and yet were not
promoted whilst others who were less capable were, simply
because they were Anglos. Non-Anglos were told that they needed
certain qualifications to be promoted. However once they
did manage to get those qualifications the excuse given
for their non-promotion was, "Qualifications are only
one criteria we use..." These people couldn't win.
It was finally suggested to one of the applicants
that they should
change their surname (anglo-size it). To which an
appropriate reply was given and the person resigned,
went overseas, and ended up as a CEO for a large American
Corporation.

Some things apparently still
don't change that quickly in this country. As for our PM.
Well her name is Julia Gillard after all, and not
Benazir Bhutto or Megawati Sukarnoputri, or Roza Otunbayeva.

If a horrible lying immigrant child, of the wrong sex, can get to be PM, surely anything is possible.

One would need to be completely unprincipled to get to the top in the ALP, & I suspect, any major party. Just to get to the pre-selection stage requires an individual to prostitute any principles they once might have had for the good of the party. Undoubtedly thats how we have so many total deadbeats in the political circus, most people with a plurality of functional grey cells and even the slightest hint of decency would run a mile rather than join the most corrupt game in town. I keep hoping Big Clive will get up and prove me wrong about bloodsucking parasites, after all he's cut from a different cloth than the present crop.

Hasbeen: >I had to go guarantor for one who bought her first house aged just 20, while doing her BSC<
Well,that says it all doesn't it!?
This is not an average example, but one supported by rare privilege, a stable family environment and well heeled parents!?
And for your information.
As a former business owner and operator, I am anything but a communist.
And if you were a little more intelligent, and less of an Ideologue, you would see in my many contributions, anything but communistic Ideas!
I earned my first day's pay aged just seven, and adult wages, aged nine!
I picked up the traces aged just 17, and paid the mortgage on the family home, and general running costs for several years, when my father was incapacitated!
I had to do a seventy hour week and a dawn to dark gut-bust, just to earn enough money.
I had to burn the midnight oil until I turned thirty, to gain my tertiary qualifications.
So, don't you dare lecture me on the value of hard work!
I served my nation, and many of my colleagues and compatriots, would tell you, if you didn't have a tin ear, I worked as hard or harder than any man, and lead from the front, by example.
I take extreme umbrage at your extremely offensive ignorant remarks, and were you anything remotely close to a "Gentleman", you would have the good grace to withdraw and apologise unreservedly.
Rhrosty.

I also think this feel good article does not address the ongoing important need to ensure that all people have an equal starting point to enable opportunity to progress.

As someone who was a ward of the state, a manual worker, and a bit of a smart ass (in my 20s), i was sure glad the system allowed me the opportunity to progress in life.

Would i have done it sooner in a much tougher dog eat dog world, maybe, but i doubt it.

Lets hope Australia remains a fair country that always recongises the problem of disadvantage.

Let's also hope that those who succeed do not forget the advantages they received.

A minimum starting point on the basis of providing all with adequate opportunity is a hallmark of an advanced liberal democracy, albeit the need to be smart and efficient with our use of resources to ensure the right balance between production and consumption.

This latter point should be the new aim of the CIS and IPA, not bs about the role of individual.

We all need to lift our game, not specialise in propoganda.