Once upon a time far far away, there's this ship called Australis at voyage on the global seas.

It becomes infested with rats from all the ports it reaches

The rats start eating the timbers and saying how good life is and define 'UnAustralis' to mean those original ship mates who become concerned the ship will sink.

The rats invent Australis day to increase SPENDING so the Business and commerce rats can get fat, powerful and have more wives, mistresses, pleasure and babies. Soon Australis day becomes a POWER point where rich rats find excuses to exert influence and power over more sober and concerned citizens.

But just as the rats are considering a law to make Unaustralisism a criminal offence, the timbers are breached by gnawing teeth & the ship starts to sink.

The rats all abandon ship and swim for the good ship NewZealis.

The original australis citizens caulk the leaks and get back to green , sustainable and prosperous ways.

On the very next Australis day, the rats see the recovery and demand to come back ... The UN says Australis is obliged to take them back and that Australis is the worst country in the developed world if it doesn't.

At this point the hard earned wisdom of the Australis citizens shows itself with pride and spirit on THEIR AUSTRALIS DAY as they give the rats and the UN the one-fingered salute.

Sometimes even hindsight offers less than perfect wisdom
Hartcher and Young aver that events have 'proven' the policies of Hawke- Keating and Howard-Costello to be correct. It's certainly true that they dragged our country kicking and screaming into following the neo liberal policies of Thatcher and Reagon, albeit a few modest steps behind.
I suspect it was more the 'kicking and screaming', than the dragging which has made us comparatively successful, and we still have time to catch up; which we most certainly will do if we don't start learning from the mistakes of others.

I think Graham is trying to be optimistic in a sea of Global despair.

Currently I'm getting feedback from Canada which has a similar economy to us.They are rich in resources/energy like us but wages are half ours and living costs in some food items such as and beef/chicken higher.Ordinary folk are doing it really tough and the Americans are worse off.

We don't have a miracle economy.Aussies do work hard long hours,but our saviour is China whom we sell vast amounts of resources/energy to.John Howard also retired Labor debt and left us with a surplus.

The real devils in this whole GFC crisis is the Private Central Banks like the US Federal Reserve and their banking parasites.US Govt debt of $15 trillion is = to their GDP.Ron Paul with a partial audit of the Fed found an additional $16 trillion in off balance sheet loans( ie money created from nothing) and loaned out to institutions all around the planet.This money created from nothing,ie $31 trillion will eventually cause hyper-inflation.Some of this money was loaned to our Banks here.The Syd Morning Herald through the freedom of information act tried to find out how indebted our banks are.The Gillard Govt denied this request on the grounds of national security.

When we allow private banks the power to create from nothing all the money to equal increases in our productivity + inflation,then loan our productivity back to us as debt,then we and our Govts become slaves to this system.That is the reality which we see happening in thoughout the West.

Australia is a success, unfortunately many who call themselves proud Australians are hellbent on ruining it all.

Howard did nothing in all the years he was PM. Just the ridiculous GST and punishing the poor.

Pensions did not rise in real terms for the entire time he was in office so why do you claim that he made life better for the poor.

No mention of credit growth...not relevant to economics.
More rocks chucked over the fence at the "other side"...yawn.