You are certainly right about Howard and his 'I's, Nicholas, which he uses in most expressions rather than the more approriate democratic 'We's, but maybe with the colonial style corporate culture both parties seem stuck with now, maybe we will have to put up with it.

Also as a lover of learning in his retirement, might remind that the term the Lucky Country was not expressed under neo-liberalism and economic rationalism but under Keynesian center balanced politics.

... and might also remember, BB, that the term "lucky country" was originally an ironic dig at the complacency of the second-rate people who ran Australia back in the 1960s, not an endorsement of the prevailing policy consensus

Just a case of taking the Lucky Country two ways, Rhian, this one remembers the good feelings after we were de-mobbed at the end of WW2, got married and went back to the land and retired reasonably successful in 1975, leaving a son and his wife to run the farms.

Reckon they were the good times, Rhian, Don't know about now with our governments having to rely on pitstock quarry economics with a record overseas trading debt of
nearly 500 billion and the IMF well on our trail.

Cheers - BB, WA

It seems to me that Howard has now won the election. Everyone will have to vote for him now, so we can find out whether his public promise to retire before the next election was core or non-core.

The point of Horne's book was that Australia had been lucky so far and that sooner or later the country's luck would run out, unless policies changed, and essentially they haven't. Howard will probably escape the well- deserved blame for the looming debt disaster, since he will most likely be retired.

I doubt that Howard will escape the blame. He has based his career on the lie that he is somehow a "good economic manager", so it is only appropriate that he should be pilloried when it is exposed. Of course, the "anti-terror" laws may mean that we're not allowed to discuss it...