The Lucky Country

Overview

The title of Horne's book comes from the opening words of the book's last chapter: Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.}}

Horne's statement was an indictment of 1960s Australia. His intent was to comment that, while other industrialised nations created wealth using clever means such as technology and other innovations, Australia did not. Rather, Australia's economic prosperity was largely derived from its rich natural resources and immigration. Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society".

In his 1976 follow-up book, Death of the Lucky Country, Horne clarified what he had meant when he first coined the term:

In the decades following his book's publication, Horne became critical of the "lucky country" phrase being used as a term of endearment for Australia. He commented, "I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase."

Legacy

The book was published in December 1964, with The Australian newspaper publishing a series of excerpts starting from 2 December. It became a phenomenon at its publication, despite some initially critical reviews. One commentator remarked that the release of the book was like "A bucket of cold saltwater emptied onto the belly of a dreaming sunbather". Writing in 2007, Raewyn Connell called it "the first pop-sociology best-seller" in Australia.

It was published at a time when criticism of Australia, which had experienced an ascension to wealth and prosperity in a relatively short history (the country was federated in 1901), was rife. It is not the only book to shine an unfavourable light on the country: Robin Boyd's The Australian Ugliness was released four years earlier in 1960 and is considered a seminal work on Australian architecture. Boyd's book was an indictment on the taste of Australian suburbanites, and the aesthetic of the Australian suburbs, which he lamented was in a deplorable state, full of European imitation styles fused together to make one whole.

Horne's book was given an unofficial sequel in 2016, with Ian Lowe's The Lucky Country? Reinventing Australia. Lowe's book addresses Horne's stance, and states that due to poor leadership, little has changed since The Lucky Country.

With regard to economic innovation, Australia still ranks relatively low compared with other developed nations: in 2014 ''The Economist'''s Economic Innovation Index ranked Australia 22nd, behind Japan, the US, Germany and Sweden.

References

References

1. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-03/australia-is-second-best-place3a-un/3620398/?site=melbourne "Australia second best place to live: UN"], [[774 ABC Melbourne]], 3 November 2011
2. [http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780143180029/lucky-country/39485/extract ''The Lucky Country'' – Introduction] to the sixth edition by [[Hugh Mackay (social researcher). Hugh Mackay]] (extract), [[Penguin Modern Classics]]
3. "The Lucky Country".
4. (9 September 2005). "Forever misquoted, Donald Horne dies". [[The Sydney Morning Herald]].
5. (31 October 2014). "Is Australia still the Lucky Country?". [[BBC News]].
6. (2007). "Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science". Polity Press.