A commentator has claimed many Aussies have completely misunderstood the meaning behind the well-known phrase: ‘the lucky country’.
The term was coined by author Donald Horne in his 1964 book of the same name and has become associated with long term prosperity and the country’s avoidance of economic and social downturn seen in other nations.
Australian commentator Topher Field told the Unemployable Media Podcast the phrase did not necessarily have the positive connotations most thought it did.
‘It was actually telling us, you guys are lazy. You guys are riding off the back of good luck. Good luck of geography, weather and industry,’ he said.
‘You guys are the lucky country, and if you don’t wise up real quick, your luck is going to run out.
‘You’re not going to know what hit you because you’ve never had to navigate anything bad.’
Horne’s famous line appears at the beginning of his book’s final chapter.
Australian commentator Topher Field (pictured) told the Unemployable Media Podcast the phrase did not necessarily have the positive connotations most thought it did
The term ‘lucky country’ is often associated with Australian prosperity (stock image)
‘Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas,’ it reads.
‘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.’
The phrase wasn’t a celebration of national success, but a critique of how little of it was earned through innovation or effort.
Horne argued that Australia’s wealth was built not through ingenuity, but through good fortune, natural resources, climate, and a wave of immigration.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Field expanded on Horne’s meaning.
‘[Horne] was being ironic. ‘The Lucky Country’ was an observation that so much of what we had in the ’60s when his book was published was a result of geography and quirks of global timing and trade, rather than our own hard work.’
Field added the critique remains just as relevant today as it was decades ago.
‘It was not earned prosperity, but just dumb luck. Sixty years later it’s fair to say that our luck has held up remarkably well, thanks again to geography, timing, and trade.’
Field warned that Australia’s ‘luck’ may be running out (stock image)
Field referred to the mining boom, and the strength of the industry which protected Australia from economic decline.
‘Our resources sector is much-maligned, but it carried us through the dot com bubble, the Asian Financial Crisis, and the 2008 GFC, comparatively unscathed, tempting some people to say that Donald Horne was wrong and that we really are lucky.’
But Field warned that the very luck that once sustained Australia may be creating complacency.
‘I wish that were true. All the economic indicators are telling us that our luck has very much run out,’ he said.
‘But we’re so complacent, so lazy, so used to being ‘lucky’, that we’ve lost the will and the work ethic to get ourselves out of what’s coming.
‘We’re no longer getting lucky, we’re getting what we deserve.’
Field ended his statement by saying Australia’s luck is finite, invoking a former British Prime Minister in his warning.
‘With apologies to Margaret Thatcher who said that “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”,’ he said.
Historian Dr Zac Gorman says Australia’s “lucky country” idea dates to the 19th century
‘I will say that the problem with being lucky is that eventually your luck runs out.’
Dr Zac Gorman, a historian at the University of Melbourne’s Robert Menzies Institute, said the criticism being attributed to the modern era was ironic.
‘People who use the phrase to suggest that our luck is being squandered by our present politicians often miss out on the irony that they are actually making the exact same argument that Horne himself was making in the 1960s.
In doing so, they are engaging in the same nostalgia for the past that Horne was so dismissive of.’
Gorman added that the idea of the lucky country predated that of Horne, saying Australia was known as the ‘working man’s paradise’ in the 19th century.
‘We had uniquely high wages and social mobility compared to the rest of the world.’ he explained in a statement to Daily Mail Australia.
‘Joseph Cook, who went from coal mining in England from the age of 9 to become Australia’s sixth prime minister, used to describe Australia as “the land of the better chance”‘.
