The Australian Difference – Why Australia isn’t coming apart... yet?
Australia has always been something of an outlier. A Western country located in the Global East founded by, and on the principles of, northern Europeans in the great Southern land. We ‘punch above our weight’ on the global stage – militarily, economically, socially.
Living in an age of change, if the story of the 20th century is the rise, and fall, of communism, the story of the 21st century thus far has been rapid technological change and displacement.
Yet, as we have discovered, technology has not solved all our problems, merely changed their nature. If change has benefited most, it has not benefited all. Across the western world, some people, communities and institutions have been Left Behind. In some countries, the blowback has been serious.
Does Australia have any lessons for the rest of the world, or are we still just “a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck”?
Simon Cowan
Research Director, CIS
Greg Lindsay AO
Director and Founder of the Centre for Independent Studies
Professor of Public Policy and Director, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University
Professor of Economics at Stanford University; Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and Chair of the Working Group on Economic Policy, (US)