It was on a hot summer's night in December 1964 that Donald Horne gave the nation - to use and much more frequently to misuse - the famous words by which he will be best remembered.
"I was about to write the last chapter of a book on Australia," recalled Horne. "The opening sentence was, 'Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck."'
Thus it was that "a series of essays held together by a last-minute final thought about what it was all about" became the best-selling book The Lucky Country.
It was meant as an indictment of an unimaginative nation, its cosy provincialism, its cultural cringe and its White Australia policy. But much to Horne's subsequent misery, many failed to detect his irony and many more, either wilfully or lazily, misinterpreted his words.
Despite revisiting his topic and his catchy title, in The Lucky Country Revisited, he was later to complain: "I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase." Or paraphrased it, like politicians, who found the "clever country".
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WhyWe Use Private Trusts in Australia: The Income Tax Dimension Explained
There are a large number of
trusts, particularly discretionary trusts, in Australia. This was highlighted
in one of the Australian Labour Party’s (ALP) tax reform proposals in its 2019
federal election campaign (‘A Fairer Tax System:
Discretionary Trusts Reform’). It is also evident in statistics
released annually by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) -…
Hungarians Can’t Be Bought With Potatoes Jacobin
Absolute power Times Literary Supplement
Hungarians Can’t Be Bought With Potatoes Jacobin
Absolute power Times Literary Supplement