The smart money is on clean energy – but Australia must play to win

When Donald Horne coined the phrase “the lucky country”, he did not mean it as a compliment to Australians. What he was saying was that we hadn’t created wealth like other countries – we exploited what was already here and borrowed from our ancestry. 

‘We are still so very, very lucky. But our continued prosperity hinges
on us being a bit smarter than we have been in the recent past.

And Australia has been lucky, because despite a sometimes unforgiving climate, our natural resources are formidable. Over the years we have done well by riding on our gold rush, our sheep and, more recently, through another resources boom.

Globally the next resources boom is already on. For all the noise about the Adani coalmine, the smart money is now in clean energy. And here Australia’s luck is in again. We have a lot of sunshine, along with extraordinary wind and water resources. In time we can genuinely run our economy on cheap, clean energy that will reduce power prices for everyone – renters, homeowners, small businesses, manufacturers and other big energy users.

Read the story from The Guardian by Kane Thornton - “The smart money is on clean energy – but Australia must play to win.”

'Lucky Country' out of luck and sinking in unsustainability

The message in Horne's book
frequently misrepresented.

More than 50 years ago Donald Horne, then working in an advertising agency, described Australia as “a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck”. The phrase “the lucky country” quickly became part of the language, though its message was often misrepresented.

Horne’s 1964 book sounded three loud warnings about Australia’s future: the challenge of our geographical position, the need for “a revolution in economic priorities”, and the need for a discussion of what sort of country we want to become.

Those warnings are even more urgent today after 50 years of inaction by our second-rate leaders. I’ve revisited Donald Horne’s ideas and updated them for the 21st century. An additional complication is the accumulating evidence that we are not living sustainably.

Read The Sydney Morning Herald story - “50 years after The Lucky Country, Australia's sustainability challenge remains.”