“No longer content to be the lucky country, Australia must become the clever country.” ~ Bob Hawke
I watched an old interview with Bob Hawke and Blanche d’Alpuget last night, and that line stayed with me.
The lucky country. The clever country.
I found myself wondering whether, somewhere along the way, we have managed to become neither.
Australia was extraordinarily fortunate. Geography, resources, relative security, strong institutions and generations who built rather than simply inherited gave us advantages much of the world could only envy. Generations who understood that investing their time and effort in the country meant they also prospered.
But luck is not a strategy.
Perhaps Hawke understood that.
Being the clever country meant recognising that what we inherited had to be nurtured, improved and prepared for those who came next.
And that is the part that troubles me today.
We seem increasingly consumed by the immediate — the next election, the next headline, the next outrage, the next promise — while some of the much bigger questions about what Australia will look like in twenty or thirty years remain unanswered.
We have become consumed by the micro rather than the macro. By instant gratification rather than long-term consequence. And perhaps most concerning of all, given the uncertainty we face, we seem increasingly unable to say with any confidence what Australia will look like even five years from now.
So the questions remain:
What are we building?
What are we protecting?
What are we leaving behind?
A lucky country can squander its luck.
And a clever country can stop being clever when it loses the courage to think beyond tomorrow.
Perhaps the question isn’t whether Australia is still lucky.
It is whether we are being clever enough with the luck we still have.
