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More than 40 years ago, the late Donald Horne coined one of the most memorable phrases to describe our nation. He called Australia the ‘lucky country’. As many of you no doubt realise, Horne was not singing Australia’s praises. Rather, he was decrying Australia’s complacency, its lack of innovation in important forms of industry and business and its failure to match the enterprise of other prosperous industrial societies. Horne believed that Australia owed its prosperity not to its native creativity and innovation, but rather to blind luck.
Horne warned that we were a nation taking it easy, that we were coasting along and drifting with the tide. While I don’t agree with everything Horne argues in The Lucky Country, I do believe his message is as apt today as it was in 1964. Most importantly—as Horne cautioned 40 years ago—we need to remain focused on national reform and innovation if we are to prosper in the twenty-first century. While Australia’s economic performance has been solid through the mid 1990s and in this decade, our productivity growth has stalled and our living standards are slipping in relation to comparable OECD countries. And, as I will address in some detail here, the challenges we face are not just economic.
In the health area, for example, the paradigm has changed dramatically. For the first time in our history, the impact of non-communicable diseases now exceeds that of communicable diseases. Yet our health system remains largely designed to treat injury and infections.
New solutions, new reforms and a recommitment to cooperative federalism are crucial to meeting the challenges facing our country.