We Were the Lucky Country

There's something going wrong in our country, and it's pulling us apart and dragging us down.

Don't get me wrong, Australia is still a pretty good place to live by global standards, but our politicians seem intent on making this country worse.

I'm not just talking about the mechanics of how the nation functions either.

Sure, the electricity grid is failing, our roads are in a state of disrepair, our defence force is a woke and diminished service, and the rest of us are over-governed and treated like fools by the political elites.

They are all 'mechanical' things that can be fixed through prudent policy.

We can quit chasing the disgraceful green mirage, stop playing progressive political games and dulling the tip of the defence spear. We could reduce the influence of government and let people take responsibility for their own actions.

That won't happen with the current crop of mid-level managers walking the corridors of Parliament House - but it could be done, if the will was there.

What's really broken in this nation is what I describe as the cultural balance sheet.

That's comprised of the intangible threads that bind us together as Australians.

You see, our nation isn't just a set of worlds in a constitution, nor a formal boundary or border.

A nation is the total sum of the people who share a common bond and love for the community of which they are a part.

The roles they play in that community will be vastly different of course. And that's not to say one is better or more important than any other.

What's important is that the things that unite us remain the priority for all of us.

That's how I've always seen it. Our new Aussies chose to come here because of that shared inheritance. It may not have been perfect, but it was always a darn site better than most other places.

People were expected to work and to do their best. There was pride in being independent of government handouts and local communities helped each other through hard times.

We celebrated enterprise and success as the means of providing jobs and creating prosperity for more Aussies, and we were all expected to have a sense of humour even when it meant laughing at ourselves.

But there are alarming signs that what made us the envy of the world has now been lost, if not entirely, then it's fast disappearing.