Lucky Country?: Reinventing Australia

By Ian Lowe

Can we reinvent the Lucky Country? Fifty years ago author Donald Horne described Australia as 'a lucky country run by second-rate people', adding that our leaders are mostly unaware of events that surround them. The good fortune continued when our wide brown land proved to contain bountiful resources of saleable minerals, allowing successive generations of second-rate leaders to create an illusion of economic progress by liquidating those assets. But a crisis is approaching, driven by irresponsible encouragement of population growth rates typical of poor developing countries. In this polemic work, Ian Lowe will assess the state of Australia and whether we can retain our status of the Lucky Country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Queensland Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9780702255458

Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe is an emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University and was a reviewer for the United Nations-sponsored 2005 Millennium Assessment Report and the 2004 report of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. He is the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and is the author or co-author of sixteen other books, including Living in the Hothouse (2005) and A Big Fix (2008). He lives on the Sunshine Coast.