    Lucky Country's had a lot more going for it than just chance
Take a bow, Australia. Few nations have been so successful for
so long.  IT DREW little comment, but the centrepiece of Julia
Gillard's white paper on the Asian century was her target of
raising Australia's standard of living - income per person -
from the 13th highest in the world into the top 10 by 2025.
Perhaps the reason this grand objective excited so little
interest is that, for we Australians, there's nothing new about
being in the materialist winners' circle. As Ian McLean, an
economic historian at the University of Adelaide, reminds us in
a new book, Why Australia Prospered, we joined that company from
about 1820, and between 1860 and 1890 we were the richest
country of all.  Few countries have been so successful for so
long, he says. McLean reminds us one country has experienced
long-term relative decline after having achieved membership of
the rich nations' club in the early 20th century: Argentina.
Even New Zealand, which tagged a