Stop complaining. Australia’s in good economic shape (mostly)

August 5, 2026 — 5:00am

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Did you know that Australia has one of the oldest federations in the world? And did you know that this year we are – or should be – celebrating its 125th birthday? Apparently, this is known as its quasquicentenary.

In a recent speech to high school economics students, Dr Steven Kennedy, the former Treasury secretary and now boss of the prime minister’s department, offered a potted history of the economy’s many ups and downs over that time.

I drew two conclusions from his graphs of unemployment, inflation, government debt and home ownership. First, most of the big knocks to our economy come from overseas and so are beyond our control. The question is how well we responded to the hit.

Second, our econocrats have been far better at managing the economy over the past three decades or so than they were over the previous three.

This ought to be obvious, but Kennedy spells it out. In setting up our federation, we drew on the design of the US federation. Upper house called the Senate; lower house called the House of Representatives.

Of course, much of the way we do things comes from the Brits, hence the coinage that our federation is based on the “Washminster” model.

Kennedy observes that even countries that aren’t democratic and capitalist like ours benefit from the global economic order created by the democratic capitalist countries.

“China’s economic transformation could not have occurred without trade, investment and demand from democratic capitalist economies across the........

© The Age