When Donald Horne coined the phrase “the lucky country,” it was intended as a rebuke. Yet for those who arrived in the aftermath of the World War II, including my grandparents who were Holocaust survivors, it came to mean something else entirely: not luck, but opportunity.

Between 1945 and 1970, more than two million migrants came to Australia. They did not come for comfort. They came because this country offered something rare in a shattered world – stability, freedom, and the chance to begin again.

Holocaust survivors understood that better than most. They had seen what happens when institutions collapse, when extremism takes hold, and when the rule of law is turned against its own citizens. They arrived with little having lost everything including their families during the war, but did arrive with clarity: freedom is not an abstraction. It is the foundation of everything.

In factories, in small businesses and trades, they worked. They saved. They invested. Home ownership was not an entitlement; it was an ambition. Security was not assumed; it was earned.

By the 1960s, Australia had one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. Migrants and their children were central to that achievement. They deferred gratification, took risks, and believed, quietly but firmly that effort should lead to reward.

That belief became a culture. They passed it on to next generation and to the one after. It was a belief I grew up with.

It is that culture which now looks increasingly fragile.

Australia today is wealthier, more comfortable, and yet more uncertain of itself. There is a growing reliance on government, an expectation that security and prosperity can be managed from above rather than built from below. At the same time, productivity has fallen to some of its weakest levels in decades. This stands in stark contrast to the post-war period, when a strong manufacturing base underpinned national growth, self-reliance, and rising living standards.

Australia is no longer as economically competitive as it once was. Rapid population growth has not been matched by productivity gains, placing strain on infrastructure, housing, and wages. Inflation remains elevated, driven in part by high government spending, while interest rates have risen sharply in response. These pressures are not abstract, they are felt in households across the country.

There is a case for reform. But there is also a cost.

When a system weakens the link between effort and outcome, it does not merely adjust policy, it reshapes behaviour. The ethic that built modern Australia – work, save, invest, advance cannot be endlessly diluted without consequence. A culture that once prized discipline and self-reliance now risks drifting toward complacency. An ideology that prioritises comfort over contribution cannot sustain long-term prosperity.

It is here that a broader principle comes into view. As John F. Kennedy once urged, citizens should “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” That sentiment captured the same ethic that defined post-war Australia: responsibility over entitlement, contribution over dependency. It is an ethic that now feels increasingly distant.

It is worth remembering that even Labor once understood this balance. Under Bob Hawke, economic reform went hand in hand with aspiration. Hawke understood, famously, that “when the bells toll for Israel, they toll for Australia as well.” He recognised that national security and democratic alliances are inseparable from domestic prosperity and cohesion. Today, that clarity feels largely absent.

At the same time, a louder cultural current has emerged. Calls to “decolonise” institutions, the rise of gender ideology in policy, and the spread of critical race theory in education and workplaces threaten to fracture the shared understanding that binds society. Criticism is vital in any democracy. But when cultural experimentation begins to erode cohesion, the social fabric itself is at risk.

A country cannot cohere if it no longer believes in itself.

Once, Australians took pride in their national symbols – the flag, the anthem, and the defence force that secured their freedoms. Today, many younger Australians are increasingly taught to view these symbols with ambivalence or even shame. A nation uncertain of its past will struggle to define its future.

And when that confidence erodes, others notice. Strategic competitors do not need to overcome a nation that is busy questioning its own foundations, they simply wait. History shows that internal doubt can become an external vulnerability.

Australia has faced existential threats before. During the Pacific conflict of the World War II, Japanese expansion reached Australia’s shores. It was the alliance with the United States that proved decisive in securing the region and anchoring Australia within a stable post-war order.

That alliance has endured for decades. But alliances are not automatic. They rely on shared interests, mutual trust, and consistent commitment. As tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific—particularly with the growing influence of China—Australia again depends on the strength of those relationships. Yet recent signals from leaders, and even figures like Donald Trump questioning allied commitments, underscore a simple truth: no nation can afford complacency. The Albanese government’s perceived weakness on the world stage—particularly when the protection of its citizens appears secondary to ideological priorities—risks exposing Australia in an increasingly uncertain region, especially as China conducts intimidatory drills off our coast.

The migrants of the 1950s would have understood this instinctively. Many had lived through the consequences of assuming that stability would hold, that institutions would endure, that warning signs could be dismissed.

Often, they could not.

Holocaust survivors have long spoken about how gradually the ground shifted beneath them, how normal life persisted until, suddenly, it didn’t. By the time the danger was undeniable, the borders had closed.

That is not a prediction. But it is a warning worth remembering.

Freedom is not self-sustaining. It requires vigilance, confidence, and a willingness to defend both institutions and alliances. It depends on a culture that values contribution over entitlement, and cohesion over fragmentation, precisely what Kennedy was referring to.

None of this is to suggest that Australia stands on the brink of collapse. But it is to recognise that the conditions which made it exceptional – stable institutions, cultural confidence, and a clear link between effort and reward are not permanent.

They can be eroded. Gradually. Quietly. Democratically, even.

And so the question remains.

Can a nation that has inherited so much remember what it took to build it?

The post-war migrants did. Leaders like Hawke did too. They saw Australia not as something to apologise for, but as something to strengthen.

If that instinct fades and if comfort replaces vigilance, reliance replaces responsibility, and entitlement replaces effort then the “lucky country” may discover that luck was never the point.

It was discipline. It was belief. It was work.

And those things, unlike luck, can be lost.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)