Griffith Review 28 Still The Lucky Country? ed by Julianne Schultz
Text Publishing, $28
It was Donald Horne - a kind of Australian Bruce Jesson - who declared Australia to be "the lucky country" in his 1964 book of the same name. Few - and very few from New Zealand's National Party - need any convincing that it's an apt description. They earn more over there, don't they? And pay less tax. It's warmer. They're formidable at sports, including some the rest of the world cares about.
They rode out the recent recession with aplomb. They're in with the Americans, and they've got what China can't get enough of - they're perched on a regular bonanza of mineral resources: the world's largest reserves of bauxite, uranium, nickel, second largest reserves of gold, third largest reserve stock of iron ore and a whole lot more, including significant coal, oil and gas deposits. Sheesh. It's like living next door to a filthy rich guy who keeps winning Lotto.
But while Horne's description is quoted more and more often, it's taken ever more out of context. What he really wrote was that "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck".
The point, of course, is that luck, if not hedged with prudence, can run out. And that's the guiding niggle behind the 28th edition of the Griffith Review, as the question mark at the end of the issue's subtitle, "Still the Lucky Country?" attests. Living in Australia, for anyone who has a sense of history, is to live with the constant anxiety that the present boom must surely be followed by a bust.
The Griffith Review has been published out of Queensland's Griffith University since 2003. Each issue comprises a mixture of reportage, essay writing, fiction, poetry and photography, all arranged around a central theme.
The keynote piece of Number 28 is Kathy Marks' Tears of the Sun, a warts-and-all portrait of the mining industry past and present. It's a cracker, a reminder of how satisfying on every level good quality non-fiction can be. This article, plus Marcia Langton's The Resource Curse and Jonathan West's More Than A Gift From The Gods should be a compulsory read for anyone who thinks the path to prosperity is paved with whatever minerals you can rip from the ground.
And change "agriculture" for "mineral wealth", West's meditation on how to cope with luck - or "comparative advantage", as economists call it - and it speaks directly to New Zealanders. In fact, out of the various pieces of reportage, analysis and memoir, no one really has anything particularly positive to say about the mining industry. Even the fiction and the photography - superbly reproduced portraits of grizzled jokers fresh from t'pit, their grimy features a complete answer to anyone who wants to know why they call it "the dirt game" - damn it.
Conspicuous by its near-absence is the spectre of climate change, which has to be the thing most likely to spell the end of the Australia's run of luck. Carmel Bird's The Ace Of Spades refers to it obliquely, and it may or may not be in the background of Anna Krien's short story, Still Here, or Megan McGrath's The Lunar Coast.
Otherwise, it barely rates a mention, which is strange, considering how exposed coal-dependent Australia is to any meaningful global (or even Chinese) initiative to crack down on the use of fossil fuels, and considering the Griffith Review devoted its 12th edition to it.
The Griffith Review describes itself as "Australia's best conversation", and Number 28 is certainly a fascinating passage upon which to eavesdrop, given the current government's preoccupation with getting its hands on golden eggs, whatever it means for the poor old goose.
John McCrystal is a Wellington writer.
