LAST JUNE, AUSTRALIA completed its twenty-first consecutive year of economic growth. That’s a record, Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan pointed out, no other advanced economy can come close to matching. It’s even more impressive given that this performance has spanned the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98, the dot-com boom and bust, and the international financial cataclysm triggered by Lehman Brothers’ fall in 2008. During each of these economic calamities, local and international doomsayers were quick to predict that, this time, Australia’s good run would come to an ... Read More
