HALF a century ago we were “the lucky country”, according to Donald Horne. But 1964 is a long time ago and the description is ironic in today’s Australia.  

Just how mean can Australians get?

Mean is much more than about money. It is about “me”, about not caring about others and about bullying those who are down on their luck. The age of entitlement is finished!

Most obviously are the refugees. We have no room nor interest and just because they can’t manage in their own country – for economic or security reasons – does not make them our problem. It’s their problem and they should shoulder the responsibility and work it out, without coming to our shores begging for another opportunity.

But we also pick on our own; young people, in particular. Australia has been ranked equal third in the world’s first financial literacy assessment of young people.

The report released by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development in the last week measured 15-year-olds’ knowledge of personal finances and solving financial problems.

Our leaders, no doubt, interpret this as supporting the process of leaving unemployed under-30-year-olds with no social security support for six months. They can manage their own finances after all!

However, a senior executive leader for financial literacy at the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, Miles Larbey, pointed out that 10 per cent of these teenagers in Australia were below baseline proficiency for financial literacy.

Finding themselves without jobs, these are the people who are much more likely to be in need of support, but what the hell? Not my problem! Let them work it out; let them earn or learn; time they grew up.

This is not the first time I have attacked the insidious GP $7 co-payment.  The payment picks on the poor and the elderly. Who cares if they have to combine this payment with the medicines co-payment in the PBS? What about those who need repetitive medical visits? Too bad!

As AMA president Brian Owler points out, when they are at the early stages of warfarin prescription and need repeated pathology and medical consultations, it’s just their problem.

This is the nation that has just cut its foreign-aid budget by $7.6 billion over the next five years. Little wonder we perform so poorly on the international “caring about others scale” – the “Good Country Index”, released by Simon Anholt, an independent policy adviser, on June 24.

It ranks countries based on how much they do for others globally. Ireland and Finland are on top with Libya at the bottom. Wealthy Australia comes in 15th just ahead of Cyprus, Spain and Italy that have been wrestling with genuine budget issues. But why should we care?

These are just a few examples. The Federal Budget was the real indicator of how mean and ugly we Australians have become.

Yep, a majority voted for the government – it is our government and it sets the standards.

An academic economist I know, who has all the Federal Budgets since 1973, told me that the “last Budget was the meanest and unfairest” he had seen in 40 years of Budget watching.

The reality is that those of us who are the lucky ones in our “lucky country” just don’t give a damn anymore. In marking the end to the age of entitlement we have opened the new era of callousness, meanness, inequity and too bad about the unlucky – that’s their problem.