Is Australia needy for acclaim?
Australia is currently the recipient of so many plaudits that is getting almost embarrassing.
On the economic front, the "wonder from down under" goes from strength to strength. This week it became the first G20 country to raise interest rates from the emergency level. Unemployment actually went down, bucking the global trend and surprising local economists who had all predicted a small rise.
The Aussie dollar has almost reached parity with the US dollar, while , according to the World Economic Forum, though Britain still sits top of the global league.
It is not so much a case of spotting green shoots of recovery. June is bustin' out all over.
Add to that the announcement this week of the country's first female Nobel laureate, the molecular biologist, Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the award for medicine.
Or Australia taking the silver medal on the global quality of life index, coming second only to Norway (Britain came 21st some readers will no doubt be delighted to learn).
Kevin Rudd also returned from the G20 summit in Pittsburgh claiming a diplomatic triumph, since that international forum has now leap-frogged over the G8, a group which does not include Australia.
I've written before about how the cultural cringe, an ingrained sense of inferiority, has been replaced by Australia's cultural creep, a growing influence around the world.
But I think the prominence given to these kind of stories over the past few days in the Aussie press, and the pride with which they are reported, highlights a trait that does hark back to the "cringe" era: the desire, the need even, for international recognition and acclaim.
On page one of A Secret Country, John Pilger speaks of his first job in journalism, which was to hang around Sydney's wharves and airport to ask visiting celebrities what they thought of Australia. They were expected, he writes, "to play a game and make a statement affirming all that was good and sublime about "Godzone"."
I've found myself asking the same question of visiting friends and family members, hoping, I suppose, for the same positive response. It is self-validating. Or perhaps it is related to the country's geographic isolation: people travel so very far to get here that you want them to feel the trip was worthwhile.
So I ask this question because I am still searching for the answer myself: when it comes to international acclaim, is Australia especially needy?
This week, of course, Australia has also been the butt of some strong international criticism, especially in America, over the . More on that later...
UPDATE: There are strong threads currently underway on the booze and sporting codes front, with some very funny and clever comments. "In the school of Greatest Boozy Reputation, Australia may be a high school graduate, but Britain is a university professor," says question-the-motive, who I suspect may well be right. Ever professorial him- or herself, Wollemi reminds us how the wave of post-war southern European immigration enriched and enlivened Australian culture, and especially its cuisine.
"The coastals would throw up if they consumed half of what a bushy consumed," says Petesyc, which sounds very much like a challenge. Meanwhile, the size, shape and names of beer glasses is something I am still trying to get to the bottom of. With that lame stab at humour, I'll wish you a good, hangover free, weekend...
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