ABSTRACT
During the 1990s “economic miracles” in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands attracted considerable attention. All three countries reduced measured unemployment and reversed deleterious fiscal and current ac-count deficits dating from the 1970 s to a greater extent than their larger European neighbours. Analysts looking for policy lessons that might be applicable to the employment and growth malaise in those larger European economies were particularly drawn to the two “nice”, that is, more social democratic, examples of change, or to the superficially high-tech dynamism of Ireland. All this attention obscured another equally interesting miracle story playing simultaneously in the southern hemisphere: Australia.
