Last week, the former head of the Australian Treasury, Ken Henry gave a speech at the Australian National University entitled – Writing a New Australian Story – which received considerable press coverage. His message has relevance to all advanced nations who are engaged in a war on their population via fiscal austerity and attacks on workers wages and conditions as a enhancing so-called international competitiveness and engendering an export-led recovery. He considers these things are fine but not as ends in themselves and successive Australian governments have forgotten that message and undermined our national prosperity as a result. He believes it is time to reorient the public debate to focus on the challenges ahead rather than be mired in single-minded goals that only help a small sector of our society. I agree with some of what he says but we reach the same conclusions from an entirely different body of economic understanding. I had a 4-hour flight today on my way up to the North of Australia and this is what I wrote on the journey to keep myself amused.