In the months leading to the 2007 Australian general election, ‘nation-building’ re-entered the national political debate in spectacular fashion. The major political parties vied with one another to prove their nation-building credentials. The then Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, former Opposition Leader, Kim Beasley, then Prime Minister John Howard and then Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the National Party, Mark Vaile — among others — invoked the term at various times during the federal election campaign. Even State Premiers like the former Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, weighed in on the nation-building angle. In so doing, each evoked a paradigm of nation-building as a policy framework for meeting the long term social and economic obligations of government.

The election campaign embedded the term in the consciousness of politicians, the electorate and the media. ‘Industry welcomes nation-building Budget’, or so-said the headline for Tony Jones’ May 2008 Budget night interview with Australian Industry Group Chief, Heather Ridout on ABC TV’s flagship program The 7:30 Report.^[1] Was this merely a rhetorical ‘hook’ for a newspaper storyline or a media ‘grab’ or did it signal a genuine shift in the policy focus of governments? For his part, the then Opposition Shadow Treasurer, Wayne Swan (now Treasurer), declared that the Howard Government’s Budget ‘fails the future test’. This, of course, begs the question about what ‘tests’ might reasonably be applied to putative nation-building initiatives.^[2]