In Australia, the nation-building story has traditionally centred on ‘iconic’ infrastructure projects. This is the imagery most often invoked by politicians when trying to tap into a transcendent national story. Commonly cited examples include the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme (the ‘Snowy’) or even the Sydney Harbour Bridge.^[3] Thus, the story of Australia is that of a fledgling nation fighting above its weight. It is also, in part, a story about ‘visionary’ projects whose scale, audacity and symbolism transcended mere function.

Past investment by government in strategic national infrastructure was a response to perceived market failure — the incapacity of markets then prevailing to deliver public goods. Governments felt they had to step in because only government could command the resources to deliver nationally strategic projects.

Despite the importance of nation-building in the national historical narrative, however, Michael Pusey argued in his 1992 book, Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-Building State Changes its Mind, ^[4] that the contemporary Australian state had largely turned its back on the federation era visionaries and post war Keynesian re-constructionists in favour of an instrumentalist economic rationalism in which the market is king, government is small, and government’s role in constructing the nation is largely finished.

Should we accept that the nation is ‘finished’ and, if not, what does ‘nation-building’ mean today? Importantly, what do politicians and the public generally understand by it? Is nation-building — like ‘mateship’ or the ‘fair go’ — just a symbolic feel-good catchphrase (whose meaning is, nevertheless, vigorously contested) or does it describe a genuine policy frontier with a broadly agreed framework and preferred policy instruments?