Aussies are even lucky when it comes to ignorance!

"The Lucky Country" is a nickname sometimes used to describe Australia, taken from the 1964 book of the same name by social critic Donald Horne.

The title of Horne's The Lucky Country comes from the opening words of the book's last chapter:

Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.

Horne's statement was actually made ironically, as an indictment of 1960s Australia. His intent was to comment that, while other industralised nations created wealth using "clever" means such as technology and other innovations, Australia did not. Rather, Australia's economic prosperity was largely derived from its rich natural resources. Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society." [1]

In the decades following his book's publication, Horne became critical of the "lucky country" phrase being used as a term of endearment for Australia. He commented, "I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Country