BY DOUG CONWAY
26/12/2008 1:00:00 AM
26/12/2008 1:00:00 AM
If we're supposed to be in a crisis, why isn't anyone panicking?
Perhaps Australians are born optimists, phlegmatic by nature. Perhaps we have every confidence in those steering our ship through the stormiest economic waters for a generation.
Or maybe it's because so many Aussies are loaded up with pre-Christmas hand-outs from Kevin Rudd's $10.4 billion economic stimulus sack.
Perhaps it's because the current crisis has also helped bring petrol prices down below $1 from above $1.60 for the first time in three years.
The relative calm might also be because the Reserve Bank, after 12 years of successive rises, has slashed interest rates by a whopping 3 percentage points in four months.
That alone put another $150 a week into the pockets of homeowners with a $300,000 mortgage.
Maybe we've not entirely given ourselves over to fear because we know the worst is yet to come.
Whatever the reason, 2008 was the year we were supposed to panic but didn't, despite there being plenty to panic about.
Wall Street shed $US1 trillion ($A1.5 trillion) in value in a single day for the first time ever.
Superannuation funds took a battering as the Australian sharemarket shed 45 per cent in value, or almost $A730billion, from its all-time peak in November 2007.
The Aussie dollar plunged almost 40 per cent in three months from its post-float high of US98.47c in July.
About 250,000 Australians had $A25billion in market-linked investments frozen.
After years of economic sunshine, Australians began contemplating a series of gloomy questions.
Will there be a recession? A depression? Will my job be safe? How much is my super worth? Can I afford to retire? Can I afford the mortgage? Can I get my hands on my investments? Will we all be ruined? Unemployment rose to its highest level in a year, though the November jobless rate of 4.4per cent was less than the economists expected, and described by the Government as welcome news given the circumstances.
For most Australians, life as they know it went on pretty much the same.
If anyone felt uneasy about the new Prime Minister's first year, they weren't showing it.
Mr Rudd faced two so-called forces of nature, simultaneously, after the year's biggest domestic political change presented him with a formidable new opponent in Malcolm Turnbull just as he was grappling with all the financial upheaval.
Mr Turnbull capped off a meteoric four-year rise from new MP to Opposition Leader when he replaced Brendan Nelson. But at year's end Mr Rudd remains serenely in control, with one opinion poll showing him 47 percentage points ahead of Mr Turnbull as preferred prime minister, the same margin he held over Dr Nelson before the swap of leaders.
Mr Rudd was nothing if not energetic, implementing an array of changes both practical and symbolic. He said sorry to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations, appointed Australia's first female Governor-General in Quentin Bryce, withdrew combat troops from Iraq, ditched John Howard's unpopular WorkChoices legislation, ended Howard's Pacific solution for asylum-seekers and got the ball rolling on what to do about climate change.
NSW and Tasmania got new premiers in Mr Rudd's first year Nathan Rees and David Bartlett, respectively.
They were installed by fellow Labor MPs to replace Morris Iemma (NSW) and Paul Lennon (Tasmania), premiers who got dumped or jumped mid-stream, as had already happened in Victoria and Queensland.
WA got a new premier, too, Colin Barnett, whose Liberals won four seats fewer than Labor but negotiated their way to power by forming a coalition minority Government.
Beating the drum for women, apart from Quentin Bryce at Yarralumla, were Julie Bishop, who became the first female deputy leader of the federal Liberal Party; Carmel Tebbutt, the first female Deputy Premier of NSW; and Kay Goldsworthy, Australia's first female Anglican bishop, in Perth. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard also impressed political observers whenever she covered for her boss's regular absences overseas.
The seamier side of politics was represented by former NSW minister Milton Orkopoulos, jailed for child sex and drug offences, and former West Australian Opposition leader Troy Buswell, who resigned after a bizarre incident in which he sniffed a woman's chair.
Former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld admitted telling lies over a $77 speeding fine.
Some things never change. Bart Cummings won his 12th Melbourne Cup and Australians again covered themselves in glory with 14 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. They included memorable performances from triple-world-record-breaking swimmer Stephanie Rice, pole vaulter Steve Hooker and diver Matthew Mitcham.
One momentous change in business was Australia's biggest bank merger, the impending union between Westpac and St George, which will have a combined customer base of 10 million and a market capitalisation of $A46 billion.
Another change for the history books came when James Packer ended his family's 50-year association with Channel Nine.
One of the year's biggest shocks came with the death in New York of actor Heath Ledger, 28, from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.
A 67-year-old mystery was solved when HMAS Sydney was finally found on the floor of the Indian Ocean, where it went down with all hands in a battle with the German raider Kormoran in the navy's greatest disaster.
Mr Rudd has guaranteed bank deposits for three years and Treasurer Wayne Swan points to ''heartening'' figures indicating a recovery in economic confidence.
Australians are alert but not alarmed about terrorism, as they were instructed to be by the previous government, and this time they don't need a fridge magnet to remind them.
AAP