Australia was built by means of hard work and discipline. Men and women, in the face of great obstacles, defied even the elements of fire, flood, drought, plague, pestilence and the unforgiving sun, ventured into the wilderness and persevered to carve out a new living and to found a new nation. It took courage, tenacity, discipline, a will to work hard and a provident vision to conceive and fulfil this task.
One of Australia's leading historians, Professor Geoffrey Blainey, has said,
"In many ways the European history of this land has been a remarkable achievement. Today this land feeds fifty times as many Australians as it fed in Aboriginal times. We clothe hundreds of millions of people across the seas; we feed millions in other lands".
Paul Johnson, the eminent British historian and social analyst, after his visit to Australia in the early nineteen eighties concluded,
"The development of Australia rates as one of mankind's great achievements. With five years to go before the double century, one of the most advanced and prosperous societies on earth has been created. It is an achievement with few parallels in the history of human adventure. In the sixties the phrase "the lucky country" was coined. In fact there was little luck nothing but hard sweat and peril — in the process whereby, for instance, poor men pushed broad-wheeled barrows hundreds of miles along a burning coastline to open up the Australian goldfields. There are far more tales of heroism and sacrifices in the penetration of the Australian outback than in the whole history of the American Far West." — (The Age, January 22, 1983).
The Australian pioneers were often faced with ruin and forced to start again. Often it was that no matter how hard he toiled and no matter how diligently he forethought, the free settler would be beaten in the end by the harsh Australian elements. Yet hard work, discipline and vision triumphed.
The work ethic and discipline amongst the populace have been essential requisites in the rise and development of western civilisation. This system seeks to maximise personal freedom, thus preserving liberty to do good as well as liberty to do bad. It also recognises the imperfections in Man (as well as the good) and the increased possibilities for evil, inefficiency and corruption where power is centralised. That does not mean that in this philosophy freedom is considered to lead always to a good or perfect result. Individuals may misuse freedom. In doing so they will destroy freedom (in some degree). Nevertheless, freedom subject to limited law and government produces better results than the over government of the modern state. This is why moral values are so important. Remove those values and freedom will decay and the system will collapse. Two of the most important of these values are the work ethic and discipline.