In the September quarter, US per capita income was $US47,100 and Australia's was $US48,600. As the ANU's Professor Ross Garnaut has pointed out, it is the first time that Australia has pipped the US on this measure since World War I.

America's next top model: us - Peter Hartcher - Opinion - smh.com.au

Although I was in Washington to write about the US election last month, I learnt something interesting about my own country on America's election day.

Four separate encounters cast new light on Australia. One took place at Madeleine Albright's election night party in Washington. The subject turned to the fractured US electoral system which, by general agreement, is dysfunctional.

The former secretary of state reflected on the electoral systems of many other countries where she has worked as an international monitor. When I asked her which country she considered to be the leading model for electoral systems, she replied that, in so far as there was one, it was Australia. Or, as she put it, "You all."

The same day, The Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn, formerly chief speechwriter for George Bush, observed that Australians were asking what an Obama administration might mean for them. "But if the question is flipped, we have a far more interesting proposition: What might Australia and its Labor Party government mean for an Obama administration?" McGurn posed.

He went on to offer Kevin Rudd as a role model for a new centre-left US president: "For Mr Rudd's Labor Party has done something Mr Obama's Democrats have yet to do: make their peace with the global economy.

"Mr Rudd is showing that it is possible to embrace the global economy while pursuing a social-democrat agenda."

The third encounter was a conversation with Anirvan Banerji of the Economic Cycle Research Institute in New York, who specialises in peering into the future using indices which seek to give early indications of economic activity.

I wanted to know how bad the international recession was going to get. Very bad, was the answer: "We are seeing clearly the worst reading in the six-decade history" of the indices, he said.

But as he surveyed a global horizon of gloom across the 20 countries he monitors, he added this observation about Australia: "I'm not sure about Australia yet. Certainly it's going to be a major slowdown and it may still be possible to avoid a recession. It's the one significant economy where I wouldn't want to say it's a done deal."

The day after Obama's victory, I interviewed Richard Fisher, the president of the US Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, one of the 12 regional banks that comprise America's central bank. This makes him one of the 10 officials who set official US interest rates. He considers himself to be half Australian - his father was a street kid in Queensland, and fled to America for a better life.

Fisher was anxious that the US Congress would mishandle the response to the economic downturn, spending too much money and pushing the US into so much debt that it would hinder, not help, recovery. He volunteered that "the US Congress could take a lesson from Australia". He was full of praise for the previous Australian government and for the current one.

The Howard government had been "immensely successful" in prudently paying down a lot of Australian Government long-term liabilities and running budget surpluses, "and Kevin Rudd is building on his success - he seems to be saying and doing many of the right things and it may be an exemplary situation for the US".

It was an eclectic and entirely chance series of observations about Australia. In the space of some 24 hours, four knowledgeable Americans had pointed to Australia as some kind of model, exemplar, or best case. They complimented Australia on competent governance, wise political management, successful politics, sound economic management and prudent economic reform.

Australia has improved its performance tremendously in the past couple of decades. Hawke and Keating pushed a reluctant country into the modern era of competitive markets; Howard and Costello continued pushing. Together, Labor and Liberal governments gave Australia a 17-year boom. Unemployment went from 10 per cent to 4, lower than US unemployment.

In my view, it is a prerequisite of a successful country to be able to offer its young people the prospect of work. This is a fundamental human right and it can't be delivered by any charter.

Now the boom is over, Australia is better placed than just about any country in the world to withstand recession. Economic modernisation, a vigorous private sector and a competent system of public institutions have combined to make Australia a success story. And other countries - the US, in this case - have noticed.

One remarkable and little-noted feature of Australia's performance is that, this year, Australia overtook the US in income per capita. In the September quarter, US per capita income was $US47,100 and Australia's was $US48,600. As the ANU's Professor Ross Garnaut has pointed out, it is the first time that Australia has pipped the US on this measure since World War I.

That moment has been lost already so we shouldn't get too smug - Australia's higher per capita income lasted for only the first nine months of the year and has now fallen away with our dollar.

Still, on the more comprehensive measure of living standards in the UN's annual human development index, Australia remains in the topmost echelon, ranked third among the world's 190 countries. Only Iceland and Norway rated higher in the 2007-08 listing, and Iceland's plunge into insolvency in the past few months won't help its human development one bit.

None of this is to disparage the US which, even in its current travails, remains the benchmark of modernity. Least of all do I want to counsel complacency, the enemy of achievement.

Yet, as we brace for a tough new year we can take a moment to note the fact that our leaders - of both parties - have rejuvenated our country. It's not perfect, but it's better than it was, and better than just about any of the alternatives.

Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor.