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How could I have forgotten The Wiggles when talking about Australia's 'cultural creep' and its growing influence around the world?' Those always-chirpy, planet-trotting troubadours, who have captivated children way beyond Australian shores with foot-tapping hits like 'Yummy, Yummy' and 'Mashed Potato, Mashed Potato.'

For proof of their plans for global domination, just check out their , and its worldwide map with red-dots signifying Wiggle outposts - or should that be bridgeheads or even 'Widgeheads.' Steve Irwin and, now, his daughter, Bindi, have enjoyed the same global appeal, and ensure sure that a slice of Australiana is beamed into living rooms and nurseries all over the world. So thanks to TGordon41 for pointing that out.

Overlooking The Wiggles, Australia's highest paid entertainers, will probably reinforce wjburt's view that I am clueless about Australia. "The idea that Australia will become a 'super power' is fanciful rubbish," he or she writes in response to the last blog, Australia and the rise of the rest.

In my defense, I was never making the case for Australia achieving super-power status. Far from it. I was merely suggesting that Australia is in a position to help make other countries, like China and India, superpowers, and that will give it more diplomatic clout as the century plays out. This is how evansukthorpe put it: "Once oil runs out and if/when the world goes nuclear, Australia will literally be the world's powerhouse."

I was also suggesting that power is probably going to be more evenly divided over the next century, and that Australia is part of what's being called the "rise of the rest". If this is to be the "Asia-Pacific Century", it is perhaps worth remembering that it was the government which brought together the first meeting of APEC, the forum for Asia-Pacific states.

Usanewsman had this to say: "Surely Australia is by far one of the most up and coming nations to fill that void (left by America)." Still, I think wjburt has come up with a very deft-worded definition of Australia's national goals. "We want to be strong enough to protect ourselves and our friends; rich enough to give our citizens a good life and influential enough that we can stand up to Europe and Asia when they try pushing us around." Anybody have any thoughts on that?

The Persauder, a Pom, warns against complacency and too much self-congratulation. Rob Hob notes that Australia "overachieves in sport, but under achieves in science, innovation, and manufacturing. Science and innovation is imported." Don't know if there are any scientists or innovators there that want to weigh in on that.

After all, the list of Australian inventions is long and varied: penicillin, Polymer bank notes, the clapperboard, the electric drill, spray-on skin, the flight data recorder - and, of course, the esky (a cool box) and box wine. On the question of Australia's global rebranding, many of you clearly think that should try to be a little bit more sophisticated and escape from some of the cliches and stereotypes of its "So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?" campaign. Mordigirl asks "what about promoting all the great ethnic restaurants we have? Promote our diversity".

Admirable thought, but does that work? A few years back, when Tourism Australia asked prospective tourists to "Take a Fresh Look at Australia," the global campaign did not have much of an impact, especially in the US. People seem to prefer the cliches - they want to waltz Matilda rather than to dump here.

Fulmandjpk says: "Play to our strengths". He may be right. Launched in 1984, Paul Hogan's "Come and Say G'Day" campaign - where he promised to throw an extra shrimp on the barbeque - was a massive success. It helped double visitor numbers in just four years, and paved the way for Hogan's success in "Crocodile Dundee", rather than the other way round. I think it's brilliantly done - Hogan's pre-Croc Dundee work was always his best, right? You can watch it

Some of you have said that Melbourne and Victoria have clever and off-beat tourism campaigns. You can see a sample . And it's worked. Last year Melbourne earned more from domestic tourism in Australia than Sydney. Segat1 suggests Australia should be looking "over the ditch" to New Zealand. It's 100% Pure New Zealand campaign is a real winner - You can watch it .

W. Underbar spoke about "eco-extremists driving the cost of air travel beyond the reach of the average pocket". Certainly, Australian tourism chiefs are worried that long-haul travel is going to become increasingly environmentally incorrect and violate peoples' personal green codes of conduct.

Before signing off, a few quick follow-ups:

+ After the Rudd government's first budget, the baby bonus will now be means-tested.
+ Kevin Rudd has announced he wants to expand the Anzac Day commemorations to feature an annual service at Villers-Bretonneux, the town in France where Australian forces scored a victory over the Germans, though at the cost of 1,200 dead. More evidence, I would suggest, that Anzac Day is growing ever more popular and becoming ever more intricately choreographed. Comments please.
+ Last weekend also marked the six-month mark of the new government, and the honeymoon continues for Kevin Rudd. According to a Nielsen poll, Rudd is the second most popular prime minister in the 36-year history of the poll. Here are the respective high-points for each Prime Minister since then. Hawke 75%; Rudd 69%; Howard 67%; Whitlam, 62%; Fraser 56; Keating, 40%. According to Newspoll, Rudd beats even Hawke.
Keating remains a fascinating figure. He seems to inspire the most respect and devotion from his supporters, and the most hatred and invective from his detractors. Any thoughts on why he is so very polarising?
+ And one final thing: for 1,200 pupils on the outskirts of town. The Sydney-based Quranic Society have the option of appealing this in the courts.

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"The Post-American World" is the title of a new book by the Newsweek columnist and global big thinker, Fareed Zakaria, which argues that the US is in slow decline, and that the world has entered a period of "post-Americanism".

It is one of those "Honey: Who Shrunk the Superpower?" sort of books. It notes that America can no longer boast the world's tallest building - that honour goes to Taipei; Bollywood has overtaken Hollywood; the European-made A380 is bigger than the American-made jumbo jet.

This is something much broader than the much-ballyhooed rise of China or even Asia, writes the Indian-born Zakaria; "It is the rise of the rest."

The book comes out here in August, and I wonder how many times it will mention "Australia", "Howard", and "Rudd". But Australia is unquestionably part of Zakaria's "rise of the rest" - I would argue a big part.

First all the boring stuff: the Australia exports that are feeding, fashioning and fuelling the rise of the rest. Australia is the world's biggest exporter of black coal, the third biggest producer of iron ore and has the largest known recoverable resources of uranium, which is essential for the nuclear ambitions of India and China.

By the end of the decade, it should be able to boast the planet's largest solar energy plant, and be the world leader in geothermal "hot rock" power generation.

Australia is the world's fourth largest exporter of wheat, and the fourth largest exporter of wine. If you want to fully understand why there are wheat riots in Egypt and pasta protests in Italy, then go see the empty grain silos in rural Australia.

In investment banking, Macquarie Bank, the Sydney-based "Millionaires Factory", is now estimated to be the world's largest non-governmental owner of infrastructure. It owns all manner of things, from Thames Water in London to the Indiana Tollway, from the Chicago Skyway to Red Bee Media, which was perhaps better known in its previous incarnation, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Broadcast. Staying with global finance, up until 2005 the World Bank was run by an Australian, James Wolfensohn, who grew up in Sydney and who fenced for Australia at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

On the geopolitical front, Kevin Rudd has just made it into "100 Most Influential People List". At a tribute dinner for John Howard in Sydney earlier this month, George W Bush and Tony Blair sent video good wishes, a measure of Australia's enhanced global standing.

Even under Kevin Rudd, Australia remains America's closest Asia-Pacific ally. When John McCain set out his foreign policy vision in an essay late last year, he noted: "I will tend carefully to our ever-stronger alliance with Australia." In the same essay, Britain did not merit an equivalent mention.

Culturally, Australia boasts at least three of the finest prose stylists in the English language, the two-time Booker prize winner, Peter Carey (although he lives in New York and his latest book, in my uneducated opinion, is a bit of a dud), Tim Winton and Booker prize winner Thomas Keneally. And is there a more accomplished film star in the world right now than the saintly Cate Blanchett - who, in a wonderful historical inversion, rose to global prominence playing an English monarch?

In media, just two words: Rupert Murdoch. The world's most influential business newspaper, the , is now not only owned by a native Australian, Murdoch, but edited by one as well, Robert Thomson.

Australia's culture is influencing the world in more subtle ways as well. Just think of all those Chinese students studying in Australian universities, drawn Down Under partly because of the strict visa requirements introduced by the US in the aftermath of 9/11.

In sport, Australia's sporting academies are the envy of the world, and have helped regularly give it one of the highest ratios of Olympic medals per capita of any country. At the Athens Olympics in 2004 it came third in the "medal tally by population" league table, behind the Bahamas and Norway (the UK came 29th, the US came 34th and India was last).

Its anti-doping regimes provide the global gold standard. In cricket, the world's second most popular sport, Australia still dominates the field of play, if not the corridors of power.

Australia remains a lifestyle superpower. For all its infrastructure problems, Sydney still ranks as the world's favourite city among tourists, according to magazine - the 12th time it has topped this readers' poll. Sydney and Melbourne can boast some of the finest restaurants on the planet.

I'd love to hear what you think about Australia's cultural, diplomatic and economic reach. Am I overestimating or underestimating it? And what about the notion of post-Americanism? Having spent the past week with a US naval task stationed off the coast of Burma - America is the only country that could come close to mounting that scale of operation so far from its shores - I suspect it's a little early to write off the US.

But I am in no doubt that the rise of the rest extends to this far-flung corner of the planet. The land down under is increasingly front and centre.

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"Populate or perish" came the cry in the 1930s when Australia's leaders were sufficiently concerned by the nation's sluggish birth rate that they encouraged their fellow countrymen and women to adopt the missionary position with evangelical zeal. Procreation became a patriotic imperative.

The calls became even more insistent after World War II, when the bombing of the Northern Territory and the Japanese advance into what was then called New Guinea heightened fears in Canberra that the low birth rate posed an existential threat to the nation's long-term future.

Prospective parents answered the call, and by 1961, the height of Australia's post-war baby boom, the country's fertility rate stood to 3.55 per woman. By 2001, however, it had slipped back to an historic low, at 1.73 a woman - a decline attributed partly to the decision by prospective parents to delay having children.

The concern now was of the greying of Australia: of how to finance the welfare entitlements of an ageing population. In the early 1970s, when Australia remained a relatively youthful nation, a third of the population was aged 15 years or younger. By the turn of the century, this proportion had fallen to just 22%.

So on budget night in 2004, Peter Costello, the then Treasurer, came up with his own version of "populate or perish". Introducing his popular "baby bonus", a financial pay-out for each newborn, he urged his fellow Australians to have "one for mum, one for dad and one for the country".

The purse strings were opened and the patriotic nerve was well and truly tweaked. So much so that by 2006 the number of births reached 265,922, the second highest figure on record and the best in 30 years. As he hoped, Costello's bonus had proved a baby booming success.

For the canny Treasurer there was also another dividend. By providing a lump sum payment which parents could spend however they chose, he blunted calls for statutory paid maternity leave - a right which mothers in Australia still do not enjoy.

I raise this subject not only because it was Mothers Day in Australia on Sunday - hope all you far-flung Aussies remembered - but, more importantly, because it is budget day on Tuesday, the Rudd government's first.

In the lead-up, there's been a lot of speculation as to whether the baby bonus will survive in its present, universal form - a one-off payment of $A4187 ($3,934, Β£2,020) (and $A 5000 from July). Looking to slash government spending - a recent Treasury report suggested the Howard government had all the fiscal profligacy of an inebriated mariner and that public spending was at "unsustainable" levels - the government's "razor gangs" might target the bonus.

Kevin Rudd has already hinted that the baby bonus should be means tested - implying that the promise of a few thousand dollars to a millionaire hardly produces a stampede towards the bedroom. A number of leading economists have come out and said that it's an "unbelievably expensive" way to achieve a higher birth rate. The Business Council of Australia derides the bonus as "middle class welfare" and says it should be means tested.

So should it survive in its present form? Or should the baby bonus, as some headline writers have gleefully put it, be thrown out with the bath water?

Equally, is it time to rethink whether there should be statutory paid maternity leave? After all, Australia and the US remain the only developed nations not to have such a scheme. When the idea of national paid maternity leave scheme by 2010 was floated at the recent 2020 summit it did not even make the shortlist.

Or would means testing the baby bonus be part of Labor's plan to soak the rich? There's already been talk of a "Robin Hood" budget, and leaks about a new tax on luxury cars. Curious political strategy for a leader who's built his success on reaching out to voters who have traditionally been suspicious of Labor.

When it comes to boosting fertility, perhaps it is time for a new slogan. "Make more working families", might be a favourite in government circles, whose members have seemingly been programmed to include the phrase "working families" in every sentence that leaves their voice box. "Lie Back and Think of Australia?" might be a better ice-breaker. Perhaps there should be a more imaginative incentive scheme, in the frequent-flyer mould. I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Many of these are ultimately questions, of course, for the Treasurer Wayne Swan. Born in 1954, Mr Swan was himself a product of the post-war baby boom, and, like his boss, Kevin Rudd, is the proud father of three children. As the Treasurer has proved, when it comes to populating or perishing, actions speak louder then words.

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Digging began this week at the Glenrowan Inn site where Ned Kelly made his legendary last stand, dressed in home-made body armour fashioned out of ploughs. This week also sees a clutch of anniversaries: the 20th anniversary of the opening of Parliament House in Canberra, the 50th anniversary of the Logies, the Australian equivalent of the BAFTAs or the EMMYs, and the rugby league centenary test between Australia and New Zealand which will be played on at the historic setting of the Sydney Cricket Ground, with players decked out in 1908 replica kits.

Aside from the coincidence of timing, there's no obvious link between these disparate events and commemorations. But I wonder whether they speak of a rising popular trend: a new-found fascination for all things historical, and a growing enthusiasm for understanding, and then celebrating, the events of the past.

was a case in point, as record crowds turned out to cheer on the medal-clad diggers and to commemorate the Gallipoli landings. At Melbourne's imposing Shrine of Rememberance, some 40,000 attended the dawn service, while a crowd of more than 60,000 people watched the ANZAC parade in Brisbane. Apparently it was the same nationwide, with branches of the RSL (the Returned and Services League) reporting record turn-outs in communities small and large. Even as the number of veterans dwlindles - 109-year-old Jack Ross is Australia's last surviving World War One veteran - the interest in ANZAC Day grows.

The Australian publishing industry is riding this wave of nostalgia, with a bookshelf-full of new titles published each year re-examining, and in many cases revealing, the full extent of Australia's participation in the wars of the last century. As The Australian newspaper recently reported, up until the 1980s the Australian War Memorial was the only publisher of such works. Now they're one of the fastest growing sectors of the Australian book market.

How many people below the age of 50, I wonder, knew much about the siege of Tobruk in northern Libya, until the rugby-international turned popular historian Peter Fitzsimons wrote a bestseller telling of how the Australian 9th Division held out for some 240 days against Rommel's feared Afrika corps? It was the first time that the Nazi war machine's feared Panzers had been brought to a halt.

It is not just the ANZAC spirit which is at work. When the MCC decided to take the Ashes on a nationwide promtotional tour of Australia, it was overhwhelmed by the crowd-pulling response. It had to expand and extend the itinerary.

When the Sydney Harbour Bridge celebrated its 75th anniversary last year with a rare bridge walk some 250,000 people took part - 50,000 more than had registered.

When the board of Qantas urged its shareholders last year to agree to a private equity takeover, nostalgia helped scupper the deal. The public was reminded of the companiy's humble orgins as the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, and the way it provided a lifeline to remote rural communities. Opponents of the deal argued that these routes would be threatened, and its history therefore denigrated, if heartless private equity types took over.

Expect to see a fresh wave of nostalgia when Baz Luhrmann brings out his new outback epic Australia later in the year, which deals with the bombing of Darwin in World War II.

Of course, history has also become a hot-button political issue. Under John Howard, th subject became the most hotly-contested battleground in the culture wars. The former prime minister hated what he used to call black arm-band view of Australian history, which was one of the main reasons he refused to apologise to indigenous Australians for past injustices. He also re-established history as a core academic discipline in schools, and made sure it featured prominently in the citizens' test for new immigrants wanting Australian citizenship.

In delivering his , Kevin Rudd outlined his own, very different version of Australian history. In parts, his speech sounded like a history lecture as he sought to elucidate the issue.

Curiously, the fascination with history has yet to spawn a thriving heritage industry. Visiting historic buildings, for instance, ranks 10th in tourist activities - well down the list after eating out, which is first, shopping, which is second, and visiting the beach which ranks third. And is there an up-to-date book which captures the broad sweep of the country's history? Comments please.

It's a history that could be 80,000 years old, and evidently there's an audience which is crying out for it be told.

What explains the revival of the ANZAC? Is it time for a new narrative of Australian history? And if so, what should it emphasise and what should it downplay? When Kevin Rudd is trying to focus the country on 2020, why the fascination with what happened in 1915?

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