Born in 2015

If you were born in 2015, Australia changed Prime Ministers again. Malcolm Turnbull removed Tony Abbott in September in a party room vote that nobody outside the Liberal Party quite saw coming, and suddenly Australia had a new PM — clever, wealthy, moderate, urban, seemingly tailor-made for the times. The national relief at having someone who could speak in complete sentences without a script was considerable.

Turnbull won the subsequent election comfortably and the country, for a moment, felt like it had found its stride again. The same-sex marriage debate was building — the community was overwhelmingly in favour, the parliament was blocked, and the compromise of a plebiscite was still two years away. The Hawthorn Football Club won their third successive AFL premiership and were perhaps the greatest dynasty in the modern game.

The Ashes were won back in England. The flat white was $5. The housing market in Sydney was extraordinary — 20 per cent price growth in a single year — and the question of whether anyone born after 1990 could ever own a home in Sydney was being asked with real anxiety.

Netflix launched in Australia in March and the streaming wars were quietly beginning. The backyard barbie was still there. The beach at Christmas was still free.

The country was proceeding.