Finally, something nice happens to Wayne Swan. Euromoney has declared him to be the best treasurer in the world. This is not a normal thing. Nice things do not often happen to the Treasurer. He's been in politics a long time, the Treasurer, and life there hasn't been easy.

Swan, now 57, was elected to Federal Parliament in 1993, and served just three years before he was knocked from office by the national tidal wave of anger leveled against the last bloke Euromoney crowned the world's greatest treasurer.

He spent a couple of years battling his way back, and in 1998 was re-elected to the seat of Lilley. Then he got prostate cancer. He got through that, too, and was a close adviser to Labor leader Kim Beazley, in which role he collected much blame from colleagues for Beazley's cautious approach to opposition. Not a Crean fan, he suffered through the Crean years. Worse was to come with the election to the leadership of Mark Latham, a man Swan privately regarded as bonkers. And when Labor finally won government in 2007, the joy of finally being in power was tempered rather distinctly by the approach of a large financial punch in the face, and the fact that once again Swan was serving under a leader he had always thought to be a bit crackers.

As Treasurer, Swan has been teased for his stolid, clunky approach. Not blessed with the barrister's tongue handed out to Peter Costello at birth, he has relied on stoicism, earnestness and hard work. Friends value him for his good heart and the sincerity of his aspirations for those in poverty, outlined at length (at very great length, bless him) in Swan's 2005 book, Postcode.

As Australians, we don't really care if politicians have a tough life, so the Trials of Swanny won't exactly move many to tears. But they are worth recapping, in this brief interregnum of praise for the man, even if it is disputed domestically, and even if the praise is delivered by an organ called Euromoney, at a point where the big thing about anything euro is that it almost certainly won't have any money, and an unfortunate proportion of European finance ministers are assisting the fiscal police with their inquiries.

Swanny may be the toast of London, but his local paper, the Courier Mail, ran the story of his triumph today on page 20. This is part and parcel of the Australian experience at the moment. Viewed from London, Washington, or indeed space, Australia looks like a tremendous place to be. When The Economist ran a special edition on Australia earlier this year, its editorial tone was one of puzzlement that such a blessed nation could muster such crippling levels of discontent, and such average politicians.

Foreign observers must feel - watching Australia's existential struggles with our dribbles of illegal immigrants, and our fretting about how the mining boom is ruining us with its intemperate billions - like the poor neighbours of a lottery winner overhearing a steady stream of complaints about how the $100 notes keep clogging up the washing machine.

The federal stimulus program, for which Swan has principally earned his Euromoney gong, is a good example of the broader phenomenon. To Euromoney, the stimulus program looks like a triumph because Euromoney is evaluating it purely as an exercise in economic management. As a giant funnel through which to pour revitalising funds into the Australian economy, the stimulus most certainly worked. But the Euromoney award, and the satisfaction of a non-dead economy, is about all the reward Mr Swan will get, because on the ground in Australia, the stimulus program is not just assessed as an economic tool. It's assessed on the value of all its constituent elements, all of which are immediate and apparent and photographable and much more easily explained than the spectral and – in the end – happily non-eventuating threat of economic meltdown.

The decision, in late 2008, to embark on hastily-scrambled spending programs whose main purpose was to squirt money about entailed the very strong chance that those hastily-scrambled spending programs would develop problems of their own. And that those problems would be received, not with the understanding nod of some comfortably distant Brussels economist, but with the very real consternation of a householder who regards their ceiling fire less as a regrettable footnote to economic triumph than as a bloody CEILING FIRE.

This is the essence of the risk that Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd took nearly three years ago. They've paid pretty dearly for it ever since.



Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer.