Warsaw | As every Australian knows, we’re in our 29th consecutive year of economic expansion – the finest record in the developed world. But wait: there’s someone snapping at our heels. It’s unheralded Poland, central Europe’s quiet achiever, which hasn’t even had a single quarter of negative growth since 1991.

Poland tends to make headlines, if it makes them at all, for its scrappy, bitter politics. The Law and Justice (PiS) party was Trumpian before Trump, storming to power in 2015 on an anti-elitist, anti-liberal agenda.