Thank goodness. Many people in Australia would have feared waking up this morning to Hurricane Katrina-style devastation along a stretch of coastline reaching from Townsville to Cairns in northern Queensland. Happily, the trail of destruction was not nearly as bad as predicted or feared. Not for the first time during this floods crisis, officials presented Queenslanders with worst-case scenarios that did not ultimately eventuate. The same was true with the floods in Rockhampton and Brisbane.

Warned to expect the worst storm in Australian history, a category five cyclone with winds nearing 180 miles an hour, the fear was of a significant loss of life. Remarkably, however, there have been no reports as yet of fatalities or even serious injuries. Instead, the story of a baby girl born in an evacuation centre in Cairns as the cyclone thundered overhead - delivered with the assistance of British midwife in Queensland celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary, no less - has become powerfully emblematic. In the early morning hours, it came to symbolise the feeling of profound relief.

A string of smaller communities including Innisfail, Cardwell, Mission Beach and Tully have been very badly hit. There, the cyclone winds ripped roofs off houses, wrecked buildings, brought down power lines and palm trees. Many of the region's banana plantations have been wiped out. But the cities of Townsville and Cairnes were largely spared.

Once again, Cyclone Yasi demonstrated the remarkable, round-the-clock stamina of Queensland's emergency services and its leaders. It is strange now to think that the year started in controversy for the state premier, Anna Bligh, who decided to travel to Sydney for New Year's Eve rather than remain in Queensland, where the floods had already reached crisis proportions. Now no one would surely begrudge her a holiday, while they would probably urge her to take it outside of the state.

A few years ago, Queensland got an inordinate amount of free publicity for a clever tourism marketing campaign offering The Best Job in the World - the chance to become a caretaker of a tropical island, and to be paid handsomely for the privilege. For the past month, Anna Bligh has had one of the toughest jobs in the world, and the widespread feeling is that she has risen to the challenge. Certainly, her command of fast-changing situations and her retention of so many facts and figures has been impressive. As for Julia Gillard, I think one of our commenters, Nancy, put it best. Her public pronouncements throughout this crisis have sounded like a primary school teacher reading a sad story to her class. In contrast, Bligh has come across as a natural leader.

We have spent a lot of time talking about the resilience of Queenslanders. There's been talk of Queensland's exceptionalism, not least from Queenslanders themselves. But the fact that Cyclone Yasi passed without loss of life points to their preparedness, as well. Modern buildings are constructed now to withstand category five gusts, and people have the good sense to heed the warnings of officials, first to evacuate when they had the chance and then to hunker down when these towns and cities were in lockdown.

Let us hope that Queenslanders will not be tested again. They, like Anna Bligh and her team, thoroughly deserve a break.

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In the week that the son of a Yorkshire miner celebrated Australia's classlessness and egalitarian spirit, the heir of a reigning monarch did much the same thing. From the pit to the palace, Australia is getting rave reviews.

It was Sir Michael Parkinson who noted: "For someone brought up to conform to the strict boundaries of class and privilege in post-war Britain; to feel inhibited, shackled even, by the limitations imposed by accent, education and the fact of being a miner's son; for this person to encounter fellow human beings to whom none of these things mattered at all, was a joyous revelation."

But during a speech at an Australia Day reception in London, Prince Charles came close to ventriloquising precisely the same sentiment.

Reflecting on the two terms he spent at Geelong Grammar School in Australia in the mid-1960s - Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer are fellow alumni - he noted: "I was able to go around relatively privately and find out an awful lot about that part of the world. As you can imagine I have a huge affection as a result. I've been through my fair share of being called a 'pommy bastard' I can assure you! Look what it's done to me. My God it was good for the character. If you want to develop character, go to Australia. As I say I have a huge affection for it."

What both of them were essentially saying was that this is a country where your background does not really matter - or certainly nowhere near as much as it does in Britain, where I suspect there are still people who feel constrained by "the strict boundaries of class".

All of which brings us to "Cassandra", who has been playfully badgering me in the comments sections of the recent postings to reveal where I went to school. Before ending her suspense, it is worth pointing out that it's the first time anyone has posed this question since I arrived in Australia.

In certain circles in Britain - high society weddings, perhaps, or the editorial offices of Tatler - this is often something of a conversational ice-breaker. But like Parky and Prince Charles, one of the things I like most about Australia is that people tend to take you at face value rather than making judgments or even worrying about your social or educational background.

Perhaps it is because Australia is an immigrant nation, and thus a land of fresh starts. Perhaps there is a legacy from the earliest days of white settlement, when so many of the early settlers were convicts who wanted to wipe the slate clean. Perhaps it is because people here are less obsessed with education as a social indicator and more impressed by housing or money. Perhaps it is because character has more currency in Australia than class. Your thoughts please.

For what it's worth, I went to a comprehensive school on the outskirts of Bristol, and have never attended a fee-paying school in my life.

But truly, who cares? Few in Australia, I suspect, and an increasingly fewer number in my homeland, as well. In the crossflow of cultural and social influences, it is another way in which Britain is becoming more like Australia. Don't draw too many conclusions from our Old Etonian prime minister, take-me-as-you-find-me classlessness is in vogue. More Shane Warne than Hugh Grant.

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Presenting it as a communal act of national mateship, Julia Gillard has opted for a flood tax to help pay for the reconstruction after the floods. Most Australians will end up forking out between A$1 and A$5 a week, although low income earners and the victims of the floods themselves will be exempt. About two-thirds of the A$5.6bn reconstruction money will come from cuts in infrastructure spending and some flagship environmental programmes.

Usually, budgets frame the political year. Now, the floods reconstruction programme - a kind of emergency budget, if you like - will define Australian politics for the months to come. As we noted in Floods: The Fall-Out , its ideas and implementation has the potential to make or break Julia Gillard's prime ministership.

Ms Gillard is essentially arguing that every Australian should lend a helping hand, that the sums involved are affordable and modest - it's already been dubbed a "light-touch levy" - and that most of the money will come from savings from the federal budget.

In reply, the conservative opposition has complained that the government is imposing yet another tax, that many people who have already made charitable contributions are being handed the collecting plate for a second time and that it could depress consumer confidence at a time when retail spending is already flat. They argue that deeper savings could have been made from the federal budget, and that the levy is not necessary.

Politically, there are risks for both sides. The Labor government has what are euphemistically called "delivery problems": a reputation for botching the implementation of major spending schemes, such as the school rebuilding and home insulation programmes.

The Liberal-led opposition runs the risk of sounding heartless in the face of Queensland's suffering.

As the head of a minority government, one obvious question is whether Julia Gillard is capable of getting her proposals through parliament. Having deferred or killed off some of the government's environmental programmes, such as the cash for clunkers scheme, the Green Car Innovation Fund, the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, the Green Start program, and the Solar Hot Water Rebate scheme, it will presumably be harder to secure the all-important vote of the Greens MP, Adam Bandt. The government says the best way to tackle climate change is to attach a price to carbon, but these were intended as remedial measures before an emissions trading scheme comes into effect, whenever that may be.

The independent MPs, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, have already been non-committal.

A couple of quick, further observations. Many of these environmental projects being delayed or axed were Kevin Rudd's pet projects. Indeed, the former prime minister stood alongside Barack Obama at an international summit in Italy to announce the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. This may come to be viewed as the true end of the Rudd era, according to ABC's political commentator, Annabel Crabb.

Some readers might be interested to learn that the government has promised fast-track approval for temporary skilled migrants who wanted to go to work in flood areas.

So should Australians lend a helping hand by putting it further into their pocket?

UPDATE: Deploying the "M-word" once again - her frequent mentions of "mateship" are presumably designed to give the proposals a measure of political immunity - Julia Gillard set out today to sell her flood reconstruction programme. In a radio interview this morning, she was given one of the tougher cross-examinations I have heard an Australian prime minister subjected to.

It came from Neil Mitchell, a Melbourne radio talkback host famed for his hard-hitting style of interviewing. At times ill-tempered, you can listen to an excerpt from the 20 minute interview here, and it's bruising stuff.

And here's something to set the cat among the pigeons. The state premier of New South Wales, Kristina Keneally, who faces a tough re-election campaign in March, is calling for the tax to be adjusted for Sydneysiders to reflect their higher costs of living.

"The Commonwealth, before they lock this levy in stone, may do well to consider some fine tuning... what we know is that mortgages are higher in NSW on average and other costs of living are higher than other capital cities like Adelaide and Perth," she told reporters.

"Families really are doing it tough... many in NSW have already given so much in charitable giving and will have to pay more through rising food and other costs as a result of the floods."

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