The Commonwealth of New Lakemba is a gargantuan, genial nation, ruled by The Committee with a fair hand, and remarkable for its vat-grown people, rampant corporate plagiarism, and absence of drug laws. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 19.696 billion New Lakembans are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The enormous, liberal, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Environment. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of New Canberra. The income tax rate is 100%.

The frighteningly efficient New Lakemban economy, worth a remarkable 6,790 trillion New Lakembian Standard Kebabs a year, is highly specialized and mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Tourism and Book Publishing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an amazing 344,755 New Lakembian Standard Kebabs, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Films are funded in accordance with the volume of tears shed when reading the screenplay, aeroplane cockpits no longer have altimeters or airspeed indicators, refugees from other nations are flocking to New Lakemba's border, and international collectors know that a grease-stain on a work of art probably means it's passed through New Lakemba. Crime is totally unknown. New Lakemba's national animal is the Animal Kingdom, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

New Lakemba is ranked 291,824^th in the world and 6,389^th in The North Pacific for Largest Automobile Manufacturing Sector, scoring -58.26 on the Henry Ford Productivity Index.