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Op Ed : Australia – Head In The Sand Amidst Changing Tides

In a country where 3 out of 4 citizens are either naturalized or have parents who were, you have a nice cultural hodge podge going. The good thing about Australia is that the cultural identity of the locals have been so rooted that, in the past, values have been preserved. The values that keep their society going with a strong community spirit and love for their land.

This keeps the nation going. That buses and trams are unmanned with commuters entrusted to paying their full fare, supermarkets with self check outs, no fence policies in neighbourhoods and such.

Critics of Australia call them a bunch of lazy folks, who will not do overtime, take long lunches and coffee breaks. Indeed, when the Ford factories automated themselves, the conditions that labour unions laid down were that robots should be given coffee breaks to ensure that conditions remain fair for the humans that the robots were replacing.

No wonder they are in CNN’s list of the Top Ten Drinking Nations.

Gina Rinehart, their richest woman, had this to say about her motherland when moving her family to Singapore.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/australia-s-richest-woman-aus-could-be-next-spain-Kr~G5c~tTr~so1H0hb_fEQ.html

Criticise not for there is a beauty in their utterly pure and simple approach to humanity that eludes the self serving mindset of the real world out here in .

Their intense desire to preserve their social liberal ideology has led to a one dimensional economy, that is able to deliver the fastest gains for the current generation. The commodity driven economy that is borne out of their untarnished lands and abundance in minerals.

It should be obvious that the rest is suffering neglect as services and manufacturing flounder, unable to keep up with the lower labour costs all around the world whilst enjoying the 5th highest minimum wage in the world at $9.54 per hour.

Running a balanced budget gives back to current tax payers what they are due but does not prepare for hard times. When hard times hit, simply tax the tax payers more.

“It’s “a credit bubble built on a commodity market built on an even bigger Chinese credit bubble,” wrote SocGen’s Dylan Grice.  Australia has a mining-heavy/technology-light index. This in part explains why market-wide EPS forecasts for the ASX200 have been cut more than almost every other market in the world.”

Source : Business Insider

But that was before Abenomics came in and dragged AUD up again as the threat of carry trades to come keep traders hopeful. Australia remains in luck.

The hypocrisy is starting to show though.

Because the country that is the very antithesis of Australian ideology is also seen as Australia’s saviour.

And we cannot blame Australia for latching on, as New Zealand, Latam, Africa and Myanmar all clutch to the coat tails of the mighty Chinese to save them.

The worry I have is this.

Once the flows ebb, and Chinese economy going into a hibernation, what would be left ?

“If that boom in investment ends abruptly, so should the flows of foreign capital that have largely funded it. That, as the analysts point out, could pull the rug from under the value of the dollar and could be exacerbated if their dwindling coincides with a US Federal Reserve Board unwinding of its quantitative easing program, which would probably see US interest rates rise.” Business Spectator