On Wednesday, 22 November 2017 at 10:24:52 UTC, Indigo wrote:
I have been told by several that Australia is a good place to
go and I myself have thought about it. It seems that Australia
is probably a rather insulated society in that the rest of the
world could kill itself off and they'd be ok(probably a lot to
do with it it being so physically isolated and somewhat small.
Goods and people can't move as easily between it and the rest
so mentally the people are more independent minded and closer
knitted society). I've heard though that it is expensive to
live there and one it is difficult to stay.
Australia is not small. Who told you that?
https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Australia
If you want to talk about small, consider the tiny land mass of
Indonesia just to our north - it has the 4th largest populated
country in the world (260+ million). That's more than 10 times
Australia's population, in such a small land mass. Needless to
say, that's something our defense forces are keanly aware of, and
constantly monitoring.
We are also close to the worlds busiest shipping lanes, and goods
travel very easily between us and the rest of the world. We are
the 23rd largest export economy in the world. In 2016, we
exported $159B and imported $181B. So we have a negative trade
balance actually, which makes us very vulnerable to what's going
on in the rest of the world. As long as China is ok, we're ok. As
long as U.S is ok, China is ok..and around around it goes...we
all rise together, and we all go down together.
https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/
I wouldn't say we are a close knitted society. We are a country
built on immigration, and it's very diverse here. But we do share
(we'll most of us anyway) certain values that help bind us
together - which is not easy when your population is so diverse,
or when you have increasing numbers of people coming in, with the
completely opposite values. This is our biggest threat I think
(i.e. internal stability, not external threats). External threats
are easily deterred when you have friends like the U.S.
But we are very independent minded, that much you got correct ;-)
