Thread

Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU

254 points · 216 comments · doener

nl · 1789602253 · focus · HN ↗
Just to be clear on this - Australia is primarily interested in methods of reducing trade barriers, not any sort of political union.
Australia is economically served well by free trade: most of its production is low cost, high quality primary production of mining outputs and agricultural goods (grains, wool and meat) where if price and quality are the primary selection criteria it wins.
The downside of this is that Australia hasn't really got any significant manufacturing or advanced technology industry.
But it has made Australia one of the best performing economies of the past 25 years.
1. someperson · 1789603920 · focus · HN ↗
  A big part of what makes Australia a better performing economy is maintaining high population growth rate of 1.5%, mostly through immigration.
  Has had implications on housing affordability, but it's great for GDP statistics.
  <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/aus/australia/population" rel="nofollow">https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/aus/aus...
  1. PorciiVorbesc · 1789604945 · focus · HN ↗
    >Has had implications on housing affordability, but it's great for GDP statistics.
    Which high performing economy DOESN'T struggle with housing affordability?
    >mostly through immigration
    *SKILLED immigration
    qball · 1789607378 · focus · HN ↗
    The high performing economies that didn't make it illegal to build are high performing because of that.
    This is why the highest standard of living on the planet, with the highest GDP over the largest population... is in Texas.
    The fact the people there aren't pathologically conservative/authoritarian in the "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything" sense is the precise reason why that is.
    pinchydev · 1789609847 · focus · HN ↗
    Texas has the world's high standard of living?
    I don't know what metric you're using, but it ranks 37th of the 50 states just behind Arizona on the Human Development Index which ranks health, education, income. Texas at 0.917 is above the EU average (0.915) but below many others including the top Iceland (0.972), Norway (0.970), Australia (0.958), Canada (0.939), Japan (0.925) and the US as a whole (0.938)
    So while Texas is indeed the wealthiest per GDP per capital (using your "over the largest population" filter) ($91,594 / 31.71M pop), it has a much lower HDI than countries with much lower GDP per capita, like Japan ($35,973 / 123.29M pop). In other words Texas out-earns Australia per head by 38% but trails it by 0.041 on HDI
    HDI uses the log of income, so extra dollars count for less, and Texas lags on the life expectancy and schooling components.
    For example, if we take the life expectancy in isolation to see the dragging metric, Texas is ranked 46th in the world at 79.1 years (2022 data), just behind 45th Estonia at 79.3 years (2024 data), but a long way behind 6th Australia (84.1 years) and 3rd Japan (84.9 years).
    (edit: I used Japan as illustrative of a large population with a low GDP per capital to highlight that GDP isn't everything, and Australia as that's the country of question in this tread)
    coderenegade · 1789611934 · focus · HN ↗
    Not really. Australia is very lax when it comes to bringing in dependents, who outnumber skilled migrants themselves. We also have an oversupply of technically skilled people, with nothing for them to work on, because we got rid of all of our industry. High energy prices and wages means that you'll struggle to get anything that isn't finance, gambling, or real estate related off the ground. I guess defense is the other option, and it's essentially the only game in town if you want to do something hardware related.
    I'm one of the lucky few who ended up in a job that really does exercise my technical training, and a big factor in that was COVID shutting the borders and me getting my foot in the door. That one event meant someone was willing to take a shot on me, and I got put in the hot seat and got time next to very senior software engineers, which changed the trajectory of my career. They got something out of it, too, as it turned out that I really was the right guy for that job.
    There are currently 3 million temporary visa holders in the country, roughly 10% of the population. Australia also has a birth rate that is below replacement. All of those people need a place to stay, and if a population twice the size of Adelaide were to disappear tomorrow, we'd immediately go into a housing surplus. In fact, you wouldn't be able to get a loan for a house from the bank, because they're not in the business of investing in falling markets. Which is to say, the housing crisis here is entirely by design. It has been engineered by both sides of government for more than two decades, and is primarily kept afloat by our world beating migration rate. It has to end.
    nl · 1789644714 · focus · HN ↗
    > There are currently 3 million temporary visa holders in the country,
    It's pretty important to realise that this includes student visas (600K - and education is a major earner for Australia) and graduate visas (200K) and 700K New Zealanders (who have their own special temporary class).
    There are also 250K working holiday visas (ie backpackers).
    coderenegade · 1789647792 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, the largest chunk is students. In fact, ~6% of all international students in the world attend Australian universities, making it the largest per-capita destination for international students by a significant margin. They still require housing, and they still have working rights. Fake students coming over to work without ever attending a class is a well-known rort.
    The single biggest justification for our high migration setting (among the highest in the OECD) is ostensibly for skills we need to keep the economy afloat. I've yet to see a skills shortage closed by migration. And of course, skilled migrants are one of the smaller cohorts in our net intake -- we actually bring in more dependents than we do skilled workers.
    nl · 1789704017 · focus · HN ↗
    Of course skills shortages are closed by migrants! You've never met one of the many ex-UK police officers or nurses? Or the many welders on mine sites?
    And of course skilled migrants have dependents - they generally have partners and kids. Why is this surprising?
    coderenegade · 1789756314 · focus · HN ↗
    Most professions on the list don't have a shortage, and professions stay on the list for far longer than necessary. We don't need any more IT workers, for instance; my workplace routinely receives hundreds of applications even for temporary roles.
    We get to set the terms of migration, because it's our country. I don't think we should be allowing students to bring dependents across, for instance, because they're students. We're already saturated with them, and could stand to be a bit more exclusive.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.