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

independent.co.uk

81–90 of 203 posts

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

#81
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India does the same. They try to be friendly (or at least on business terms ) with as many countries as they can and stay out of global conflicts as much as possible. They were buying oil from Russia well after the Russia-Ukraine war started. It also worked well for India as they were able to get rock bottom prices. From a purely economic standpoint, this would make sense. Not sure what to feel about the ethics of it…

> at least part of the Russian war bill was footed by the money India paid for Russian oil It's weird India gets held to this standard. Don't European countries still buy some natural gas from Russia?

Russian natgas is laundered through third parties, whereas India is laundering Russian oil. Not saying I support any of these sanctions or tariffs, but India is making bank selling Russian oil to Europe right now, so there is going to be some political blowback. Malaysia also.

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

#82

[flagged]

> Gosh if Kamala was elected, there'd still be a war in Iran, but we'd pretend it's different. Obama bombed Syria and no one cared.

Are we really going to pretend the 51st state rhetoric would be the same with any Democrat in the White House?

> Do we hate giving the uneducated masses a vote?

No, I but I do think they've had some dogshit candidates picked for them, especially recently

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

#83
post #12

As an Australian, I have noticed a shift personally in feeling like I identify more with "European" culture, compared to 10 years ago I felt like we were the 51st state and I felt very close with the US. This seems to be shared by others, I remember reading there was a survey that asked Australians who they felt our closest international friend was. The US was the top answer for over a decade, having stolen the crown…

As an American, I identify more with European culture compared to 10 years ago.

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

#84
I love Australia. Amazing country. Great people. I'd move back in an instant if given the opportunity. As an American, I always felt welcome there, but haven't been there since 2016. It'll be interesting seeing how attitudes have changed when I'm back visiting in 2028.

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

#85
post #9

It is an interesting position we are in here, I suspect we will do the usual thing and walk the middle road. Australia, is part of the Commonwealth, huge trade partner with Asia and allies with the US. Why not throw Canada into the mix some more. This setup is why I call this place an equal opportunist whore. If we can do business with you, we will. I also call it the worlds largest Mining town, but that just acknowl…

I'm Australian and am increasingly ok with this approach. I'm growing slowly out of a protectionist mindset, toward one of cautious, and considered collaboration. Singapore follows this approach and it has worked well for them so far.

I've never really understood the protectionist mindset. It kinda only makes sense to me as a fading shadow of WWII paranoia. The invasion of Australia by a foreign adversary has never been something I've worried about (but, maybe, that's _because_ of the alignment with the US). I've also struggled with the practical logistics of it.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the American side it felt like we had more cross-pollination with Australia in the 90s than in the decades following. Disney even had a studio out there that animated some of the TV shows it aired in the US (and presumably in Australia too). Not sure what changed.

Apart from the "Crocodile Dundee" and "Men at Work" phenomena in the late 80s, there is no real cultural pollination between Australia and the US, as far as I can tell. It's too far away and there are no real reasons for Americans to visit, nor are there enough internationally notable Australian music brands, films, or products that give visibility to the country, which is one price of being a commodity producing nat…

Re autos, IIRC Holden shut down in the late 2000s. But the Australian economy (and Canadian, for that matter) is just houses and holes.

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

#87

Can I move to Asutralia now... please

Spelling the country's name correctly is one of few prerequisites.

Maybe if Australia created very strong trade ties with Taiwan, we would change the name of the country to Asustralia.

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

#88
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fairly well acknowledged, but there is no 'dealt with' that fits into any kind of reality I'm familiar with. My purely observational understanding is that there are fundamental incompatibilities between aboriginal and 'western/British' culture. "Ownership" of land as probably the primary example. I don't know how that gets 'dealt with'.

I don’t know the discussion in Australia, but in Alaska (also having an indigenous population with land ownership) they found solutions. Regional “native corporations” were given large amounts of valuable land, natives were given preferential resource rights (fishing, etc). Not everything is perfect (far from it), but a lot has been done.

Yeah, other ex-British colonies with similar problems are doing great work in reconciling their differences. We could learn from them.

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

#89
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

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.

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)

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the American side it felt like we had more cross-pollination with Australia in the 90s than in the decades following. Disney even had a studio out there that animated some of the TV shows it aired in the US (and presumably in Australia too). Not sure what changed.

Apart from the "Crocodile Dundee" and "Men at Work" phenomena in the late 80s, there is no real cultural pollination between Australia and the US, as far as I can tell. It's too far away and there are no real reasons for Americans to visit, nor are there enough internationally notable Australian music brands, films, or products that give visibility to the country, which is one price of being a commodity producing nat…

Holden, truly an incredible brand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Ute
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