Australia is blessed with quite the spineless government at the moment. I doubt very much that they would be doing anything (at all actually) as concrete as forging deeper ties with Europe - at least at the expense of the US. After all, it wasn't so long ago that Australia handed the US $800 million of its citizen's hard-earned for submarines that might not ever get built within an alliance that looks increasingly one-sided.
Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
131–140 of 203 posts
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having spent a lot of time in the UK, EU and US, I feel Sydney is way more like California than say London or European cities, in terms of living, shopping and culture. Even things from the US are coming here, like the growth of Halloween. If you walk into a shop, the US is much more like Australia in terms of service and attitude (even though retail staff are paid vastly differently). I always thought this was due t…
I've always felt that Australia felt like a British version of California. Though California is itself a bit exceptional in the context of America. The two places have a lot in common though - not withstanding the fact that everyone drives on the wrong side of the road and uses different power cables.
But you can bend the pins of the power cables and make them fit. :)
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haven’t Australians just moved to US - Keith Urban, Chris Hemsworth, Russel Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and the list goes on … it’s not the same way as Japanese’s or Korean output, because English as the native language makes the transition seamless and doesn’t stand out. Oh! I forgot JIRA and Atlassian are Australian too :D Now you really can’t deny you haven’t felt the Australian influence in your life. Lol
Canva, Blackmagic Design. Wifi, actually, was developed there (CSIRO patents)
Blackmagic Design is it very good company no excuses. They support all three platforms.
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You rely heavily on Australia for both blockbuster and character actors. If they aren’t already British or Irish or Canadian, they are likely Aussies (or New Zealanders - sometimes seems like you barely have any actors of broad ability who you haven’t imported). Margot Robbie, Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Jackman, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Chris Hemsworth (all three Hemsworths!), Toni Collette,…
>Pom
>Almost but not quite able to finish the post without whinging.
Checks out.
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#135This and Canada are just kneejerk reactions against the chaos of the Trump administration. While that makes sense, my prediction is that in the short-term it won't amount to much. In the long-term, history books will write about these years as redefining the world order that's existed largely since 1945. As for Canada, nobody really knows what associate membership means. Given that EU freedoms are reciprocal I just d…
This hardly seems knee-jerk. Relations with USA has been deteriorating for a while now. At this point, i think most people no longer view this as a trump related fluke but the bew status quo, which is why canada is scrambling for alternatives. > As for redefining the world order, that's what this war of choice in Iran will amount to. In the short-to-medium term it's going to redefine the Gulf security architecture. T…
Canada is too intertwined with the US to truly divorce the US or even shift significant trade to Europe.
Australia can sell raw materials anywhere but the Red Sea being closed makes it take longer and be more expensive and who is really going to demand raw materials in Europe when the energy crunch hits? And we're bouldering towards that energy crunch (both natural gas and diesel). One of Australia's biggest competitive advantages in selling raw materials to China has always been relative proximity. Lower shipping times and costs.
Yes, the US has used Israel as a weapon in the Middle East (since ~1967) but what kept Gulf powers in line was the supply of weapons (to prop up unpopular regimes) and the free flow of trade. This war has shown that the US cannot defend its own bases in the Gulf let alone any of its client states (sorry, "allies").
I believe there's a nonzero chance the Israeli state collapses within the next decade. That's how much things are shifting and what a blunder this has been.
The GCC countries are going to have the redefine a new regional security architecture that includes Iran. That's inevitable at this point. If the US had been smart they simply would've admitted defeat ~5 months ago but they can't. Because of Israel. For now.
So Iran is America's Afghanistan (USSR era). The quagmire of Afghanistan was a huge factor in the collapse and breakup of the USSR. This isn't like Vietnam, which we could simply walk away from. Iran won and the Israeli state in its current form is doomed.
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haven’t Australians just moved to US - Keith Urban, Chris Hemsworth, Russel Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and the list goes on … it’s not the same way as Japanese’s or Korean output, because English as the native language makes the transition seamless and doesn’t stand out. Oh! I forgot JIRA and Atlassian are Australian too :D Now you really can’t deny you haven’t felt the Australian influence in your life. Lol
Canva, Blackmagic Design. Wifi, actually, was developed there (CSIRO patents)
>Wifi, actually, was developed there (CSIRO patents)
Ehhh thats more like CSIRO patent trolls for wifi.
My recollection is that the particular trick they patented was already in use in CDMA networks, the CSIRO did it using 2.4GHz on a low power device and called it a new invention. But honestly it reeks of Microsoft pursuing anyone using a file allocation table
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#137As 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…
Australia's alignment with the US was a major consequence of World War 2 and the aftermath of that. Pre WW2 we were basically in lockstep with the UK. However after Singapore fell to the Japanese it became increasingly obvious that the UK could not be relied upon to defend Australia. At the time most of the elite Australian troops were fighting in North Africa (El-Alamein, Tobruk etc). and there was a genuine perceiv…
>Almost overnight our foreign policy swung behind the US instead.
We still had dual citizen brits running government departments making pro UK decisions until like the 70s or 80s. The UK/US have sort of shared us until the 90s. We let the poms nuke SA.
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#138Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#139As 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 hope you can identify strongly as an Australian. Why bother telling yourself you’re something of a European? In any case, I hope countries form ties with Europe. Europe needs be economically stronger than it is. Better for the world, so long as they can slow their tendencies toward government control and censorship.
But there's whole communities of Americans who identify as Irish, or Anglo-Saxon, or whatever.