[tankenmate]

Hardly; agriculture and mining _combined_ make up 10% of GDP. 68% of Australian GDP comes from the services sector. These figures courtesy of the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the year 2006. Agriculture and mining do make up 57% of exports however, thus keeping the trade balance on keel.

[brc]

2006 and 2011 might be massively different in terms of GDP makeup. You also forget to mention that much of those services are underpinned by the money generated from the export industries.

[nl]

The size of GDP mostly correlates to population (assuming stable living conditions).

"How well" and economy is going correlates well to exports.

Agriculture and mining do make up 57% of exports however, thus keeping the trade balance on keel.

Mining makes up 47% of the total - agriculture as a whole is smaller than Gold alone, and roughly the size of our crude petroleum exports (I never realize that!). See http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade/trade-at-a-glance-...