[sdiwakar]

@nl you couldn't have summarised better.

There are plenty of problems in Australia, including insane housing prices, negligible government support for the manufacturing industry and comparatively lower research & development spending (I don't have data to prove this, but I think this is obvious in comparison to other countries esp. the US).

BUT, on the other hand, we have what other citizens in other countries lack:

  * an excellent superannuation system
  * a social security system that provides some real security (centrelink)
  * a medicare system that provides for all Australians
  * a public university system (although since the Howard govt. universities have suffered)
  * an excellent public schooling system 
  * relatively low gun crime and,
  * a tolerant, multicultural workforce.

[thmcmahon]

Negligible Government support for industries that are not sustainable is a good thing.

[vacri]

It's not worth losing a pool of skilled labour over temporary insustainability.

[thmcmahon]

Where are we losing it to? And if we need it again won't there be an incentive for it to come back?

Australia doesn't have to be good at everything.

[vacri]

We're not losing it 'to' anywhere. If you don't use skills, they atrophy, and when you need them again it takes time to knock the rust off, and even then you can lose some of your original finer points.

One easy example is manufacturing management, particularly of electronics. People think it's easy, but it's really quite intricate. I've worked for two manufacturers of electronic goods, and if a production manager leaves, it's very hard to find a replacement that has a clue. And if you're not a company that can afford both the scope and salary to pull talent internationally, it scuppers your ability to make things efficiently. It takes years to train someone up to be an efficient self-directed production manager.

There's also similar things like this in the trades - tradesmen are so heavily paid right now because of exactly this issue, skills forgotten by society. We went through a period where trades were looked down on and the skill pool atrophied. With only so many tradesmen and too much work, it's really expensive to use that skillset.

[vacri]

Australians love to self-denigrate, it's the national pastime. But we won't stand for anyone else doing it!

I'm lost some potential new friends when I've took exception to their usual slogan "Australia has no culture", which either means that we don't have the thousand years of fine art history of Europe or that we don't have a coming-of-age ceremony like some tribe that live in grass huts do.

We waste so much hot air and our media talking about how crap we are and how poorly performing the country is, when we consistently score in the top 5 in any international measure involving quality of life (oh no, so Sweden or Denmark beat us out again... why is that so shameful that we're not always #1 of 200 countries?)

Not to say we don't have some serious problems, but we do tend to look at ourselves in a bubble and compare ourselves against some mythical 'home country', seen through rose-coloured glasses.