Each country has a story that it sells to the world based on what it produces, what its geography entails and what kind of culture it has. For Australia this story has been fairly simple – it’s a country that digs stuff up and ships it overseas and then goes to the beach for a barbeque. While this may overlook much of Australia’s diversity – and also its being an overwhelmingly urban country – it is in general an external image that Australia is comfortable with. Or at least one that the country has made no real effort to change.
This lack of effort is due to two structural issues the country is complacent about. The first is Australia’s own unique resource curse. The conventional resource curse is an observation that countries with an abundance of natural resources often have poor economic growth and development outcomes, alongside weak institutions and corruption. Australia has none of these things, but instead, the country has become so wealthy from its natural largesse that it has felt no reason to do anything else. This accounts for its stark lack of economic complexity – a major problem given that coal and gas are about to fall off a cliff.
The second form of complacency is Australia’s image as a “lifestyle superpower.” Australian cities frequently rank highly in surveys of the world’s “most liveable” and for much of the country there is an ability to be outdoors for most, if not all, of the year. This is an incredibly attractive picture for Australia to project, and the only marketing tool that Tourism Australia has ever felt the need to use.
Yet the rising cost of living means that the advantages of this lifestyle are becoming exclusive. Australia has rocketed up the rankings of the most expensive places to live in recent years, and now finds itself rubbing shoulders with the notoriously pricey Scandinavian countries and Caribbean tax havens. This is an obvious burden for those who are not financially secure, but it also inhibits the creation of one resource Australia hasn’t been blessed with – ideas – and its ability to shift its economic reliance from a small number of big – and uncomplicated – industries.
