[Genevieve]

Hi Jaqui !!

In regard to your above post would you care to point me in the right direction toward "researching" that observation a little further please?

I am in no way discounting your observation - merely asking for some help in looking into this further.

While I do feel very grateful for living here in Australia at this moment in time , and grateful for my location, upbringing, the various ebbs and flows of my life that have funnily enough brought me back at this very moment to the place of my childhood - I am continually PERPLEXED to say the least about the resounding SILENCE from the average Australian citizen in the face of what is happening worldwide.

Do they REALLY believe we are immune to it all? Or do they think our little old government is gonna turn around and go "Isolationist" on the rest of the world?? lol I doubt it seeing as our whole economic BOOM is related directly to China's industrial expansion. And even our "beloved" BHP Billiton which is almost soley responsible for the resources boom in Western Australia - has suffered badly this week.

I seriously think we are in a VERY precarious position as Australians - politically and geographically.

While we currently have "good" economic realtions with the Chinese ( and a Mandarin speaking Prime Minister to boot lol) - we were also a part of the Coalition of the Willing and so far up the US *** that at one stage I thought if GW stopped walking suddenly John Howard would have a brown nose!!!

We have at best "precariously polite" diplomatic relations with Indonesia (which is just a small boat cruise away from our northern shores) and one of the largest Muslim nations in the world!!

We rely almost TOTALLY on imports for all our domestic goods as we have literally NO secondary industry and are at the mercy of the world markets for our HUGE amounts of primary industry.

Add to that the fragile environment which the majority of Australians being used to a western culture "live on" and you can see we are also at the mercy of relying heavily on technology and infrastructure to provide all our citizens with even the most basic needs as water and food. A handful of dams and a fragile pipeline supply water to over three quarters of the states population in WA alone.

The whole of Western Australia is still reeling from an incident earlier in the year involving an explosion in a north west gas pipeline which we soon found out was THE one and only major supllier of natural gas to the states infrastructure and due to the "unavailability" of a certain part worldwide - we are still being hit by the limit of supply of a basic need!!! Loads of resources yes - but all held to ransom in the blink of an eye by the lack of or total control of our infrastructure!!

We also rely heavily on immigration especially in this so called economic boom to provide labour for our growth markets and also on overseas students at our Universities. Yet other studies show we have a continous "brain drain" from the nation wherein our most qualified and educated people in their various levels of expertise choose to leave the country.

While we SEEM to be in a better position financially than other economies at this present moment - I see it more as a fragile game of fence sitting and wonder which side of the fence we fall!!

With all this in mind - i am still PERPLEXED as to what Australia has to feel smug about??