Talk:Economy of Australia

Excised text

moved from article, pending wikification, NPOV and sources/fact-checking. clarkk 20:40, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Australia has continued to prosper during the following years of 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. It has done so by continuing to privatize industries and by relying on increasing domestic consumption and Chinese demand for resources to bolster its economy. The state of Western Australia in particular has benefited from the Chinese caused resources boom, with its economy growing at an annualized rate of 7.5% during 2004. The national economy however, has been growing at an average rate of just above 3 % a year. New economic problems come from a trade deficit caused by increasing amounts of cheap Chinese imports and overspending by Australian consumers. In 2005, Australia is projected to reach an important milestone : more than 1,000,000 new cars will be sold in Australia. In recent years the federal government and many of the Australian states have also enjoyed substantial budget surpluses.

CER and FTA

It's a little odd that the Australian economy article does not discuss the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relationship (which essentially creates a market of 25 million people) nor the more recent bilateral free trade agreements. Is there a reason why?--Cyberjunkie 23:22, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

• why must everything (in this case land mass) be related to in terms of the U.S? we should attempt to use something a bit more international, frustrating to see that an article about the economy of Australia has some bits geared to U.S user's.

• Like it or not, the US is the benchmark against which a lot of things are measured. I personally find it an acceptable standard to use.

Improvements required

I think that this article should be longer and in greater depth. I'd to remove some of the binary statements that assume a situation is 'either/or', such as:

Australia commenced a basic reorientation of its economy in the early 1980s and has transformed itself from an inward looking, import-substitution country to an internationally competitive, export-oriented one.

The reference to 'full financial deregulation' is in the same category: financial deregulation is an ongoing process, and certainly hasn't got to a point that could be described as 'full'. Too many sectors of Australian industry still enjoy cosy protection, subsidy, or regulation, at the expense of more efficient productivity, to make that statement.

In the interests of Wikipedian neutrality and clarity of explanation, I'd also like to see party politics and individual politicians' names removed from the discussion, except where it appears to be central to the discussion. The evolution of the economy is larger and is occurring over too long a period to warrant reference to these phenomena. In addition, economic management now appears to be reasonably bipartisan throughout the capitalist world. Tony 09:23, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I created a to-do table listing some improvements that could be made. Feel free to add to it or even undertake some of the suggestions.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 10:23, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I think It'd be pretty safe to nuke the content of this article and start again. The summary table is a good idea, and it should use ABS statistics. I think a useful way to divide the content would include

• Economic history; with discussion of micro and macroeconomic reform in the last 30 years (there is probably the potential to spin off an Economic history of Australia at some point)
• Economic structure; industries, imports/exports etc; workforce; financial and stock markets
• Economic poilcy (current); taxation, fiscal policy, monetary policy, supply-side Policy, RBA; issues of governemt intervention in the economy
• National debt; prominent section in the US economy article - also relevant for Australia
• Currency; value since the float and so on
• Free trade; relevant agreements; significant issue for Australia

--Peta putting her half finished BEcon to good use

Both excellent ideas; except that perhaps currency should be treated in economic policy, which might treat macro- first and then micro- (?), or is the distinction now too blurred for that? Tony 06:28, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking of having currecy in both the policy section and its own section (which would say that the AUD is the official currency, look briefly at historical exchanges rates, mention factors affecting the exchange rate that Australia is especially susceptible to, mention the possibility of a common currency with NZ etc.). However, I don't mind if that kind of content is covered in policy. --nixie 06:38, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Economy of India is probably the best article of this type currently on Wikipedia, and may serve as a good model.--nixie 10:26, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Peta that pretty substantial improvement could be made to this page. I'd suggest starting with a broad description of the economy, with history mainly referenced in its own article. Australia's economic history is fascinating, and certainly deserves its own page (which I do plan to do something about...). EcoRat 12:22, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Statistics formatting

OK, I'm about to start (in the next day or so) updating a bunch of the statistical information here. However, I had a question on which to seek input from other wiki folk here...

Most economy articles quote economic stats such as GDP, inflation, etc on a calendar year basis. But Australia normally uses a financial year base for most stats (e.g. 2003-04 is the period from 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004). Should statistics here be in calendar year or financial year terms? (My preference is for the latter, but other views would be welcome). A lot of statistics are only available on a financial year basis, including a lot of the national accounts and historical information. EcoRat 12:22, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Financial year statistics are perfectly fine. They are usually indicated by split year references like, say, 2003/04 or 2005/06. As you say, most statistics will actually be determined by the financial year. Quarterly figures are usually referenced to the year of the quarter, sometimes leading to confusion with the calendar year. Most of the stats in this article were taken from the CIA, so it would be great to have more accurate (ie, Australia) figures. Happy editing, --Cyberjunkie | Talk 15:22, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

query

I wonder what the source of this statement is:

'The government is pushing for increased exports of manufactured goods'.

I'd like to see broad brush strokes at the opening, characterising the Australian economy in relation to others. Tony 13:46, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what the source is, but I would say it is, or was, broadly true. The age-old goal of Australian governments has been to establish and maintain a manufactures industry. Economists see the lack of elaborately transformed manufactures or ETMs in our exports as a fundalmental weakness. --Cyberjunkie | Talk 15:29, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, but I'd like to know the source! Otherwise, I think it has to be removed. Tony 04:24, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

The source was the CIA Word Factbook. However, that statement has since been removed from the latest edition. Personally, I see no evidence at all that the Federal Government is pushing for increased exports of manufactured goods. In fact, Australia's manufacturing sector continues to decline and is now one of the smallest in the OECD. This is largely because Australia invests only 1.6 per cent of GDP in research and development, compared with between 2.5 and 5 per cent in the tiger economies of comparable size, such as Finland, Sweden, Singapore and Ireland. ZwickauDeluxe

Other sources

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Economics

Might be of some use, although its structure appears to be idiosyncratic. Tony 04:25, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

This might also be useful.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Australian_History/Contents

Ryan Castle 07:48, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

AUD/USD in table

The figures shown in the table make it heard to discern what numbers are in relation to both USD and AUD. Would it be possible to either:

A) List both AUD and uSD

B) Or simply do all figures in one type, IMO USD (PPP) as it seems to be the common standard used

-G 07:40, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

• We should probably be consistent with the rest of Wikipedia, and use a common currency. It doesn't help a lot to express these things in domestic currency terms, as it doesn't allow for any comparisons. The only problem with using USD (PPP) is that the numbers are often quite out of date, and don't always reflect the most up to date information about the economy. EcoRat 11:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Merge

I think the Economic history of Australia should remain its own article. Many other countries have their own articles for their economic history.--Bkwillwm 23:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Merge or Not?

Merge or don't merge, it doesn't bother me, but could someone plese fill in the last 30 years of Australian History? The Article is useless without talking aobut the "recession we had to have" or the GST

I'd throw it in. Just get rid of all the headers. They make it unreadable. - G^t 11:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the merge is necessary.--nixie 01:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

introductioin

very confusing and slightly misleading: "Australia has a prosperous, Western-style market economy, with a per capita GDP slightly higher than, France and Germany in nominal terms as of 2006, but thanks to the lower cost of living, slightly higher in terms of Purchasing Power Parity."

slightly higher? depends who you ask, and whats with the "but thanks to the lower cost of living" bit? this introduction makes no sense and lacks clarity 203.214.25.139 10:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Emphasis on agriculture

This article seems to me to contains a very heavy emphasis on Australia's agricultural sector. How do others see the following statement: "Economists often refer to Australia as the 'world's farm'. The agriculture and natural resources sectors contribute significantly to GDP."

I have never heard any economist describe Australia as "the world's farm". Agriculture's share of GDP has fallen from a peak of 30 per cent in the early 1950s to 14 per cent in the early 1960s and to well under 5 per cent in the early 2000s. Mining has a higher share and has grown both in the long and the short term. Manufacturing is larger still but has been falling since the early 1960s. Services dwarfs them both and parts of the services sector are growing rapidly - notably finance and business services. See this Treasury analysis and this from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.