Australia Profile: Part Four International

1.     International Trade (What? How much? To whom? From whom?)

a.     Exports

The top 5 exports are iron ore & concentrates (A$57,000 million), coal (A$38,000 million), gold (A$15,000 million), education-related travel services (A$14,000 million), and natural gas (A$14,000 million). The top export countries are China, Japan, Republic of Korea, United States, and India.

b.     Imports

The top 5 imports are personal travel services (A$22,000 million), crude petroleum (A$20,000 million), passenger motor vehicles (A$17,000), refined petroleum (A$16,000 million), freight transport services (A$9,000 million). The top import countries include China, United States, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand.

2.     Exchange rate (current value, recent history)

1 Australian dollar= 0.94 US dollars

Over the year, the Australian dollar has been increasing.

3.     Immigration/emigration (From where? To where? How much?)

Immigration: 5,993,945 people in mid 2010 were born outside Australia. This was 26.8% of the population. Top countries include United Kingdom, New Zealand, China, India, and Italy.

Emigration: 43,423 people emigrated in 2012-13 to United Kingdom, US, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and United Arab Emirates.

4.     Relations with other countries (recent or historical conflicts, allies)

Australia is part of the United Nations and Commonwealth nations.

Some recent conflicts in Australia include 2012 Sydney anti-Islam film protests, 2005 Macquarie Fields riots, 2005 Cronulla riots, and 2004 Redfern riots.

Some Historical riots include 1942 North Western Area Campaign, 1942 Townsville Mutiny, 1939-1945 WWII, 1924 Bedford Downs massacre, and Mistake Creek massacre.

A Fez for the Heart Response

a.     Choose one passage from the reading that you found particularly interesting.  Why was this interesting?

First paragraph on page 5.

I thought it was interesting because the people that live in that town do not think much of the ruins. Visitors come to see the ruins even on the hottest days. I just find it interesting how the locals don’t think much of the beauty and ruins. Also, hearing that locals never undressed on the beach and the narration of people undressing on the beach was funny.

b.    Use examples from this reading to illustrate the interaction between economics and culture.

The Muslim population in Pomegranate did not like when the visitors would come into town in their bathing suits, so they put of signs to not do it. Then more and more tourists came in to the town, the locals noticed wanted there business. So some of the locals took down the “No Bikini” signs and used them for advertising. They eventually sold postcards with topless women saying, “No Problem in Turkery”.

The locals said, “Life used to be fun. Now it’s just business.” Their old way of living was over and they had to adapt to the modern, liberal way of doing things.

The food they now sold included foreign foods while displaying their food as “authentic Turkish cuisine”.

           

In order for the locals to keep up with the business with the tourists, they had to conform to modern Europe. This includes the ideals of the Western world. They did resist however. They put up the signs to stop women from walking around in bikinis, but that was short lived. Also, wearing the fez was legal if you were dealing with tourists and tourists were allowed to wear the fez even when it was illegal for locals to wear it in any other circumstance. The entire towns way of life changed within 20 years due to the overwhelming demand from tourists.

c.     Beyond the specific example of this town in Turkey, what connections or conflicts do you see between tourism and economics or tourism and culture?

Tourism brings in the demand for certain businesses to come up. In towns with a lot of tourism, the streets are filled with businesses that accommodate their needs. It’s very obvious when you walk through one of these streets that the businesses are meant for tourists. The tourists shape the economy of the town to meet their demands.

Large influxes of tourism can also change the culture in a town, as it did in Pomegranate. The cultural ideals had to change in Pomegranate because the culture the tourists brought with them was overwhelming and unstoppable, but that doesn’t mean there is no resistance. Pomegranate’s culture did try to resist or hold on to some of its “old” culture but eventually they had to conform.

Australia Profile: Part Three Tourism

1.     Importance of tourism to country (numbers, origin of tourists)

The 2010-2011 fiscal year saw 5.9 million short-term visitor arrivals. Tourism is important to the Australian economy, representing 2.5% of Australia’s GDP, or A$35 billion.

2.     Major tourist attractions

Popular destinations include the coastal cities of Sydney and Melbourne, as well as the region of Queensland, the Gold Coast, and Great Barrier Reef. Uluru, the Australian outback, Tasmania, and wildlife are also big on tourism.

3.     National parks, wildlife or nature preserves

Some of the National Parks include Royal National Park, Sydney Harbour National Park, Blue Mountains National Park, Lane Cove National Park, and Kosciuszko National Park. Some of the most famous animals include kangaroos, koalas, and platypi. Australia has some of the world’s most dangerous snakes and spiders.

4.     Important museums

The Australian Museum, Powerhouse Museum, National Museum of Australia, Western Australian Museum, Australian National Maritime Museum, and Museum Victoria are some of Australia’s most popular museums.

Australia Proflie: Part Two Economics

Find recent statistics on each of the following economic measures.

1.     GDP

1.521 trillion USD

2.     GDP per capita

67,035.57 USD

3.     Life expectancy

81.85 years

4.     Poverty rate

12.8 %

5.     Literacy rate

96 %

6.     Unemployment rate

6%

7.     Inflation

2.7%

Research and briefly report on the country’s resources.

1.     Natural Resources (climate, growing season, rainfall, agricultural land, major rivers and waterways, significant mineral deposits)

The climates in Australia include tropical, subtropical, equatorial, desert, grassland, and temperate. Winter crops are planted from April to June and harvested from September to January. Summer crops are planted from September to January and harvested from February to May. Cotton is planted from September to November and harvested from March until late May. 80% of the land in Australia has a rainfall less than 24 inches per year and 50% having even less than 12 inches. As a whole, Australia has an annual average rainfall of 16 inches. About 90% of Australian farmland is for grazing with many livestock as cattle and sheep. Their major crops include potatos and wheat. One of the world’s longest navigable rivers is Murry River in Australia. Other popular rivers include Macquarie River, Margaret River, Victoria River, Wollondilly River, amongst others. Australia is the world’s leading producer of rutile, zircon, bauxite and alumina, the second largest producer of gold, iron ore, lithium, manganese ore, lead and zinc, the third largest producer of ilmenite and uranium, and the fourth largest of silver, nickel and black coal.

2.     Labor (size of labor force, educational system)

The size of the labor force in Australia is 12,026,320 workers. The Australian education system consists of a primary, secondary, senior secondary, and a tertiary school. The primary is from Kindergarten to Year 6 or 7. Secondary runs from 7 to 10 or 8 to 10. Senior secondary school runs from years 11 to 12. A Bachelors can take 3 years (General) or 4 years (Professional) of tertiary school.

3.     Capital (industry and technology, infrastructure)

The primary industries of Australia are agriculture, animal and plant health, fishery, and forestry. The infrastructure construction from most to least is oil/gas/coal/other minerals, roads/highways/subdivisions, bridges/railways/harbors, and electricity generation/transmission/distribution.

News Summary 1

Title of Article: Manufacturing not all bad news

URL: http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=965674    

           The Australian manufacturing sector has seen a steady job loss but this job loss is not all bad news. According to the article, this decrease in employment is due to a transition from heavy industrial manufacturing to hi-tech, and higher valued, goods. Australia has shown to be globally competitive in this type of manufacturing. Sue Beitz, general manager of the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency (AWPA), commented on the transition to hi-tech saying “we do see that there are fabulous opportunities in the areas of pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food and beverage, either in moving to the higher end of production or entering new markets.” The economic concept of adaptability or “spontaneous change” fits with this transition because Australia sees opportunities in places where they aren’t at and want to fill those gaps. Australia’s manufacturing sector has an opportunity to grow and ultimately make more jobs in this transition. They are adapting to the new market structure. The growing markets in hi-tech is due to the rapid advancements in technology and the growth in demand for new and better technologies. Policies that promote businesses to make this transition and make it easier will benefit the employer and employee. Incentives are an example of this promotion.

            An issue pointed out in the article is that much of the current manufacturing workforce is not skilled, by that I mean have no post-school qualifications. With much of the workforce not qualified, this limits the productivity and profit for the manufacturers. Mrs. Beitz said “the issue is really about how we continue to adapt our manufacturing industry from the capital intensive to knowledge intensive offering… and the challenge of getting clever people out of laboratories and into businesses.” To continue to adapt, more clever people in the businesses would help solve that problem, but to get them to the businesses, one thing that businesses could do is provide incentives and communicate to them that going into business is a viable option for them. One could also approach with a more broad approach. This broad approach involves improving the education system to 1) educating the students more effectively and 2) finding these students who are the “clever people” that businesses are looking for and nurturing them. A problem with the education system could be that these clever people are never found and never are able to reach their full potential. This broad approach tackles that problem.
           The biggest issue is the unemployment increase. The article states that the Australian manufacturing jobs have “declined 10.2 percent over the past decade… and that they were forecast to continue to decline 1.0 to 1.5 percent per annum out to 2025.” Unemployment is a tough problem to face in manufacturing because some jobs are being automated with robots and other technologies. This means that some recovery of the unemployment is not possible but to solve this issue, companies need to start up and move to this market because of the rich opportunities with relatively low risk. I say relatively low risk because these industries are growing fast and there are lots of opportunities to succeed. Policies that make it easier and safer for businesses to start up in the hi-tech manufacturing will increase employment in Australia’s manufacturing sector.