Response
Australia is one of the unique parts of the world. A continent isolated from the outside world, which is almost empty. Indeed Australia’s population is tiny in comparison to its territory. There are two major areas where all the population is clustered – Eastern coast and Perth area (De Blij, Muller and Nijman 570). Such population distribution has both its advantages and drawbacks. For instance, highly urbanized and clustered population fosters interconnectedness and makes it easier to implement innovation. Australia is still in the beginning of its path. On the other hand, such large territory causes several burdens that slow down the overall progress of the state. These burdens are transportation and communications. There are 330,000 km of surface roads that the government has to sustain, and the distances between the two main areas are large (Prosser 49). Air transport would be perfect to dealing with the distance, however, with small population it is impossible to make the airplane tickets cheap. This issue, however, may be solved in the nearest future with the increase of population and development of technology.
The economic geography of Australia and New Zealand is dominated by the export of livestock products and specialty goods such as wine. Australia also has significant wheat production and a rich, diverse base of mineral resources.
Australia is among the most developed countries of the world by GDP per capita. Nevertheless it is primarily a resource-driven economy. Its main products of export are livestock produce and raw materials such as coal and iron. This not surprising, when looking at Australia’s agricultural and mineral riches. It has enormous territory which is yet to be used. Although resource-based economies are generally thought of less developed and more prone to market fluctuations, Australian economy has a large safety margin given Australia’s natural abundance. However, experts suggest that in the future, Australia may face some decline in economy if it does not restructure its exports, more than 60% of which go to China (Blackwell). A the growth of the Chinese economy will stabilize and slowly fade out over the next years, Australia may find itself in worse position than other more diversified resource-based economies, such as Canadian (Blackwell).
References
Blackwell, Richard. "Australia And Canada: Two Resource-Driven Economies On Divergent Paths". The Globe and Mail. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
De Blij, H. J., Peter O. Muller, and Jan Nijman. Geography: Realms, Regions And Concepts. 16th ed. Wiley. Print.
Prosser, Robert. Australia. 1st ed. London: Evans, 2007. Print.
