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Australia's system of government is based on the liberal democratic tradition, which includes religious tolerance and freedom of speech and association. It's institutions and practices reflect British and North American models but are uniquely Australia's. Australian's political system seems to give their people a lot of freedom, which shapes the people who live their because they are given all of these freedoms to live their lives.

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Australian art is any art made in Australia or about Australia, from prehistoric times to the present. This includes Aboriginal, Colonial, Landscape, Atelier, early twentieth century painters, print makers, photographers, and sculptors influenced by European modernism, Contemporary art. The art shapes the people in Australia because all the art represents the people from the past and present.

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Aboriginal art or indigenous Australian art is art made by the indigenous people of Australia or aborigines, as they are commonly known. Aboriginal artwork was in a wide a wide range including painting on wood carving, leaves , sculpture , sand painting, ceremonial clothing among others. Ceremonial and religious aspects of life are important to any society and this was an inspiration to aboriginal art. There is a wide range of styles that were used by the aborigines in their art with some varying according to time depth, however the art have gone back in time. An example of studies on rock art in Kakadu in the northern territory and Kimberly in Western Australia shows variations in style dating back to tens of thousands of years ago.

Most of the carved and painted art can be divided into two categories non-figurative or non-naturalistic and figurative or naturalistic. Moreover, aboriginal art is more complex than this , it incorporates freestanding carvings, thread cross strings, stencils, charcoal drawings, carving and objects such as beeswax, application of feathers. The oldest rock art painting in Australia is charcoal drawing, which was found at the excavation of Narwala Gabarnmang rock shelter in the western region; it dates back twenty eight thousand years and is one of the oldest pieces on earth. Narwala Gabarnmang is considered the oldest and extensive collections on earth.

Figurative style or naturalistic style means that the person observing the art can recognize the subject on the art. It looking like a natural figure of the intended object, a macro pod figure represents a large kangaroo or a small wallaby but the basic feature can be easily recognized. The naturalistic figure comes in other categories based on subtle differences and the styles used in the art. Researchers and aborigines named the aborigines named the subdivisions for the locality and was mainly based on a dominant feature of the art style. An example is Kimberley, the wandjina, which describes paintings that was done at the wandjina and were multicolored with a crude naturalistic style.

Some of the unique Australian aboriginal art that used a naturalistic art is found in the northern Australian region. The popular regions where these art are found in Kakadu and Kimberly regions. A form of this style is where the internal anatomy of the animals is depicted in the painting commonly referred X-ray effect. The feature appears in old and modern art and dates over a thousand years, the X-ray style continues in the modern art and is mainly produced on paper and barks and these are marketed to tourist by aboriginal people of this region.

Non-figurative and non-naturalistic styles incorporate geometric patterns, abstract styles and are commonly found in central Australia. Aboriginal art has become popular in the world and dot painting involved paint colors such as brown, red, yellow, and white. The aborigines used dot paint on the caves, rocks and other surfaces. Aboriginal art history stretches back to thousands of years as evidenced by the caves of Nullarbor Plain and Ubirr in Kakadu National Park. The symbol and motifs appear on the durable surfaces. Being central to the spiritual life of the people aboriginal art was made for cultural uses. It has been suggested in some areas that the proliferation of dot painting was to obliterate the meaning of sacred symbols.

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Aboriginal art or indigenous Australian art is art made by the indigenous people of Australia or aborigines, as they are commonly known. Aboriginal artwork was in a wide a wide range including painting on wood carving, leaves , sculpture , sand painting, ceremonial clothing among others.

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They economy is very high and wealthy in Australia. This takes pressure off of the people living making them happier. Making them less stressed about their lives and work.

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In his December Innovation Statement, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull set the scene for how his government will handle Australia's economic transition from the "mining boom" to an "ideas" or "innovation" boom.

"What is going to drive Australian prosperity in the years ahead? How does our economy transition? Our innovation agenda is going to help create the modern, dynamic, 21st-century economy Australia needs."

And now that the Federal Budget has been released into the wild, it's even clearer that Turnbull has innovation firmly in his sights, with the most generous measures reserved to help small businesses flourish.

But as always, innovation statements and budgets serve up a generous sprinkling of jargon to go with their insights... it can leave you asking the same question as Kanye's Twitter feed - what the fuck am I reading?

Fortunately, we're here to cut through the crap and make life a little easier to understand, so here's what you need to know about where Australia's economy is heading.

The mining boom

"From the middle of the previous decade, Australia enjoyed a sharp run-up in the prices of our key commodity exports. This led to an unprecedented boom in mining investment. The benefits were spread beyond the narrow confines of the mining industry in numerous ways, with strong growth in employment and wages across a range of industries around the country," - RBA Assistant Governor Christopher Kent.

The first thing you need to understand is that a country is a bit like a business; it needs to make money to survive.

And in Australia, while the bulk of our economic output comes from our services sector (finance, tourism, healthcare etc), most of our growth over the last few years can be attributed to the stuff we pull out of the ground - iron ore, coal, nickel, copper, and gold to name a few.

This is mainly because China, which has experienced double-digit economic growth a few times in the last decade, was using our ground-stuff to feed their development frenzy... they just couldn't get enough of it.

Increased demand for commodities served to push prices up, making our mining companies and government big money, and creating a tonne of jobs.

Between 2002 and 2012, the price of our mining exports more than tripled and by 2013, it was estimated to have lifted household disposable income per capita by 13%. In other words, we made a lot of bloody money.

And even though mining only represents 7% of our Gross Domestic Produce (GDP), combined with the agricultural sector it helped our economy to grow at an average annual rate of 3.6% over the last... well, 15 years.

To put that in perspective, the OECD average growth rate (made up of 34 other mostly developed economies) sits at 2.5%.

The problem with this kind of accelerated growth is that once it slows down, everyone begins to feel the pressure, just as much we felt the sweet, sweet rewards.

The end of the mining boom

Of course, nothing lasts forever. In the same way that increased demand drives prices up, if no one wants to buy something anymore, prices go down.

And that's exactly what happened when China decided it was time to slow their economy down and stop building... suddenly they didn't need to buy as much of our exports anymore.

So while we still have plenty of candy to go around, all of our friends have gone on diets. Typical. Don't get me wrong, we still make a shit load of money through mining, and we probably will for a long time, but we need to keep our economy growing, right?

The ideas boom

So if we're not selling as much ground-treasure anymore, what do we do instead? Enter the ideas boom.

It turns out that with high levels of education in this country, we have a pretty good opportunity to drive growth through services and innovation.

Instead of selling commodities, the plan is to shift our focus towards selling more services, in turn, increasing our service based economy.

And we are starting to use technology to drive innovation; in fact, Sydney is now considered one of the biggest fintech (financial tech) hubs in the world.

But how does that help us grow?

Well, by carving out a global niche in key service areas such as healthcare, education and tourism, or creating new and highly profitable businesses, we encourage investment in Australia, create more jobs and increase our profits... Which all translate to growing our economy. Simple, right?

Why should I care?

When growth slows down or stops, company profits go down with it. Jobs are cut, foreign investors withdraw their money and we head straight for a big fat recession.

In short, times get tough for everyone.

That's why old mate Malcolm is pushing innovation so hard; we can't rely on our ground-candy forever.

And the beauty of innovating to succeed is the possibilities are endless... as Turnbull said in last year's Innovation Statement, "Unlike a mining boom, [the innovation boom] can continue forever, it is limited only by our imagination, and I know that Australians believe in themselves, I know that we are a creative and imaginative nation." Powerful stuff.

How is going?

So far, not bad! Given that this is quite a sizeable economic shift, our economy has remained fairly stable throughout.

And despite cutting rates on Tuesday in an effort to drive growth, the Reserve Bank are pretty stoked about it too, with deputy governor Philip Lowe citing low unemployment rates as key indicator of success.

"Low wage growth is one of the factors that has underpinned the reasonably positive employment outcomes."

How our economy will continue to perform stands to be seen, but all signs are pointing to success at this stage. Moving forward, all eyes will be on a nervous government with a business-heavy budget to come up with the goods.
Feature image: bullhorn.com

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From Mining to Ideas: Australia's Economic Transition Explained

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In his December Innovation Statement, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull set the scene for how his government will handle Australia's economic transition from the "mining boom" to an "ideas" or "innovation" boom. "What is going to drive Australian prosperity in the years ahead? How does our economy transition?

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Australia has many of its own holidays, like Australia day. Growing up around a huge unique holiday to celebrate their own country. It becomes a part of their lives and their beliefs.

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On Australia Day 2018, Robin Eckerman was recognised as a Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia for "for significant service to the telecommunications industry through roles in broadband infrastructure and network development, and to the energy supply sector".

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Australia is typically really dry and not farmable. There are certain areas that are super fertile because of rich volcanic soil. This limits the type of food they can grow and have available to them.

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The main religions in Australia are Catholic, Anglican, Christianity, or they don't have one. For Australian's this means that religiously they aren't very diverse. Growing up around few religions makes them less likely of stepping outside of the few normal religions that they were surrounded by.

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The economy, industries and businesses of a nation thrive on diversity; without it comes stagnation.

We have a very diverse economy with 509 industries, hundreds of thousands of categories of goods and services, and 2.1 million businesses. All this in a nation that is less than 1.5% of world GDP and has little more than 0.3% of the world's population. That, and our innovation and productivity growth over the past several decades, has led to Australia having one of the highest standards of living among the 230 nations and dependencies. We are currently around sixth - even higher if we discount tiny nations and dependencies such as Liechtenstein (less than 38,000 people), Luxembourg, Brunei, Singapore or Switzerland - which has a third of our population of 24 million.

Social diversity is the other side of the coin, and again Australia is benefiting in this area.

Our population is very diverse. We have citizens from over 160 nations, speaking some 200 languages. Almost three in 10 citizens were born overseas from regions and countries shown in the first chart. The figure is higher - over four in 10 - if we include the children of these settlers.

In less than 250 years, Australia has moved from a predominantly Aboriginal population (now just 2%), to British, and on to European in the post-WWII decades. We are becoming Eurasian in the 21 st century, with 12% of our citizens born overseas coming from Asia. In the 22 nd century we will be becoming Asian, yet with a rich and diverse ancestry.

We have certainly had an enviable cultural mix of people cohabiting and integrating - if not assimilating - peaceably over the decades and centuries.

Our religious diversity is also increasing, and it is interesting to compare Australia's religious affiliation with the world's mix, as the next two charts show.

Australia has a high proportion of non-religious people, approaching one in four citizens compared with one in eight worldwide, and barely one in 10 being regular churchgoers. This is an outcome of being a rich and increasingly educated and questioning society. And whilst Christianity has had a history of terrorism (the Crusades, Ku Klux Clan) and oppression (the Spanish Inquisition and other disgraceful eras), those practices are fading into history. Although six out of 10 Australian citizens identify as Christian, we have a largely non-sectarian society.

Currently it is Islam where some fanatics in a handful of countries have turned to terrorism and oppression as a non-representative component of the one in four Islamic affiliated citizens of the world. Australia is largely insulated from these problems, though not totally immune.

So again, we have a fairly diverse religious society, living peaceably.

And as a final indication of social diversity, we have more generations alive today than at any other time in history, as the final exhibit shows. Indeed, it is almost unbelievable that six of the 12 generations since 1788 are still alive today! This is of course the outcome of much longer life expectancy than the 38 years expected in the late 18 th century.

Being able to maintain a cohesive society with diverse beliefs and habits - and even traditions - is no mean feat and an ongoing challenge.

Different generations have or develop different habits, customs and traditions - all of which are not to be confused with values such as love, respect and concern for others, which are more or less timeless.

People confuse habits and values all the time - often using the term "value systems" - which can generate inter-generational squabbles and arguments for no useful purpose.

When we hear people defend a tradition, we should be suspicious: it is often a habit that has passed its use-by date, and has no value!

Living longer means living with and respecting a wide variety of habits and traditions across different generations. After all, habits and traditions are comfortable to each generation. The important thing is to distinguish them from values that are truly worth promoting and defending at all costs.

Indeed, we are a diverse society, but it takes leadership, freedom and accommodation to create cohesion. By doing so, the economy flourishes and our standard of living rises to create a happier and hopefully fairer society where those who are less well-off are looked after or supported.

Imperfect as we may be, we are very high up the scale on the standard of living and quality of life measures. And five of our capital cities are in the 10 most livable cities on the planet.

Doesn't get much better than that.

To download a PDF of this article, click here.

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The economy, industries and businesses of a nation thrive on diversity; without it comes stagnation. We have a very diverse economy with 509 industries, hundreds of thousands of categories of goods and services, and 2.1 million businesses. All this in a nation that is less than 1.5% of world GDP and has little more than 0.3% of the world's population.

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Australia and Oceania are surrounded by water and have rich volcanic soil that effect  their diets. They have natural resources given to them like seafood, tropical fruit, and different nuts and spices that are native to where they live. Growing up around these types of foods changes their diets and what they are used to.

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Tropical fruits stock image. Image of summer, fresh, pile - 2460967

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The Great Barrier Reef is one of the many tourist attractions that brings people to Australia. But with human impact and pollution the water temperature has increased and caused coral bleaching. If this continues and the coral reef loses its beauty it won't draw as many tourists effecting the economy.