Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 29

The 21st century began just as Australia was emerging from hard times and into a new era of prosperity and widespread wealth. Thanks to the hard yards of economic reforms in the 1980s and 90s, from 2004 Australia was in a great position to benefit by the China boom, China’s dramatic economic development after joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001. This created huge demand for Australia’s natural resources, as well as creating huge new markets for Australian education and tourism sectors. In significant part because of this Australia was able to avoid many of the disastrous problems that beset the north Atlantic countries in Europe and the US in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. In the 2010s though, China’s geostrategic expansion began to create a host of new problems for its regional neighbours to wrestle with, and Australia has had to navigate these changing realities.

Aside from ‘the China Question’, other global challenges haven’t been shy about imposing themselves. How best to deal with climate change continues to vex us, and has triggered the fall of Prime Ministers, Opposition leaders and whole governments. The Islamist attacks of September the 11th, 2001, (aka ‘9/11’) was followed by another terror attack on Australian and other western tourists at Bali in October 2002. The ‘War on Terror’, and protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan was another by-product of the 2001 terror attacks, and have ensured argument amongst Australians on the rights and wrongs of this practically ever since. Whilst all this was happening other issues also demanded attention: Indigenous reconciliation, Same Sex Marriage, Asylum Seekers, sexual harassment of women, free speech and the freedom of religion have all elicited debate, much of which continues ongoing. And then there was that COVID thing …

As the third decade of the new millennium gets under way, the ongoing story of Australia is showing no signs of slowing up any time soon.