The problem with the EU is that the integration has become unbalanced. The common currency had no chance without an integrated banking system, and the concept that all governments should defer legally to Maastricht has led to elected governments having laws imposed on them by bureaucrats.

It comes as no surprise that most Europeans are fed up, and if a popular vote were held in Germany, France, The Netherlands etc, they would all leave.

I prefer a good outcome. And that would be assisted for us, with stronger ties and trade relations with Ireland and Scotland, where many of us have ancestral ties.

And doable if we reinvigorate our manufacturing sector. We need to emulate a modernized Scandinavia, where they build or built cars, trucks, modern jet planes, trains, tractors, earthmovers, ships, subs, ammunition, firearms long and short, for a world market!

We have a significant advantage, inasmuch, we possess the raw materials, the mineral resources, the wit and wherewithal to build submersible storm and pirate avoiding, nuclear powered. bulk freight forwarding shipping/national fleet. Indubitably, the key to opening up the manufactured goods markets of the northern hemisphere and competing for a more than useful market share!

And where an armchair ride that cares for far less handled fragile freight as a matter of course; delivered to destinations at speeds of up to fifty knots. With fuel we have reasonable supplies of for the moment and new nuclear powered ships not needing to be refueled for up to 25 years, ensuring an incomparable, doubled, competitive edge!

Yes it may well take twenty years to develop a nuclear industry! And waiting that long, for it to magically manifest of its own accord, will ensure that's stretched to forty fully wasted years!

Our plain as the nose future is in our own hands and very doable regardless of the political outcomes in Europe!

And would be assisted, if we just had the good common sense to create a destination here that self funded cashed up, good character, european retirees saw as their most desirable relocation retirement destination! [The keys being energy and tax reform, coupled to affordable housing!]

Ditto the energy dependant high tech industries of europe, Japan, parts of Asia and the Americas!

Can't died in a cornfield over a century ago!

Unfortunately timidity and won't are still alive and well, but particularly in forelock tugging Australian political circles!
Alan B.

I will suggest another scenario.
France will divide into two states.
France is already preparing for a civil war.
The Zones Sensitive or No go zones in Paris and Marseilles will claim
independence, (they have it now), and join into an Islamic territory.
With an Islamic population of 20% backed by the Koran it seems inevitable.

In such a situation no one can guess what the rest of Europe will do.
The moslem populations in Belgium and Holland may also demand to join Paris.
The French population will be told to leave or pay the Jizaz tax or die.
This would produce a Europe with independent moslem enclaves.
No doubt this sounds way out there but the moslems are already warning
that it is what their ultimate aim is.

This is the first google that came up:[ France road deaths ].

"Deaths on French roads in July hit a three-year high, according to new figures from France’s Interior Ministry. There were 360 people killed last month, an increase of 19.2 per cent compared with 2014 and the highest monthly figure since July 2012. France has one of the highest road death rates in western Europe, with 53 deaths per million of its population."

There will be a Muslim enclave and a road-rage French Volvo drivers enclave and a French-Muslim Renault Midlum truck enclave.

The EU has been failing for a long time, but its treatment of Greece was the beginning of the end. While the European media took the EU line that Greece caused all its own problems by too much social spending (despite the fact that it had the second-lowest social spending budget in Europe after Bulgaria and had a military budget that was almost four times the EU average - a legacy of the military oligarchy established under the junta that overthrew Greece's left-wing goverment in the 60s).

Crippled by massive military debt, the Greek people had the audacity to yet again elect a left-wing government. It had to be punished - and its punishment was mind-boggling in its ruthlessness. Populations in EU countries watched this with mounting horror.

Previous to that were a whole litany of referendums that voted against EU treaties to override national sovereignty, which were either ignored or the people were propaganda-blitzed into voting again 'the right way'.

Then there were the cumulative effects of massive migration from countries happily and willingly destabilised and bombed by Nato, the miltary arm of the EU, which white-anted populations already impoverished by the EU's neoliberal agenda.

And then 'everyone', i.e. the EU media and liberal establishment, acted oh so surprised that a UK majority voted to get the hell out. Why, oh, why did this happen? Oh, of course, racism and xenophobia - that's it ... yeah!

But I digress. How does Australia deal with a British exit? Nothing. Because the Brexit will not happen. There will either be another referendum (to get the vote 'right') or the UK government will just coast along until the people give up on waiting. Meanwhile several other countries are pushing hard to have their own referendums, which will also most likely be ignored.

This will all end rather unpleasantly.

I know that your Catholic Church has always had a problem with democracy, Pablo. Like the Muslims, it too probably wants a theocratic state where the clergy tells everybody else what to do. But you see, Pablo, 400 years ago, the "populists" began the process of reigning in the power of the kings and clergy to form governments of the people, by the people. They correctly realised that governments rule with the consent of the ruled, and in a democracy, the "popular" majority wins.

This does not suite a lot of people, who consider democracy an impediment to the sort of world they want to create. Hitler hated popular democracy, and so did Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim il Sung, the Imams of Islam, and a host of other nut jobs. And you don't like democracy either? Too bad. Europe is still democratic, although the
anti democratic forces which you support seem to has become very strong, and the backlash against them by the people has begun.

I know how you think, Pablo. After WW1 and WW2, some people thought that nationalism was the cause of war. So just destroy nationalism and war in Europe would never happen again. But human beings are tribal and territorial, Pablo,
and nothing you can do will ever change that. If you knew anything about history, you might have noted that democratic countries never go to war with each other. So democracy is more a factor in European peace than nationalism. And, you want to destroy direct democracy and "populism" in Europe by having an indirectly elected bunch of overpaid ideologue rulers in Brussels, making laws which suppress the wishes of the people that they are supposed to represent? You are on the wrong side of history, Pablo.

The present "migrant crisis" is exemplary in displaying how incompetent and out of touch the new European aristocracy is. What we are seeing in Europe, the USA, and Australia today, is the people taking back control of their countries from the lobbyists and activists who have pushed this accursed anti democratic political correctness ideology down our throats.

Hitler and Putin were democratically elected. Trump probably. Gillard was a dictator.