Horus,

Eu tenho explicado já.

Qué séra sér.

Mas obrigado para plerdsus de ocupaçào.

Fair question plerdsus.

>>Do you see a world of sweetness and light, where the lion lies down with the lamb, etc.? Or do you see, as I do, a Hobbesian world where wars are fought to secure diminishing resources, when billions die as a result, and where we are very fortunate to be out of the way, in our own little region, and most of all, favoured by having a sea boundary.<<

Neither, actually.

The problem with your first idea is that it has never happened before in the history of the world, and will never occur in the future while human nature persists.

Your apocalyptic alternative has some merit, but contains one fatal flaw. We are by no means "out of the way", and would inevitably be sucked into any conflict of the nature you envisage. Especially when resources are involved.

No, my view is that we will toddle along, becoming gradually less important in the world - it was only ever reflected importance anyway, from the UK (up to 1945) and the US since then.

Our economy will gently slide in comparison with the rest of the world, making us an increasingly less attractive destination for refugees - as their country of origin becomes comparatively less disadvantaged, our attraction diminishes.

We won't be hard up. We'll make a living. But it will be increasingly dependent on service industries - particularly tourism - as we become an attractive backwater.

Nothing dramatic. Just business as usual, really. Which is why, when people go out of their way to antagonize our neighbours by slagging off their religion, or their lack of democratic principles, and generally behave as if we are something special, it raises our ugliness profile just a little, and unnecessarily. And if we become sufficiently ugly in someone's eyes, they might take a swipe at us. The question will then be - because we are totally ill equipped to defend ourselves, what with being girt by sea and all that - who will drop everything to help?

More law means more orders.

Clearly. Thats the point.

Yes, Pericles, Paul Keating's "banana republic" is coming this way.

Exactly, Jack the Lad. But what amazes me is that otherwise intelligent human beings are actually surprised by the fact that the world is in a constant state of change, geo-politically and socially speaking. Always has been, always will be.

As a kid, if we saw a toy with the words "Made in Germany" or "Made in Japan", we absolutely knew that these were of inferior quality and that was the reason they were cheap. We knew it, we accepted it. Later, we would understand how it had been necessary for these two post-war economies to build themselves up on the back of their most freely-available resource: people.

When in the sixties and seventies these countries became economic leaders, rather than followers, it was because they had had to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, after necessarily discarding any and all of the Prussian Junker or Crysanthemum Throne concepts of society. This gave them an advantage over countries whose wartime successes had not interrupted their concepts of ownership and privilege.

When I was older, Spain was little more than a tourist destination, where food and booze were cheap, and the natives simply a backdrop to our two weeks of hedonism. Today it is a serious economic and political force. Who knows, one day it might again be just a place to drink sangria and eat paella in the sun. It's just the way the world turns.

We in Australia have had a dream run, first on the sheep's back, now by exploiting our mineral wealth. When this dominance fades, so will our influence and, hopefully, our arrogance.

The overriding self-delusion is that it is our "Aussie culture" that has somehow been the mainspring of our success. In fact, we have survived and prospered in spite of, rather than because of, our overwhelming attitude towards hard work which is, inevitably, "I'd rather be surfing".

That is not, of course, to denigrate the efforts of the ten percent who actually do work hard. And yes, before you write in to protest, I know that you are one of the ten percent.