Australia was not established as a nation-building project. It was established as an extraction platform. The British did not colonize Australia to build a civilization. They colonized it to extract l; first convict labor, then wool, then gold, then minerals, then gas. The political architecture was built around that extraction logic from day one, and it has never been restructured away from it. You assume the state exists to serve the population, and therefore bad outcomes must mean the state is being run poorly. Australia is not a sovereign state that happens to have a mining sector. It is a private sector extraction platform that happens to have citizens. Every Australian who “owns” a home is servicing a debt instrument that enriches the FIC. The minerals get dug up by foreign-owned multinationals. The profits get distributed to global shareholders. The taxation office is structured; by design, through decades of lobbying, to ensure the extraction proceeds leave the country with minimal sovereign capture. The politicians are doing exactly what the structure requires of them: absorbing public anger, rotating every few years to reset the pressure valve. Australia is not mismanaged. Australia is managed perfectly, just not for Australians.