AHC:Australia one of the worst places to live in the world.

With a POD of 1901 (Australian Nationhood), make Australia in 2019 the worst place in the world to live. Either OTL North Korea-esque or (preferably) OTL Somalia-esque.

Rules:
1) No more than 10 times the nukes used in anger than OTL, and *none* of the nukes can detonate on Australia.
2) An area at least the size of Spanish speaking South America must have Political and Economic conditions as good as Spanish speaking South America iOTL (but doesn't have to be in South America)
3) Australia can come apart into multiple nations, but the area referred to as the worst in the world must include the States of New South Wales and Victoria.

Bonus Points for having New Zealand still being one of the best places to live.
 
Does it have to be exactly 1901 or can it be later? I was thinking as such: the Japanese turn their attention to Australia, and at the end of the war, the Soviets liberate it or at least send revolutionaries, backing them the way they did the CCP.

Australia goes red, and the people who opposed Red Oz go to New Zealand. Australia becomes a communist military dictatorship, and life is just as shitty as it is in most Eastern bloc nations behind the Iron Curtain.

Then as the Soviet Union falls, any aid to Australia disappears, but instead of a peaceful transition to democracy, there’s a brutal civil war between those loyal to Red Oz and those who want literally anything else. No one will go near it, and Australia ends up as bad off as current Syria.
 
I'm tempted to make a joke about the wildlife, but that's beyond me. Depending on the timeline this may screw me out of history since my great-grandfather moved from Australia to NZ
 
It might not make Australia the worst place in the world, but I always thought a timeline where Australia becomes an extreme economic neo-liberal test in the 1970s (ultra-deregulated, basically Rogernomics/Reaganomics/Thatchernomics on steroids), while New Zealand re-elects a surviving Norman Kirk in 1975 (avoiding Robert Muldoon as PM) would make for interesting reading.

It's borderline asb however, because I strongly doubt the Australian electorate could fall for that level of free market reform in the 1970s.
 
I'm going to have to balk at that 1901 rule for a simple reason.

In my opinion, one of the reasons why Australia is so stable and peaceful compared to it's neighbours is that it was at first colonized by a culturally-singular racial group and then it was settled by the British Empire, the most powerful and economically stable empire at that point in history. Another factor that plays into Australian stability is that the Aboriginal tribes were not actual kingdoms or nations. This allowed the British to easily colonize the continent, without any worry of controlling native empires or nations. This has prevented Australia from having something like India's caste system or in fact, India's wide-ranging cultures. This allowed the future Australia to have economic stability and cultural stability, since most white Australians in the early 1900s were Christians and the Aborigines were effectively pushed into minority status.

Not just that, but the British Empire mostly left the Australian colonies alone to run their own affairs, unless it involved military matters or foreign policy. (Each of the Australian colonies had to get the permission of British Parliament to form their own defence forces). if Australians did revolt, it was against the authorities appointed by the British, not the British themselves. Just look at the Eureka Rebellion and the Rum Rebellion.

I don't want to say this made Australia destined to be successful, but it's a important element to consider. So, if you want to turn Australia into a hellhole, I would suggest the country being colonized by multiple countries, most likely ones who had a terrible record of governing their colonies (looking at you, Spain). Just look at how Spain governed Latin America before it's wars of independence. Spain's governorship of the colonies created strong racial and national divisions that prevented them from coming together to form a stable and long-lasting Gran Colombia. I'm not saying early Australia's treatment of Aborigines was good (New Zealand didn't want to be part of us for that very reason), but it could've been far worse.

Another alternative POD I can think of is for many primitive cultures, not just Melanesia/Papuan-descendant Aborigines, to colonize Australia. Opposing cultures could force the Aborigines into forming their own nations or kingdoms, to fight against common enemies. This would have a domino effect across the continent, with the other primitive cultures forming their own kingdoms or nations. This could make the European effort to colonize Australia more difficult and force them to engage in diplomacy, which could slow the rate of European colonization, potentially making white Europeans the minority and Aborigines the majority. This could force Australia to wind up like South Africa, with a majority-black government ruling over a minority white populace, against which there is the occasional hate crime and the occasional government-backed land grab.

(I am not pushing the white South African genocide nonsense. Farm attacks in South Africa are part of a wider crime problem and are not limited to whites)
 
I agree with the above, it's kinda difficult to make Australia terrible. Vast resources, a single culture that settled it, one that allowed for a lot of self government and created the seeds for the worlds most successful countries.
 
I agree with the above, it's kinda difficult to make Australia terrible. Vast resources, a single culture that settled it, one that allowed for a lot of self government and created the seeds for the worlds most successful countries.

On the other hand, clock spiders.
 
backing them the way they did the CCP.

I believe international communism briefly flirted with a tenant farmer strategy for New Zealand. Not so for Australia. For more information read Noel Butlin on how Australia's agricultural sector has always been industrial-capital.

Australia becomes a communist military dictatorship

There's a problem in the room that didn't resolve itself until the late 1990s, and that problem is the ALP. If you don't understand why this is a problem for sole CPA rule, you really ought not to be commenting here. The brief CPA/ALP war alliance broke down by 1947. The only way the CPA is going to shoot the moon is through electoral alliance with the ALP. (Please note: the CPA, despite working class members, was a bourgeois electoral conspiracist organisation. An IWW communist australia through trades hall reds alliance is more credible than a Communist australia.)

because I strongly doubt the Australian electorate could fall for that level of free market reform in the 1970s.

Nah, it took the CPA, ALP and ACTU 10 years to sell them on the accord.


* * *

IWW/OBU proves more resilliant. Monash pulls all the stops, white army activates. Makes Melboring's police strike look like a butter churn. Horthy's Australia in 1924. Ming PM: the only competent administrator in parliament. Below A/C-Series awards. Awards turned on their head as wage regulators. Commune uprising in Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong 1932. Melbourne 1933. Brisvegas 1934. The "1930s" generation of lefts are liquidated one at a time by the White Army. War goes worse: no ALP to pull the brand out of the fire. No ALP to bend the knee and open the mouth to the Yanks. Divisions lost in North Africa, Singapore, Papua, Borneo. South African academics write about the racial and democracy problem in Australia. Monash's successor is incompetent. Australia tries to pay its war debts. No reffos, Hydro, new Australians: no "manufacturing industry". No minerals boom. Failed uprisings 1954, 1966, 1972. US "Assistance." Wheat infection (poor biosecurity, incompetent administration). Velvet revolution by young liberal Army officers crushed in early 1980s.

That should get you a productivity and GDP lower than 1924 with a larger population by natural increase (no birth control industrial labour flop to low family size).

Bottom 3rd of the world fascist basket case import dependent failed resource exporter. Only the depths of incompetence of Australia's far right administrators could really give you this outcome. Labor, the unions and the CPA were meritocratic.

yours,
Sam R.
 
I think one way you could do it is to have a much nastier Pacific War where you get huge waves of Indonesian and New Guinean refugees very reluctantly accepted by White Australia (or where that’s the terms of the treaty made with the Japanese). Then after the war, the independent governments disavow the emigrants as traitors (US forces decolonization outright) and leave them stateless. You then get a sort of District 9 environment with a very hostile society but huge numbers of these displaced folks.

It’s probably fairly close to ASB.
 
The Emu's counter attack, after a brutal outback war the drop bears, wombats and roos ally with the Emu's and take the East Coast.
 
I believe international communism briefly flirted with a tenant farmer strategy for New Zealand. Not so for Australia. For more information read Noel Butlin on how Australia's agricultural sector has always been industrial-capital.



There's a problem in the room that didn't resolve itself until the late 1990s, and that problem is the ALP. If you don't understand why this is a problem for sole CPA rule, you really ought not to be commenting here. The brief CPA/ALP war alliance broke down by 1947. The only way the CPA is going to shoot the moon is through electoral alliance with the ALP. (Please note: the CPA, despite working class members, was a bourgeois electoral conspiracist organisation. An IWW communist australia through trades hall reds alliance is more credible than a Communist australia.)



Nah, it took the CPA, ALP and ACTU 10 years to sell them on the accord.


* * *

IWW/OBU proves more resilliant. Monash pulls all the stops, white army activates. Makes Melboring's police strike look like a butter churn. Horthy's Australia in 1924. Ming PM: the only competent administrator in parliament. Below A/C-Series awards. Awards turned on their head as wage regulators. Commune uprising in Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong 1932. Melbourne 1933. Brisvegas 1934. The "1930s" generation of lefts are liquidated one at a time by the White Army. War goes worse: no ALP to pull the brand out of the fire. No ALP to bend the knee and open the mouth to the Yanks. Divisions lost in North Africa, Singapore, Papua, Borneo. South African academics write about the racial and democracy problem in Australia. Monash's successor is incompetent. Australia tries to pay its war debts. No reffos, Hydro, new Australians: no "manufacturing industry". No minerals boom. Failed uprisings 1954, 1966, 1972. US "Assistance." Wheat infection (poor biosecurity, incompetent administration). Velvet revolution by young liberal Army officers crushed in early 1980s.

That should get you a productivity and GDP lower than 1924 with a larger population by natural increase (no birth control industrial labour flop to low family size).

Bottom 3rd of the world fascist basket case import dependent failed resource exporter. Only the depths of incompetence of Australia's far right administrators could really give you this outcome. Labor, the unions and the CPA were meritocratic.

yours,
Sam R.
Would IWW rule be worse than communist rule?
 
Something starts killing sheep.
Something stops killing rabbits.

Money spinners like mining only happen if these is an agricultural sector bringing money and people into the country.

Wipe out the agricultural sector through disease and environmental degradation and how else is Australia going to make money? No tourism yet. No finance industry yet. No education sector yet.

Less money, less immigration. More chance of a South American style monied elite. More chance of creative coups. Vicious downward circle results.


OTOH Keating had some choice words about the future of the country in the 80s.
 
Would IWW rule be worse than communist rule?

The IWW and trades hall reds were the very very early CPA. Which is to say any chance of socialisation or communisation in the 20th century will be reliant on labour and or Labor lefts. Which would be very different from existing historical models. Closer to Don Dunstan’s south Australia or Nick Origlas’ Balmain.

But obviously the IWW communist movement is less cranky than the Sharkey era communist movement. Otoh Australian communism in the early 1970s was dynamic and multitendential. It’d just end up in free helicopter rides. Or some drunk improperly failing to consult the prime minister before using reserve powers in an uncustomary manner.
 
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