Met a mine owner from Australia on a plane long ago. I said, well, we have the same basic language and I presume the same culture. He looked at me and said you are naive...australia is becoming more socialist by the day. For example, did you know we pay a higher salary when people are on vacation then when they are working. I asked why and he said because the state feels one spends more while on vacation then while working.
Not long on me is this asshat’s comment about Australia not having a bill of rights. He sees that as a good thing because the supreme law of the land does not interfer with whatever the benevolent government lackeys deign to let the populace do without constraints.
Australia was on a crash course to Socialism for a good long time. However they had a break from that under John Howard who was PM for 11 (96-07) years and did a lot of work to wrench that country back towards the Right. Now granted, they are probably still more statist than I like (socialized medicine exists), but they are much better than they were.
The amount of economic success he had was such that the Socialists that have followed him have been timid about undoing his work.