Gross Südland

"What you have to understand," I told an old friend as we sat in a waterside cafe in Sydney drinking wine, "is that the Greeks just don't pay their taxes."

"You mean they don't like paying tax.  Who does?"

"No.  They just don't pay them.  Anyone who pays tax is stupid.  At a barbecue you'd boast about how little the government got from you last year."

"But, but you have to pay tax.  You just have to.  I don't understand.  If you don't pay them then nothing works."

When back in Australia a few months ago I had this exact conversation - my take on the Euro crisis - again and again.  Whenever the discussion got to the Greek's diffidence to tax the reaction of my family and friends was the same: disbelief and barely suppressed outrage at a nation blithely refusing to pay its own way.

In Europe only my German friends react this way.  It occurred to me that this is no coincidence because: -

Of all the countries in Europe, including Britain, the country with which Australia most shares an outlook is modern Germany.

We may speak the same language, play the same sport and share a similar sense of humour to the Brits but our wider attitudes are increasingly Germanic.  We work hard and expect other to do likewise.  Driving on either the autobahn or its Australian equivalent there is an understanding that if the law is sensible it will be obeyed.  In a world of Keynesian pump-primers, both countries are run by deficit hawks who are paranoid about inflation above all other economic woes, although Australia's scars from the 1980's are nothing next to the rise of Nazism.

Although we play English sports we approach them with a German attitude.  Cricket is a game to be won not merely played.  Ditto rugby.  Our reaction to the Olympic team returning gold-less from the 1976 games (for the only time in our history) was to found the oh-so scientific Australian Institute of Sport.  We then staffed it with German coaches.  The backhanded English compliment "the Australian approach to sport" is essentially analogous with "the German approach to business": methodical, hard-working and intolerant of failure. 

Australia and Germany each struggle to reconcile the sensibilities of the dominant culture with the needed changes brought about by Islamic immigration.  The word 'genocide' appears in both histories, albeit unfairly in Australia's case.  The merest whiff of racism is rightfully exposed and condemned from all sides.  We are the only G20 nations where the Green movement has serious traction.  We see ourselves as the 'grown-up' country in our region so of course each pay our taxes, grudgingly perhaps but always in full.

We each drink lots of beer.  Not as much as Ireland or the Czech Republic but we both make the Top Five per capita consumption.  Then again, it's only beer, surely the most benign of alcoholic beverages.

I find working with Germans a far easier proposition than with the French, who intellectualise everything, or even the English, where every comment needs to be run through a decoder.  And Germans do have a sense of humour, however, it only appears after you've proven that you're not going to waste anyone's time.

When the comparison first occurred to me I was horrified and this theory still horrifies my Australian friends.  But if we have to resemble anyone then why not a country embarked on an ongoing project of national reinvention built on hard work and innovation without resorting to callous American inequality?  So sing it with me: -

Australien uber alles...