Australia's Outback: 'failed state'

One of the concepts you learn about in studying International Relations is the idea of something called a "Failed State". Basically it is what it sounds like - someplace that has stopped being a functioning civil society, in technical terms this usually means some blend of high poverty, high rates of crime/violence, and a poorly run (or non-existent) government that mismanages finances and resources. Usually failed states are associated with the places in the third world.

Or now, Australia.

That's the verdict of a group of prominent Australians who are now classifying the Outback - the huge, sparsely populated desert that covers much of inland Australia - as a failed state. They blame decades of Australian governments for mismanaging the vast area, and say that poor planning and lack of investment has caused to the infrastructure to crumble and many communities to become ghost towns as people pack up and head to the major cities along Australia's coast. The result, according to a report published by the Centre for Social Impact, is that much of the Outback is turning into "a largely unsettled wilderness."

The big problem for Australia is that about two-thirds of the country's mineral wealth is located in the Outback (including deposits of rare and valuable minerals like gold, diamonds and uranium), so if the region becomes abandoned, it would mean getting at that wealth would become much more difficult if not impossible, and that of course would be a real blow to Australia’s economy. The report even suggests that it could become a security problem for the country, raising the possibility that a foreign power could conceivably try to invade a portion of the Outback to get at the resources they contain on the basis that Australia had abandoned its claim to the area.