I finish dumping on one "Aussie in Hong Kong" article that whinges about Australia's place in the world when I stumble across another. What is going on at the moment that all these complaining Aussies are coming to Hong Kong so they can appear to have a better view of all that ails the lucky country? It's always tricky getting fired up twice in a day to deal with silly articles but I'm going to try.

The only general news story about Australia to feature in The South China Morning Post on Monday concerned the attempt to scale back the skimpy bar girls in Kalgoorlie.

Ah yes, don't you love the image Australia projects to the world - a bunch of boorish, sexist miners in the desert leering at semi-naked young women between shifts working for largely foreign-owned mining giants?

And what other messages have been coming out of Australia of late? Our PM is a boring, small-minded, sport-obsessed, Monarchist, yankophile, divisive, dog-whistle racist. The leader of the Opposition is foul-mouthed thug who has broken the arm of a taxi-driver and just succeeded a grey union troglodyte as the alternative national leader. And the leader of the Democrats is a drunk who man-handles women in the Senate. The country's clearly in good hands.

Travelling overseas just highlights everthing that Australia is not. Crikey's best mate lives in the central Hong Kong suburb of Causeway Bay, the most densely populated square kilometre in the world.

If 6.7 million people can live on this vibrant little Island (including Kowloon), why the hell can't Australia cope with 50 million and actually become relevant on the world stage at something apart from sport? And don't give us this water argument? The whole of the north has too much water.

The bridal party for this wedding is an interesting snapshot of globalisation, multiculturalism, Australia's place in the world and the generational differences which John Howard and Mark Latham each represent. The bride and groom each have one sibling and two high school friends in the wedding party.

The bride and her bridesmaids at this wedding who are all very outward looking, educated Hong Kong Chinese. One works for the world's biggest advertising agency and is about to marry an Aussie and probably move to Beijing, another was educated in Australia and is about to go and work in New York for a financial information giant, another is a pharmacist and the sibling bridesmaid is about to move to Singapore with another multi-national.

The blokes are all non-practising WASPS (Australia's arguably has less religious baggage than any other country) from Melbourne's comfortable eastern suburbs. We're all private schools boys, university educated, working professionals and on good money, save for Crikey who is self-employed, asset poor and owes 20k on the credit cards.

And what has happened to the careers of these lads? One works for a giant American consumer goods company, another was schooled by Nike and works for Australia's largest importer from China and another works in Hong Kong for a London-based global advertising giant and is about to move to Beijing. Crikey, of course, runs the quintessential information age business - a web operation based at home with the wife and kids in suburban Melbourne.

So did any of the blokes in this bridal party have the opportunity to work for an Australian-based multinational? Not really, because as a nation we ain't produced many of them? Instead, we have a load of cartels, a service-sector oligopoly with way too much power, close to the highest level of foreign ownership in the developed world and the reality that to seriously get ahead many Australians have to leave for more dynamic and relevant places like Hong Kong or work for foreign companies.

The groom and his two groomsmen school mates have married "Catholic foreigners" - one Hong-Kong Chinese, one Indonesian-Australian and one Irish-Italian (Mrs Crikey) - although this is largely irrelevant to all of us.

These sorts of marriage patterns and career paths would never have happened in our parents' generation - the conservative generation which loves John Howard and will prove to be Mark Latham's biggest obstacle.

However, the 30-something, Aussie blokes in this bridal party are all very excited about what Latham potentially has to offer - mainly because he's an alternative to little Johnny Howard and has a vision of individuals and Australia as a country "getting stuck in" and climbing "the ladder of opportunity" .

Sitting up here in Hong Kong, where the top personal income tax rate is just 15 per cent, you do reflect that Crikey could be run from anywhere in the world. In logical terms, Crikey should never be "based" in Australia where the working poor are getting slugged like never before to prop up the subsided and conservative, Howard-voting, retired, asset-rich, low-tax, 60-plus generation who don't like multiculturalism or globalisation. They may enjoy some of the benefits of mobile capital, but they don't like the idea that labour could be mobile also and Australia should open its door to millions more "foreigners".

The phrase intergenerational tension has been flying around lately and the ascension of Latham will bring much of this to a head. The young will vote for him but the subsidised oldies won't. Latham has previously talked about cutting the top personal tax rate which is the most punitive regime in the world. He should make the oldies pay more tax as part of this change as they won't vote for him anyway. Crikey met a bloke on the tram yesterday who sent his son to the University of NSW for an accounting degree but then brought him straight back to work in Hong Kong because the tax rates in Australia are so ridiculously high.

So what is making news in Hong Kong at the moment? Well, this tiny Island state's foreign reserves rose $US1.7 billion to $US114 billion in October giving it the fifth highest pile of cash in the world after Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea. As the poor white trash of Asia we've only got $US30 billion stashed at the Reserve Bank because the Howard government keeps raiding it to claim phoney budget surpluses which wouldn't exist at all if we built up our foreign reserves to Asian levels and also properly funded our $85 billion and rapidly growing unfunded superannuation hole for current and former federal public servants. Crikey remains gob-smacked that Federal unfunded super can blow out by $13 billion over the course of the Howard government and they have the gall to claim surpluses when this would be illegal if done by any publically listed company.

With more than 30 per cent of Australians on welfare and more than 50 per cent of Australians now requiring support or heavy subsidies from us "highly taxed working poor", someone like Mark Latham has it all in front him.

Firstly, he's got to win over one of the most union-dominated "non-right" mainstream political parties in the world and then he's got to win an election and then he's got to get a visionary reform agenda through a perenially hostile senate.

He probably won't succeed so sport can resume its place as the major barbecue stopper in Australia - the nation which doesn't count for much on the world stage and is famous for things like strippers in mining towns and celebrity crocodile hunters.