I recently watched Blade Runner with my flatmate. Aside from being stunned by how beautiful its sweeping vistas remained, and less than impressed by its representation of women, I was struck by an aspect I had completely missed the first time I watched it.
The city of Los Angeles in Blade Runner is hollowed out. Everybody with the money or connections to do so has fled Earth for the outer planets, with its possibility for a better life. The only people left are the poor, the disabled, and those willing to wring out a living amidst the squalor. Due to the mass exodus, the remaining infrastructure has been left to rot around the remaining inhabitants. You can't really blame people for wanting out; Earth has become a waking nightmare. Their departure, however, has abandoned those remaining to a dismal existence.
As I watched the movie, I thought 'damn, off-world sounds just like Australia.'
I have the vague sense that most people in other countries would kill to live in New Zealand, but most New Zealanders are tripping over themselves trying to fuck off to Australia. It's no wonder why - you can double your salary and increase your chances of getting a job exponentially just by flying across the ditch. But the consequence is that the country is bleeding professionals at an alarming rate while doing fuck-all to keep them here.
The problem compounds itself; as doctors leave, for example, the load on the remaining doctors becomes greater, so more doctors leave. Any solution to stop people from leaving would involve paying them better or improving the country's public services, an idea which makes the neolibs in charge go apoplectic. So just like Blade Runner, Earth gets hollowed out as people flee offworld, leaving behind the people who can't escape.
I don't particularly like the idea of moving to Australia, but it's goddamn tempting. More jobs, more money, more everything. Another university-educated warm body skipping the ditch and leaving everybody else left to do the same with less.