Brian McNair: Lop-sided view of Down Under

• Bright prospects: Spectators gather on the shores of Sydney Harbour ahead of a fireworks display Picture: Getty

So Australia is the new Iceland, suggests the First Minister in search of a business model for Scotland after the conspicuous failure of his Nordic arc of prosperity. Crikey, as they might well say down here, followed perhaps by "what did we do to deserve the honour?" National bankruptcy, volcanoes erupting all over the place, lesbian feminist prime ministers? That's bloody feral, mate!

The land of pickled puffin and Bjork does indeed have a lesbian feminist prime minister, which may be seen as one of the few positives to have come out of the country's economic and political meltdown. A lot of Aussies would baulk at that, though, given that they find the idea of current Labour prime minister Julie Gillard hard enough to swallow. "Deliberately childless" went the pre-election slanging; radically feminist, possibly lesbian, not a proper Sheila was the implication, even though she is in a long-term relationship with a bloke. A hairdresser, as it happens.

But seriously, is the Great South Land a good example for Scotland as it faces a difficult economic future? Leaving aside the fact that it is four times bigger in population, and about fifty times Scotland's land mass, can we take lessons from the Aussies on how to run a country? Does the Australian experience strengthen the independence case?

Alex Salmond praised Australia for avoiding the worst effects of the credit crunch. For the first minister, that success shows that when a nation controls its own natural resources and the revenues they bring in, as opposed to having to share them with others, as the Scots must do with the English, Welsh and Northern Irish, it is better placed to withstand economic downturns.

While Bank of Scotland and RBS had to be bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of 70 billion, Australia's banks sailed serenely through the storm. In the last 18 months the Australian dollar soared against the pound, and Australians have continued to enjoy relative economic prosperity when compared not just with Scotland and the UK but the US and the EU.

Here in Australia, unemployment is about 5 per cent, as against 8 per cent in Scotland. The housing market is still rising in Australia, while it is stagnant or declining in the UK. As a percentage of GDP the Australian public spending deficit is much less than the UK's, and the budget is heading back to surplus by 2012. In Australia, annual pay rises are still common, while Brits are looking at freezes and cuts across the board.

It would be wrong to say that all is rosy in the Australian economic garden. They face the same looming demographic challenges as the Scots - people living longer, health care becoming more sophisticated and expensive, manufacturing industry being exported to the cheap labour economies of Asia. Whichever party or coalition eventually emerges as the government, Australia is entering a period of tighter public spending. In the university sector, where I work, the talk is of a "difficult" financial year ahead. But no-one seriously suggests we face anything like the austerity now being unleashed in the UK. The place still has the economic feel of Blair's Britain - expansionary, dynamic, technocratic.

It's true, as Mr Salmond says, that much of Australia's economic resilience in the face of the worst global capitalist crisis since the 1930s is a consequence of its vast resources of coal, gas and minerals. With its proximity to China and the Asian economies, Australia is sitting on a gold mine, literally and figuratively.

Not only does it have the resources, it has billions of consumers hungry for all it can supply, right on its doorstep. Assuming a further round of global economic turbulence doesn't tip China and India into recession, Australia can look forward to further commodities-based prosperity, as demand and price rises fuel a sustained mining boom.

One might be tempted to conclude, therefore, that an independent Scotland with the freedom to exploit its own natural resources would enjoy similar advantages. Except it wouldn't, and couldn't.

Our main exportable natural resources - oil and gas - are past their peak already, and even if there are big new finds still to come, we are talking decades rather than centuries before they are exhausted. There is quite a lot of coal still in the ground, yes, and new clean technologies make it more viable than was thought possible until very recently. But it is too little, too late, to bear serious comparison with the Australian case. Certainly too little to underpin independence.

More importantly, Australia's enviable economic position is due not just to the accident of its geology. Australian banks were prevented by legislation and sound management from indulging in the speculative risk-taking frenzy that brought down western institutions and effectively bankrupted those great institutions, RBS and Bank of Scotland.

Australia's financial sector was hit by the global loss of confidence, but nowhere near as hard as in the UK and US. Big Aussie banks had long made mortgages much more dependent on ability to pay, thus avoiding toxic sub-prime loans and capital funding problems on the scale that caused the US crisis.

Australia's government had to resort to fiscal stimulus and tax cuts, like the UK, but on a much lesser scale. Combined with the proceeds from its renewed mining boom, Australia's budget is forecast to be back in surplus by 2012. Australia also has a much smaller public sector than Scotland, averaging about 35 per cent of GDP between 2006 and 2008, as opposed to the UK's 45 per cent.

In short, Australia's economic success is a consequence of long-term economic and financial policies as much as the contingencies of the commodities market. They have natural resources, yes. But they've made choices on public spending and finance that shielded the Australian economy from the worst of the global crunch.

One is tempted to ask, all that being true, why the Australian voters chose to punish the government which had presided over this economic success story. Kevin Rudd and Labour were elected to power in 2007, after a lengthy period of Liberal domination. After a couple of good years, including the high profile "apology" in 2008 to the indigenous people who had been all but exterminated over the previous two centuries, it all went wrong. Rudd was increasingly unpopular as prime minister, and he chose to pick a fight on taxes with the big mining companies which drove the economy.

A few months ago the Australian Labour party did what New Labour shrunk away from doing and removed a sitting prime minister because of poor public opinion ratings. Rudd was replaced by Julie Gillard, who called an election in which her party lost its governing majority. So much for sound economic management and taking tough decisions on party leadership.

Party politics aside, what can Scotland learn from the Australian example? Not, surely, that economic nirvana could be secured if only we had the control of our oil and gas production which independence would allow. Natural resources are finite, and revenues subject to volatile markets. Commodity prices are rising this year. They have fallen in the past, and will again. No nation's future should be staked on fossil fuels, or any other non-renewable commodity.

We could, of course, choose to follow the Australian example and manage our banks better. We could cut long-term public spending to the Australian level. In fact, the Westminster government is already doing that. Given the lingering leftist tinge of Scottish political culture, would an independent government have the guts to follow? If not, look elsewhere than Australia for miracle cures to the Scottish malaise.

l Brian McNair is Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. He was, until recently, Professor of Journalism and Communication at the University of Strathclyde.