Why Australia is a great place to create wealth

Sometimes, it takes leaving home to realise just how good you had it.

After spending the past five years living overseas - swapping Sydney beaches for Saskatchewan snowstorms - I’ve gained a fresh appreciation for what Australia provides its people.

As 2025 winds down, the tinsel comes out, and everyone thinks about their New Year's resolutions, it feels like a good time to say it out loud:

Australia is an incredibly good place to invest and make a good living.

Not because it’s perfect - no country is - but because so many of the big pieces quietly fall into place for you. From the outside, these advantages are easy to miss. From overseas, they’re impossible to ignore. Here are three that stand out.

1) The gift you don’t unwrap till later: compulsory super

Australians love to complain about super. Too complex. Too inaccessible. Too far away.

But living in Canada (and spending time in the US) has shown me that what Paul Keating did in 1992 wasn’t just an economic reform - it was a living standards miracle.

In North America, retirement planning relies on a confusing alphabet soup of schemes. Many people only start thinking seriously about it in their 40s or 50s - and by then, the clock is loud and unforgiving.

But in Australia, even if you’ve never logged into your super account, you’ve been saving around 12% of your earnings your entire working life.

UniSuper data shows Australians typically have super balances of around $300,000–$400,000 by age 60, versus roughly $100,000–$150,000 in local currency for Canadians and Americans, based on official statistics.

It works so well, in fact, that even Donald Trump recently praised Australia’s super system as "a good plan" and a scheme worth copying. That’s not a sentence I ever expected to write.

P.S. If you're going to make one New Year's financial resolution, please review your super!  Check your balance, the fees, returns and insurance, and think about sacrificing more - future you will thank you. I cover this in more detail below.

Education

3 changes that helped my super grow faster

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2) A strong safety net

Wealth isn’t built in spreadsheets alone. I can’t emphasise this enough: nitpicking the difference between an 8.0% and 8.2% return is meaningless if you don’t have the basics in place - including a baseline level of economic security.

In Australia, sick leave, compassionate leave, redundancy protections and Medicare aren’t “nice to haves”. 

They’re the social safety net many of us take for granted. They mean a bad year doesn’t automatically become a financial disaster.

In America, an employer doesn't have to give you any paid annual leave - none - while in Canada, sick days are a perk - not law.

It's not uncommon in North America to take out high-interest loans or max out credit cards due to sickness. Others remain stuck in jobs they hate because losing employer-provided health insurance can mean losing access to affordable care. That kind of financial stress makes it incredibly hard to save, invest, or plan for the future for many.

Australia’s system isn’t flawless - but it gives you room to breathe. And crucially, it means you shouldn’t have to dump your entire portfolio just to pay a medical bill.

3) The most underrated advantage: the 'fair go'

The biggest gift Australia gave me and countless generations of immigrants... was opportunity.

I still remember my first job interview as a business reporter. My resume was thin. My experience was limited. But the hiring editor picked me, and I asked, "Why?"

“You showed more enthusiasm than anyone else, so I wanted to give you a fair go," she told me.

Unlike many business cultures around the world, we take an unusual approach of judging someone’s ability to do a job by their experience and attitude - not by whether they went to Monash University versus TAFE. In many other countries, post-secondary credentials and institutional prestige often carry more weight than character and capability.

That fair go is the invisible engine behind so many Australian wealth stories. It’s what allows people to climb the wealth ladder.

Just yesterday, on my way to a wedding, my Uber driver told me how his family lost everything. His father ran a successful bearing manufacturing business in India. Then, Chinese exports flooded the market. The business went under. Factories were shuttered. Their home - used as collateral - was seized. His parents could barely afford to rent.

The driver and his wife came to Australia to redeem what his family lost. They worked relentlessly - multiple jobs, long hours, little margin for error. His wife became a NSW teacher. And between daily living costs, they saved enough to buy his parents a new home. At one point, he said something that stuck with me:

“In many places, if you want to work hard, the work isn’t there... but in Australia, if you want to work hard, the work is there.”

I’ve seen this story play out again and again.

• The Italian housekeeper who became a climate scientist for the Queensland Government.
• The Serbian parents who watched their son rise to a senior executive role at a state utility.
• The car mechanic who became head of the private client team at a major bank.

These aren’t just feel-good stories. They’re examples of economic opportunity in action.

Stable, well-paid work creates the foundation people need to save, invest, and take calculated risks to build a better life.

Because without economic opportunity, there is no portfolio.

A Christmas reminder

For all its imperfections, Australia remains a country rich in economic opportunity. If you’re willing to work hard, stay curious and back yourself, the system generally gives you the chance to find your feet - and then build from there.

This Christmas, I’m grateful for the opportunities Australia provides - beyond its natural beauty and warm weather. I hope the break gives you a moment to appreciate them too, and perhaps the space to set a few New Year’s resolutions around investing and personal finances.

On behalf of everyone at Livewire, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy start to the New Year!

Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, Canada...