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In a series the Ministry of Foreign Affairs likes to present foreign nations to the Norwegian public. After having dealt with Finland in our previous episode of the series, it is now time for - up to very recently - our guests: Australia
Society
The society of Australia is made up by about 500 users which renders that nation 2.5 times bigger than Norway. Considering party polictics Australia seems to be more active compared to Norway. In the recent weeks some articles were released considering the Congress elections which have been covered in the ambassador report.
The Great Barrier Reef

Fiscal System
Except for houses all taxes have been set to 1% which renders Australia one of the countries with the lowest taxes of the world. This is probably due to the fact that Australia experiences wipes for longer periods and does not want to generate additional income to the occupying nations.


We contacted the current Australian President infowar and asked him some questions about the relations between Norway, Asgard and Australia.


You are the CP of Australia, could you introduce yourself with a few words to the Norwegian citizen?
I am Infowar! I am a RL Australian guy from Sydney. I love Australia a lot, I have been to many countries and lived in other countries, but I still think that Australia is probably one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

There are many jokes about how everything was either upside-down or poisonous in Australia. How is the Australian reception of these jokes? Do you laugh at them, are you annoyed by them or do you simply ignore them?
Australian people are generally very easy going, we generally have a great sense of humor. If someone is laughing at us, we are the type of people to laugh with them about it, if they are mocking us, we would probably mock ourselves with them and laugh about it, that's how Aussies are... We don't usually take things too seriously and we have a great sense of humour.

You know Asgard and Norway and you do know Australia. What are the big differences between our communities and where do you see similarities?
To be honest I can't really think of any big differences between ourselves and Asgard. At the end of the day we are all fighting for the same cause. I guess the only difference I could think of would be that Asgard countries have managed to work as a whole in a brotherhood regional alliance for a very long time, that is something very unique in which eAustralia has not had the opportunity to experience. But as for similarities, we both have had a long close history with eCanada, we all seem to get along quite well, and we all like each other a lot, and we are all around the same size in terms of active players, so when we fight for each other, we know that it really counts.

In recent months we saw a steady strengthening of relations between Australia and the Asgard Nations. Has there been any opposition to these relations in Australia?[/i]
There has been no opposition to this whatsoever. Quite the contrary actually. We have embraced our strengthening relations with Asgard, and the Australian community has received Asgard with open arms. In fact priority for DOs and battles are usually given to Norway and Sweden.

Australia is a country which is more or less perma-wiped by Chile, Indonesia and the FYROM. In your campaign you promised not to talk with them about NAPs. How does that situation affect the Australian community and have you ever thought of letting allies of Australia air-strike the occupied Australian core-territories?
Well, to answer your question. FYROM were considering discussing an NAP with us. We have a lot of Greek friends who have helped us make a lot of trouble for them, and I guess that part of the reason why I was not for it was because they would expect us to turn our backs on our Greek brothers. We have a long history with Greece, and they have always welcomed us. When we were without alliance after the collapse of TWO eGreece were one of the first countries to support us. Also if it wasn't for Greece we would have not had a congress the past two terms. Also they like us a lot, and we like them a lot. So doing a deal with FYROM is not something that I am in favour of. Another problem with NAPs is that you don't really have any real wars anymore, you are just fighting for TP damage, and there is no thrill in making life difficult for your enemies because the NAP restricts you...

We have considered allies airstriking us. In fact Slovenia and Greece made attempt a few weeks ago, sadly the Airstrikes failed and they were overcome by Aurora as there hadn't been adequate Asteria/LETO help organized at that time.. But it looks like the Argentinian one will succeed. But that will probably only result in getting FYROM, as soon as Argentina leaves, Chile and Indonesia will just wipe us again like they always do..

We are in a position where we know what it's like to be wiped for months and months on end. Chile had wiped us during two for almost a year straight. Prior to that they had wiped us for many months several times before over and over... We have been wiped for most of our eRep history... Chile had totally ignored us when we tried to discuss an NAP with them during those months. More than half of our players have since left the game because of Chile wiping us for so long... We have lost a lot of good players because of them...

Our best hope would be for strong allies to occupy the majority of our regions rent free, to protect us from aurora. Then aurora would think twice before Airstriking and wiping us again... I have learned that this would be the best solution..
Landscape in Victoria

Australia lost its rented 'back-up' region in Saudi-Arabia due to a resistance war. How did you come to the idea of renting regions in Fennoscandia, a territory at the other end of the world?
The Saudi region was given to us by the Greeks. Sadly, pacifica were looking for a reason to smite LETO, and chose to attack our region there the day before I was elected as CP..

I really felt that I had to act quickly to secure us another region. We were supposed to rent two regions from North Korea. That would require China to help release the regions and permission from NK. The deal had been ready to go, but when it came time to release the regions, the inactive Chinese CP at the time didn't release those regions, and the MoFA denied knowing anything about the deal even though he was at the meeting.. It was also difficult to get in touch with the North Korean CP. Just was a big let-down.

So we started to look for other possibilities. Norway had said that we could rent one or two regions from them, so at the time I thought that Norway was the best option.

We had only air-striked Finland because we were unable to air-strike Norway because we had an MPP with them and same with Sweden. It is forbidden in the eRep game mechanics to attack an ally, and we did not have an MPP with Finland which is why we ended up air-striking there. Finland had promptly approved it for us in their senate, which was very kind of them. They had also offered us to rent Aland.. But sadly we had too many RWs to fight against, and it became overbearing and we failed to reach Aland due to players fighting against us, most of which were our own allies sadly.. We also had a big disadvantage, that is our MPP stack is limited because we were attacking Norway and Finland, we are unable to share any of the same MPPs during this campaign. If one country attacks a country who shares a same MPP, the attacking country loses the MPP.. So every battle was a real struggle for us..

How do you think did the renting deal between Australia and Asgard affect the relations between our countries?
If I knew what I know now, I don't know if I would have went ahead with it. I never knew how hard it would be. I never expected such heavy resistance. I never expected that winning these wars would be so difficult. These wars have really consumed me and taken a lot out of me..

In a way I am glad to get out of Finland, they had a lot of good players helping us, but they also had some players giving us a real hard time and making us feel unwelcome. But their CP is a great guy, he did his best to help us and I won't forget that..

I just hope that this project hasn't affected our relationship with Finland in a negative way.. As for Sweden, I don't see us having any negative results with them from this campaign so far, and their players have been great to us.. Norway, the Norwegian community has generally been very kind and supportive of Australia during this campaign. I hope that our presence does not affect our relations in a negative way.. But at this point anything could happen, it won't be easy for us to stay for long anyway I think..

If you had a wish concerning Australia, Finland, Norway and Sweden and the relations between our nations, what would it be?
Whatever the outcome is from this campaign, my wish would be to continue to work with Asgard on future projects and to continue to build up our relationship. I think we have already proven that we are capable of working together on a more intimate level.

Is there anything you would like to add or tell the Norwegian Audience?
I just want to tell Norwegian community thanks so much for your support during this campaign! You know that we will be there for you guys when the time comes 🙂


Infowar, I would like to thank you for taking the time giving us these detailed and honest answers on behalf of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was fun having you guys up here and I hope that you find a home somewhere in this world, whether it be here on top of the world or whether it be down under. May the friendship between our nations ever prosper.

Directorate of Embassies
Ministry of Foreign Affairs