Here’s a country buffeted by the Chinese economic slowdown, overly reliant on resource extraction and hostage to plummeting commodities prices.

Welcome to Australia, land of milk and honey, at least compared with Canada, the OECD country that most closely resembles it. Despite the liabilities above, which the Aussies share with Canada, Australia is on course this year to eclipse the Netherlands’ record of an unbroken 26 years of GDP growth.

Australia’s jobless rate is 5.7 per cent. Canada’s is 7.0 per cent. Average annual wages in Australia in 2015 were $64,680, to Canada’s $61,684. (All figures in Canadian dollars.)

Low-paid workers make up a smaller share of total employment in Australia than Canada, at 18.9 per cent and 21.8 per cent, respectively. The yawning gap in pay between men and women in Canada is 19.5 per cent. Australian women, by contrast, are paid just 13.8 less than men for work of the same value. (Mind you, the gold standard is New Zealand’s 5.9 per cent.)

By mature-economy standards, Australia has been booming, with annual GDP growth of 3.1 per cent for the fiscal year ending June 1, outperforming the U.S. and the European Union (EU). By contrast, Canada’s GDP growth over the first half of 2016 has been a pitiful increase of 0.8 per cent.

Australia and Canada each got through the Great Recession relatively unscathed, buoyed by continued resource exports to a still-booming China. But since the Chinese economic slowdown, Canada’s GDP growth has flat-lined, while Australian GDP growth is still robust.

Is Australia a model for future Canadian prosperity?

Yes, there is much to emulate.

But first we have to factor out those many things we already have in common. These include Medicare, above-average student performance, the fiscal prudence shown by Canberra and Ottawa over the past two decades, and our mutual striving to diversify away from over-reliance on resource extraction.

Canberra’s tough-love spending restraint beginning in the 1990s enabled Australia to spend more on stimulus per capita to cushion the blow from the Great Recession than any country but China. Ottawa was able to do the same, and for the same reason, having accumulated 11 consecutive budget surpluses ahead of the epic downturn, a record unmatched by any country.

Yet while Canada, Brazil, South Africa and Russia have taken a blow from the Chinese economic slowdown, Australia has managed to profit from a continued robust level of resource exports to China.

Australia’s decade-long boom in iron ore and thermal coal exports, mostly to China, boosted disposable household income by 13 per cent, and wages by 6 per cent, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the central bank.

More important, perhaps, is that the huge foreign investment in efficient, lower-cost Australian mining capacity has enabled Australia to make up in volume most of what it has lost in price. Australia’s decision to devalue its currency has been an additional stimulant to continued export strength.

Canada has also allowed a deep devaluation of the loonie. But the Aussies are making a more determined effort to exploit that competitive advantage.

Among Australia’s fastest-growing exports are education and tourism. The Aussies are also investing heavily in transforming the export sector into one that develops high-tech, value-added breakthroughs.

Australia is emerging as one of the world’s biggest education exporters. This $17.8-billion industry now ranks second to mining among Australia’s largest industries.

Australia’s first-rate colleges and universities can draw on the entire Pacific Rim, one of the world’s most heavily populated and increasingly affluent markets for international students. Enrolment of international students jumped 11 per cent last year alone.

Middle class Asian students seeking a higher education in English are coming to Australia in record numbers. Students see Australia as closer and cheaper than the old standbys of England and North America.

And tourism receipts, now a $3.7-billion industry for Australia, are up a whopping 31 per cent in the past two years alone. For Pac-Rim vacationers, Australia is relatively nearby, safe, relatively cheap yet exotic.

Australia’s tourism trade generates an impressive $4,589 per foreign tourist per stay. Canada, which still relies on daytrippers from the U.S. for tourism receipts, gets a mere $480 on average per international tourist.

Finally, Australia’s industrial renewal strategy calls for Victoria, the southeastern most state, to become an incubator of export-oriented startups developing commercialized breakthroughs in high-tech medicine, communications, transportation and other fields.

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Heavily industrialized Victoria, like Southern Ontario, has taken a hit from offshoring to lower-wage jurisdictions and a high-priced dollar that made its goods uncompetitive. Victoria was also overlooked by Canberra in favour of a Western Australia where the mining boom was underway.

Now, Canberra’s attention – and investment – is focused on high-tech startups in eastern Australia with potential for value-added exports. And international students are encouraged to spend four years in Australia, or embrace it as their adopted homeland. It’s hoped that this will provide Aussie startups with one of the world’s youngest, smartest and culturally diverse workforces.

Note that well-paid jobs in education and tourism are not easily off-shored. And start-ups, of course, create good jobs.

The cri de coeur of Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull is “We must be more innovative, competitive and productive if we’re to remain an affluent, high-wage country.”

That’s easily recognizable as the economic challenge for Canada, too.

In recent years, the big three foreign-based automakers in Australia, complaining of high labour costs, closed their plants.

Having balked at unreasonable demands for subsidies by the automakers, Canberra instead got to work leveraging the technological skills of one of the world’s oldest automaking jurisdictions. Many of the startups Australia has financed are based on the wide range of auto-related skills, from electrical engineering to advanced electric power systems.

That young effort has already spawned impressive new Aussie enterprises that are exporting high value-added goods and even setting up satellites elsewhere, including Silicon Valley.

Ontario’s auto sector is still an engine of the Canadian economy. But it too is a high-wage jurisdiction, entirely foreign owned, and vulnerable to the same abandonment dealt to Australia.

The Australian model of re-invigorated education and tourism sectors and high-tech incubators that create promising entrepreneurial startups is indeed relevant in shaping a substantive Canadian industrial policy.

Australia is still vulnerable to volatile commodity prices. The transformation to a more “knowledge-based” Aussie economy will require patience and persistence. And just as Canada is overly reliant on the U.S., Australia remains over-exposed to China, whom many fear is due for a housing and financial crash.

Yet Australia has taken control of its economic destiny as few countries have. And that alone should command our attention.

Correction - September 12, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly described Victoria as southwestern state in Australia.