Once the China but with high quality location for video game manufacture, the australian games indsutry has really hit some lows with many studio closures and thousands losing there jobs because of the dollar being so strong against the USD. But while the ios/mobile development is growing it appears that they may be getting support from the government. The government of australia is going to change its legistation for Research and Development tax credit which is designed to help australians invest in companies focused on R&D. Basically its 45% refundable tax offset, and our local games developers assoication is working closely with the government for including games development with all the production work such as writing new code, doing new animation etc which games studios do to create games, that all comes under R&D.
This is only for small-medium business's that earn less than 20 million dollars but contact work is also included. Combine this with the local universities (that are Asian leaders in education) are pumping out 100s of games developers students this is great news and if passed would create rise to alot of small studios poping up and able to score contacts with Major publishers to produce games.
This could be great news if passed.
read more at:
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/06/how-a-tax-bill-could-kickstart-the-aussie-games-industry/
Of Course That's Just My Opinion, I Could Be Wrong