> I look at the USA, UK and EU and people seem to have given up trying to vote in a better government? They don't seem to care about importing more than exporting or government spending exceeding revenue as election issues worth voting on?

It's impossible for every country to be a net exporter so I don't see the issue on "care about importing more than exporting", exporting high-value added products and services while importing products/services lower in the value chain is how countries that aren't so lucky as Australia with immense natural wealth and low population get to be rich as well.

Many countries in the EU also have a balanced budget, it's a mixed bag, France overruns its revenue consistently, Germany had a debt brake and until the past few years consistently had surpluses, Sweden has quite low debt and a balanced budget, the Netherlands has a small deficit, so on and so forth. So it's entirely country-dependent instead of being a general EU issue.