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“Despite this decrease, Australians still have a higher life expectancy than many comparable countries, like New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Canada,” Ms Cho said.

The latest comparable data from overseas showed only Japanese (84.1 years), Swiss (83.7 years) and Koreans (83.6 years) lived longer than Australians, who shared the same life expectancy as Spaniards (83.2).

Sweden, Luxembourg, Israel, Italy and Ireland rounded out the top 10.