But here in the US, the taxes are ADDED to the final price from Apple, so for example, here where I live the sales tax is 5.3%, making a $1500 machine be $1579.50. GST and VAT are, I believe, not added on at sale, but included in the sale price. Using your example of AUD$1452.00 for the price, adding GST makes it AUD$1597.20. Now there is a difference of AUD$100 between that and the AUD$1699 you quoted, but that's a lot less than the AUD$247. The difference could be import tax in addition to GST. According to one online duty calculator, Australia adds AUD$50 to any import valued at AUD$1,000 to AUD$10,000. So that makes the difference even smaller.
I'm not defending Apple's pricing, it certainly makes a metric crap-ton of money every year, but the pricing for products is remarkably consistent world wide, at least based on where I've seen it and been able to consider the factors.