You ask number of questions here.
I would suggest that Australians have a generally very good financial literacy as evidenced by the number of self-managed super funds (SMSF) as a percentage of the population there are perhaps 10% of working aged adults involved in their own SMSF.
There are many options for investment, certainly property is one pushed heavily by a number of individuals in Oz who have made lots of money through property investing. I have written in another money.SE answer on the options you have for investing. All of these are promoted as options to the investment community.
To address your other question why Australia does not promote the big and global fund houses to introduce mutual fund schemes
- there is a large distrust in Australia for the larger investment houses and banks with some very high profile cases of inappropriate investment advice.
Further to this, there has been quite mediocre performance by the vast majority or funds, with high fees and relatively low performance, as looked at by the independent consumer watchdog Choice. The detailed research for 2015 can be found here.
So as for the "why" of your question, I would say there is a high mistrust of mutual funds offering any particular products by Australians.