Creating Mirror site in different .tld (country) - Penalised?

Hey SEO geniuses,

I've got a site (niche store running on WP) that i've built up over the past month. It's doing OK, so i want to create another. My site is in the .com.au - australian domain, and i want to build a almost identical site in the .com domain.

My question is - if i use the same content on the new site - that is - mirror the content on the .com.au site on the new .com domain, will i be penalised (ie. google will think i'm scraping etc...)

Should i create new content, or can i use the same content?

Any ideas appreciated.

Cheers,

A.

You need to differentiate the on-page content between the different versions, and, equally importantly, truly target the audience in each country within the content of the page, that's if you want to get the intended effect from those country-specific websites.