Hi All,
Just wondering if google actually penalises sites for duplicate content eg when you have the exact same website setout but on different TLD domains.
eg.
www.domain.co.za
www.domain.com.au
Clearly i want to launch sites for each country however the product listings will be the same.
Cheers 
Yes and no. If you want to make sure that you’re not penalized the best thing to do is to register your websites with Google Webmaster Tools and designate which country each website should serve. That will clear up any duplicate content issues with Google.
Good idea hyperbolik. That way you’re telling Google that each one is for a different country. How can the penalize that? Although Google can be picky sometimes.
The only penalty duplicate content gets is that it doesn’t get listed in the search results - only the copy the search engine considers to be the original gets listed.
With those four domains it should be relatively easy for the search engines to tell which copy to consider the original for each version of their results. Providing more info to the search engines to make certain that they don’t pick the wrong copy can’t hurt and might help.