.com Doman and off-shore host for an Australia company, does this hurt ratings?

[oznappies]

We have a site based in Australia that has been using the .com domain. Recently the .com.au became available and we purchased it and use a 301 redirect. Does having a site hosted off-shore and a .com rather than .com.au for a company affect the ratings in google.com.au for Australian traffic?

[EGOL]

I wouldn't take chances.  I would host on shore and use the country-specific domain.

How search engines are behavin' today might be very different from tomorrow.  So, I would go with what makes logical sense.