Life In Australia

A $37 billion tax cuts package is coming our way over the next few years. The changes in personal tax from July 2006 work out as follows:

The 30 per cent threshold will rise to $25,001.

The 42 per cent rate will be cut to 40 per cent and the threshold increased to $75,001.

The 47 per cent marginal tax rate will be cut to 45 per cent and the threshold increased to $150,001.

We also pay medicare but that’s much, much less than National Insurance in the UK.

Looking to the (my) future, superannuation for people aged 60 and over will be paid tax free from July 2007.

It looks as if Australia is proving to be the lucky country. Developing countries are hungry for metal ores - which Australia has in abundance. Australian exports are fetching record prices and the economy is very healthy. For years now we’ve been getting tax cuts. Compare this with the UK where Gordon Brown is scratching around for every possible way of increasing taxes.

Australia’s needs for skilled migrants are going to be all the more easily met. It used to be that Brits looking to emigrate to Australia traded off the fact they’d be financially worse off for more sunshine and a better lifestyle. It looks more and more as if Australia may soon offer a higher wage packet as well as the sunshine and better lifestyle. Finding more migrants for Australia is becoming easier every year.

We were talking with another British couple last night about homesickness.

Homesickness is something we’ve never really felt. We both feel it would be nice if we could see our relations in the UK more often, but it’s not something that’s tearing strongly at our emotions.

But last night we met – I’ll call her Jenny. Jenny and her husband have been in Brisbane for about a year now and Jenny still finds herself crying almost daily with the pain from homesickness.

It’s not as if she doesn’t like Brisbane. She says it’s a far, far better place to live than Manchester, where they emigrated from. Yet her close family isn’t here. Other familiar people and smells and scenes aren’t here. The effect seems to be tearing the poor woman apart.

If you haven’t been away from Britain for an extended period before, homesickness is something you should watch out for. It could wreck your whole emigration and, if it strikes you, I don’t think there’s much you can do about it.

I’m certain Jenny and her husband will be back in Manchester within 12 months. They’ll have a lower quality of life in many ways but it’ll be worth it to Jenny because she’ll have all those familiar things again that she can’t have in Brisbane.

Some Poms are happiest moving where there are plenty of other Poms. Others prefer getting away from other Brits completely. If you’re one of the latter, most places in Australia are not for you.

Poms are everywhere in Australia. In Brisbane alone there’s almost 100,000 people who have emigrated from Britain. Most of us have gone native so you’ll find it difficult to tell us from the Aussies - until we open our mouths ;-).

You’ll find that the vast majority of Aussies are very welcoming and friendly to Poms, so don’t worry about opening your mouth and revealing your Pommieness.

When they begin planning their move, a lot of people from the UK think they should move here in December or January. The idea is to escape the worst of the British winter. In my opinion, it’s not the best time to arrive.

When you arrive, you’re going to need to find a house to rent, buy furniture and household goods, buy a car and do all sorts of other things. Even though there is air-conditioning in many areas, you’ll find all of these activities are tougher if you’re melting in summer heat that you haven’t adjusted to.

To make things worse, this time of year is a bit like August in France. It’s the time when lots of people take holidays. You often can’t find people as easily as at other times of the year.

In my opinion, the best time to move here is in April or May. Then the hottest, wettest, stickiest weather is over. In April and May, the sun isn’t as strong as in summer so, with a bit of care, you won’t have to worry as much about getting sunburnt.

Coming in April or May, you will be greeted on many days with perfect weather - blue skies, moderate humidity and daily maximum temperatures somewhere around 25 degrees C. Perfect weather, giving you lots of time to acclimatise before the heat of next summer comes along.

I was reading some gloomy jobs news in The Age today.

Apparently employment in Australia fell in the last three months - including in Queensland.

Funnily enough, figures from the ANZ Bank are showing that, at the same time as employment is meant to be falling, the number of jobs advertised in Queensland is actually increasing. More and more of the jobs being advertised are appearing on the internet - good news for anyone thinking of moving here.

I know for a fact that businesses all over Australia, not just in Queensland, are crying out for skilled workers in all fields - just a couple of days ago there was a report that Queensland was short of around 500 aged-care nurses.

It seems that unskilled jobs may be being lost, leading to the decreasing employment figures. At the same time there is increasing demand for skilled people, leading to more internet job ads.

The skills shortage is very good news for skilled people who want to live in Australia.

A word of caution though. An employer who advertises on the Net may not be interested in hiring someone from overseas. Most newspapers here circulate in only one State - they don’t have Australia-wide coverage. The Net is a convenient way for employers to get their vacancies in front of readers all over Australia.

Australia works hard at attracting British people to move here. There is sometimes an element of over-projecting an image of Australia as the land of milk and honey but most Poms who move here don’t regret it. The quality of life is better here for most of us.

If there’s one thing the Aussies love to crow about, it’s their sporting success. Beating the Poms is their greatest ambition. Reading a press release from the Minister of Immigration (Senator Amanda Vanstone) a few days ago made me smile. She said:

“People arrived from more than 200 countries, with the largest influx coming from the United Kingdom. A total of 18 220 now call Australia home - maybe keen to be part of a successful sporting nation!”

http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media_releases/media05/v05164.htm

I hope the minister and her advisors are more on the ball with immigration matters than they are with sport because - whisper it- The Poms beat Australia in Sydney to take the Rugby World Cup in 2003 and we’ve just won back the Ashes.