Current situation in Australia

[Stan.goodvibes]

Just had some drinks with a guy from the UK in a pub in Auckland on Sunday - to give him a heads up about jobs, tax etc.

If you are looking for jobs check out www.seek.com.au. Best place to go for jobs is Sydney, then Melbourne.

Rates depending on what you do range from the $50-$90 range, obviously you have to be pretty special to get over $100/hour. Don't convert that to pounds - a A$1 will have close on the same spending power in Aussie as a quid does in the UK. Sydney is one of the more expensive places in the world to buy a house tho.

Tax: no IR35, and less dicking around with dividends. You can either pay yourself a salary as you go and pay PAYE monthly or do what i do: - just take 'drawings' whenever I feel like it and pay a load of tax at the end of the year.

Job scene is pretty depressed like everywhere, but on the plus side Aussie isn't technically in a recession, on the down side it sounds like things are picking up in the UK whereas here in NZ and Oz companies are still at the shedding workers phase.

Still, Both NZ and Aussie are great places to live. Well, apart from all the Australians of course

[Jet Setter]

Being an Aussie living in the UK I can confirm that the Aussie tax office are far more hard @rse than the HMRC. Not nearly as many things you can sneak through as over here.

Melbourne and Sydney are definitely the places to be workwise as most big banks, companies and multinationals have their headquarters there.

One thing I will say, there's much less chance that you'll get a contract where there's bugger all to do. Most big Aussie companies cutback massively years ago and any sign of fat gets cut immediately. Which is a good thing I spose. It does have a very tulip visa system though, takes way longer for Brits to get to Oz than the other way around.

Good luck! It's a cracker of a place.

[weemster]

Thank you one and all for the replies - really useful stuff.

Stan - Can you PM me the details of that really good agent (not to mention a stunner) we spoke about (she was based in Aus but has since returned to Welly).

Going to need to get the company/structure formed and get some good agents on side. So any pointers are really appreciated.

Interesting what all the guys and girls are saying. My Dad and his Australian girlfriend live in Melbourne and we went out for a meal last night (as they are in the Uk at the mo - no doubt waiting to see the Aussie get tonked in the test match ) they were saying that Australia is about 8 months behind the Uk from an economics point of view and that corresponds to what people have said on the forum, which is very interesting!

Thanks once again everyone !

[gadgetman]

Sorry but that's total ball cokcs.

Its a myth about cost of living being cheaper. With some notable exceptions its 2 to 1 or worse on the vast majority of stuff.

I'm contracting through a management company in Melbourne. I started off trying to use Lester but everytime I contacted them my previous contact had left and I found them poor at dealing with my initial queries (conflicting advice depending on who you spoke to).

LAFHA and other tax breaks make a HUGE difference to net income. This is on a 457 visa. I'm happy to answer any specifics by PM.

Don't convert that to pounds - a A$1 will have close on the same spending power in Aussie as a quid does in the UK.

[Funkywood]

I'm trying to get .Net work in Australia right now and found Mycareer.com.au to be as good as Seek. Given the time of year Brisbane is my first choice and do have possible client who has had things delay the project (death in the family).

The agent says she's going push them a bit as I've only got just enough time left on my 1 year visa to cover it after the first 7 months were made somewhat redundant by a UK client keeping me on while I was over here. At this rate the visa will go unused as far as work goes. I got told the name of an agency that deals with those seeking sponsorship too so they are my next call as I fancy staying here until the UK picks up. Their site is gnjobs.com.au but it doesn't look to have anything good right now.

[weemster]

Hi,

So did you have sponsorship in the first instance to get your visa ?

[Funkywood]

Hi,

So did you have sponsorship in the first instance to get your visa ?

No. My original plan was just to try it out for 12 months while taking time off so I just got the working holiday visa.

I might end up going through the whole skilled migrant thing too unless I can get a foot in the door with my current visa so that they'll sponsor me. There's an equivalent of the BCS test that you have to go through so I'm looking at getting that done too. You'll know more than me about that if you've already gone through it all.

Given that there's still more work in London and Australia might be lagging the UK economically anyway I might just enjoy the time off before wading into the London market again.

[weemster]

Assume in that case you are sub 30.

My advice is stick with it over there - there isn't a great deal about here at the moment although that said things are slowly getting a little easier albeit very slowly.

[Funkywood]

I was just sub 30 when I applied for it but sadly that's no longer the case as I left it as late as I could while the going was good at home, stretching it out by not actually getting here until a year after I applied. So no fruit picking for me I've just had a call from the agent in Brisbane though so that's a good sign.

Thanks for the update on the UK situation, it's hard to judge from here. Best thing I've got is the old pimp email index which has increased markedly since November when I think I went for 2 weeks without so much as a phishing email.

I'm getting a few a day now. One or two a month are actually personal, asking how I'm doing and if I'm back on the UK market yet. Then again I did tell a few that I might be back in July.

btw: After considering it I found out the lift passes for skiing here are some of the most expensive I've seen unless you get in before July. Cheaper to fly to NZ if you want more than a couple of days on the slopes.

[Jet Setter]

Correct. Skiing in Australia is the world's biggest rip off. Better to go to NZ. No wonder we're so ordinary at the Winter Olympics.