Loopylu

So you know my mind about Australia? Why do you always have to have a nasty dig at me all the time? No I don’t “love” Australia and it will never be my true home. As Quoll often says, it is just another first world country. It’s ok if all you care about is sunshine and big houses.

Yes - I worked much harder in private practice in Australia than the UK but now work in-house so have my life back. I used to have to do all-nighters on deals here and never got any TOIL or extra pay. I’ve spent nearly 30 years working as a solicitor in both jurisdictions but it appears I know nothing….

Have you visited Australia previously? I am concerned that you think life will definitely be better here. It took me over 10 years to be on a salary better than what I was on in the UK. The pay differential here between partners and staff is much more pronounced than in the UK. In the UK, I had free private health insurance from my law firm in Birmingham. Here Medicare is not all free with expensive gaps and private healthcare will cost you upwards of $500 a month for your family - it won’t be provided by your employer. There are also huge gaps (ie it only covers part of the cost of treatment and you pay the difference.) The public hospitals here are struggling just like the NHS. State schools.are very underfunded. I also went from 29 days annual leave a year plus public holidays to 20 days plus public holidays. To get long service leave you have to do 10 years with one employer which may be hard to do if you want to progress in your career. I am only here because I agreed to live in my husband’s country. If I had my time over I would have stayed put.

I stand corrected as this was never the case previously. However, when I just searched the list they only want IP lawyers (a very limited category). Barristers are specified as a general category but, as they are contractors affiliated to chambers, they don’t have employee rights and it’s a hard market to break into. You need connections from law school or have gone to the right private schools to make it here. The shortage of specialist IP lawyers is because outside of Sydney and Melbourne there is little work and what there is is run of the mill. Most young Aussies who specialise in this field go to London or the US to get interesting work. They come back after a few years for family reasons and often go in-house to universities. The IP teams in top tier law firms are very small.

Mitchelton, Ferny Hills/Grove are good areas. We live a bit further north out of Brisbane in the new City of Moreton Bay (our suburb is Eatons Hill). We are only 20km from the CBD though and you get more house/land for your money up here. However, we bought our 5 bedroom on 888m2 in 2009 for $565k and it's now valued at over $1.1m. Hopefully you've experienced similar appreciation on your property in the UK so you have a good deposit to put down on a house here.

The system is weird - if you lose your job in Australia or retire but your partner is still working you are means tested and get no benefits/aged pension. I know a lady who worked all her life and is now 78. She doesn't qualify for an aged pension because her partner is 55 and still working. Conversely, there is no way of sharing your tax burden with a partner who doesn't work and use their tax free allowance. It's a very unfair system. We are in a similar boat to you. My husband can't work due to serious health issues so I have to support him fully on my income but can't use his tax free allowance....

Hi Danielle Firstly I don't think lawyers have ever been on the skills list for Australia. Australian universities churn out loads of lawyers and the government has actually increased law degree fees to discourage the uptake and to encourage students to study STEM subjects. Secondly, you need to get a few years' working experience after admission as a solicitor in the UK before trying to make the move. As a UK admitted lawyer, I relocated to Qld in 2008 but was sponsored over by a top tier law firm because I specialised in energy law and there was a shortage of lawyers at that time with the required experience. At that time I had 13 years PQE experience. To practice here (rather than work as an overseas qualified lawyer under supervision of an Australian admitted lawyer), I had to take exams and then get admitted here. This took a year and I only had to do 3 exams. Since then the number of exams has increased and so, if you are working fulltime and studying in your own time as I was, requalification may take longer than a year. I was then under supervision for 2 years before getting an unrestricted practising certificate. Law firms here will not be interested in employing you with just an LLB. You will need to do your SQE, two year training contract and get a few years of post qualification experience in the UK before they may consider you. If you are still relatively young, you could maybe get a working holiday visa and then try to get work as a paralegal here and then you could see whether working in the Australian legal profession is for you. I hope this information helps even if it is probably not what you want to read. All the best

Sound advice, as usual!!

Hi - sorry to hear about your husband’s diagnosis but good to hear that he is stable. If your husband is an Australian citizen and chooses to return to Australia to live then he will qualify for Medicare treatment. However, in our experience, you cannot just handover all the NHS medical notes and instead you would likely have to be referred by a GP for ongoing oncology specialist treatment. When we moved here in 2008, my Aussie husband had Stage 3 chronic kidney disease and could not shortcut the GP and waitlist for seeing a specialist. Queensland Health failed to treat his condition with certain drugs that slow progression of the disease and we blame this on moving between systems and care not being smoothly transitioned. Basically, the NHS tests and diagnosis were binned and we were back to square one. My husband is now on dialysis and hoping to go on the active transplant list. All the best with whatever you decide to do and try to enjoy every day that you still have your husband.

Actually I had to phone up the local health authority administration team for the vaccines and ask for an appointment at the mass vaccination hub. It was not a case of just bowling up and sticking my arm out. I had to give my name and show ID to security and be ticked off the list. Really no different to getting a GP appointment. It was not a free for all as you suggest. Unlike the vaccine fiasco in Australia, people with current NHS numbers were sent a vaccine appointment, starting with the most vulnerable first. If you couldn’t make your allotted date and time it was easy to rearrange to a convenient time. As I did not have an appointment in the post I had to arrange one as described.

We flew with this airline a year after the two incidents and it was fine. The crew and food were lovely. The only perturbing feature was the Islamic prayer before take off for a safe flight....

As others have commented, public hospital care in Australia can be hit and miss too. I don't think that you should move back to Australia solely based on a belief that the public health system may be better. I think you would need a few more reasons than that for a major upheaval in your living conditions which could increase your stress levels and set you back. I think it also depends on where you live in the UK as to the quality of care you receive. My Dad was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in February 2021 and the care he received up until his death in February 2022 in Carmarthenshire. Wales was second to none and better than the care my friend's husband received in Brisbane (again with a terminal diagnosis). If you decide to move back to Australia for other reasons and base yourself in or near to a major centre then your care should be of a first world standard (as you would get in the UK, Canada, EU, NZ etc) but noting that I have read of other first world countries such as France having medical staff shortages too. A lot of first world countries have limited the number of doctor training places at the insistence of the medical unions and now that the baby boomer generation are retiring there is a shortage of medics all round. This leads to first world countries poaching each others' doctors and those from poorer countries.

Hi Caz Not childhood vaccine, but I was in the UK in 2021 and was able to access a free Covid vaccine from the NHS without showing a British Passport or quoting my NHS number. The NHS was more than happy to vaccinate anyone who wanted it who was staying in the UK for a while. I was only there 2 months. Unlike Australian medical facilities that require sight of a Medicare card before treating you, NHS hospitals and GPs do not tend to turn people away who need treatment. I suggest that you ask your family in the UK to make enquiries at their local GP as to whether your son can have the vaccinations he needs. If they are frequent fliers there then the GP will likely help out. I would take your records with you so that the nurse or doctor administering the vaccine knows what your son has had to date and can sign off on the vaccinations. You will need evidence of vaccination on your return from Australia to obtain any child related tax concessions. Hope this helps.

Be very careful if you choose Sandgate. It’s a lovely spot but in recent years the avenues near to the water have flooded badly. We know a few people (including family) who have sold up after being flooded a couple of times. You may struggle to get 4-5 bedrooms near the water for $900k as house prices have rocketed in Brisbane. Houses of that size in good suburbs 20km to the north of the CBD on more than a postage stamp of land are going for $1.1 million at the moment.