matte

Hey Tom, I was working in the AV field when I applied and still am now. I specialise in mainly the visual side of things so I was working with large LED screens, projector blends, content switch etc. I remember the occupation being grouped with commercial fire alarm systems which is really odd as no one who specialises in AV tends to work with fire alarm systems and anyone that works with fire alarm systems doesn’t really tend to specialise in AV. However the aussies love a qualification for anything so some of the hoops you have to jump through can be quite tedious. I’m in QLD where technically it’s still illegal to wire a plug unless you have a Restricted Electrical Work License. I learnt about how to wire a plug and electrical safety in Physics at school. I studied it further at University when I completed an BSc. in Audio Technology. I have over 15 years of work experience working in the field but according to the QLD government I still need to go back to college to learn how to wire a plug (legally). It’s a bit of a joke to be honest but that’s the trade off for living somewhere as nice as we do. Some of the other states aren’t as harsh as they all make their own rules with things like that. When I sat my technical interview I just went into it with an open mind. Don’t think just because you don’t have experience in that sector that you can’t answer the questions. At the end of the day a fire alarm will have a sensor that talks to main control unit. It’s likely to do that via some sort of communication cable like RS232 or probably more commmon in this day by CAT-5 cable. I think the fire alarm questions totalled to 2 out of about 30 questions. The assessors were very good at guiding me to the right answer even if it wasn’t the first thing I replied with. I haven’t kept up-to-date with what’s now the required points level for an invite. I was sitting at 70 points when I did mine only after completing the IELTS exam for some additional points. I’m a native English speaker and it’s the only language I’ve ever spoken so I sat the test purely for points purposes only. Employment wise there’s plenty of work to be had around the major cities in the AV field. I worked as a full time employee for a couple of years and have now set up on my own being self employed. I regularly contract to about 5 companies, some local some national, and between them all they keep me fairly busy.

Hi everyone., I would like briefly describe the process we have faced importing a pedal car for my son into Brisbane. My father-in-law purchased the shell of a vintage Austin J40 pedal car back in 2012. He did a complete restoration on it and gifted to my son on his birth in 2013. The car has been stored up until now at their residence in the UK. My son is now coming up to 3 years of age and we wanted to ship it over so he could use it. The pedal car was placed into a 1 cubic metre crate, total weight 90kg. It was collected from their UK address and sent to Brisbane port by sea freight. Total cost so far for this was £278 (£180 for collection and loading, £98 for LCL freight). The cost of shipping did not include charges for handling and clearance in Brisbane. My wife and I had to instruct a local customs clearance agent to handle this. The total charges for unloading and clearing the crate so I am able to pick it up myself from the port has amounted to a staggering $1,326! :eek: Let me clarify, the item was processed as personal effects (owned for more than 12 months) so it is not liable for any GST or import duties. This amount is purely the cost for handling and a quick quarantine inspection. This is completely way over what I expected to pay in handling and clearance charges. I expected these to be around $300 - $400 at most. Upon further investigation it appears $390 of this is just for quarantine to poke their head in the crate and decide no further treatments are necessary. Another staggering $438 has been charged in port handling fees by the agent appointed by the shipping vessel to unload the crate. I questioned this and did some research. I was told by the clearing agent that this is likely to be over-inflated because the company that transported the crate by vessel will be getting a commission from the local handling agent. In comparison with other handling agents, it costs the same amount to unload a full 20ft container which can hold 33 cubic metres. Do you think the they are charging all of the other shipments in the container the same amount? A nice tidy profit for them if they are. (33 x $438 = $14,454). We are not able to instruct our own agent unload the container from the vessel so we are held to ransom by the agent the vessel wishes to use. I was wondering if anyone knows of any authority I can complain to who can investigate these charges further? I know nothing will probably come of it but quite frankly these charges are ridiculous. How can they be justified at all? How can it cost so much more to unload and clear the crate this end than it did to load it and ship it all that way from the other side of the world?

Yep, mine didn't really feel like an interrogation. I think it lasted an hour all in all about the first 15 minutes of that was just him introducing himself and explaining what was going on. To be honest I felt far more awkward at the speaking component of my IELTS exam - Not sure if you have done that yet or are going down that route. I only did the IELTS to boost my score by 10 points. I felt kind of stumped when the assessor asked me what I enjoyed most about being at primary school. English is my first language which I have spoken all my life, in fact I'm awful at speaking other languages but I mean come on, these days I can barely remember my teenage years let alone my time at primary school. I think I answered with a couple of sentences (something about enjoying playtime) and then the assessor just stared at me with an awkward silence for the next couple of minutes or so trying to get me to elaborate. The whole time I was thinking 'ask me a a proper question!!' I understand where your coming from on the visa changes. The current Aussie government is just milking and milking the visa system to try and make up the debt left by the previous government. They see it as easy money. They have already over doubled the cost of some visas in the last few years (most noticeably the foreign spouse visa for Australian citizens). We ourselves have been impacted by the circus surrounding the 103 parent visa which is now not even worth applying for as most parents will likely be deceased before it's granted. (Wait time has increased from about 7 years to 30 years). Now the only option is the contributory parent visa that costs around $100,000 for a couple which is unaffordable for most.

Hi Adam, It's been a few years now since I did this but I'll try and list some topics below based on my experience: Connectors - Commonly used AV (RCA, HDMI, VGA etc), networking (RJ11, RJ45, etc), power (3P and 1P) Electronic components - Resistors, capacitors, transistors, ICs Health and safety - What to do to minimise harm, electric shocks, etc in the workplace Try to have several workplace examples up your sleeve for when you might have faced a hazardous situation, had to repair something or installed something new as I'm sure you will get asked to detail a few of these. The only thing I really needed to brush up was basic electronic components and circuitry as I haven't really studied it since my school days. I did have one question related to installing a commercial fire alarm system. I think it was something along the lines of how would I go about installing one. I have no experience with fire alarm systems but I told the assessor that I'd assume there would be one or more sensors that would have to be connected, perhaps by a network, to a central control unit. That unit may then require a connection to a telephone line and would also have to be powered. I can't remember exactly what I said as I kinda bluffed my way through it. It is strange that Fire safety and AV have been grouped together in the same category. I haven't yet met anyone in my industry that specialises in both. My assessor was good though and didn't really ask me any unreasonable questions. Whether they tailor the questions to your previous work experience I don't know. Unfortunately I don't think you'll find any all-in-one study resources. Your best just to closely analyse the 342313 category and try and look up the basics for anything listed within it. Sorry I can't be of any more help. Good luck and hope it all goes well for you.

I work as a video engineer for live events and installations. I could leave my full time position and look at going freelance. That way I would earn a fair bit more during the busy months but I would be sacrificing job security at the same time which is not really something I wanted to do within our first year or two of being here. Having said that being a freelancer could have a few extra financial advantages tax wise in being able to claim a portion of rent/utilities/petrol etc as a lot of the work takes place on site at venues around Brisbane and the Gold Coast. There are full time positions advertised at around the $75000 - $80,000 mark but these are in Sydney and I was told not to expect that sort of salary living on the Gold Coast. The other half works as a paralegal and she has a law degree from the UK. What she's earning seems to be the going rate in this area. If she wanted to progress further it would involve going to uni full time for a year to do her PLT course so she could progress to being a lawyer. That's roughly another $12,000 to $15,000 I believe. We would also have to factor in that she couldn't work much whilst doing her training. By 40 hours I mean 5 days a week 9-5. Technically it's 37.5 if you don't factor in your lunch break. It's a VW Jetta. There is a little bit of loan insurance incorporated into that payment if either of us do lose our jobs. I have been contemplating whether it might be worth looking at that and taking that off as it's dead money however it is nice to have that safety net. As for hairdressers, fashion, phone contracts. I cut my own hair and the wife has only just been to the hairdressers last week. Her first trip since June last year! We don't have any mobile phones contracts. Both on PAYG with Boost at $40 per month. Clothing, I think I've bought 3 T-shirts since we arrived at $10 each and the wife has only bought a few work clothes from Target. There's not much we could cut back further there.

We already do the Aldi and markets thing. I'm always scanning the specials when the junk mail arrives on a Tuesday to work out what to buy from where. We're about 25 minutes inland from the coast in a non touristy area so it's not as expensive as the areas nearer the coast. You probably wouldn't get any change from $400,000 if you were to buy in the same area. A mortgage repayment for that amount would likely be in the $550 to $650 per week range so definitely not cheaper to buy. I wish it was.

Yes I must admit the car repayment does sap our income somewhat and we probably shouldn't have spent as much on it as we did. I guess at the time we were already shelling out $800 per month on a rental car so to own one for a similar payment seemed more logical. However as you said we are now in a position whereby it would be difficult to sell and recoup the money for something cheaper. We didn't just save $8k from our whole time in Dubai. We saved and paid for our own wedding and honeymoon and also had to pay towards the cost of the birth of our son (something that is not cheap and often taken for granted by those on NHS/Medicare). Those three things took their toll on the savings we had. We do currently shop around a lot for groceries and I cook almost everything from scratch, never buy pre-prepared and and any activities we do at the weekend tend to be either free or very low cost. I guess it's just going to be a tough few years.

Tax free it may appear on the surface but I and anyone else that's lived there can tell you that you still get stung in many other ways. With rental prices at least 2-3 times what they are here and all the hidden costs and charges you are always getting stung for it isn't quite as luxurious as it's sounds.

Unfortunately we haven't ever been in a position to purchase a house in recent years. The property bubble in Dubai was completely insane and unaffordable for first time buyers. Having said that it is not much better here either. We would love to own our own home but at this point in time with house prices what they are and our current financial situation it will be many years before we can even think about saving for a deposit. We saved as much as we could whilst we were there which helped pay for our visas (all in around $8,000) and the sale of our car helped fund our air fares, relocation expenses and initial accommodation when we first arrived. But you are quite right that we don't have much of a buffer and I wish we did. It was never going to an easy move but time was ticking and with the rising costs in Dubai also we didn't really want to stay and longer than we had to.

Yep, we have a 189 PR visa but I'm pretty sure that our earnings are classed as too high to qualify. I think your household income has to very low to get any rent assistance. We are all registered with Centrelink but all we seem to qualify for is the child care rebate that is paid directly to the day care centre and the minuscule child care benefit of $22 per fortnight. It doesn't seem very fair that the harder you work the less your entitled to but it is what it is. We didn't come to Australia with a view to try and claim as many benefits as we can however it would be nice to to be able to live slightly more comfortably than we currently do.

My wife, son and I moved here just over 6 months ago from Dubai we here we lived and worked for the last 6 years. Moving to Australia has always been a long term goal of ours and we're happy that we are now finally here. However I'd be lying if I didn't say we are finding it quite tough financially. I'm going to be quite open here as I'm interested to find out if there are others in the same boat or any suggestions on how to cope a bit better. I earn a salary of $65,000 and my wife earns $60,000 per year. So our total pre-tax household income is $125,000 which sounds quite reasonable. This works out to be about $99,000 after tax. The problem is where does it all go? We pretty much live pay cheque to pay cheque and if we have any big utility bills or unexpected costs we seem to be plunging further into debt. We don't live an extravagant lifestyle, hardly if ever, eat out and are very careful with our weekly shop often only buying items if they are on special and shopping around the various supermarkets to get the best price. We rent a 3 bed + study house in an ok area north of the Gold Coast for $440 per week. Water and electricity are extra. If I'm honest we could if we really wanted to downsize slightly and live in a much less desirable area for around $360-$380 per week but it wouldn't get much cheaper than that. My wife and I both work full time 40 hours per week and so our 2 year old son has to go to day care. Even with the child care rebate this still costs us $212 per week. The only other benefit we receive is child care benefit that comes to a grand total of about $22 per fortnight, hardly worth getting! Our other big expensive is the car loan repayment for the family car we purchased when we arrived which is $215 per week. Yes this adds up to be quite a big cost but we purchased the car to last us many years. Also at the time I was commuting over an hour each way to Brisbane so we wanted something economical. It's a 3yr loan so we'll be much happier once it is paid off. I'm not going to go into too much more details of our expenses but there is nothing really any different from other average household expenses. I do find insurances, especially contents cover, incredibly expensive here but that's just something we have to deal with. So my question really is how does everyone else do it, especially families that have only one working parent. If we're struggling with both of us working in fairly skilled professions we can't be the only ones. I can't imagine that the benefits you would receive with only one working parent would amount to be very much but maybe I'm wrong. Is it financially better for a second parent to work only part time hours and send their child to day care for say only 1-2 days a week thus reducing child care costs but relying more on benefits. I don't want to start an angry debate over the pros and cons of child care but I really struggle to see how it's all financially viable in the bigger picture. :err:

Hi guys, Only just seen your post as I haven't been here for a while. My wife, son (he's nearly 2) and I arrived in August last year and have been here just over 6 months. So although not moving in 2015 we are still fairly new arrivals. We moved to Pacific Pines which is just next to Helensvale. If you need any help or advice just ask. We're more than happy to help and hope your move goes well. Matt

Hi guys, My wife and I have just been granted our 189 visa in the last few days. We are so happy. We were getting a bit nervous as her medical was referred for over two months because she suffers from Crohn's disease and weren't sure whether because of that they would reject our application. We received our grant letter saying we must enter by September 2013 which we will do whilst on a short holiday to validate the visa. We are then looking to move over permanently around the beginning of 2014. My question is what next? The grant letter was remarkably short and uninformative. I don't quite know what I was expecting (maybe some diamond encrusted padded book and a small trophy after the amount it has cost for the whole process! :laugh:) What I'm looking for I suppose if some information specific to the 189 visa on what we can do, i.e. can we apply for Medicare straight off from day 1? Are there any limitations on who I can work for, the job role I do, can I run my own business and work for myself? It seems only fair that after I have had to send the Australian government a small rainforest worth of paperwork that they could send me at least a few more details on what exactly we are and aren't allowed to do. Does anyone know of any good books that detail this kind of information? Cheers

My wife had her medical referred 3rd October even though we sat them at the beginning of September. I contacted our case officer after 1 month who said all he was waiting on was the medical approval. A further month down the line we have just received an e-mail to say our visa has been granted. Seems there is around a 2 month waiting period for referrals.

I wasn't sure if I needed it, after all VETASSESS had already assessed my work experience and education qualifications when they did their skills assessment. I e-mailed them to check and they said that it would probably be best to apply for the letter anyway. Therefore I filled in form SRG35 (for occupations assessed by VETASSESS) and sent that to them at the start of June. I did this because my skills assessment was previously carried out by VETASSESS. Three weeks later I received an e-mail stating that I had sent them the wrong form and I would have to resubmit everything with the SRG34 form (for occupations not assessed by VETASSESS) and pay an additional $110 on top of the $174 I had already paid. I was very confused and contacted them to say my skills assessment was carried out by VETASSESS and therefore SRG34 form is the correct form. They replied saying no it isn't. The Electronic Equipment Trades Worker occupation is actually assessed my TRA and only outsourced to VETASSESS. The department at VETASSESS that carries out the skills assessments on behalf of the TRA does not communicate with the regular skills assessment department and so that was the reason I would have to resend everything. Therefore more certified copies and passport photos needed. The whole process to get this letter has taken longer than my entire skills assessment. It was only when I chased them up again a few days ago they seemed to remember about me and have now sent it. I am currently waiting for the courier to deliver it within the next day or two. The most annoying thing about this whole process is that I don't think I need the letter anyway. My CO has already signed off my education on the degree and transcript evidence I have already supplied. As you can see the whole process for obtaining this letter has been very frustrating and a complete waste of $274. :mad: