Cerberus1

Local dam is looking a bit sad after weeks / months? of negligible rain, dam level currently at 5%.

There are many good registered migration agents who post on the forum who I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. @wrussell http://www.pinoyau.com/ @Raul Senise http://www.ozimmigration.com @Richard Gregan http://www.overseas-emigration.co.uk/ @Alan Collett https://www.gmvisas.com/ All MARA registered, many years experience as agents, all have contributed on the forum for around a decade or more.

BankSA CEO Nick Reade, (speaking at the launch of BankSA's latest economic bulletin) says incentives are needed to attract skilled migrants to smaller cities and regional centres. He said approaching population growth in a smart and targeted way was vital for the less populated cities and states to ­develop stronger economies and higher living standards through increased workforce participation and productivity. “With our regional towns and centres, we need to provide the right incentives to get more ­people to move there,” Mr Reade said yesterday. “Australia doesn’t need less migrants, we just need to find ways to attract more migrants — and other Australians — to states like South Australia.” Melbourne had grown by more than 125,000 people, Sydney by more than 100,000, and Adelaide by just 9600 in 2016-17, he said. The number of skilled ­migrants to South Australia had dropped by 23 per cent since 2014-15, from almost 11,000 ­people to about 8000, he said. “Other cities are bursting at the seams, and facing real challenges as a result,” he said. “But we cannot allow the loud voices to our east to drive outcomes that would only worsen our situation. Rather than growing our population simply for the sake of having more people, we must be focused on ­attracting skilled workers from ­interstate and overseas.” In calling for a plan to address South Australia’s sluggish population growth, which at 0.6 per cent lags behind the rest of the country, Mr Reade backed a target of at least 1.6 per cent, or an extra 17,000 people, a year. He said education models needed to be revamped to ensure skills matched fast-growing and changing industries, and for the small business start-up rate to increase from 11 to 15 per cent, which would see an extra 7000 firms ­offering employment. “We should also consider more semi-skilled workers — including migrants — to fill the jobs that unfortunately many South Aus­tralians don’t want to do,” he said. Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge said the country had a migrant distribution problem. The federal government is looking to impose conditions on skilled visa holders, forcing people to spend far more time in regional centres. “When they’re there, hopefully they’ll put down roots, have their kids going to school, and make it their home,” Mr Tudge said. South Australian Premier Steven Marshall told the BankSA forum that Canberra had ­accepted “we do have a two-speed population” issue and the state needed “preferential migration status”. “There are states that say we have got too much (growth) — that is not our problem in South Australia; we are missing out,” Mr Marshall said. Elsewhere, former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said there needed to be more money spent on regional infrastructure to encourage people to the country. “In Sydney, people are saying it is just so overcrowded … the traffic is bad,” “Rather than spend another $5 billion on Sydney roads why don’t spend half a billion dollars in Tamworth and attract a lot more people into that area … and actually start spreading the population around.”

Richard Gregan - https://www.overseas-emigration.co.uk/meet-the-team/

Have a look on realestate.com.au You can specify 'Land' as the property type and a minimum land size. You'll probably have to enter at least a state (QLD, VIC etc) as I don't think you can search the whole country. Specify Max price value, sort by price and away you go. Haven't seen anything under $10,000 when I had a look for QLD, there were some around the $15,000 mark. Quite a few were auctions though, so they may have sold/sell for low amounts.

https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details will help you track down your pensions. https://www.gov.uk/voluntary-national-insurance-contributions for paying voluntary NI contributions

That's definitely true, when we first moved to SE Melbourne suburbs, it was all agricultural land all around us, but it's all gone to housing in last few years and suburbs have just spread further and further out. This is pretty much the area. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-18/melbournes-food-bowl-at-risk-as-housing-developments-grow/10006834 Similar article about farms in NSW http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-04-13/how-to-save-australias-remaining-farmland/9627516

You wont have got the notification Ali because, quelle surprise, it's not true. It's important in times of fake news and project fear to actually get the facts. The NMBA responded to the claims back at the end of March. That seems quite clear, so there's not much point in perpetuating the myth any more on this thread.

Richard Gregan wrote an article for us some time ago and diabetes type 1 was mentioned.

As I understand it, the current Occupations that are subject to pro rata arrangements are: Accountants Auditors, Company Secretaries and Corporate Treasurers Electronics Engineers Industrial, Mechanical and Production Engineers Other Engineering Professionals CT Business and Systems Analysts Software and Applications Programmers Computer Network Professionals

Probably best talking to your vet, but you can get all in one products like Nexgard Spectra (monthly chewable tablet) which will protect against fleas, ticks & heartworm (spread by mosquitoes) or you can get a yearly injection for dogs (Proheart) which protects against heartworm.

Further data released this week by CoreLogic, has Hobart as the best-performing property market by far over the past 12 months, with its prices surging 11.5%. It was followed, not very closely, by Canberra (+2.4pc), Brisbane (+1.2pc) and Adelaide (+0.7pc). However, Hobart's property market slowed to a crawl last month — remaining flat in July. CoreLogic have the median dwelling price (a figure which includes houses and apartments) in Hobart at $435,833.

As I understand it, his Canterbury conviction has been upheld and he's facing a retrial for the Leeds case.

Wesfarmers chief executive Rob Scott has warned a decline in migration levels would be “very bad news” for the Australian economy leading to fewer jobs and lower wages. Acknowledging there is currently a “backlash” running through the community over immigration levels, Mr Scott, who as the boss of Wesfarmers runs Australia’s biggest non-food retailer, said this type of backlash often occurred because governments had failed to invest in infrastructure such as housing and public services. As debate around the nation grows over the levels of migration Australia should target and any flow on affect to the economy, housing prices and congestion in our key cities, Mr Scott strongly defended Australia’s long history of migration levels and the benefits had to the domestic economy. “Australia has benefited from having the highest population growth of OECD nations for some time. That is, currently around 1.6 per cent v the average of 0.6 per cent,’’ Mr Scott said. He said it was a leading factor in Australia’s extended period of uninterrupted economic growth. “Migration has contributed to a reasonable proportion of this growth and also provided access to new skills and capabilities, additional spending and it has also contributed to the multi-cultural and diverse society that we enjoy. “This is also one of the key factors that has led to Australia having sustained economic growth over the last 27 years.” Mr Scott warned that a drop off in migration rates would damage that momentum and growth of the national economy and spill over to rising unemployment and a worsening standard of living, labelling any moves “bad news”. “If this trend was to decline, this would be very bad news for Australia’s economic growth and ultimately mean fewer jobs, lower wages and being less competitive as a nation.” However, he did concede there was a growing backlash against high migration levels, but this could be smoothed by more investment in key infrastructure projects. “Population growth, and related to this immigration, can be a sensitive subjects. Backlash often occurs in major cities that haven’t invested enough in infrastructure, housing and public services and where bottlenecks exist. This is one of the reasons why I believe infrastructure investment is so critical for our nation – both in regional areas and our major cities.”

When regional Australia is calling out for migrants to fill jobs and boost dwindling populations, and most new arrivals stay in the cities, how can they be enticed to settle in the regions? In the last financial year, 101,255 migrants arrived in Australia and of these, only 6,637 settled in regional Australia, according to the Department of Home Affairs. Rockhampton-based Central Queensland University academic Ataus Samad has put forward a solution. Dr Samad said a holistic approach needed to start before migrants arrived, along with more support to get them directly to regional areas. "We found that the current process of resettling people from metropolitan cities to regional areas is difficult because once people settle in big cities, they are reluctant to move," he said. Often their children have started school, and even if migrants do not have jobs, they have their local community to support them. "If we place migrants straight away in metropolitan areas within their own comfort zone, people don't have the motivation to go out and talk to others," Dr Samad said. When migrants settled into regional areas, they were motivated out of necessity to talk to their neighbours or school teachers and to better integrate, he said. This is an issue the Federal Government has grappled with, and figures from the Department of Home Affairs show about 6 per cent of skilled migrants settle in regional areas. Data from its Continuous Survey of Australia's Migrants found that of those skilled migrants who settled in regional areas, 10 per cent moved to a major city between six and 18 months after settling. Meanwhile, agribusiness employers across regional Australia face the challenge of attracting skilled labour. Dr Samad recently presented research at a Developing Northern Australia conference outlining these challenges. He found that most of the labour shortage in regional areas was met by seasonal workers under different visa conditions, but this was not necessarily good for the local economy. "They earn here and spend somewhere else because they are seasonal workers or backpackers and their motivation is different," Dr Samad said. "They work here to earn their day-to-day living and make enough money to go around Australia and visit different places but not to invest in the local community." Employers take on temporary migrants or seasonal workers because they are unable to get permanent migrants or people from their local community to employ in their industries, he said. "The solution is to utilise the migrants we already have in Australia, whether they are refugees or skilled migrants, and get them to regional areas and get them to fill the skill gap," Dr Samad said. Dr Samad said he had seen this work. He was involved in a successful program piloted by the Federal Government seven years ago, where refugees from Myanmar were resettled into the small central Queensland town of Biloela, 200km west of Rockhampton. It was part of the Rural Employment Assistance Program (REAP), which relocated newly arrived migrants and refugees from Logan, south of Brisbane, where there were high levels of unemployment. Dr Samad said one of the program's successes was the fact a number of families from the same ethnic background moved to the town. He is working with CQ University and Charles Sturt University to identify the minimum of number of people needed to settle in a regional area to meet that critical mass. "There are successful resettlement programs in regional areas, not only in Queensland, but in NSW, Victoria and other places in Australia," Dr Samad said. Dr Samad said any resettlement also had to be led locally. "They know their area best, and my personal view is that we need to give the entire process of resettlement to local community and local government," he said. Dr Samad also noted there was a general perception that regional communities were not welcoming to migrants, and that some communities had not been exposed to migrants. "Although we have some shocking statistics that our regional areas are not supportive of migrants in their community, my experience living in a regional area is people are very welcoming and supportive, provided we consult them," he said. "We need people to bridge this fear and as soon as this fear is bridged, regional communities are really welcoming." On the other hand, many migrants had misconceptions of what life in regional Australia was like and many had the perception it was a wild area. Dr Samad said although there was a lot of encouragement from the Federal Government with visa categories for settlement in regional areas, there was a mismatch between the regional settlement of skilled migrants and the actual employment of skilled migrants. "We need to start the process from the very beginning — the moment we select which refugees we accept into Australia, where do we resettle them has to come under a holistic plan," he said. Full article @ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-30/enticing-migrants-to-the-regions-and-out-of-cities/10040146