Man ... there are some ignorant views about Australia!!!!!!
A few years ago there was a common joke about NZ'rs coming here for the dole! Yes, it really was based on the fact that they would come here only to get Australian pensions. (You can actually pretty much freely travel between the two countries. ) Now the rules have changed. NZ'rs must be here for at least two years before they can get dole payments! :lol:
NZ'rs are also likely to come here for employment and business opportunities. Yes, AU really is a better place for living (as opposed to holidaying)
As for spiders and {bleep}... Um, where? Are you going to go camping out in the forrests? LOL
Xenophobic? WTF? Not that I've been to Sydney, but I've heard some pretty {bleep}ty stories about Sydney.
Come to Melbourne, you really wont see any of that ... well, not much. (Not unless you're trying to get in to some of the Chinese restaurants that wont serve Caucasions, or get employed by some of the shops that advertise in Chinese, presumably to discourage non-Chinese? ... but that's another story, and it's the exception rather than the rule)
No, Melbourne's great! You'll rarely hear people complain about the place. It's a consitant international award winner. And people love it. People BRAG about Melbourne!
When discussing Australia, PLEASE keep in mind the sharp contrast between Sydney and Melbourne. They are that VASTLY different that they are almost like two different countries in themselves! I could go on and on about the cultural differences.
I problem I've noticed on many online forums is that people visit Sydney and have too many negative points about what they experienced about its citizens.
TRY ME!BOURNE FIRST!
Politics?
WTF?
I don't mean to get into political arguments on this thread, but politics in AU is fine.
The only odd thing is that federal elections are won by Liberal, state elections by Labor.
The thing is that if you look in the federal governments past, you'll see two governments vastly different way of running the place:
Labor()
{
HUGE (and LONG TERM) unemployment, AND I MEAN HUGE;
HIGHEST interest rates over a long term;
Some of the biggest spending, esp. wasting money.
Some of the worst and most contraversial desicions ... even contraversial within the party.
Worst ecconomy Australia ever had.
Produced the biggest debt ever.
Employed many people to sit around and do NOTHING in gov. run companies in order to artificially reduce the unemployment rate ... even though the unemployment rate only went up!
}
// On the other hand...
Liberal()
{
Cleared the debt. we're now in surplus.
The LOWEST unemployment rate for ... well, decades..
Interest rates are MUCH lower now.
The ecconomy has been GROWING. Even when other countries have have shrunk.
A much better outlook for the country
}
THAT is why even though many people will vote Labor for the states, the will vote Liberal for the federal.
