A skills shortage in the IT sector should be eased by facilitating overseas professions to emigrate to Australia, leading recruiters say.

Skills shortages and the need for more skilled workers to fill IT jobs could delay major projects such as the national broadband network, and the restriction on the number of skilled IT workers from overseas should be reviewed, recruiters say.

Australia’s largest IT and technology recruiter, Peoplebank, last year signed an agreement with the federal government that allows them to recruit 150 to 200 overseas nationals annually, and has increased its intake of overseas IT professionals by about 20-30 per cent in the past six months.

Peoplebank acting chief executive Jeff Knowles said the company will ask for a further increase on that number, and predicts a skills shortage by the middle of this year in NSW, Victoria and Canberra if more workers cannot be found. Read the full story

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Tony Abbott’s Coalition will cut net migration levels if it wins government, in a bid to stop Australia’s population reaching its predicted size of almost 36 million in 2050.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday told The Australian the Rudd government had allowed immigration to rise too high and the population figure that Treasury’s Intergenerational Report predicted last September for 2050 was unsustainable.

Mr Morrison said the Coalition would not allow the average net overseas migration of more than 300,000 a year that had occurred since the Rudd government took power to continue. Read the full story

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It has been a busy start to the new year in the Sydney investment property market as good quality properties are being sold quickly to eager buyers – sometimes at their full asking price.

I’m not yet sure whether this strong buyer demand will be maintained throughout the year – or whether the strong results from sales early in the year will induce others to list their properties for sale – providing some increased supply to keep prices more in balance.

As I have previously reported, the Australian residential property market has fared better than several other markets internationally over the last 20 months. Several local market watchers (professional and amateur) saw this as being in part due to the government’s housing stimulus for first home buyers – and predicted that the winding back of these subsidies would have a slowing effect on property markets – particularly the first home buyer belt, which in Sydney is the A$500,000 to A$650,000 segment. Read the full story

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Australian house prices rose last quarter by the most since 2003, and combined with the expansion of the manufacturing sector the central bank may have to extend a record round of interest-rate increases.

Economists are expecting Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens to extend the benchmark lending rate, which reached 3.75 percent in December from a half-century low of 3 percent in October.

An index measuring the weighted average of prices for houses in the eight capital cities climbed 5.2 percent from the previous three months, the Bureau of Statistics reported in Sydney. Read the full story

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Hey all, well it’s nearly 1 am down under on the 1st of January 2010!

Much food has been eaten and much wine and beer has already been drunk

With that in mind, this is a very short post to wish you all the very best for 2010.May this year be the year that your down under dreams really do come true.

All the best and enjoy the new years break!

Regards

Mark

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I should preface this article by saying that unfortunately the crystal ball to tell us how Sydney house prices will weather the next 12 months has not yet been discovered.  

So, if you are looking for someone to tell you this with certainty – keep looking – and tell me if you find that magic crystal ball.   But, if you are interested to read my perspective on the Spring market – and the factors that help some properties to outperform others – then read on.

SYDNEY housing market in spring 2009

Spring in Sydney is traditionally accompanied by prodigious listings of homes for sale – particularly in its more affluent eastern and northern suburbs.   2009 proved no exception, with many homes being offered for sale in September and October – with some more recent listings hoping to sell before the Christmas slowdown.   The Domain North supplement in Tuesday’s Sydney Morning Herald is a good indicator; traditionally comprising one section, over the last month it has yielded two bulging sections of homes for sale.
Read the full story

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A member of parliament for the ruling Labor Party on Friday called for Australia’s immigration quotas to be cut in light of the threat from homegrown Islamic terrorists. That threat was exemplified last week when five men were charged over an alleged plot to storm an army base in Sydney.

Kelvin Thomson rational for the cut was that fewer migrants would mean more stringent background checks on applicants could be carried out.

He said Islamists were entering Australia through official immigration channels stating that this was “a far more serious issue than the prospect of us being attacked by another country”.

Hmmm, sounds like an interesting character this Kevin Thomson chap and I really don’t think he quite ‘gets it’. The current checks and as many of us who have been through the process can testify are more than rigorous enough. Read the full story

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Hey all. Not much to write about in the world of Australian immigration so I thought I’d write a little entry just to say hi.

I have a number of Google news alerts set up under various Australian Immigration categories on the basis that if anything happens then I’ll get to know about it quite quickly. Having said that, there doesn’t appear to be much of interest  happening right now.  

If you’re trying to enter Australia illegally then there are plenty of stories in the news about how NOT to do it.

Boat people (i.e. Folks trying to migrate illegally to  Australia on small boats) seem to be making headlines over here in Australia on almost a daily basis.

It seems the Aussie immigration folks are paying very close attention to Australian shores after a number of high profile incidents where boat after boat full of illegal immigrants were  turning up on Aussie soil, apparently unchallenged! Read the full story

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I remember when we first arrived in Australia back in late 2006 and I wrote about the problems we experienced trying to find a rental property here in Perth.

Speaking to friends and work colleagues who are currently in the ‘Rental market’ it seems that similar problems still exist, however compared to the other side of Australia in New South Wales the job of getting a rental here in Western Australia seems a relatively easy one.

The shortage of available rental properties in Sydney is such an issue at the moment that some agents have made complaints of being abused and threatened by frustrated prospective tenants.

The frequency of such events isn’t a low figure either with an Institute survey finding that 32 per cent of real estate agents had been threatened or abused within the past month. Read the full story

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Well, I’m packing my bags again on Sunday and will be flying back over to Sydney to visit our Sydney offices and attend numerous meetings with Suppliers over the next week.

I still think it sounds cool to say I’ve got meetings in Sydney , since my mini tour of Australia, I’m also hoping to have enough time this time around to see some of familiar sights.

Sydney is one of my favorite places and was the first city we ever visited when we traveled to Australia. If anything, Sydney is to blame for us falling in love with this fantastic country we now call home so it will be nice to spend a little time there again.

I’m traveling this week and want to try and cram as much stuff and meetings in as I can   because I want to make sure I don’t need to go for the next couple of months due to the pending birth of Junior number two.

The missus is already a little frantic that I’m traveling away but as we still have two months before the due date I reckon we’ll be OK -crosses fingers, toes, arms, legs.

I really do hope that this is the case because being a short FIVE HOUR FLIGHT away from home could cause a number of logistical issues should I need to get back quickly!

Thankfully the missus has been busy building up a small group of mum ‘mates’ that she has met via Kindergarten. I have to say, Kindi has turned out to be the centre of the social universe for the missus. Its amazing the number of things that get organised through the Kindi moms and its been a good way for us to meet a number of the moms and dads through the mutual acquaintance of juniors little kindi buddy’s.

It’s always been a lot easier for me to make new friends since arriving in Australia as I kinda got chucked into the social circle when I started work. The missus on the otherhand had to start from scratch and do little more searching.

I think its fair to say that its been a bit more of a hard slog, however, the missus is very sociable and slowly but surly she’s started to get together on a regular basis with a number of like minded moms and the sounds of text messages arriving on her mobile are again starting to become a familiar sound at home

We always knew that starting from scratch from a friend perspective was always going to be pretty hard but we seem to be getting there now and it certainly gives me a little more peace of mind when it comes to traveling again.

In other news I’m still kicking myself for not making my mind up earlier as the Australia Exchange Rate continues to strengthen against the UK Pound!

I’m seriously getting into the kind of space where I’m starting to think ‘sod it’ as the house prices are still rising over here and I’m starting to get paranoid that the houses we can afford now will be out of our reach in 12 months time.

Still, Sydney will be interesting

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Hi Guys

It’s probably been the longest time I’ve spent without updating the blog and I feel ashamed

I managed to get a promotion at work which has resulted in some pretty significant travel and a little less time to update the blog. Still, things seem to be calming down a little now so I hope to get back into the swing of things.

During the last three weeks I’ve flown to some of Australias major cities visiting some of our head office sites in each of the major states.

This has included trips to Brisbane, Sydney Adelaide and Melbourne (pronounced Mel-bun and not Mel-born as I was repeatedly corrected by my Aussie colleagues) before flying back to Perth just over a week ago.

I gotta say, they were literally flying visits and I’ve been left feeling pretty knackard.

Typical itineray meant arriving in the city at about dinner time, quick dinner/drink followed by meetings the following morning and then back to the airport.

I don’t think it will be the last time I visit these places so I hope to get to know each of them a little better.

I already have another trip planned for Sydney early July although I’ve already spent a bit of time in Sydney so have got to know the place pretty well already.

Its nearly officially winter now and the temperatures have been dropping quite low in the early mornings (I even saw my breath for the first time while waiting for the bus the other day).

It transpires that the house we are renting has no insulation so we feel the cold pretty quick. It has still be warming up quite nicely during the day though with the average daily temp still hitting the early 20′s so we are still far from the freezing temperatures we’d be experiencing during the equivalent of late November back home.

Baby number two is still growing. The missus has a very large bump now and with three months to go I have no idea how the heck she can grow any bigger without exploding! It is a perfect bump though (all out front). Kinda on the lines of a large football (the round ‘soccer type’) shoved up ther front of your t-shirt. Still damn big though.

More news to follow

Cheers all

Mark

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** update – Newsgab have the uncensored Lara Bingle topless pictures HERE **

Nearly a year ago I blogged about the wonders of Laura Bingle (a name I have since found our is spelt Lara Bingle) and how the topless comment I made attracted a lot of extra visitors to our site.

I’ve written about Lara a number of times. Since she first appeared on the ‘Where the bloody hell are you?‘ ads she’s drawn quite a bit of attention.

Whether or not the attention has been down to her good looks or the advertisers tag-lines is debatable but for the visitors to our site it seems the Bingles assets are a big attraction.

The reason for me posting this entry is because the wonders of the Bingle effect have struck again!

I’ve noticed a bit of a spike in traffic to our site recently and having done a little digging around it seems that good old Lara has been in the news again.

Top searches hitting our site in the last few days have been:

laura bingle (looks like I’m not the only one who can’t spell her name correctly). lara bingle naked (hey lets cut to the chase and get to the point). Wanted down under - Finally good to see that we have some folks interested in a move down under still viting our site (hello to you ). laura bingle topless – Back to the boobs again. bingle lara (lets try the backward spelling approach) laura bingle naked (different and incorrect spelling of one of the earlier terms) lara bingle (short and sweet), laura bingle nude (not naked but nude this time) lara bingle topless (more users looking for boobs)!

So, whats with all of the interest in Laura Bingle this time? Well it seems that most of our Lara fans visiting our site originate from within Australian shores.

Some time ago, when the ‘where the bloody hell are you?‘ ads were being shown regularly, and Bingles public profile was at it’s peek, the Australian ‘lads mag’ Zoo magazine showed some piccies of Lara Bingle topless (but appropriately covered).

The magazine advertised the pictures as: “World Exclusive! Bloody Hell! TV ad girl, Lara Bingle’s first ever men’s mag shoot” while an accompanying press release declared: “Lara Bingle Poses Topless for New Men’s Magazine.”

Bingle says she did not pose, topless or exclusively, for the magazine and tried to sue publisher Emap in the Federal Court for defamation, misleading conduct and breach of copyright.

Anyway, to cut a long story short it turns our that she DID pose topless and the pictures appeared for a short time on the German version of GQ Magazine.

The Sydney Morning Herald picked up on the story and reported on the story which in turn caused the GQ webservers to crash as a direct result of all the extra traffic being routed to the site.

The crash resulted in even more news which resulted in more traffic to GQ which resulted in GQ removing the pic.

The lack of the offending pics is what appears to be leading Bingle fans on their search for pictures of the top totties assets (damn, I’m starting to sound like a daily star reporter).

Anyway, a GDU toned down version of the offending picture can be found here (Lara Bingle Topless GQ photos). Was the search worth it?

I have a feeling it’s probably not and if you want the uncesored version…well you’ll need to wait for the guys back at GQ to sort their servers out

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Tasmania is Australia’s island state, separated from the mainland by the 240 kilometre expanse of Bass Strait.

A land of wild and beautiful landscapes, Tasmania boasts a comfortable temperate climate, quality wine and food, rich history and a leisurely, relaxed lifestyle.

Tasmania is home to one of the world’s 10 best beaches (Wineglass Bay), the world’s best small town (Strahan) and is rated third in the world for wise management of the natural environment.

More than any other state in Australia, Tasmania enjoys four distinct seasons, each with its their own special characteristics.

Both local Tasmanians and visitors enjoy the state’s temperate maritime climate. Summer is a festive season when the Launceston Festivale and the Hobart Summer Festival are held.

Autumn is a mellow season with calm, sunny days when the native deciduous beech trees and European trees blaze with a riot of red, orange and gold colours. Winter days are crisp and clear with a dusting of snow on mountain peaks. Spring is cool and refreshing, with gardens bursting back to life as Tasmania celebrates the Blooming Tasmania festival.

Tasmania’s capital Hobart is an intriguing blend of the old and the new, a city defined by the river and sea. Hobart’s maritime focus can be appreciated with a harbour cruise or drive to the top of Mt Nelson or Mt Wellington – suburbs line the Derwent River, city buildings are clustered around the historic docks and the Derwent estuary broadens into Storm Bay.

Only twenty-five kilometres from Hobart is the historic town of Richmond, home to the old Richmond Gaol and part of Tasmania’s early convict origins. The nearby vineyards and wineries of the Coal River Valley are home to many of Tasmania’s superb cool-climate wines. Hobart is an ideal base from which to explore southern and eastern Tasmania.

Hobart has more summer daylight hours than any other Australian capital city. Tasmania is the southernmost of the eight Australian states and territories, and enjoys over 15 hours of daylight on the summer solstice (22 December).

This is 2.5 more hours of daylight than Darwin (Northern Territory) receives and 1 hour more than Sydney (New South Wales) receives on the same day. Experts at the Launceston Planetarium claim that the day is even longer if twilight periods at dawn and dusk are taken into account.

On the other hand, Tasmania receives less daylight than mainland Australian states and territories in winter. Hobart has around 9 hours daylight in winter, 1 hour less than Sydney and about 2.5 hours less than Darwin.

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Australia, according to the 2005 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, is the best place in the world to live in! That is probably why the application for migration to Australia annually is extremely competitive as many people dream of starting a new life down under.

There are numerous factors attracting people to live in Australia – the quality of life easily achievable, abundant employment prospects, world-class education and good health care facilities. However, it can be very tricky to achieve permanent residence status in Australia because the competition for the limited number of visas given each year is intensive.

There are a number of ways for those who are serious on starting a new life in Australia to apply for residency.

You can apply for immigration for your whole family with the Skilled Visa Program if you have a specific skill set that is in demand in Australia. But, there are little people that applied for immigration under this particular scheme despite the intense demand for visas to live, study and work in Australia.

There are those who were put off at the thought of having to prove experience in their profession and demonstrate their skills should actually take this scheme if they truly possessed the skill and if their profession is listed in the Skilled Program List of in-demand skills, because they can stand a great chance of acceptance.

For those who find filling in millions of forms and turn up for lots of interview to be accepted for immigration horrifying, they need to be well prepared. Because, you will have to go through a series of interview, fill up plenty of paperwork no matter which program you apply for but in the end, if you are granted a visa, all these will be worthwhile.

A trip to Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane, Perth or Cairns will perk up your desire to immigrate to Australia if you are serious of starting a new life there. Cities like Sydney and Melbourne in Australia are considered some of the most appealing, interesting and enjoyable cities in the whole world.

The lifestyle is languid and carefree and yet the cities are modern and fashionable. Blessed with fine weathers and fun people, Australia is a country with so much fun and attraction.

You can apply for a visa to reside in Australia permanently with the Partner, Child, Parent or Other Family Migration schemes if you already have family living in Australia.

Those who already have a business and intended to relocate to Australia or those who wish to start a new business there and employ the locals have other alternatives available for them. There is a special visa available for refugees and last but not least, the option available to any one with lots of money is to invest a sum of money into a bank in Australia for a period of time.

Whichever scheme that suits your situation best, be sure to put in everything within your power to make your dream of starting a new life come true. As Australia has been voted to be the best country to live in, demand for residency there will increase significantly as we all move to Australia to get the best quality of life possible!

Article Source : emigration-center.com

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Australia is a very diverse country geographically and a hot spot for tourism. If you are thinking about heading down under, here is some information on Australia.

An Overview of Australia for Travelers

Australia is its own continent, the only country in the world that can say as much. It covers roughly 3 million square miles and is about the size of the continental United States. The capital is Canberra, but Sydney is the biggest city with 4.2 million people. The climate of Australia is extremely dry inland with more temperate conditions along the coast. The population centers are primarily along the coast due to soaring temperatures inland.

Australia was originally inhabited by Aboriginal tribes. In 1770, Captain Cook claimed the land for Great Britain. In 1788, the first colony was established in New South Wales. Most of the colonists were convicted criminals from Great Britain. Gold was discovered soon thereafter and Australia became a destination for immigrants seeking fortune and a new start in life.

On the far northern coast, Australia is home to one of the amazing sites in the world. The great barrier reef is a water enthusiasts dream. With incredible plant life, the reef is world renowned as a diver’s paradise. A watchful eye is advised given the presence of the Great White Shark in the area.

Australia is a Commonwealth. The federal powers are mapped somewhat after those in the United States, but no bill of rights exists. Unlike the U.S., the individual territories retain significant authority over their own affairs.

People in Australia are called “Australians.” The country has a population of just over 20 million, and the population is growing at a rate of 1.1 percent a year. Australians ethnicity is 92 percent European, 6 percent Asian and 2 percent Aboriginal. No religion dominates, but 27 percent of Australians considered themselves Roman Catholics. Life expectancy for males is 78 years while females live to 83 on average. Literacy rates are a surprisingly low 85 percent.

Australia was often considered the forgotten country. Long distance transportation changed that designation. Now it is one of the hottest tourist destinations year in and year out.

Richard Monk is with FactsMonk.com - a site with facts about everything. Visit us to read more about Australia.

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Australia’s Northern Territory is a land of swirling, near-phosphorescent, ochre dust, rocky mountain-high thunderclouds and sky-shattering storms – a region of pawpaw (papaya) and mango farms, pearl oyster meat from the pearling industry, farm-raised alligator and Thai spices. Indigenous people still dive for lily roots and burn the forests to trap game and make passage through the undergrowth possible.

To journey through this land and taste it was one of the greatest privileges of my travel-writing life.

Equivalent in size to France, Italy and Spain combined, Australia’s Outback Northern Territory is bordered by Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. A vibrant, developing economy, the Northern Territory has one-sixth of Australia’s land mass and just over one percent of the population, but with the youngest, wealthiest people in the nation.

It has an environment that ebbs and flows with the seasons, of contrast and colour, where change is the only constant. Of awe inspiring iconic wonders – the World Heritage National Parks of Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta (Ayers Rock).

Darwin, the state’s capital, is so close to Asia that it’s much easier to head to Singapore than Sydney. Immigrants of every Asian culture have brought their foods and cooking traditions. At Darwin’s Hanuman, Thai Nonya cuisine meets Tandoor Indian: soak up the lemon grass and basil-flavoured sauce drenching the grilled rock oysters with warm naan bread. These are served in the trademark earthenware plates with little lids covering the oysters.

Australia’s Outback Northern Territory is renowned for its colourful characters. The type you’d meet at one of the legendary outback pubs, cattle stations or country towns. The gateway to Asia for the rest of Australia, or the window into the country for the rest of the world, the Northern Territory is a unique part of the most exciting continent on earth.

It’s almost hard not to fall in love with its down to earth attitude.

Don’t miss this great once in a lifetime experience. National Visas can help you get a Visa for Australia. Visit our website for more details.

Source: nationalvisas.com.au

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