Magic of Melbourne
One unexpected magical discovery in Melbourne was on our final evening.
We went to the Spaghetti Tree restaurant, one of a number of Italian places along that street. After a very fine meal of Veal in white wine for Av, Hoi Sin Duck risotto for me, along with a rather excellent Tasmanian wine, Tamar Ridge Pinot we moved on to pudding.
The restaurant had <drum roll>
A mars bar cake.
Yup – no kidding, turn a cake into a delicious chocolaty goodness Mars bar tasting cake. So unlike the Scottish who take a Mars bar and turn it into deep fried Mars bar (ukh!), the chef here has magicked together all the right ingredients to make a gorgeous pudding.
Perfect.
Immigration equality
Since April 2011 British immigration rules have tightened up. Kiwi’s, Aussies and other Commonwealth countries that have previously enjoyed very favourable immigration status in the UK, are being put on a more measured footing. While as Brits emigrating to NZ or Australia there’s a limit on the number of places, we have to demonstrate our worth and in most instances have a job to come to (or stacks of cash), the same hasn’t been the case if you were a kiwi heading to the UK.
So what’s different if you’re heading to the UK?
Well, for a few years now you’ve needed to apply for a visa anyhow. It’s not been granted ‘as of right’ when you show up at a UK airport fresh off the long flight. At the time, the requirement to get a photo taken for your new visa was predicted to kill off all and any OE’s & working holidays to the UK. Only it didn’t. And the new rules will have a similar effect, people will just work with them.
Existing visa’s granted on the basis of ancestry are unaffected. It’s just those people coming to the UK who wont be on a temporary (albeit two year long) working holiday visa, will now have to jump through similar hoops that Brits coming to NZ do.
So now, prospective kiwi’s wanting to spend 2+ years in the UK working will have to have skills. Plus a job offer from a legitimate company for a job that is in high demand in the UK. And they’ll need to apply early as there’s an annual cap of approx 20,000 places available. And the job will probably have to have been advertised across the entirety of Europe for anyone there to apply ahead of you.
Sounding familiar?
Now, there’s a lot of Kiwi & Aussie interests who are crying foul about this. Yet, I don’t see an issue with it. Although this sort of system is never going to solve the domestic problems the UK has due to immigration – with 350 million+ Europeans having the right to enter the UK and apply for any job, limiting the potential for 25 million Aussies+Kiwi’s to enter the UK isn’t going to prevent an overwhelming flood.
Sure it means Kiwi’s & Aussies might be more likely to only stay for two years. Surely that’s a good thing though?
NZ & Australian Govts. spend a lot of time and money encouraging ex-pat kiwi’s & Aussies to return home. They have skills the home country needs, there’s loads of jobs etc. So while these people have gained valuable European working experience, <rant on> which somehow never translates into better salaries once you return home mind you because none of that is suddenly apparently relevant to the home market <rant off>, suddenly bringing these people home to share their skills & experience is an unfair thing?
Compared with the UK, neither NZ or Australia have a significant unemployment problem. Sure there are certainly groups in all societies who have higher unemployment than average. The social engineering that is UK immigration policy is much bigger than simply unemployment.
Compare & contrast; in Wellington we have a few dozen people peacefully camped out as part of the ‘Occupy’ movement. While in London a few months ago you had thousands of people rioting and pillaging for nights on end. While there’s no excuse to steal stuff from the One Pound shop (read $2 shop), it reflected discontent, inequality, general grievances with the ‘system’ and the Government. And at last count there were hundreds of people camped out in front of St Paul’s cathedral in the heart of London.
We’ve got it good. We don’t really appreciate how good. Whether that’s in NZ, or as Kiwi’s heading to the UK even under the new immigration rules. Let’s just get on and make the most of what we’ve got.
Six figure jobs
The Seek job search website has (finally) followed TradeMe’s lead and now have a ‘jobs paying over $100k‘ category . This is said to be in response to the large increase in the number of positions attracting those salaries, although all the numbers I can find quoted are only percentages, so it can be a bit tricky checking the real picture.
The largest slice of the currently advertised positions are in their IT category {148/3152}, followed by Engineering {359/3152} in quite a distant second, with accounting (285/3152) also placing. In comparison TradeMe are currently listing 554 IT jobs, out of 1332 in total with a $100k+ salary.
Now, the real picture is a bit smaller than this. We’ve mentioned before about potential overlap in advertising for ‘the job I’m leaving and the job I’m going to’ distorting the apparent figures. Also, some positions have multiple different advertising slants. The difference between a consultant, architect or IT specialist can sometimes be nothing beyond the advertised job title. So agencies try different headlines hoping to catch your eye. So don’t be surprised to find the same job description for a wide variety of different job titles.
Plus numerous positions are being advertised with multiple agencies, so it can pay to dig around and pick which agency to apply through if you fancy one of these positions. Often you will find that the actual recruiting company is also advertising the same role via Seek or TradeMe.
While the agencies will of course tell you that you stand a much better chance applying through them, experience shows few agents actually add value (there’s a shock!). The ones that will are normally the agents who have worked with you previously – perhaps in placing you in your current role. When it comes to interviews, the recruiting agencies should be able to help you out with the nuances of who is interviewing you, company values etc. more than a simple perusal of the companies website. Set against that, good personal networks should be able to give you better information.
At the end of the day if you apply directly, it can mean that the hiring company saves $20k+ in ‘recruitment’ costs. Money that would otherwise be paid to the agency as a success fee. There’s certainly a few decisions, which while they’ve not only rested on that factor, have certainly swung in the direction of a direct applicant rather than a recruitment agency referral because it saves that $20k.
(Don’t expect of course that you will be seeing the $20k!)
Survey time – licensed Immigration Advisers
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Immigration Advisers
The IAA has just published the results of their third annual survey of client satisfaction with licensed immigration advisers. And what a fascinating read it is – No really, I mean that.
There were 5,781 immigrants invited to respond and 721 of them responded. So, the satisfaction of 721 people out of approx 45,000 emigrants to NZ are intended to give us a representative picture of how much better NZ would be if only everyone used a licensed immigration adviser.
The visa types for these 721 people is also interesting. 40% for Work visas, 20% Student, 20% Residency(what were the other 20%? ). So at least 60% of the survey respondents were actually applying for a Temporary visa. Not Permanent Residency. Seems like a lot of temporary visa’s still being dished out with a chunky advisers costs attached.
Oh and 5781 people, across approx 500 advisers. So that’s an average of just eleven clients successfully through the end of the immigration process a year. Sheesh – no wonder immigration agents have to charge so much if their professionalism & efficiency only manages to succeed with eleven clients in a year.
Lets put that into numbers shall we?
Just 12% of emigrants, including those on temporary visas, decided to use a licensed adviser in the past year. For a service which is supposed to be made sooo much better and easier by having a licensed professional on the case for you..
Anyhow.
The Executive Summary can be found here. It must be the only exec summary I’ve read in the past five years that goes on for eight pages.. Executive = doesn’t have the time to read the full report and needs a one page summary.
Ho hum, then again I am the sort of person who will read the whole 50 page report with appendices of statistical analysis. Short of conducting the survey myself, reading the full report is as close as you’ll get to doing original research – rather than parroting the officially approved line.
Still, moving on.
The actual summary page, first link above, provides some interesting snapshots.
The satisfaction benchmark is 65%. Hmm, seems a bit low. One in three customers not being satisfied is acceptable performance? Most customer sat surveys I’ve seen or heard companies rave on about set a benchmark of at least 80%.
In terms of Adviser Performance I find it most interesting that there are two area’s showing ‘below’ satisfactory performance;
information about Treaty of Waitangi and Maori customs/traditions (44%); and
providing services for a reasonable cost (64%).
Hmm – so irrespective of whether you were happy with your adviser or not, Price is still one area that advisers don’t even meet the paltry 65% satisfaction level.
The next nugget is even more fascinating, the satisfaction with exempt advisers.
It is just as good as with properly “professional” licensed advisers..
You what?? After all the rigmarole about how fantastic it must be for emigrants to use properly licensed advisers, they don’t actually do a better job than a random lawyer or Citizens Advice Bureau adviser? (clearly this does not apply to “advice” you can get for free off immigration forums or blogs – that would obviously cause you a great deal of harm and cause your intestines to explode through your eyes.
)
Still, the highlights tell us that in all the important scoring area’s there wasn’t anywhere that exempt advisers scored better than properly licensed advisers.
Except when you look at how many people were ‘very satisfied’. This is your 80% customer satisfaction benchmark, and only 43% of people using a licensed adviser were very satisfied. Compared with 50% who used an exempt adviser.
Interestingly, when Avalon wrote to the Immigration Minister a second time on this issue after receiving the obligatory fob-off and they tried to use the current sat survey to impress upon is how good these advisers were – she said:
In fact the survey also shows that Immigrants prefer the service given by the Exempt agencies – so once again – it’s hardly something the Immigration Agent Industry should be proud of. It suggests that potential immigrants would be best advised to employ the services of a lawyer and stay well away from Immigration Agents.
Hmm -looks like the situation has not improved in the last 2 years then. And they have some way to go then on more than meeting a clients expectations and really delivering a high quality professional service then! Overall satisfaction still remains at 75%, so three years into a licensing regime and those licensed advisers aren’t doing much better overall.Also – I just love it when statistics don’t actually show what people tell you they show – and I really dislike that the people tell us hope we are too dumb to notice.
Still on the positive side, the survey does show that an increasing number of clients of licensed advisers are satisfied with individual aspects of what their adviser does. Which in itself is a good thing, but still doesn’t answer why the vast majority of emigrants still don’t bother with licensed advisers. Presumably becuas ethey know its a rampant rip-off. And to be honest – most of the people that do really don’t need to. There just isn’t enough added value to justify the amount of money it will cost you. The actual step-by-step process to migrate to New Zealand is not that complicated. The thing that makes it hard for some people is the shite service and behavior of INZ – and no “adviser” is going to make that easier to deal with. I have still not met a single migrant whose agent actually dealt with the issues rather than just pass the crap back to the migrant to deal with.
Save your $$$ – you will need it to buy coffee with!
Auckland joins the 20th Century – just in time for the rugby
Filed under: Cost of living, Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views
One of the really odd things we found on our initial trips to NZ was the lack of an airport hotel at Auckland. With the number of international flights getting in at unsocial hours of the day, it seemed a big opportunity was being missed.
Now when I say airport hotel, I mean a hotel which is within a five minute walk or taxi ride of the terminal buildings. Not the closest hotel to the airport being a 20 minute taxi ride away. Which is what the situation at Auckland has been up until May 2011.
Plus of course as we have now discovered, the propensity of AirNZ to cancel direct flights to and from places (Wellington to anywhere out of the country for instance) and insisting that you have to bounce via Auckland to get out of the country. This means you fly back into Auckland really late, and either face a night in the terminal building or a journey of half an hour each way to get to a hotel. Because of course, AirNZ insist on booking you on the first (antisocial) flight out of Auckland to your onwards destination.
Arriving Auckland midnight sir? You’ll be wanting the 0630 flight on to Wellington then wont you?
Seriously, do these people not think! Six hours is too long to comfortably spend in either terminal overnight, since they do actually shut the things down as the traffic volume is nowhere near enough to justify keeping them open 24 hours – unlike Heathrow or Gatwick for example. But also too short to actually get somewhere else and get a decent amount of sleep.
<rant off>
We are now blessed with a Novotelat the airport. Which is within a 2 minute walk of the international terminal. Really, it is. They’ve built it at the end of the terminal where everyone piles out of customs & baggage reclaim bleery eyed and wondering where to go next. In fact, it’s between the ‘pay for your parking here’ parking meters, and the car park.
And it’s swanky. Somehow we got a room on one of the two ‘Premier’ floors, which seem to equate to the Executive rooms listed on the hotel website. Kudos to the receptionist who greeted us at somewhere around 2:30am in the morning – boy was he bright eyed and bushy tailed! Which was really nice to have someone checking us in who didn’t give off the ‘I’m on nights and I’m going to distribute the surliness around‘ attitude that you sometimes find. But also attentive enough to understand we were at the opposite end of bright eyed and that if a pillow had been placed on the counter we’d have probably fallen asleep there and then.
Very nice rooms, the latest entertainment options thought of etc. So if you happen to have a laptop or portable DVD player and want to watch a movie you’ve bought with you, you have all the normal cabling options available so you can plug the thing into the large screen TV in the room.
Plus the bar was still open gone 2am in the morning when we arrived on a delayed Fiji flight, with the coffee machine up and running at 6am at the bar in the morning when we have to ship out again for our Wellington return leg. When the website says it’s a 24 hour bar – its true.
Oh and they have very nice showers, with really good sound proofing in the rooms so we didn’t hear a single lift door go bing all night even though we were in a room next to the lift lobby.
Plus, like the Singapore Changi airport hotel, they’ll do rooms for during the day – but not buy the hour. Which is really handy for those late night flights out of Auckland which will take 12 sleepless hours to get anywhere.
So finally and just in time for the rugby world cup, Auckland has a decent airport hotel, yippeee!!
Crappy service from the Post Office at Reading Cinemas today
There are days when I just wonder whether front desk staff actually understand the meaning of either of the words ‘Customer Service’.
Yesterday I went to the post office at the Reading Cinema building, easy enough you’d think, to try and post a package back to the UK. On reaching the counter I ask for the price of posting to the UK, put the package on the scales and politely wait.
Post Office lady – “that’ll cost you $4 extra for stamps”
I give a puzzled look
“our printing machine that prints the ‘postage paid’ labels is broken, so you have to buy stamps. Which will cost $4 extra”
“err, if your machine is broken then that’s your problem. I just want to post this to the UK, if you can only do that with normal stamps I don’t expect to pay more”
“the printer is broken, it’ll cost $4 more”
Like I’m stupid and didn’t understand the English language in the first place
“Yes and it’s not my issue that you’ve got something broken, I don’t expect to pay extra just because you have to use stamps”
“Well you wont have to pay any postage. You either buy the stamps or we don’t post it “
Putting on her best I’m not negotiating face, take it or leave it.
So I left it.
And trudged off to the next nearest post office to try them. Shame it’s a monopoly really otherwise I’d be able to really take my custom elsewhere.
So at the other post office, the printer was working, the chappie smiled, asked me for $14.81 and checked that I’d put the right customs sticker on it.
Done. Sorted. Without ‘extra’ charging.
So I’m left wondering – was the staff member at the first post office just being obstructive, or were they trying fraud? After all, postage rates are postage rates, they’re standard. It doesn’t matter if you buy stamps in advance, buy them at the time, or print your own stamps. Same cost.
Where would the extra $4 have gone? Someone’s pocket?
Time to find the Post Office’s complaints form and fill one in.
IRD denies excess. . .
As new staff car park is opened.
In the foyer of the new IRD offices, aka the Asteron building in Wellington yesterday were;
A black Bentley, A white Lamborghini, a Yellow one, a Silver Aston Martin V8, plus a Grey Aston Martin Visage. Nice, the latter two Aston’s that is, not the others.
Where to live in the world?
It’s index time, apparently, with the OECD Better Life Index & Vision of Humanity Global Peace Index coming out with their best places to live in the world annual surveys.
The OECD survey is quite interesting as it allows you to give weight to particular things you care about, be that quality of life, jobs, income etc. They do produce a summary report with analysis which makes fascinating reading.
Everything being equal, NZ only scores bottom in the ‘employee’s working very long hours’ category – which appears to mostly be driven by the relatively low average income. Although at least the Aussie’s & the UK score badly for that factor too. Turkey skews the average results a bit by having a very high level of weekly hours worked. So 10 out of 38 are ‘above average’.
At $18k USD NZ average income is below the OECD average. Interestingly this compares with being the seventh best in terms of levels of employment, and fourth ‘best’ for long term unemployment (i.e. fourth lowest).
(Another) interesting outcome is that NZ comes second, behind Sweden, for environmental factors. As it turns out this is actually a measure of pollution in the air in cities of over 100,000 people (NZ=7, Sweden=5). Which as a generalisation for the majority of the population is probably a fair assessment.
We’ve mentioned the GPI before, and this year it puts NZ second place – behind Iceland. So assuming you ignore the bankrupt banks, stagnant economy, exploding volcano’s – sure Iceland is a great place to be. We’ll ignore our own earthquakes, buggered-ish economy and the Rugby World Cup for the moment.
Funnily enough the NZ drop in score is for curious reasons;
More Police officers – delivering on a Govt pledge to put ‘more police on the street’;
More people in prison – possibly linked to the greater number of Police;
And an increase in involvement in International conflict! I hadn’t noticed NZ invading any other countries recently and I don’t think lots of Kiwi’s going to Aus really counts as an invasion let alone a conflict. Unless they were thinking of the international jousting tourney in Taupo?
ho hum.
Can I have my 62c back please?
Filed under: Economics, General Budgeting, Hubby's Views, Immigration Advisers, Life in New Zealand, Retirement, Pensions and Kiwisaver
I was browsing through some news articles on Kiwiblog and came across this one about Govt income & expense. Which is talking about the Where’s My Tax? website, using figures from this weeks budget.
Which is quite a fascinating resource..
Top right of the page you can switch between income (taxes) and expense (public spending) .
One of the wow! factors for me was the single biggest Govt expenditure:
NZ Super (Pension). At $2173 per person per year.
Second place goes to Treasury debt servicing, at $829 pppy Our collective revolving credit facility costs us all $829 a year. hmm, that seems like an awful lot of money doesn’t it?
Primary education comes in third at $620 pppy, that’ll be all those ‘voluntary’ contributions.
With Secondary & Tertiary education each getting $455 pppy, more ‘voluntary’ contributions then! 
DPB, at $430 pppy, comes a long way behind as the second biggest MSD expense, after NZ Super.
One of the buried slithers (actually the second smallest) on the income page is Dept of Labour, showing this income;
Yes. The effective income from immigration ‘advisers’ is 22c per year. The effective income from giving someone Residency, ten times that.
But wait, lets look at the expenses shall we?
So this is just a list of the bottom half of DoL expenses. 62c a year to run the IAA.
I don’t think these numbers are any different from what has been previously posted. Presented in a fascinating way though.
You are here too
Filed under: Blog and Forum Roundups, Hubby's Views, The Book and Website
Having written the You are here post, I was then doing some site admin. We use Visitor Maps to help us see where you’re all reading from. The latest version of the plugin gives some rather nifty graphics, such as this showing visitors in the past month;
Which is rather interesting to look at really.
So, you are all here, somewhere.
Avalon’s Guide On Facebook
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