13 February 2007

Live in Canberra? It'll cost you

| johnboy
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Interesting post up on the British Expats site from a “Hel” who’s trying as hard as she can to move to Canberra.

She’s a little disheartened to discover that public education is going to cost “$12000 per year plus $349 insurance” for her son, compared to ~$5,000 in NSW.

And another one goes private…

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Hey sammy it goes to show after seeing a before shot of here that with a little bit of makeup and good stylist, many everyday people could look like her!..

She also makes it clear that she didn’t file in time for another visa which could have stopped the “international student” fees.

It’s her problem.

And cry me a f***ing river, she has to pay something like 1/3 of that when you look at the exchange rate.

Having just done a bit more background reading, it appears that may be just for people coming here on student visas.
The children of people who come on work visas are apparently entitled to the same schooling fees as residents/citizens.

Meconium – From the CRICOS website, an overseas student at an ACT government primary school is up for $66 500 for the duration of the course. That sounds like international fees for international students to me.

NFS: Canberra Times few days back for the doctor’s gap, few months ago for the dentists story. Can’t link as the CT website only archives for 2 days (ggrrr).

Lol mutley, international fees are for uni students only, as well as being the same nationwide. The post itself specifies that these are fees for a state school. I don’t know how she’s calculated that, everyone knows poms can come here and get decent jobs any time they like, as long as they’re ‘the right sort of people’… I find that in fields such as education, poms are treated preferentially in some respects because of their apparent professional manner.

aich jay, read the post on the expats site, she makes it clear it’s about state schools.

yeah snarky cos your posts are just so valuable to debate.

fool.

NeedForSpeed2:31 pm 13 Feb 07

Al,

care to point some evidence for that please?
Thanks!

… and my above snark goes to Bonfire, too! (Getting into the habit of skipping his/her posts these days…)

In the UK, “public school” can, in some cases, refer to what we would call a private school. Perhaps Hel has her knickers in a twist because of the cost of private education, not the taxpayer-funded public system.

Deano: So let me get this straight – they are coming here on a temporary working visa with the option to piss off back home if things don’t work out but are complaining that they won’t be getting the handouts that long term taxpayers are getting.

No wonder they are called Whinging Poms!

We got 5 year working visas when we went to the UK for a couple years in early 2000. Although we weren’t allowed to go on the dole over there (and had to show adequate savings to get by while we were there) we were able to get into the state school system free of charge for all three kids, just like our UK neighbour’s kids did. We were able to use the National Health (UK Medicare) free, for both medical and dental, and (I think, honestly can’t recall this bit) the same child dependant tax breaks on our UK incomes as UK residents.

If only half what this person says is true they’re getting shafted in a big way, and are well within rights to be pissed off!

Don’t international students pay international student fees?

Technically public education costs $0, you are not forced to pay anything. When i went to school my parents couldn’t affored the school fees and only paid what they could and from memory it was only a few hundred dollars a year.

Where does this $12000 figure come from, did she think the total was in Pounds and then convert it into the Aussie dollar? After all the Poms get 3x their money coming over here.

Just make sure you do it in countries that don’t have an extradition treaty with Australia.

VYBerlinaV8_now with_added_grunt1:19 pm 13 Feb 07

Perhaps as an experiment I should apply for the dole in as many countries as offer it, and see how many actually pay me. I’d be surprised if the answer is zero.

But don’t think I’m a parasite on society, I’ll give it all to charity…(the VYBerlinaV8 Foundation).

Seeing as we were briefly talking hot blondes, check out the photo of Jennifer Hawkins from a few years back, when she was a lowly legal secretary:

http://perryv.i.ph/blogs/facesmoon/2005/02/11/miss-universe-then-and-now/

Sort of makes a mockery of the whole “live in Canberra” campaign …

ACT Govt: “Come and live in wonderful Canberra. There are plenty of jobs here for skilled workers and we live in a city with clean streets, low crime and lots of trees.”

Fine print: “The ACT govt cannot guarantee affordable housing, education or health care. Move here at your own financial risk.”

typical whinging poms from a welfare mentality state.

ask them to put there hands in there own pocket to fund a lifestyle and watch them whinge.

i dont see why the benefits of being a taxpying citizen shoudl be extended to to those who have no intention of contributing to society as a whole over the longer term.

i dont expect to go on the dole when im on holiday in the old dart.

What about the ‘ladies of the night’ – are they more expensive here too?
(I wonder who’ll answer that one…)

Everything’s expensive here. Dentist fees are on average 50% higher. Couple of days ago was the report that doctors fee gaps are the highest in the country, and more. While we are patting ourselves on the back about best education, highest average pays, standard of living and everything else, we should remember we are being systematically shafted for the privilege by all and sundry. And we put up with it…

I think the dip community could be why they think they can get away with gouging so much.

Amazing, given the costs and relative prestige of private schools in Canberra. I’d be willing to bet diplomats don’t have to put their kids names on the wait list at birth to get in at Grammar, Radford etc.

Sammy, those hot blondes usually have bad days.
Which is why the place is known as ‘Hot Cross Bunnings’.

I think the dip community could be why they think they can get away with gouging so much.

By my reading I think they’d like to get a longer visa if they could.

Wow, that’s huge. I wonder why so much in ACT compared to NSW? Given our large diplomatic community, I would have thought ACT would have reasonably fees.

For around $2,500 per year in school fees, I could send all three kids to the local Catholic school. Add on a few hundred extra per child for uniforms, a few hundred for private music lessons at school, and it’s still a lot less than $12,000 per student.

For a little while the twins perplexed me, as I didn’t realise there were twin blondes working there.

One is clearly more attractive than the other, and until I realised they were two people, I thought she was just having extreme good and bad days 🙂

From the post:
Ontop of school fees we will not get 1st homebuyers grant, medicare, child benefit etc

So let me get this straight – they are coming here on a temporary working visa with the option to piss off back home if things don’t work out but are complaining that they won’t be getting the handouts that long term taxpayers are getting.

No wonder they are called Whinging Poms!

Wendy (the younger) is hot at Bunnings

for your viewing pleasure sammy… lol

I like going to Bunnings in Tuggeranong to see the hot chicks who work the checkouts. Why do they hire so many hot chicks? Oh wait, I answered my own question 🙂

$12,000.. thats disgusting!

I know one of the managers at Bunnings in Tuggers, I’ll ask him why there so many Poms…
my best guess though is they most likely they needed the staff and hired them!

Recently i’ve noticed an inordinate number of poms working at Bunnings in Tuggeranong. There are a few reasons I can think of:

1. It’s just normal

2. They’ve come over here to work at Bunnings

3. They are the children of people who’ve come over here on skilled migrant visas.

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