You may have read about the bushfires racing through Victoria, especially through small towns on the outskirts of Melbourne.  In Victoria, the bushfires have already claimed over one hundred lives and destroyed entire towns.

We at the Visa Bureau would like to extend our hopes for the safety of our clients, and our families and friends, who may be affected by the bushfires.

If you would like to help those affected by the fires, we would encourage you to make a donation to the Australian Red Cross.  You can learn more about the Australian Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009 at this website: http://www.redcross.org.au

Please note that the Australian Red Cross is dealing with unprecedented traffic to its website, so you may need to be patient.

UPDATE: Additionally, if you are concerned for the safety of family and friends in the areas affected by the bushfires in Victoria and have been unable to contact them directly, we advise you call the Australian Red Cross hotline on + 61 3 9328 3716.

Our hopes are with everybody in the area, and with the firefighters and soldiers working to stop the flames.

- Andy Harwood is the CEO of the Visa Bureau

©Visa Bureau 2003-2010

Visa Bureau takes no responsibility and cannot be held accountable for action taken as a result of any information or comment provided on this blog, and we recommend that you always seek a number of opinions before making a decision regarding your migration or visa application. Please refer to the Visa Bureau terms of use for more information.

A few weeks ago, we wrote an article for British Expats called "Would You Be Better Off in Oz?"

The article, it seems, set off a bit of controversy in the British Expats discussion area!

In the interest of transparency, I would like to share our background research so that we can be entirely open about where those numbers came from.  Interestingly, our original versions of this article, and in places where we use it in promotional material, the piece contains full citations.  We removed them from the version on British Expats in the interests of brevity.  It is an editorial decision that we regret!  (You'll have to forgive the boring statistical explanation below.)

The figures in all of the comparison tables are based on the exchange rate of 2.12 Australian dollars to the British pound, as provided by Oanda.com on August 2nd 2008.  Oanda.com powers the exchange rate calculations on our site, among others.

Salary figures were sourced from Salaryexpert.com's August 2008 data, which is in turn based on industry and government publications.  We also used an Australian State and Territory funded employment information source called My Future, found at my www.myfuture.edu.au

If any readers are interested, MyFuture is actually a great source for highly specific career, wage and qualification information!  You can find detailed industry and occupation information at MyFuture.

We are confident that the average salaries we listed were accurate at the time the document was written: 02/08/2008.

Our cost of goods research was from the UK Office of National Statistics (numbers circa July 2008) and from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which uses the average cost of goods in the eight capital cities of Australia.

As for property prices, these were sourced from the 2008 Real Estate Market Outlook provided by the Real Estate Institute of Australia.  Our UK housing prices were, in turn, sourced from the UK's Direct.gov site: www.communities.gov.uk.

I hope that addresses where we got our numbers, but I also recognise the feeling that we have been misleading.  We painted a rosy picture of life in Australia in an article that reads more like a sales pitch than the kind of neutral exploration of life abroad that British Expats is known for.

I'd like to extend an open invitation to British Expats members (Hi BE readers!) to poke away at our research, ask questions, and share their opinions and experiences with us.  That's the great power of online community!

-Tom Blackett is the Online Editor for the Visa Bureau.

©Visa Bureau 2003-2010

Visa Bureau takes no responsibility and cannot be held accountable for action taken as a result of any information or comment provided on this blog, and we recommend that you always seek a number of opinions before making a decision regarding your migration or visa application. Please refer to the Visa Bureau terms of use for more information.

Welcome to the new Visa Bureau Blog.

We're starting a conversation!

We'll use this blog to keep you informed about immigration and visa issues that could affect you, share some of our insights and comment on newsworthy events.

 More importantly, we're opening ourselves up to comments, questions and feedback from you.  Every post in our blog will have space for your insights or questions.  We welcome constructive discussion and questions.  We will answer your questions on this blog and address any concerns you may have about what we write.

This blog is a conversation, not just a broadcast.

As a company, we value openness, communication, honesty and professionalism.  Those values will be reflected in this blog. 

When our experts write a post or answer a question, we'll take a moment to introduce them.  Our contributors include Migration Agents, Online Editors, members of our Case Processing team, and even our CEO.  We want to make our relationship to our readers and clients as open as possible.

I'm Tom Blackett, the Online Editor here at Visa Bureau.  I'm responsible for making sure our website has only the most up-to-date information (and that it's good to read!) My team and I will be spending time to moderate this blog, forwarding questions to staff and working to make sure that our readers have the best possible experience.

My team and I are looking forward to moderating the discussion here on the Visa Bureau Blog and helping you, our readers, get the most out of this ongoing conversation.

Happy blogging!

©Visa Bureau 2003-2010

Visa Bureau takes no responsibility and cannot be held accountable for action taken as a result of any information or comment provided on this blog, and we recommend that you always seek a number of opinions before making a decision regarding your migration or visa application. Please refer to the Visa Bureau terms of use for more information.