It depends on how you spend your free time when you were in Malaysia. Do you visit events/exhibitions when you have free time in Malaysia? Not for me, at least. yam cha at mamak, snooker, shopping are the normal activities which Oz is quite limited.

If you are someone who loves outdoor/water activities, sun shines, then oz is a place full with activities.

i don't go any events in malaysia like you because they don't have that "priceless" feeling. i starts to like it when i'm in melbourne with all famous the exhibitions stopover in melbourne like tim burton's exhibition, Tutankhamun,etc. maybe is just asians not really into it

Good for you to be able to assimilate into the society culture so easily. Yeah as what I have mentioned, if you can blend into their social activities easily, Oz is not that boring.

yeah I miss Melbourne exhibitions so much especially my 1st time at SEXPO which is never ever gonna be happening in Malaysia . It was great experience indeed

australia needs more skilled workers and not managers. That's what skills shortage mean. Managers from malaysia often struggle at interview when questioned about the the job. Someone here said malaysians lacked a good command of the english language and this is true. Fair is fair. Local managers can do a better job. hence these "managers" take up a low paying job.

best chance of success, is start afresh if you are an australian graduate but worked overseas and decided to return to australia. needless to say if you are about to graduate and wished to live here.

for others, chances are slim unless you have the right qualification to easily find a job.

I don't know why so many people are migrating to Australia. Some of these people are not even graduates, they are in their 30s and 40s. And most of them don't even have Australian degrees, they pay big bucks with migration agencies to get there.

I tell you ah, Australia is worst than Malaysia. The Aussies are the pure epitome of laziness. THey have been riding high on their mining sectors growth that they don't want to do simple jobs anymore, they sub out to the Asians. Over the years, Australia have failed to grow other sectors to match their mining growth. So if China fails, Australia is in deep s-h-i-t. Europe has high unemployment and high debt. USA although improving, but they will soon be cutting spending because they got $16.5 trillion debt. Thats going to severely effect the China growth.

I don't think Australia is able to keep up their extraordinary growth.

Already, South East Asia and China are becoming the destination for manufacturing jobs (the largest employment sector). Shares services - IT, Accounting, HR, procurement and credit control are coming to Malaysia because of our cheap skilled labor. At my friend's MNC company, he is hired to takeover the shared service job from his Australian counterpart. So whats left for migrants to seek jobs in AUstralia? The leftover jobs. Even worst, if you are not an Australian grad.

This sounds more likely to be outsourcing. Based on the country development, i think they still require more skill professionals back home.
Why i'm saying this? Coz if a country keep on outsourcing all types of jobs to overseas, it doesn't look healthy at all. They still need someone back home to R&D on those skills. My wife worked in an international bank. They providing services to backcharge oversea company on finance related work. However, liasing with account or watsoever, you still need someone to do the job though.
Some my friends earning very high income here in KL but still thinking of migration & facing difficulties in the skills. Somehow, i do have the same perception as you that they have such a nice income why still wanna migrate.
Malaysia is a nice country to live when you have lots of money. My earning won't make me rich nor make me very poor...but if you're asking me to send children to uni in future, i can't assure that coz our expenditure power is dropping every year.
You'll realise our currency is getting weaker, countries GDP growth from 90's 7.4% drop till today's 4.7%. That's a huge difference since then.
If we still can maintain 7.4% like last time, we are better off than our neighbour singapore & south korea. Stop money laundering and corruption, malaysia will be 3 times better than current!

This post has been edited by Nemesis1980: Feb 4 2013, 10:38 AM

this "epitome of laziness" is norm, even if you are living in this bolehland, unless you are the malay, the so called bumi.

2ndly, the heavenly sign of all jobs moving to asia it not really a good sign.
it mean all overseas companies seeking low cost employees.
indirectly means poor biz, at the end all ppl consuming power will drop, even in Asia.

economy is a chained-event system, in short, what comes around goes around.
eventually these outsourced jobs to Asia will stop, or further dwindled.

I disagree.

1. Even though M'sian are epitome of laziness, at least you don't pay 20-30% of your average salary towards tax which goes towards funding those lazy aussies in terms of unemployment benefit. And FYI their public service like hospitals are as dreadful as in M'sia. The waiting time is a killer. Secondly super annuantion (the equivalent of EPF) is very risky in that it's actually a unit trust fund where one can very well lose money. On top of that they charge exhorbitant management fees. Imagaine your EPF instead of getting 5% returns they tell you they lost money and they still charge you a $200.00 management fee. It's what the aussies are facing with super.

2. Cheap labour or not i don't know. But if you have a family to feed, mortgage to pay and bills to foot, any job would be better than no job. Imagine in Australia where you have a house mortgage to pay, children to feed, taxes to pay etc and you just bought a new mercedes (quite cheap at 60-70k) then one fine day your employer tells you they are laying you off to relocate to Asia. How would you feel? I would panic and maybe even faint! And if all other companies in Aus doing the same, you will literally live on the roadside!

3. I don't think outsourced jobs will stop unless Australians demand for lesser money which is not possible or until Australians develop skillset which makes it more valuable for the companies to operate out of Australia instead of overseas. That means 1 person in Australia must be able to do 4-5 person job elsewhere. Otherwise how to justify in terms of cost?

4. Alot of ok to do people in Malaysia (i.e. those with degrees working in respectable jobs making a decent living in M'sia) think that Australia is godsent. But unless you have a skill that Australia really needs, the chance of you getting a similar job in Australia with a similar pay is very,very slim even if you're a PR (worse if you're a foreigner). I have relatives who work in in very respectable position in Malaysia and left everything to migrate to Australia, only to find that they cannot get a similar job or pay in Australia despite sending out thousands of resume and spending almost a year to look for jobs. Ending up alot of them become croupier, petrol pump attendants, etc which pays them slightly above min pay. They live a megre existence looking at every penny they spend, something which they never do in Malaysia. And people still think they have a better life but I'm like whatever. If i have to watch every penny i spend, cook at home, cannot afford vacations, etc, I would rather be in Malaysia where I can enjoy all these benefits with money comming from my respectable job.

1. I totally agree with you on the Oz superannuation. It is meant for your retirement but somehow you may end up losing all those money if the fund that you have invested is losing money. The ironic part is that you are paying management fees to lose money. That is ridiculous. As for tax, yes, Oz is infamous for their high tax and is totally in disadvantage for someone who is not a PR/citizen as they do not enjoy the medicare facilities. It is something that you have to bear with if you want to come over to Oz. In my opinion, if you are able to get a good job, it is still worth it because of their currency value.

2) There is no such thing as cheap labor. You need to pay an arm or leg for any services. However, the commitments such as house mortgage, children to feed and etc is the same everywhere. You could also get lay off in Malaysia. You do not need to buy a car in Oz because the public transport is very comprehensive. That is something Msia would not be able to provide. Furthermore, if you become PR, your children will get certain financial assistance as well.

3) I agree with you on that as having the main workforce to be operated in Australia is definitely not cost efficient because of their high currency and expensive labor cost. However, it does not mean you would not be able to secure a job in Oz. In telco industry, most of the engineers are foreigners.

4) Most people migrate to Oz is because of the children's future education. They want to have their children to enjoy good tertiary education in the future. Not everybody can afford to send their children overseas to study if you work in Malaysia. You maybe the lucky one who got a well paid job in Malaysia, but not everyone is like that. In fact, earning in AUD gives you more spending power. If you are a gadget person, an iphone only costs you AUD700 while in Malaysia it costs you RM2000 plus. For me, working/living in Oz has indirectly forces me to have a healthy lifestyle such as frequent walking, home cooked food and plan your budget wisely. Back in Malaysia, we tend to take everything for granted. We will just drive out whenever we want without any planning.

This post has been edited by naleh33: Feb 5 2013, 08:07 AM

Boy, you really have an attitude don't you. Must one need to be a uni grad to succeed??? Are you so naive to think skill workers are those who graduate from uni??? sorry to burst your bubble. Skill workers can also be blue collar workers eg mechanics. welders carpenters etc or those who graduates from technical colleges/institutes. These are the people that are in demand, not those cocky arrogrants uni graduates who only sit in air con office pushing paper works

So Aussies are lazy and don't want to do menial work is it. What about Bolehlanders who pay slave wages to Indo maids , Bangla workers etc??? My aussies cousins don't have maids to look after the childrens, mow their own lawn during weekends, do home repairs. What about you???

If China fails, Australia is in deep shit. What about Malaysia??? Can Malaysia escape the fall out???

SEA and China are becoming the destination for manufracturing. For how long??? Do you know that US companies are under tremendous pressure to bring home jobs??? Obama is no Bush. I am currently working in Canada and saw first hand how US companies were moving jobs from Canada back to US. Just to name 2... Caterpillar shut down one of its Canada subsidary and moved it back to US. Several months ago, GM(the second largest auto maker in the world announced that the Camaro plant in Canada would be moving back to US
Google already said that they will built their new phone in the US. Apple also said it will built some of their computers in the US. Go Google....US companies moving jobs back to US and start reading. You think those news are BS???? Will Europe politicians follow US lead and apply pressure on their companies to move some of the jobs back to alleviate their unemployment problem???
just my 2 cents

Good points.

Let's segment the job market a bit, there's the obvious blue collar jobs, the likes of plumbers and electricians. These are skilled labors that's hard to replicate and will always be in demand.

Then there's the blue collar factory work, focused on manufacturing. As the labor costs in China and the rest of southeast Asia start to go up, countries who've outsourced will start to insource again to pacify the citizens of the US and Europe. I don't think this will stop anytime soon.

The low end information worker will continue to be offshored in general but there's a lot of out of work people in the US today that can do the job at similar rates. The bad thing is that a lot of this work is starting to get automated so even this segment is endangered.

What won't be outsourced are those that either create new ideas or have immediate touch points with the public. The former is similar to the developers, architects, etc while the latter could be consultants, doctors, lawyers etc.

Unfortunately I don't see where Australia fits in the last case. New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore will continue to be the finance capitals while Silicon Valley, Beijing, Mumbai will be the startup hubs of the world for things like IT. I'm a bit down on the prospects of a good, high paying job in Australia now that the mining boom is pretty much over. Not even sure what I'd do with my PR because in a decade or so when my kids are ready for college, Australia may not even be a good choice anymore...

sounds like better to jump boat when this happen, at that time, sure there be workforce demand back at these angmoh countries.

Spot on! So unless yr in an in demand job (could be blue or white collar) job prospects and advancement is pretty hard to come by For that same reason many aussies are starting to migrate out of aus to asia.

Agree. I know friends who have managerial positions here, migrated to Australia, busted back to supervisory level. One even migrated there to become a petrol station manager.

As for education, our school standards are dropping because govt is dropping the passing rate to help the struggling ones. But this in effect lowers the quality of our education. Lee Kuan Yew has proven that he can help increase the standards of education for all races without dropping the passing rate. We just got to find the way. Making it easier for students to pass, is a temporary shortcut to solve problems. It has big future consequences on our economy. Already, Companies are complaining about the quality of our graduates not able to fit in.

On the high side, Malaysia is becoming the education hub of SEA. Many universities find it practical and cheaper to set up campuses in Msia because of our skilled teachers and low cost. Nottingham uni, Heriott-Watt, Monash, Swinburne and Curtin uni are among the universities that set up campuses here. So rest assured, our children will have access to affordable education.

To migrate to Australia for children education is quite a big sacrifice, cost may outweigh benefit. Because you and your wife will have to take up low grade jobs as your experience in Australia wouldn't be considered. The Australian employers are quite double standards, they look down on our job experience. Actually this is quite wrong, because for people like me, for instance, in my company, I am coordinating the Australian operations from here in Malaysia, because Malaysia labour is cheaper. So why my experience is inferior to that of the Austrlian worker?

Well, we can blame our currency woes on China. They are manipulating their currency, keeping it low. So if we increase our currency, we will lose in terms of competitiveness. Unless we try to become like South Korea but we have yet to achieve that technical expertise. As I say, we make too much sacrifices on our educaiton standards.

In short, I got a bad feeling about Australia. They been growing at fast pace, their mining sector is doing so well but their other industries are lagging behind. The Aussies are too reliant on their foreign based workforce and not bothered to take up the jobs themselves - boils down to one problem, attitude problem. Australia have not been able to develop their other industries, manufacturing and farming are struggling due to high cost posed by high exchange rates. I recall in 1994, Australia had a very bad recession...20%unemployed, many migrants had to return to their country because they couldn't find a job or lost their job there. Who knows, the next bubble burst could hit Australia soon. USA may be coming out of recession with slow growth..but they still got to cut exp due to $16 trillion debt and Europe haven't gotten out of the ravine...China won't be able to keep up with their extraordinary growth....already workers there are protesting and calling for minimum wage and more social protection that would cut China's competitiveness. All these obstacles will effect Australia, eventually.

Hah, naive or not...uni graduates definitely get higher pay than technical graduates. Its a universal truth. These people may be in demand but when the plant closes down they are the first to get lay off. That is the sad truth. If you are an assembler working for a bottling company for 20 years. One day, industry watchers suddenly want to use tetra pak for their products because its cheaper,then sales drop and the plant has to close down, where are you going to go? I am just saying this as an example, if the whole bottling industry worldwide closes down, where are you going to demonstrate your skills? Yes repettitive jobs require skills, but they are very specialized areas. They can be trained back or easily outsourced. That is why many western companies are preferring to move their plants to Asia.

Yeah, I know for a fact that many Aussies don't work because they want to just sit around and get their unemployment checks. I know because i've lived in Australia and seen a lot of Aussie loiterers sitting on benches and waiting at bus stops, striking conversations and even one admitted to me that he is not at work and getting his unemployment checks.

Another friend of mine told me about the time his dad was working in the construction line. At that time, the union was very strong, so they adhere to strict union rules. After 5:30pm, my friend's dad was still working at the construction line, then he saw all the Ozzies going back home when their job not finish, some work dangling precariously...they told him because of union rules, they stop at 5:30pm no matter what.

I mean, at the rate Australia is getting their migrants in, is ridiculous. Just last year, i was working in one of the Aust big city streets, I saw a few white Aussie teachers bringing some kids to some outing, all the kindergarden kids are asians. And the streets hardly, I see so many Asians. Even in the smaller outlying towns, there are many Asians. Who are the Aussies employing? What work are they doing? I've seen Asians doing simple menial work like washing dishes. I even got a friend who migrated there to work at of the construction companies, they refuse to give him site surveying work because of racial politics. His task is to photostat and send documentation to the related authorities. Are Aussies so rich is it? Hiring unnecessary labour.

I know for a fact that many Aussies send their kids to daycare...and the charges they charge for daycare is damn exhorbitant. I got another friend who migrated there, who is smart, she got a diploma in montesorri before she migrated there, because she wanted to set up day care and kindergarden biz there. Come on, if the Aussies wanted..they would have opted for maids too...but why no? Because of their high minimum wage..basically they can't afford it. So no maids in Australia...it does not have anything to do with their "hardworking' attititude. Your cousin kids are probably in their teens, why do they need a wet nurse? Of course, when its cheap to have a maid..why not have a maid - its about taking advantage of the economical advantages? You see my drift? That is why Malaysians hire maids, because its still affordable to hire one...even though the levies and the deposit have increased over the years. Australia can't do that now maybe in the 1970s but its way too expensive and they have too many laws that lobby for human rights...so if there are maids in Australia, they probably get paid quite well.

Nah, I don't think so, Australia will be in even bigger shit than Malaysia if China falls because China is Australia's benefactor. Malaysia has a lot of advantage like cheap skilled labour and low cost (prices may be increasing but still much cheaper than developed countries), being in the middle of SEA and member of ASEAN trade bloc whereas Australia is positioned quite far away from any trading bloc. I recall the 1994 recession, hit Australia so badly that the majority of migrants have to go back to their country.

Australia have been riding high for so long with no justification for their economic track record unlike their performing scandinavian counterparts...the buble is about to burst. What has Australia got? Farming, mining, tourism and education. Banking industry remains volatile no thanks to USA sub prime some years ago and the debt crisis. Mining is very reliant on China if CHina falls, ya know the result. BEsides, the world is already complaining about effects of coal to the environment...as you know Beijing is shrouded in haze, one of the major reasons..coal discharge from power plants. And recently there's some oil discovery in western australia, but only a discovery as large as the one in Saudi Arabia's giant oil fields can lift Australia out of its doldrums. Farming, this industry looks promising but Australia is facing a lot of environmental disasters like flood, drought and fire which may detrimentally affect this industry. Tourism and education, Australia's exchange rate is so high, the tourist mind as well go to Europe and USA where there's more sights to see. Education? Monash and Curtin already move to Malaysia, and there's lots of Oz university twinning (some 3+0) in South East Asia. So this is going to cut down on profit margins because of JV partnerships between Oz and local biz.

And what about manufacturing? Blue Scope steel and Holden already close down coupld of plants and lay off workers because its too expensive to manufacture in Australia. BHP outsourced its shared services functions to Malaysia. My friend's wife who migrated to sydney lost her job because, ironically her job got outsourced back to malaysia !!

If Australia don't transform...1994 recession is comingback to haunt it.

This post has been edited by Alvin330000421: Feb 7 2013, 02:52 PM

I agree with you, and I don't even live in Australia to be able to see the problems.

Yet people still want to migrate and live there. It's a case of the grass is always greener...

Cause you can say the same thing about half of the world.

Not really, you don't see a whole lot of people trying to migrate away from the US despite the sucky economy there for example, at least they're trying to make it work.

No it won't.

Because of the new World Order, western countries are moving more towards service sector orientated jobs and outsourcing manufacturing jobs to Asia.

But now, USA and Europe are suffering from economic catastrophe..they want their manufacturing jobs back. Its not as easy as ABC ya know.

Why?
1) Cost is higher due to ex rate
2) USA has really big problems with Unions, over the years their Unions have asked for very good pay packages for American workers and their Unions have caused a lot of strikes and walk-outs. This is why MNCs are not too keen to relocate back to America and Europe.
3) The Asia market is very big. It makes no sense to build a milk plant in USA then export the milk to China when you can build one in China. There are more milk drinkers in China than in the USA. I just using this as an example.
4) Again...Asia has high birth rates, India got 2 billion, China got 1.6 billion SEA got 560 million and Middle east got 450 million. The USA and Europe birth rates are declining. MNC profits are stagnating in their local markets...MNC CEOs are answerable to their shareholders, they need to seek new markets for income growth. Africa is still developing and volatile..so where is the most logical place..Asia.
5) Its a fallacy to think that Western workers can do a better job than us. A lot of people here may complain about malays and their working culture but I've worked for Australians before, they no different than us.
6) Asia is getting more highly skilled. People here can do the same job as their western counterparts for 1/3 of the cost. Asia has upgraded their airports, port terminals, roads, bridges and electricity grids...making them attractive for foreign investors.
7) Some Asia countries got rules, wanna do biz here, you need to set up your plant and provide jobs. So MNCs do this to capture the market. And then they found out its so much cheaper to do it in Asia and no Union problems. Then they say mind as well move all our manufacturing here.
8) Rules and regulations. Corps like Apple outsource their production to China because they don't want their products and labour rules to be scrutinized by strict adherence to regulatory bodies and laws in America.

Don't worry, unless the whole world economy order - ie the exchange rate system breaks down, Asia is still the best bet for your investment.