I mind paying ~30% tax while seeing Australians lining up at centrelink for their unemployment benefits but with no real intention to get a job. ie. living off unemployment benefits (paid by my taxes)

If you mean being in need as in some fat bogan chick with 4 sprogs at a tender age of 21 living with her "defacto" to milk benefits then yes, the government is very good at giving out the dole

Remember that all PR benefits have a waiting period of 2 years. But you do get Medicare straight up.
That was my plan too after getting my citizenship, but packing that many pounds on has proven to be a serious challenge.

Either way, means testing will mean that anyone with a middle class income is on their own if shit hits the fan. Suggest insurance, I mean I already have home loan insurance, home and contents insurance, income protection insurance, health insurance (after you get 80k a year if you don't have this the government gets Julia Gillard to personally come to your house and punch you in the nuts), car insurance dan lain lain lah.

I am actually a fresh grad PR in Sydney but returning to KL to work. Have been hunting for a decent job for about 5 months now without any success.

Do you think I'm making a mistake?

My plan is to return in about 2 years time once I've accumulated some work experience though..

Well I would love to continue living in Australia(and keeping my PR), hence the 2 year timeframe before I return to fulfill my visa requirements.

Unfortunately not having a professional job is not an option for me - my justification is I'd rather build up professional skills in Malaysia than work in a dead-end part-time job with no prospects of progression. After looking for about 3 months in Sydney with no success, I started applying for jobs in KL at the same time and recently secured a job in KL.

Do you think Australian companies use the non-Australian work experience as an excuse to prevent non-PRs from applying for the job? Also what is the underlying reason for not recognizing overseas work experience? Is it the culture-fit or the industry knowledge?

The reason I ask is because the area I will be working in is sort of specialized, and the regulatory bodies around the world adopts a standardized framework.
Did you secure a job before you moved back to Australia? If you did, was it difficult to secure one?

I was actually job-hunting in Australia. I could not apply to any grad programs before because I got my PR too late. And I was unsuccessful in applying for ad-hoc full time jobs after..

Australian system is so different from the rest of the world...
Normally you need to be in a country for a few years before applying to for a PR...
Other countries will only issue you a work permit if you've never lived in the country..

How do you qualify for a PR?? Where do you score??

then why don't you start your own company, like opening a malaysian restaurant??   

7-11 nightshift pays pretty well. And I'm not kidding.

Kids education will cost money and remember that as a new migrant you cannot claim FTB (Family Tax Benefit) via Centrelink (waiting period tested), so your costs will be high. I personally would save up enough money for 1 year of living. That's the around the time taken for most to get a job.

The government is listing those skills because the mining industry wants to drive costs down, so business lobbying groups keep pushing for more migration because they don't want to pay the prevailing rate for engineers. I'm lucky to have started with 80k a year when I graduated, but now, you're lucky if you can get 50k as a freshie engineer even while working in the field.

Also migration is good for the government. Why?

- No need to pay for your childhood education
- No need pay for your university fees
- No need to pay for your social welfare
- No need to chase HECS debt
- Instant tax paying citizen

Because it costs the government around 1 million dollars in investment to bring an Aussie into the professional workforce from birth. An immigrant costs 0 dollars. They pay the government lol.

It might not be as good as you think.
Businesses in Australia runs on high opex.
Imagine, labour alone will cost you a bomb at A$15 p/h for waiter and more for cooks.
Then there is the maintenance of your shop and equipments which also cost way more than in M'sia.
Rental is also not cheap. Labour is also erratic and some people just don't turn up for work (happens frequently)

Nothing wrong with welding and driving lifts. No point in having an NDT cert if you can't even weld. You wouldn't even pass the exam here

Plus driving a forklift isn't something I do everyday, BUT if I need something from racking or need to move stuff, I'm expected to do it myself instead of wasting the storeman's time, which saves on labour.

If you have the right skillset and know people, getting a job here isn't an issue. A person with an EnE postgrad, EEM ticket and with an electrician's license will get paid around 200k AUD a year out in the mines with a 5/5 roster.

It's a good idea especially if you're in the construction industry and have the need to move gear around.

There are a lot of other tickets that are useful, but I'm not sure what would apply to your industry.