In a recent poll on our website, we asked where you’d buy a home abroad if money were no object. Australia came out top – despite the high numbers of us returning home. So what is the reality behind the “ping-pong Poms”, asks Australian expat Joanne Christie
A
ustralia has long topped the list of the most popular places for Britons to emigrate, and it’s easy to see why: it has a
similar culture, there’s no language barrier, the weather is much warmer and there’s that amazing outdoor lifestyle of beaches and barbecues. In the past, when the pound was
stronger – it is currently at a 27-year low against the AUD$ – many Brits found they could sell their home and fund a very comfortable lifestyle in Australia. A Place in the Sun’s recent online survey shows that aspiration still burns bright. Robert Williams, director at the
Australia Migration Forums – which runs the popular PomsInOz site – confi rms this. “There’s no doubt that over the past two or three years, there’s been a plethora of factors
for a two-year working holiday, and last year becoming a British citizen. I now live in London – hardly
a cheap city – yet I was astounded at how much everything cost in Queensland. After (perhaps a little too loudly) expressing my displeasure at the $3.70 (£2.50) cost of a can of Coke at the local chippie, I got chatting to some retired Brits and soon realised there were worse things than having to visit family in a country where the value of my pounds seems to diminish further with every trip. Like having to live there on a frozen British basic state pension. While the pension amount increases each year to account for infl ation, the increases aren’t passed on to recipients living in some countries outside the EU, including Australia. A person who hit retirement age in
Migration fi gures show that of the 107,000 Brits who moved to Australia between 2005 and 2010, about 30,000 left again. About 7,000 left in 2009-10 alone.
which have made the migration journey more diffi cult,” he says. “But, anecdotally at least, the desire to emigrate to Australia seems to have increased. For January 2012, visits to the forum were up over 55 per cent on the same time last year.” It is now even more essential that
anyone contemplating a new life Down Under goes there with their eyes wide open, having done their research – and their sums. Because the reality of a move to Oz
is perhaps a little different from the dream that took root after the Second World War, when the so-called Ten Pound Poms – which included Australia’s current PM, Julia Gillard – headed to the other side of the world for a better life. I saw this fi rst-hand on a recent trip
to Australia. It was my fi rst visit there for almost three years, after moving to the UK from Brisbane ten years ago
2001 when the basic state pension was £72.50 will still receive only that amount, not today’s fi gure of £102.15. Combine this with the fact that the pound has lost around 40 per cent of its value against the Australian dollar in the past fi ve years, and it’s easy why some retired expats are struggling and indeed returning (see our currency market report on page 64). However, new research suggests
that it is not only pensioners for whom Australia is proving disappointing. A study conducted by university researchers found that there had been a rise in what they called ‘Ping-Pong Poms’ (or alternatively Boomerang Brits) – people that moved Down Under but then returned to Britain. Migration fi gures showed that of the 107,000 British people who moved to Australia between 2005 and 2010, about 30,000 left again. About 7,000 left in 2009/2010 alone.
There has also been a marked decrease in the number of Australians coming to the UK to work, indicating that the love affair between the two nations may be cooling on both sides. “A lot of people still think it is going
to be like it was in the 1970s, when you could afford somewhere with a swimming pool and a view of Sydney Harbour Bridge. But they can’t now, they can afford a small bungalow in the outskirts of Adelaide,” says Roger Burrows, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and co-author of the academic paper, Ping- Pong Poms: Emotional Refl exivity in Contemporary Return Migration from Australia to the UK. Victoria Sennitt, 29, is among those
who were unprepared for the cost of living. She emigrated to Australia four years ago from London but decided to return to the UK last July. “I was shocked at the cost of living in Sydney. Part of the reason I went out there was because I thought I would be able to save some money because I was being paid quite well, but apart from rent, which cost about the same as London, everything else cost more,” she says. But the higher cost of living is not all bad news for those who go there to work. Although their initial buying power may be reduced, their earnings potential is likely to be signifi cantly higher — the average wage in Australia is about $70,000 (£47,600), much higher than the UK’s £26,000. Unemployment in Australia is
lower too, at 5.3 per cent compared to the UK’s 8.4 per cent – the global economic crisis has seen a dramatic shift in fortunes between the two nations. While Britain’s economy has stagnated, Australia’s has boomed, particularly in sectors such as mining and natural resources. There are still Skilled Migration Programmes (see box on page 55) – with medical and engineering bods currently in demand. Infl ation in Australia has soared in recent years, as has the cost of both buying and renting property. Yet there
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