Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

If the visa application form is anything to go by, proving that you’re in a relationship gets harder the longer you’ve been together! That said, once you’ve proved it, the visa itself is issued really quickly (normally in less than six months).

Central to the application from this point is a statement from each of you about your relationship, starting from the point when you first met and, crucially, going right up to the day before you submit the application. These two documents will form the structure around which you’ll be building the evidence that you’re actually a couple. In the next stage, you move on to evidence about specific aspects of your relationship in terms of your finances, how you run your household, social aspects, and, of course commitment to each other but the relationship histories underpin all these. And, yes, there’s a lot of duplication.

Obviously it’s going to be longer if you’ve been together longer so allow a fair bit of time for both of you to write it! It is two statements although obviously they need to be in agreement with each other: for example, if one says you met in Paris and the other in New York, that’s going to be a problem. They also need to be in agreement with reality because you’re going to get interviewed about them as are the witnesses to your relationship that you’ve used (more on that later).

We’ve both started on our statements and it’s surprising how different they are because one’s written from a male perspective whilst the other’s written from a female perspective. They’re not inconsistent, but they are different and that’s to be expected, so don’t worry about it.

You start off from the point when you first met. Don’t get too hung up on that though. If you met via a friendship group and barely noticed your future significant other initially you could count that as the first meeting or equally it could be at the point of your first date. They’re not going to insist on the relationship starting when you swiped on him/her but rather at the point where it’s starting to become a relationship (however you defined that with the benefit of hindsight).

What’s important is what comes next so the various significant events and how the relationship developed over time. So you’ll be wanting to include first kiss, first intimate moments, moving in, getting engaged, married, first child, etc. Don’t forget consistency between the two accounts. Exact dates aren’t that important e.g. if you met in June, you don’t need to have the exact date, and if you’ve been together for years chances are that you will have forgotten the exact date.

They’ll particularly want to have details about time that you’ve spent apart. That doesn’t mean for a few hours but rather weeks so, if they’ve gone on a long holiday without you, they will want to know about that and moreover they’ll want to know how you kept in contact when you were apart. There’s more in the evidence section coming later, but they suggest phone records although many people just don’t have those these days and indeed you’ll see on the official guidance a lot of things are suggested which don’t seem to exist e.g. evidence of living arrangements comes to mind here.

Although there’s specific evidence sections later, it’s useful to build up evidence as you go through your relationship histories and they will prompt things to you as well. For example, if you went on holiday to Australia, they’re going to like some evidence about that like a plane ticket, photos, etc. As it happens one of the very earliest pieces of evidence we have is a photo of us on the top of Sydney Harbour bridge which is perfect in that it both places us together and it identifies where we were. That’s the kind of evidence you should be keeping an eye out for.

On the evidence front, it’s useful to create a folder for it and to quote a reference to each specific piece of evidence so, for example, that photo in Sydney is 2000-12 Sydney in the folder and when I’m referring to it in the relationship history. Save everything because even if it’s not useful right now, you might find you need it later e.g. we have accommodation vouchers which only name me which doesn’t seem useful as evidence at the moment, but who knows later?

Two things to bear in mind if you’ve been together for decades as we have is that there is a limit of, currently, 60 documents and that no document can be more than, currently, 5MB in size. This means that it’s useful to combine documents in one so, for example, we’ll be appending the four evidence headings after our relationship history but we have also had to shrink all of the photos to get them in one document under that 5MB limit.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Step 1 is to create your Immi account, which you do at immi. With that done, you can start on your application. Even step 1 is a pain as they want rather a long password and they’ve recently added multifactor authentication, for which you’ll need an authentication app. Oh, and they’d like you to change your password every 180 days.

Once you’ve passed that hurdle, you can start entering the information for your visa application. In my case, that’s for a 309/100 partner visa but the 820/821 is just the same except that you apply for that one from inside Australia rather than outside Australia as you do with the 309/100 visa.

The first bits are fairly simple, starting off with your citizenship(s), where you were born, and what passports you hold and, of course, your relationship status: you’re obviously going to need to be in some kind of relationship with an Australian to apply for this particular visa. With that page filled in, the next one asks you to confirm the key information thus far i.e. your name, sex, and passport number.

Next up are your contact details, both at the time of applying and at the time of the second (permanent) visa (it might be a while before the visa is granted, so you could have moved). The next screen lets you appoint someone to deal with your application e.g. a migration agent.

Next up are your family members. It asks if any that aren’t Australian aren’t migrating with you (doesn’t apply for me), then it’s on to your parents, siblings, and children (living or dead in all cases). It doesn’t ask for any information for the Australians on this list.

And now it’s time for the same information for your sponsor (i.e. your partner) so their passport details, contact details, and details of their immediate family (parents, siblings, and children). After the domestic violence question, it’s on to details of the relationship with you (some of which you’ll have entered earlier).

And that’s where things get difficult as they’re wanting details of your relationship, including financial aspects, how your household works, social aspects, commitment, and a relationship history. So that’s what I’ll be going through in the coming weeks and indeed months as it all has to go right up to the day before you submit the application.

Fortunately, you can save the application at any point. You’ll need to as the four text boxes on the above screen require you to do things like write a relationship history from when you met, and to provide evidence that you have, for example, gone on holiday together, among many other things.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Although most people give this little thought, it’s potentially going to have a major impact on your life in Australia, depending on how close you are to retirement and what arrangements you have put in place ahead of that move.

Final salary pensions (technically called defined benefit pensions) are going to stay in the UK, because they can’t be moved. In some cases, you can have your company pay the pension directly into an Australian bank account, but check the charges before you do that: some may make the payment via Swift which could cost you £25 or more each month in charges, plus charges to exchange the pounds to Australian dollars. Much better it to have it paid into a UK bank account and do the transferring to Australia yourself e.g. if you have an HSBC UK account, you can transfer this instantly for almost no charges to an HSBC Australia account. Final salary pensions will almost always get the increases that you’d have received if you still lived in the UK.

The UK State Pension can’t be moved to Australia but they can pay it directly into an Australian bank account. As above, I’d be more inclined to get it into a UK bank account and do the transfer myself as you know what the charges are going to be. This pension will not increase after you move to Australia so no more triple lock or indeed any increase at all. Worth noting is that Reform are talking about eliminating state benefits for immigrants and they appear to include the state pension in that, therefore it would be prudent to get any non-UK nationals moving with you British citizenship before you move, which currently costs about £1600, but given that it could lock in the entitlement to a UK state pension of £10,000/year or more that seems like a good investment.

Defined contribution pensions, private pensions, SIPPs, and similar pensions generally can be moved to Australia. However, there are limitations applied by both HMRC and their Australian counterpart. HMRC requires any pension to move to a QROPS compliant pension scheme which means in practice for Australia a Self Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF). This is similar to the UK SIPP scheme but with a lot more administrative overheads and therefore a lot more cost: typically the setup and annual fees run to around A$2000 or so. You can’t use an off the shelf SMSF due to the HMRC regulations, notably that no member of the scheme can be less than 55 (so you can’t transfer the pension until you are at least 55) and you will need to have the SMSF administrator create a scheme meeting those regulations. The other big limitation is that you can’t transfer more than A$120000 (about £60000) per year and can only do this up to age 75, which may mean that your SIPP can’t be transferred in one go and it may not be possible to transfer a larger SIPP in full even over a number of years e.g. a £600000 SIPP would likely take more than 15 years to transfer (not 10 because it will, one hopes, grow in value as time goes on). One way to accelerate the transfer is to transfer, say, £60000/year into your SMSF and simply withdraw another £60000/year, taking the Australian income tax hit on that second £60000, and just put it into an Australian investment account.

Australian state pension is means tested in two ways. The income test means that you get the maximum pension if you’re single and have less than A$109/week (£50), A$170/week (£75) for a couple and is reduced by 50c/25c for each dollar above those amounts, reaching zero when you’ve more than A$1287 (£643) single, A$1967 (£983 for a couple. Given that the UK state pension is currently £230/week, you’re not going to get the maximum Australian pension under the income test. They also have an asset test, so a single homeowner can have up to A$321500 (£160750), A$481500 (£240750) for a couple to get the maximum, reducing to zero when you reach A$714500 (£357250) or A$1074500 (£537250). The asset limits include everything except the home you’re living in, so notably it includes pension schemes of all types. Last, but not least, you need to have been an Australian resident for at least ten years, unless you’re Australian (in which case, you could pop your claim in as soon as you’ve arrived). Unfortunately, the UK no longer has a social security agreement with Australia (it did up to March 2001) so no exemptions from the ten year limit.

ISAs aren’t transferable and there doesn’t seem to be any Australian equivalent unfortunately. You can retain your ISAs but since Australia doesn’t recognise ISAs, they will be taxable; you can’t add any more money to them once you leave the UK. Australian tax law means that capital gains are taxed differently depending on how long you have held the asset, so it may be simpler to move the holdings from your ISA to a dealing account in Australia when you move. T212 operates in Australia in much the same way as it does in the UK, aside from the lack of an ISA and you seem to be able to transfer from a T212 UK account to an Australian one; it seems to be a lot cheaper than local Australian brokers.

And that’s it for pensions. You will need to get an adviser to set up an SMSF for you and the main banks have partnerships with companies that can do that (National Australian Bank seems the best offering).

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

This started out reasonably easy but the family have been adding requirements as the months have gone by, some directly from our experiences on our scouting trip a few months ago and some as we’ve collectively looked at properties online and thought some more about what we each need.

The basic requirement are for a house with three or more bedrooms, a few hectares of land, and costing up to A$1,000,000 (about £500,000). Prices will have changed by the time we’re actually moving, but we’re currently using that as a ball-park in our searches.

Location is always important and we’ve two slightly conflicting requirements with this because Wendy and I will essentially be retiring but the boys will be wanting jobs. Therefore it can’t be too far away from employment centres and in that respect we’re thinking of at most 30 minutes drive from either Launceston or Hobart. We all prefer Launceston but most properties in the recent searches are near Hobart.

As in our move to France, we’ll likely turn up with a massive load of stuff in boxes and therefore we want somewhere that we can store it all. That seems not to be an issue as almost all of the properties turning up in our searches come with assorted store rooms and even buildings.

Although three bedrooms is our minimum requirement, many of the properties that we’ve looked at come with four and a couple of bathrooms which is handy as that second bathroom was added as a requirement to avoid the morning rush.

Heating-wise, the houses generally come with “reverse-cycle airconditioning” (heat pumps) and many with log stoves. In a number of instances, the logs would be supplied by chopping down trees on the property itself. Quite a lot of the houses come with solar panels and in some cases enough to run everything, at least during the day (batteries are prohibitively expensive).

Recently, it has come to our attention that internet access isn’t a given in Australia so we’re specifically looking for that now (it’s called NBN there and comes in the usual cable, fibre, and satellite versions). On a related note, it turns out that TV also isn’t a given and some places that are well within our 30 minute range don’t have much, if any, TV reception (you can check this out at Digitalready). This isn’t a showstopper as there’s a subsidised satellite service (VAST) available in those areas, but something to consider. Incidentally, our French approach of just bringing the Sky box along won’t work as the Sky satellite doesn’t point anywhere near Australia so no FreeSat either. Other things that won’t work either are the various UK terrestrial channels via internet as they are region locked to the UK, although a VPN might get around that. On the TV front, we found that Australian terrestrial TV is almost entirely dire and has the feel of just a whole lot of shopping channels (even Wendy agrees with the dire verdict and she’s Australian!).

I’d also like a study/library which doesn’t seem to be an issue as most of the properties we’ve looked at come with a whole range of rooms outside the usual bedroom, living, kitchen, and bathroom categories.

Sounds daft, but in addition to the normal kitchen, it’s been suggested that a kind of ensuite kitchen for the various non-standard kitchen items would be handy (for the air fryer, popcorn machine, blender, etc.). That said, most of the kitchens are much larger than what we’re used to so this isn’t likely to be an issue. Junior #2 suggested a walk-in pantry as we’d be living “in the wilds” which sounds handy and we’d one in France, but we’re probably not going to be living “in the wilds” as such.

There’s also been some requests for things like space for chickens, vegetable garden, and similar but since we’re looking for a minimum of two hectares (four acres in old money), that doesn’t look like it’ll be an issue.

The water supply isn’t something we’d initially given much thought to. Turns out that most of the properties we’ve looked at are on town water. A little further out is tank water which means you’ve a big tank that the local authority fills up for you now and again for a fee. If you’re on tank water, I imagine that you’re also on a sceptic tank which they can pump out too, though you shouldn’t need them to do that if you’ve sized it properly.

We’ve been getting grocery deliveries for a few years now and that service is available from, mainly, Coles and Woolworths in Australia so long as you’re within their service distance (about 20/30 minutes drive from the nearest store). You can check out availability for that by popping in the postcode of the property that you’re looking at. Again, not a show stopper, but nice to know if it’s available before you move.

And that lot is after just a few months of taking the move seriously! I’m sure there’ll be more requirements arising over the time running up to 2027.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

OK, so we’re intending to move to Australia, but where?

Location is something that we’ve thought about a fair bit. As in our move to France, we want somewhere that has a “bumpy” landscape. Bumpy doesn’t mean mountainous, but rather not boringly flat i.e. some hills, but probably not actual mountains or at least not mountains that we need to cross regularly.

We also want it to be not too far from water which could mean near a river, lake, or even the sea. One key think that we found in France is that if you’re more than about a 90 minute drive from the sea then you have a continental climate which, in France, meant very hot summers and very cold winters, whereas within that 90 minute range the weather was quite reasonable all year. Although Australian climates can be quite different, Tasmania is fairly similar to France so that 90 minute or so distance will similarly change the climate: it snows in Tasmania, but mostly in places more than 90 minutes from the sea.

Together, the above still leave Launceston and Hobart in the frame as they’re both in reasonably bumpy landscapes and less than 90 minutes from the sea.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.