Hey all, just migrated from the cold land of the free, to the warm land of the free. Thankfully found this site googling… hopefully OzBargain will replace my redflagdeals.com Canadian habit. Just wanted to drop in and say hi.
Newbie just moved to Oz from Canada
Lmarbss on 06/02/2012 - 19:40
Comments
Welcome, hope it wasnt you who brought the rain …
As OzAzn says, a little remote at Port, but still many of the bargains can be had nationally.
Check out Westport, a great little club by the river. Thats about all I have knowledge on Port.
Enjoy your stay.
Thanks guys. I will probably be moving to a bigger city shortly for work and to take advantage of more deals! One good thing about being here as opposed to a bigger city, is we are saving money because there is not much shopping to do :)
welcome.
but for you coming from canada, even ozbargains may seem expensive…true most things are a bit more here than Can/US. I think aussie prices have come along way from say 10 or 15 years ago. Tariffs have been reduced a lot. change is slower here in OZ, but it is moving the right direction.
a couple of observations: Milk and baby formula is cheap. Beef is reasonable. I may not be able to get a BMW here because they are over 2x the cost. But there is a price to pay for having a small population in a remote location… I'll take the sunny skies for now.
My pet peeve is that electricity is ridiculously expensive. I believe this is harming industry, growth and innovation. For example my latest bill shows we are getting billed 26-28cents per kWh… back in Ontario I was paying around 10-12cents per kWh. I get the argument about green power — but green is costly and hurting industry. A balanced approach to solving energy is necessary. I can only imagine what Toyota Australia's electricity bill is versus other countries. Cheaper electricity is needed for some manufacturers to offset the higher Aussie dollar. Cheaper electricity is needed to foster the next Google's of the world — innovative high tech companies should be setting up server farms here in Australia, but they are hesitant to because of the high cost of electricity.
Take this example:
Australia rips out their coal and other resources and sells it to Asia to burn up for electricity… That coal is being burned by a customer somewhere. Net world CO2 emissions is the same whether Aussie's burn it or some other country. It makes sense to embrace nuclear or more clean coal technologies… cheaper energy costs will encourage other industries to develop besides mining. What happens when the resources are done (likely hundreds of years from now)? We've sold our soul to Asia and nothing is left of Australia.Perhaps when electricity costs reach 50cents a kWh then things will change around here.
sorry for the long rant.
Thanks and welcome to the sunny Australia!
And you have just spelt out what many Australians have been talking about for years. There simply not much innovation here — even OzBargain is copying ideas from RedFlagDeals and HotUKDeals :P
Government is not really helping bootstraping startups (in terms of taxation). Things are expensive here especially when AUD is already at all time high. Labour is too expensive to make manufacturing feasible, and high energy cost does not help either, as you have noted.
Anyway. We can still dig up dirt and sell them overseas. Let's see how long that will last…
Most of the electricity in NSW where you live is Government supplied. But no one wants to face upto reality is that these are very inefficient suppliers, heavy with bureaucrats who are more interested in their leather desk chairs rather than finding economies.
Yep private industry is concerned about profits, government enterprises are concerned about flex days off.
Which ever way we pay
hello and welcome to warmer weathers! Though our summer this year has been unusual, i'm sure our winters are free of snow.
Due to your location you might be missing out on some deals that are more accessible in the Sydney Metropolitan, but nonetheless i'm sure you can enjoy this site as much as the other (insert number) members and countless guests.