Expat Chat Ep 5 – Expat Voting, Award Nomination, Expat Insurance Inside of Super

James Ridley:                     I believe so.

Brett Evans:                        I think it’s episode five. So g’day to everyone out there. Got a fair bit to cover today, so we’ll try and keep it nice and concise. James, just want to give us a quick run through what we’re talking about today?

James Ridley:                     Yeah. So I want to touch base on obviously, firstly the budget that was released, just a few points. The fact that we’ve got a federal election coming up quite soon.

Brett Evans:                        Yes, big one.

James Ridley:                     What else do we want to go through? Oh, I suppose some of the recent nominations.

Brett Evans:                        Yes, no definitely, that’s worth pointing out.

James Ridley:                     Yup and obviously just a few other things. Just I suppose Facebook reviews as well, online and some recent emails that you’ll be receiving from other super funds about your insurance.

Brett Evans:                        Yep. There’s some changes there.

James Ridley:                     Yep and then lastly, just some basic insights in our expat insight survey.

Brett Evans:                        Yep. The survey, how it’s going.

James Ridley:                     Yes, that’s right.

Brett Evans:                        Fantastic, so just for the usual disclaimer for the folks out there in podcast land, if you’re watching this on video on our YouTube channel, you can make yourself a cup of tea. For those on the podcast, any of the stuff we talk about today is general nature, it’s not personal advice. So we got to put those disclaimers out there, we don’t like getting sued.

James Ridley:                     No, that’s right.

Brett Evans:                        Haven’t been sued in the past and don’t plan to get sued in the future. So just want to make sure there’s no confusion there for everyone. So let’s get the show on the road, as they say.

 

Australian Federal Budget Update

 

James Ridley:                     Yeah, let’s kick start. I suppose the main thing I want to talk about just briefly, the budget, obviously we did the webinar recently or I should say you did the webinar recently.

Brett Evans:                        Yep, yep.

James Ridley:                     I was lucky enough to be on holidays and-

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, that’s right. Half your luck.

James Ridley:                     New Zealand was great, by the way. No, but federal budget. I suppose the main thing, that I really liked the fact that they’ve increased that active work test.

Brett Evans:                        Yes, definitely.

James Ridley:                     I think that’s a huge one, especially with I suppose older age or older people working overseas for a longer period. They can now extend that period that they’re working overseas, because they can look at actually bringing back their super fund at a later time.

Brett Evans:                        That’s right.

James Ridley:                     So they’ve increased it now to… Well I suppose at the last age you can-

Brett Evans:                        66.

James Ridley:                     It’s 66. If 66 means I can trigger the bring-forward rule at 66? I believe it is.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah. So up until the age of 66 you can use the bring-forward rule and also too, you don’t need to meet the work test. So whereas before… Just explain to those out there-

James Ridley:                     Take a few steps back.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, let’s take two steps back. So if every year, pari passu as the lawyers like to say, if nothing changes, you’re allowed to put $100,000 a year into super. You can use what’s called the bring-forward rule, which means you can do three lots of a 100 for one year, but then you can’t use any for the next two years and up until these changes were announced, you could only do that up until the age of 64 and then from 65 onwards, you could only put in a 100,000 per year. So now they’re saying, up until the age of 66 you can use the bring-forward rule.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, correct.

Brett Evans:                        And also too, you don’t need to meet the work test. Now the work test has never been that laborious for people to sit and to do, 40 hours worth of work in a 30 day period. I’ve always seen some pretty creative-

James Ridley:                     Yeah, well there’s no minimum requirement on the wage rate or anything like that.

Brett Evans:                        No minimum requirement. I’ve actually never seen any way of lodging any of those forms to justify it.

James Ridley:                     Well it’s a declaration to the super fund.

Brett Evans:                        It is, it is.

James Ridley:                     That’s it.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, that’s it.

James Ridley:                     So whether it’s something actually gets sent to the ATO I’m not sure of, but it’s mainly up to the super fund to make sure they receive that declaration, so they can credit the account appropriately.

Brett Evans:                        That’s right.

James Ridley:                     And just again, I mean the type of contributions we’re referring to a non-concessional.

Brett Evans:                        Yep. After tax dollars.

James Ridley:                     Exactly right. So that’s great. So technically speaking, age 66 if I’ve got a foreign super fund that I want to bring home, I can bring that home and then obviously I can contribute up to 300,000 at 66, which is great. So that’s a great amount to get in after that age as well, so.

Brett Evans:                        Because it’s getting harder and harder these days. The good old days, we had 180 per year-

James Ridley:                     Yeah, that’s right.

Brett Evans:                        And often when people are repatriating back to Australia, they’ve either built up a nice foreign super fund or they’ve had property or some sort of investments overseas that are quite lumpy and when they come back we try to squeeze them into the super system and the lower that annual limit gets, the longer the period it takes us to get that money in.

James Ridley:                     Exactly.

Brett Evans:                        Which can also present problems too with the six month rule with a foreign pension. There’s all those sorts of permutations. So I like those big fat opportunities to be able to get some good lump sums in, because if you don’t, you’re stuck with money outside of super. As a resident, super still is the best place to hold assets in an allocated pension phase and yeah look, it’s something that all these sorts of changes are better. I like to see an expansion of opportunities, not a contraction.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly right and I suppose, yeah, even though it’s creating that window, you’re right, the caps have changed significantly over the years. I mean, back when we can actually throw as much as we want into super, that was amazing and I suppose people that had these large pensions, they bring it home, they’ve got to do it within the six month period. Obviously that’s tax free, that’s great, taking it in an individual name and then if they can only get, technically 300,000 in one year then, or 100,000 and then the 300,000-

Brett Evans:                        300 yep, yep.

James Ridley:                     So 400 over a few months.

Brett Evans:                        400 in the calendar year.

James Ridley:                     Yep and then they’ve got to wait two financial years. So if they’re bringing back, say $1 million and some of them will be. I mean, you’ve seen pilots with those sort of things, especially over in Hong Kong in those areas. What do they do with the funds then, I mean do they put it in a family trust, invest it and they’ve got a new tax vehicle-

Brett Evans:                        That’s right.

James Ridley:                     Wind it down over time-

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, they’re just putting band-aids on a lot of things, when in actual fact the end goal is to get the money into super.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. But we won’t delve too much more into that. Was there anything further on the federal budget that?

Brett Evans:                        Look, I think it was definitely a budget that was designed to be not too invasive.

James Ridley:                     So it was a cautious budget?

Brett Evans:                        It was, it was an election budget. There was nothing major there obviously, actually one thing I did like and this doesn’t affect non-residents, but it may affect you when you come back. Was the creation of that mega bracket, 30% from 45,000 to 200-

James Ridley:                     Yeah, I think that’s by 2024?

Brett Evans:                        2024, that’s correct and I think it’s fantastic, because so many times and I know this personally from friends and family, when someone gets a pay rise or promotion and yes they go up, but in actual fact their take-home doesn’t and they’re almost getting penalised for doing well. Whereas when you look at the last time that the brackets were sort of structured the way they were, a $100,000 salary was a lot of money. These days a $100,000 salary isn’t as much with the cost of living rising and I actually had a meeting with a journalist from the Australian Financial Review in Sydney. We did an article together and one of the discussions was when you look at the average take-home weekly salary, the multiple of when the top tax bracket kicks in and you look at, I can’t remember the exact stats, I’ll put a link in the show notes in the description below to the article. But when you look at, I think it’s something like the US might be three times, sorry. Australia is three times-

James Ridley:                     Well pretty high.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah. Whereas the other ones were 1.4. So it’s nice to see that relaxation in that and actually give people the ability to have incentive to work more. You go to countries that have high productivity and great tax benefits, like Singapore and Hong Kong, flat rate. So what we’re virtually talking about, is two thirds of the workforce having a flat rate of tax at 30%, I applaud it.

James Ridley:                     Oh absolutely, I encourage it. I can’t wait until it comes in, but I’ll wait until we’re there.

 

Expat Voting In A Election

 

Brett Evans:                        Yes, that’s right. It’s going to be an interesting election, it’s going to be a long election. Actually today’s the 18th of April and the 18th of May, so it’s a one month today and look, it’s going to be interesting. I think a lot of people put Labor in front, up until now. However, given Mr. Shortens gaffs with regards to no super changes and then back-pedalling on that recently and he’s done a couple of those sort of things. People are sort of saying, well maybe he’s not a shoo-in, it could come down to the numbers and that actually dovetails nicely into another conversation we’re going to have today’s, is talk about voting as an expat.

We just did a blog post today and we’re not saying whether you should or shouldn’t, that’s up to you. Obviously it’s not only just that, there’s a lot of debate about tax implications of voting, are you severing ties from Australia if you’re still voting here and those who take the extreme non-resident view severe completely. If you do want to vote, essentially the way it works and have a look at the blog post, I will put it in the notes below. Essentially you got two options or actually three. So the first option is, if you are going to be overseas for less than six years, you can put yourself down as an overseas elector and that means you could still vote, both federally and state I believe, different states, but I’m pretty sure it’s state as well.

If you plan to be over seas permanently or you want to cut yourself off totally, then you remove yourself from the electoral role. We will put links into the blog posts, so you can follow along there. If you are, and then the other option as well is, if you have past that six years and you still want to vote, you can actually email the Australian Electoral Commission and ask for permission and they’ll give you a year by year allowance to do that. So I don’t know of anyone who’s done that, but apparently it’s an option.

So if you are a registered voter or you do want to vote, you’ve virtually got two options. The first option is to go to a Australian mission, consulate. Well putting it out there is three classifications of Australian missions, embassy, consulate and one of the other ones. Anyway, not all of them do offer it, but a lot of them do offer the ability to do in person voting. Once again, in the blog post we’ve actually put a Excel spreadsheet URL, that the Australian Electoral Commission has provided and you can click on that Excel spreadsheet, it opens and it tells you about the different missions that do offer in person voting.

The alternative is, you can do a postal vote and essentially the postal votes get sent out as soon as all the contenders had been announced and the ballot papers prepared, but there is a timeframe of how far or how close to the election you can get. By the time you get the postal vote to you and you had to get it back. So essentially what you have to do, you have to have voted either on the day or before the election. You’d vote and you have to have someone to witness it. That witness can be either an Australian citizen or a list of different people who worked for Commonwealth countries. So defense people, public servants, but it has to be a Commonwealth country. So once you got that and then you voted, then you post it back to the Electoral Commission and they have to receive it 13 days after and if it doesn’t get received within 13 days, then it doesn’t count.

James Ridley:                     Who knew it would be so complex?

Brett Evans:                        Well it’s the government, of course it’s going to be complex, they’re not going to make things easy, so.

James Ridley:                     I was hoping you’d be able to register online, you’d get sent a text and unique link. You can go to your unique link online and vote, just like that, but it’s not that simple.

Brett Evans:                        Well, this is the government that tried to do the census online too and that didn’t work, so-

James Ridley:                     I think a lot of Jedi religions we’re getting-

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. Jedi was a very popular religion, wasn’t it? Yeah, exactly.

James Ridley:                     Okay, well that’s good and I mean, we’ll put the information then.

Brett Evans:                        Yep. All there in the show notes below and have a look. Certainly, whether you do or not, that’s another discussion for another day and not even with us, that’s a personal thing. Yeah, exactly.

James Ridley:                     Okay Brett, so moving on. Just want to briefly touch base on some recent nominations.

Brett Evans:                        Yes. So congratulations James.

James Ridley:                     Thank you.

Brett Evans:                        Just to let everyone know, James has been nominated in this years Money Management Fund Manager of the Year Awards, under two categories.

James Ridley:                     Yeah.

Brett Evans:                        Financial Planner of the Year and also too, Young Achiever of the Year. So I’d love to be able to call myself Young Achiever of the Year, but unfortunately I don’t meet the criteria, but-

James Ridley:                     Your under 35, aren’t you?

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, I wish man. I’m on the dark side of 40 unfortunately so, but well done. I mean, I think it’s always, I always say to everyone, I don’t think people really realise how much work goes on behind the scenes. Clients have an idea, but even they only probably see 10% of the varnish version. So there’s a lot of long hours, a lot of late nights, a lot of research, a lot of yeah, pretty much elbow grease and hard work. So congratulations for being recognised and 16th of May.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly right. That’s when the awards dinner is.

Brett Evans:                        Yep. The best of luck for that. So I just wanted to let everyone know, I think it’s important to celebrate the achievements out there and that’s a big one.

 

Expat Q&A – Expat Insurance inside of super

 

James Ridley:                     Yeah, thanks Brett. That’s great. Okay, so now I want to move on to a recent email that one of my clients actually received, it’s about insurance.

Brett Evans:                        Yes, a lot of changes here.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly right. So I mean they were announced, was it last year?

Brett Evans:                        Last year, yep.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, it was last year about inactive accounts. I think they’ve changed the months, I think it’s 16 months now. If there’s inactivity on a superannuation account for 16 months, then they’re sending out emails to know whether you want to confirm or keep your insurance valid on that account-

Brett Evans:                        And you have to actually opt in, don’t you?

James Ridley:                     Yes. So most super funds are sending out, I suppose what you call a templated email to everyone, if that account’s been inactive for 16 months. Inactivity just means no super contributions, most of the time. If no super contributions are being received after 16 months, they deem it to be inactive. They send you an email saying, “Listen, we’ve noticed this. There’s been inactivity on this account for over 16 months now. We would like to know whether you would like to keep the insurance on your account. If so, please reply with this templated text which you just control copy, send it back to that email. If not, please send us back with this text.”

And essentially you really need to be careful what you’re sending back, because if you’ve got insurance and you’re overseas and it’s covering you, even though you’re a non-resident, you don’t want to cancel it. If you cancel it-

Brett Evans:                        Some is better than none.

James Ridley:                     Exactly right. If you are going to cancel it, then make sure you’ve got other cover somewhere else. It does get to a point where, if you’ve been overseas for 10 years, most Australian insurers probably won’t touch you at all, any more. So just be mindful when that email coming out, that you understand whether you are currently covered with that provider, even though you’re a non-resident and whether you want them to maintain it and do reply to them. Don’t just sweep it under the rug and put it in the junk folder.

Brett Evans:                        And also don’t just assume that your insurance does cover you.

James Ridley:                     Yes.

Brett Evans:                        Just because you’re paying for it doesn’t mean that, should something happen, they got to pay it out.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly.

Brett Evans:                        Look it is and there’s an article in The Sydney Morning Herald today, pretty sad article about the guy, the cancer guy. So he had group cover and we’ve talked in the past about the problems with group cover and essentially he was deemed terminal by doctors, specialists, everyone under the sun.

James Ridley:                     By the medical certificates.

Brett Evans:                        Yep and sends it off to Local Government Super to get a payout, because he wanted to… I think he had two kids, 17 and 12. Wanted to take them on one last family holiday, didn’t happen.

James Ridley:                     No.

Brett Evans:                        So it’s very sad and the super funds in the general sense make it so difficult. I mean death is death, you can’t argue it. So and unfortunately the super funds have six months to be able to turn it around and-

James Ridley:                     Yeah and if you don’t have six months.

Brett Evans:                        That’s exactly right. So yeah, pretty, I’m just going to use a bit of a swear word here, but a pack of bastards. To rob that gentleman of his time with his kids, having one last hurrah and he still had a mortgage. So it’s not like he had money and you go off on holiday, he’s still trying meet his mortgage payments and all these sort of things. So yeah, some of them out they’re are a pack of bastards.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly right and I think it gets the point where, when you look at our population, our ageing population, some piece of legislation should be created-

Brett Evans:                        100%.

James Ridley:                     Just to, I suppose bring down those timeframes. There should be a dedicated team.

Brett Evans:                        Framework.

James Ridley:                     It should be within weeks, to be honest with you. It’s not that hard. The liaising with the administrator, the trustee and then obviously the relevant medical parties. Apparently, from what I understand, the individual, I can’t recall his name right now, but I think within the first week he’d given everything to them.

Brett Evans:                        Yes.

James Ridley:                     And then he was waiting months and months. Every time he called the super fund, he’d get a different person. There was no reference number, he’d have to go through the whole, I suppose deal with going through multiple people. Now he’d have to pay catch up and go, “Okay, this is where this is at. I’ll check them and update.” They wouldn’t call him back. Just over and over again, which is just-

Brett Evans:                        From memory, he had two policies. One was Sunsuper, Sunsuper paid out within three weeks-

James Ridley:                     Yeah, amazing.

Brett Evans:                        And work with his financial advisor and got the whole thing done. Local Government Super refused to talk to his advisor, would only talk to him. So instead of this guy spending quality time with his family, he’s stuck on the phone talking to call centres and every time he rung up he had to explain himself again. The guy’s sick, I mean the last thing he’s got to want to do is repeat himself 50 times over. When we’re healthy, that’s the last thing we want to do.

James Ridley:                     Exactly right.

Brett Evans:                        So yeah look, it’s at angers me and that’s one of the reasons why I want to bring it up, because people have almost an unsubstantiated belief that they’ll be looked after and unfortunately you and I see quite often the case, it’s not, not the case.

James Ridley:                     No, not the case at all I suppose, there’s probably another reason, just gone through a Royal Commission.

Brett Evans:                        Yep, exactly.

James Ridley:                     Charging a dead person insurance premiums.

Brett Evans:                        Yes. Actually I saw one the other day of, and this is by the by and I always like to segue everybody off and get off into different tenders sometimes, but this is quite funny.

James Ridley:                     Tell me about it Brett, come on.

Brett Evans:                        So a colleague had a client who died and they had direct debits on their account, for house insurance, for a house they sold back in August. So this colleague is actually one of the executors of the will and he’s been working with the banks, sorry, with the insurance company for the last six months to try and turn off the direct debits and the insurance company has come back to him and said two things. A, they should have turned it off before they died. Don’t know how you do that, “Okay. Rightio I’m dead now, so please come back from the grave and turn it off.”-

James Ridley:                     Before I die, oh okay.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah and B, we’re probably breaching the rules anyway, but we want a probate. We want all these sorts of things to turn off a direct debit and the direct debit was probably 130 bucks, 140 bucks a week.

James Ridley:                     Oh my gosh.

Brett Evans:                        No, sorry, a month and yeah, so another good example of just getting your house in order with all these sort of things. This guy had a POA, this guy had all the things right and it’s still gone to pot.

James Ridley:                     Yeah. Oh my gosh, that’s crazy.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, it is.

 

Facebook Reviews & Podcast Reviews

 

James Ridley:                     Yeah. All right, we’ll move on. Just one thing that I suppose we want to touch base on is reviews. Facebook-

Brett Evans:                        Yes, yes. Now this is a good one. So one of the things we turned on recently was our Facebook reviews. Now for the last three years we’ve actually had a review service for clients. It’s called Advisor Ratings, it’s like TripAdvisor for financial planners and it’s a moderated review. Which means that anyone can review us, but if they give it a bad rating it doesn’t go automatically into your file, they seek more information from you with that person’s or client on what the circumstances were. Which is great and people have found a lot of comfort in what our clients have had to say about us, whether it was the right thing or wrong thing. We’ve now turned on the review option on our Facebook page, which is unmoderated.

James Ridley:                     Well, I mean some of the things that are on there are comical to be honest.

Brett Evans:                        It’s yeah, so unfortunately, just to explain to everyone out there. Anyone can leave a review and please don’t do it if you don’t have to. If you’ve got nothing nice to say or you haven’t been a client or just got too much spare time, because I think there’s a lot of people that are out there that have-

James Ridley:                     Online trolls.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, online trolls and essentially what it’s meant, is we’ve had a number of comments on there from people who we’ve never even heard of. One guy in South Africa, one guy in Qatar.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, the guy that wasn’t even making sense, but it wasn’t even at us at all.

Brett Evans:                        Yes. Apparently Facebook stole his money, so he was very angry and giving everyone a one star rating and so, not sure what happened there with him and we wish you all the best in the future, but the problem is we can’t actually get rid of those reviews. Which unfortunately puts us in a very bad light.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, when I suppose it’s not a true reflection of us at all.

Brett Evans:                        Well it’s not. I mean, everyone who listens to the podcast and watches on YouTube and Facebook, they would have seen, they know the value we’re been to expats.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, that’s right.

Brett Evans:                        So what we’d like to do is, it may take us a year or two years for Facebook to remove these reviews. In the meantime, if you are finding any value from what we do, we’d love you to go and have a look at our Facebook page, I’ll put the links in the show notes there below. If you do think we’re doing a good job, give us a thumbs up. On Facebook it says, “Do you recommend Atlas or not?” Simple question, yes or no. We’d like you to hit yes, of course and just put a bit in there about the bits we’re doing. Some people are like, we had a lady the other day who put on there that she’s loving the podcast, so it can be something simple as that, but obviously we want to drown the trolls out. I can assure they’re not clients and they’ve never been a client and wouldn’t ever want them to be a client, but I think we’d have to be more of a psychologist than a client with financial advice for some of them, but-

James Ridley:                     One of the trolls, on his actual Facebook page and in the last, I think few weeks, he’s reviewed over a 100 financial firms around the world, so-

Brett Evans:                        Yep. Let me guess, let me guess and rated them down.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, yeah. I know, all one star and so he’s on I think a bit of a power trip anyways.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah. He’s an angry man.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, that’s right.

Brett Evans:                        I’m not sure what he’s doing, so and also too for those on the podcast, we would actually love you to provide a review on the podcast itself. We’re trying to, as you’ve probably seen from the last five episodes, really just trying to increase the financial literacy for Australian expats and the way that other expats get to find out about the podcast, is if you give us a thumbs up, obviously five stars is great and the more we’re rated, then surprise, surprise, it’ll be recommended to other expats.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, that’s right.

Brett Evans:                        And off we go from there. So if you want to hit pause on the podcast, you can do that. If you’re watching this via YouTube, you can hit pause as well and give us a thumbs up and maybe a comment in the field below, that’d be fantastic. Social media is an amazing tool that we’re able to broadcast at scale and essentially you and I don’t get paid to do this.

James Ridley:                     No.

Brett Evans:                        We’re doing this from an altruistic point of view of we want to ensure that everyone has the right information. The government does a shit house job in educating expats, in actual fact it’s the other way around. They don’t want to educate, they want to take. So we’ve taken it upon ourselves, because no one else has done this, to get out there and just broadcast to the four corners of the world.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, that’s right. I mean we check the comments regularly. So even if you want to leave questions, even if it’s a comment for a question about, “Oh, can you talk about this next time?” Please leave it there, because it just adds content for us to try and help educate you all, so that’s all.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah. We think we’re covering all the topics, but you might have that one burning question that you’ve had for the last five years, either there’s a thousand ways to get hold of us. If you’re on the podcast, just drop us an email at [email protected]. If you’re on the YouTube, just write in the comments below. You can also go to our Facebook page while you’re doing a review and send us a message. We talk to clients through messenger as well too, so.

James Ridley:                     Easy.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, we’re pretty open to getting feedback. If you’re on a Twitter, send us a tweet at Atlas Wealth Management or tweet out using the #Expatchat and we’ll see that as well too.

James Ridley:                     I need to get on Twitter.

Brett Evans:                        You do, you do.

James Ridley:                     It’s the final frontier for me.

Brett Evans:                        It is, I can see. It’s only for the brave, it’s like drinking from a fire hose, but you’ll tweet something and you come back and yeah, things can blow up. So yeah, just ask Mr. Trump.

James Ridley:                     That’s right, that’s right. Seems like financial markets are tied to his Twitter account.

Brett Evans:                        Yes.

 

Expat Insights Survey Update

 

James Ridley:                     That’s good, okay. So moving on now, I want to touch base on Expat Insight survey. Where we’re at right now at the moment. I mean, when are we looking at closing it?

Brett Evans:                        Closing it at the end of May. We’re I think, we’d be over 2,200 responses, which is fantastic considering-

James Ridley:                     How many?

Brett Evans:                        84 countries. So including my favourites, there’s always a couple that pop up in North Korea, so I’m not sure Kim Jong-un is on there. I doubt it, but there are a number of Australians in North Korea, but also it’s amazing. We would go through to countries and there’s not many countries that we haven’t had exposure to.

James Ridley:                     No, there’s not.

Brett Evans:                        And the biggest thing for us is, if you want your country to be rated, we need a minimum number of responses. Otherwise, and I always trip over this phrase, we need the responses to be statistically significant. Don’t say that with a few beers under your belt, but yeah, the more responses we have, the broader the base we’d draw from and then obviously from there we can do some great things. Because essentially the questions that a new expat will have moving to a country, they want to hear from other expats, not from a British or American or South African expat. Aussie expats are the fountain of knowledge when it comes to being an Aussie expat in that country.

James Ridley:                     Exactly.

Brett Evans:                        So once again, there’s got to be a link to the survey in the show notes and also the description below. It would mean the world to us if you could go on there and just provide responses. It’s 10 minutes of your time, it’s anonymous, so don’t worry, we’re not going to pass this information onto the IRS or the ATO or those sort of people. All we’re doing is aggregating the data and it achieves two things. We’re able to get a nice distinct picture of what it’s like to be an expat in that country, both from a career point of view, from finances point of view, from a family point of view, from a lifestyle point of view. But also too, there’s a gross misunderstanding in Canberra of what an expat is and I was actually having a chat the other day to the Advance organisation, they’re an amazing organisation. They’ve got about 22,000 Australian expat members and they’re really trying to educate Canberra as well. So we got to try and do a bit of work with them down the track.

James Ridley:                     What is Advance? Just explain Advance, because people probably have never come across them before.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah look, it’s a primarily US/Asian organisation that does receive government funding and its sole purpose is to embody and support Australian expats, both in a company sense and also to employment sense as well. So essentially they’re out there, they’re beating the drum, they do a lot of great initiatives and one of the best ones is actually their national awards, where they recognise a lot of the leading expats out there in terms of the field they’re doing in and you’re looking at the list of the luminaries of people who’ve actually won these awards. We’re talking Nobel Peace Prize winners, we’re talking just absolute, they’re killing it and they’re virtually a great body that’s championed the cause for expats, but they need help.

And that’s where we’ve got to hopefully step in and do a bit of work with them and from their point of view, they really look at the softer issues as well too, especially on the repatriation side. The skills migration, not only outbound, but returning and what is a big topic for them and for us, as well for our clients, is the lack of accreditation that expats get when they move back into the Australian workforce. It’s amazing how when we hear this from clients, they come back and they’ve been overseas for 10 years and they’ve been at director level, C-suite level, they come back and some of the companies and recruiters just give them zero value for it.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, absolutely.

Brett Evans:                        And it’s a shame, because the Australian economy is 1.7% of the world economy. So if you’re brave enough and bold enough and strong enough to go and compete on the world circuit and do it well, you should be not only celebrated but embraced when back in Australia. So it’s something that we’re very passionate about, obviously we’ll provide more information when Advance launch their survey, which is coming out soon. Which is purely based on the repatriation side and yeah, we’re looking forward to working with them, because the more education we can provide to Canberra-

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly.

Brett Evans:                        With a lot of them, they believe that a expat is a C-suite executive director level on seven figures, flying first class.

James Ridley:                     Not the case at all.

Brett Evans:                        No, it’s not and we’ve discussed this before. From last years survey, the most popular demographic or sector of employment was teaching.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, education.

Brett Evans:                        And then followed behind that was nurses and behind that was hospitality.

James Ridley:                     Exactly.

Brett Evans:                        So yeah, it’s something that’s not going to happen overnight, but the more data we gather and we going to do this every year. So it’s not just a one flash in the pan, it’s got to be a weight of numbers. Obviously we’d love to double last years number, last year we got 1,774 responses, so if we can double it, fantastic. Just 10 minutes of your time would mean the world to us, if you’d go on there and just have a quick look.

James Ridley:                     Exactly right and I mean, when do you think we’ll aim to put out the data and the report? I mean, we’ve got to go through 84 countries essentially.

Brett Evans:                        Yes.

James Ridley:                     And then on top of that, probably 3000 responses by the end of all this.

Brett Evans:                        Oh, we’ve got so much spare time, haven’t we?

James Ridley:                     I wish.

Brett Evans:                        Is there an eight day week coming up? Being realistic, I’d like to think July, because there’s a lot of and then you can imagine 2,200 responses, answering 62 questions. That’s a lot of information we have to sort of sort through and really what we try and do, is find a summary of what everyone’s saying and find out what the common themes are and then obviously put it out in a report.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, okay. No, so that’s great and I suppose, can you opt in to receive the report or is it, we’re just going to mail it?

Brett Evans:                        Yes, no there at the end. So essentially you can complete the whole survey and then the last question is, “Do you want to receive a copy?” If you do want to receive a copy, just put your details in. If you don’t want to receive a copy, then you know what, you don’t have to put your details in. So we never know who you are and just to give everyone peace of mind out there, if you do give us your details, we’re not going to spam you. The only time you’ll get an email from us if you do go through that channel, is if you ask for a copy of the report. So if you’re not on any of our mailing lists for our newsletters and stuff, you’re only getting one a year and that’s a copy of that report.

James Ridley:                     Yep. Amazing. All right, Brett. Well, I don’t have anything else to add today.

Brett Evans:                        Now look, I’ll think we’ll have more to talk about in coming weeks, obviously as the 18th of May gets closer.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, that’s right.

Brett Evans:                        There’s a lot of politicking that’s got to happen, a lot of back-flips and a lot of promises.

James Ridley:                     Yeah, exactly.

Brett Evans:                        A lot of broken hearts.

James Ridley:                     It’s great, I look at the headlines in the Financial Review every morning, you just shake your head.

Brett Evans:                        You always want to fast forward to the 17th of May and say, “Right, give us a synopsis.” That is one thing we’ll probably end up doing.

James Ridley:                     Comparison.

Brett Evans:                        Yeah, a comparison as we get closer to the time. I mean, we could do one now, but they could change three times over-

James Ridley:                     Well, they will change. Yeah, I think I’m on the group, they were part of X, Y. I mean, they’re all talking about, is it worth getting a comparison now? But everyone’s like, “Don’t, there’s no point.”

Brett Evans:                        Don’t, that’s right. They’re going to change and change and change and then liberals will say this, so therefore labor will come up with this. So we will do one obviously in the week leading up to the election, so keep an eye out for that, but we’ll keep you guys posted anyway, so.

James Ridley:                     No dramas. Thanks for your time.

Brett Evans:                        Fantastic. Thanks guys and have a great day.

James Ridley:                     Speak soon.