NBN Co is an Australian government-owned corporation tasked to design, build and operate Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN). But how does Australia compare to other countries when it comes to Internet speed and cost?

As the illustration below shows, there’s some good news (lost cost) and bad news (low speeds)…

The Australian First Home Buyer’s Grant is intended to help individuals, especially young couples to easily purchase their first home. Grants are given to these people so they can have a jump start in their burgeoning careers.

Because of the high cost of real estate today, many people, especially those who are just starting their careers are deterred to buy their own home. Some are content to rent because it fits their current financial capability.

This is the purpose of the First Home Buyer’s Grant – to help these people start their life and move them a step forward toward independence.

The First Home Buyer’s Grant was first instituted in Australia last July 1, 2000. From 2000 until 2011 the grant stayed at $7,000, by the coming of 2012, the Australian government has announced that the grant will remain at $7,000, though some expect an increase due to the increase of home costs.

First Home Buyer’s Grant is made available to those who purchase a home that is worth at least $600,000. The purpose of this condition is to help invigorate the building of houses and boost the construction industry.

Though the First Home Buyer’s Grant should help first time buyers to more easily purchase their new home, some in the real estate market tend to think that many house prices are artificially increased to meet this minimum threshold. Because of this, some argue that first time home buyers seem to be disadvantaged.

Many potential first time home buyers will be dismayed by the current status of real estate prices. Because of the minimum threshold price increase, many argue that it would be better to purchase a house without the grant at a lower price, than to avail it and acquire a higher level of debt.

Addressing this issue, on January 1, 2012, the house price limit to be eligible for the grant was set at $500,000 to $600,000. This can help people get a discount due to the increase of the grant and the increase of the coverage. An average person can have benefits up to $24,000 due to the First Home Buyer’s Grant.

You can consult a home loan calculator to see detailed information about loans so you can decide if you should apply for a grant and get your dream home now or wait a little longer.

In many areas, the real estate market is softening and many are taking advantage of the situation as an opportunity to buy. With the First Home Buyer’s Grant and falling prices of houses these days, the timing might just be right for you. To own your own home and live the Australian dream.

A safety warning courtesy of the Australian Bureau of Statistics:

• 31 Australians have died since 1996 by watering their Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in.
• 19 Australians  have died in the last 3 years by eating Christmas decorations they believed were  chocolate.
• Hospitals reported 4 broken arms last year after cracker pulling incidents.
• 101 Australians since 1997 have had to have broken parts of plastic toys pulled out of the soles of their feet.
• 18 Australians had serious burns in 1998 trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth.
• A massive 543 Australians were admitted to casualty in the last two years after opening bottles of beer with  their teeth or eye socket.
• 5 Australians were injured last year in accidents involving out of control slot cars.
• 3 Australians  die each year testing if a 9V battery works on their tongue.
• 142 Australians were injured in 1998 by not removing all the pins from new shirts.
• 58 Australians are injured each year by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers and finally:
• 8 Australians cracked their skull in 1997 after falling asleep (passing out) while throwing up into the toilet.

Today’s post is based on an article that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on July 23, 2011 forwarded to us by The Gourmet Guardian, an Australian Food Safety Specialist who helps food service companies avoid food poisoning.

Bob Hawke said it best in September 1983 after watching Alan Bond’s 12-metre yacht, the Australia II, sail to victory in the America’s Cup: ”I tell you what, any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum.” And a stellar moment in the Australian tradition of ”chucking a sickie” was born.

Australian workers took an average of 10 days each in unplanned leave last year, including sick leave, carers leave and personal leave, according to a survey by Direct Health Solutions. Sick leave is estimated to account for three-quarters of this time, or 7.5 days a year.

So are we really sick one week in the year? It’s clear employers don’t think so. According to the survey, almost three-quarters of employers surveyed believe between 10 to 25 per cent of absences are ”non-genuine”. Employers also report two in three Australian workers regard paid personal and sick leave as an entitlement.

Employers estimate this loss of work time comes at a cost to the economy of $20 to $30 billion a year and have introduced all manner of ways to control it, including requiring medical certificates and employing the services of companies such as Direct Health Solutions whereby workers must ring a registered nurse to present their ailment before taking the day off.

So are we really a nation of layabouts? Or is the tradition of the ”sickie”, like our legendary relaxed, beachside persona, more myth than reality?

Three decades on since Hawke effectively declared his national holiday, the Australian workforce is transformed. We work longer hours, the longest in the developed world on some measures.

The invention of emails, smartphones and iPads mean we are ”plugged in” to the office for more hours of the day, while the number of hours spent at physical work, but unpaid, has also risen.

A study by the Australia Institute for its inaugural national ”go home on time day” last November estimated Australians put in more than two billion hours of unpaid overtime a year. This translates to a $72 billion gift to employers each year in unpaid work, eclipsing the $30 billion employers estimate they lose from workers claiming their sick leave and personal leave entitlements.

Perhaps Australians are just stealing back what time has been stolen from them.

But then again, maybe we really are sick. And maybe we’re so sick because we work so hard.

Almost half of Australians surveyed by the Australia Institute said work commitments prevented them from doing exercise. One in four said they were ”too busy” to see a doctor.

Indeed, a separate survey by the economic modellers Econtech for the health insurer Medibank Private has looked into the problem of ”presenteeism” – the opposite of ”absenteeism”.

Econtech estimates a $26 billion hit to the Australian economy from lost productivity from workers turning up to work while really sick.

Health experts this week revealed a fourfold increase in the number of Australians suffering the flu this month compared to last year. Baffled, they speculate it could be due to more people spending more time together indoors.

Some days it really is worth staying in bed.

Graffiti

In the early 1990’s Western Australian State Governments attempted to address graffiti proliferation using various methods and management models.  Despite this public concern continues to grow and so does the burden of state-wide graffiti removal costs.  A tougher approach, which focuses considerable effort on offender management and behaviour, has now been adopted. A State Graffiti Taskforce has been established to deal with the problem.

Graffiti removal costs have been estimated at up to $30 million dollars per year within Western Australia.  However, this figure is likely grossly underestimated due to the difficulty in obtaining an accurate cost largely to the nature of graffiti offences, its reporting and removal.

In 2005, the cost of criminal damage Australia wide, which included but was not limited to graffiti vandalism, was estimated to be $1.58 billion annually. This estimate is likely to be a conservative one given that graffiti vandalism, like other forms of criminal damage, is not always reported to police. It also gives no consideration to the social cost of graffiti vandalism; in particular the impact on perceptions of safety and public amenity.  It is evident throughout Western Australia regardless of the social, economic or cultural status of the community that its persistence, spread and visibility have served to heighten the public’s sensitivity to it as a threat against civic order and safety in their community

It is estimated that it costs Australians half a billion dollars a year to clean up graffiti. The police are fighting an ongoing battle and the Public Transport Authority has resources in place with 1200 cameras spread through the system at stations and platforms.

According to the government, graffiti costs the NSW economy and taxpayers more than $100 million a year.

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In a recent edition of The Economist Magazine, Pankaj Ghemawat of IESE Business School in Spain points out that many indicators of global integration are surprisingly low. Only 2% of students are at universities outside their home countries and only 3% of people live outside their country of birth.

Only 7% of rice is traded across borders. Only 7% of directors of S&P 500 companies are foreigners—and, according to a study a few years ago, less than 1% of all American companies have any foreign operations.

Exports are equivalent to only 20% of global GDP. Some of the most vital arteries of globalisation are badly clogged: air travel is restricted by bilateral treaties and ocean shipping is dominated by cartels.

So what are your thoughts about the world being flat and accessible to all?

Is it just globaloney?

We’re not taking sides, but this is an interesting debate . As a blogger, you want to pick sides (or not) when there is heated debate. That means there’s interest and traffic – INTERESTED people. In this instance, we’re staying out of it, We decided to post it because it’s obviously an issue of interest to many!

This TED TALK by Tim Berners-Lee is another classic example of Antimimeticisomorphism in action. I won’t spoil the presentation for you except to say it’s amazing what smart people can do when they put their minds to it AND the data is available.

If you’ve been affected by the Queensland floods, assistance is being offered by the Queensland Government for flood victims. Click the hyperlink to determine the conditions for qualification. $25,000 grants and up to $250,000 in special loans are being made available for those in need.

Bree Robbins of Paddington Pups (who was flooded in Brisbane) mentioned to me that people who work for flood affected businesses who have been closed can get wage assistance from Centre Link via the Disaster Income Recovery Subsidy.

The Disaster Income Recovery Subsidy has been activated to assist employees, small business persons, and farmers who have had a loss of income as a direct result of the flooding and severe weather that began from 29 November 2010 and continued in January 2011 in the states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

We have received a number of requests for help and information at this time of recovery and repair from the terrible flooding events in Queensland and Victoria.

Here is some good advice from the Kroll Ontrack Data Recovery experts.

1. Do not attempt to power up equipment damaged by water. If water has infiltrated the hard drive or electrical components, electrical power can leave the hard drive unrecoverable and it can become dangerous to anyone handling the hard drive.
2. Do Not Dry the Hard Drive. Whenever media is damaged by water, the first instinct to remedy the situation and try and dry it out. However, the contaminants contained in water are often not visible to the human eye and will damage the media irrevocably. Residue left on the hard drive platters and circuit board corrosion will need to be treated by in-lab professional engineers.
3. Keep the hard disk wet until you get professional help. Although it sounds paradoxical [crazy], keeping a hard drive wet aids the data recovery. Kroll Ontrack recommends placing the hard disk in a sealed container or plastic bag to prevent it drying out until professional engineers can dry the platters and other components in a sterile environment.
4. Never assume that data is unrecoverable. No matter what it has been through data can sometimes still be recovered. Amongst the most remarkable case histories is NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia hard drive which plunged into a lake after travelling for 39 miles through space. Kroll Ontrack engineers managed to recover 99 per cent of the information stored on the drive.

Special Data Recovery Service Option

Kroll Ontrack is also providing a heavily discounted flat fee of $850 per hard drive for desktop, laptop, notebook and external hard drive recoveries. [The usual price for this service can range up to $2,400 per drive.]In addition, Kroll Ontrack is offering a 20% discount on recovery of servers, Storage Area Networks (SANs), VMware and tape media.

Kroll Ontrack Australia – Business As Usual

We were lucky our data recovery cleanroom is in West End, Brisbane and whilst the water came very close we were unaffected by the floods. We are the only data recovery company in Australia to offer a full suite of recovery solutions, enabling data recovery anywhere, anytime for any operating system, storage or media type and cause of data loss.

Every once in a while I come across information like this that makes you stop and wonder…  Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival.
Check out the 5 things I bet you didn’t know you can do with your mobile phone

Mobile Phone Tip #1

The Emergency Number worldwide for  Mobile  is 112.

If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 11 2can be dialled even if the keypad is locked. Try it out. Read More »»

A recent BRW article mentioned that blogging is going professional. For self-employed bloggers who earn revenue from advertising, the mean annual advertising revenue is $US122,000 ($132,000), according to a survey by blog search engine Technorati has found. Interestingly, 32 percent of bloggers are self employed with 17 percent counting on blogging as their primary source of income. That’s encouraging until you realise that there are 187 million hits for blogs worldwide which means unless you have specific skills and strategies – DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB!

If you want to learn how the top 5% of Internet Marketers (including bloggers) make more than the other 95% combined, you really must consider attending our 3-day Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp – coming up in Melbourne in a few weeks.

Think of it this way – there are people, working from home making $100,000+/year. What are they doing that you’re not?

Then consider this – There’s a concept called Flipping Websites For Profit that PAYS you up to $100/hour to get you to make $1,000/month on your way to $100,000/year of passive income… This program will be highlighted at the Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp…

Contact us now while seats remain available -

As you know by now, my short blog posts are rare. This is one of them. This YouTube video is a must watch for anyone involved in Internet Marketing. It is absolutely priceless. I know you’ll want to watch it more than once and forward this blog link to colleagues and friends.

The Social Media Revolution Is Here

This recent survey in Men’s Health Magazine is a wake up call if you’re spending you much time blogging and not enough time…. well… y’know….

BEWARE too much blogging may affect your sex life!

If you’re a blogger, overwhelmed with research to get content on your blog, have I got the solution for you! The best part it’s FREE and heaps better than Google!

Read More »»