What’s happening in Australia ?

Here is a brief synopsis of what’s been happening in Australia recently:

Stimulus Money

In February the Federal government announced a stimulus package to help combat the economic downturn. In April the money has started flowing to individuals.

- If you earn less than 80,000 a year you will receive $900
- If you earn between 80,001 and 90,00 you will receive $600
- If you earn between 90,001 and 100,000 you will receive $250

In the past few weeks there have been many sales enticing people to spend their stimulus package money. It will not be known until the next quarter if this will help stimulate the economy. But many analysts are predicting people will save the money for a rainy day.


Qantas cuts jobs

Qantas is the world’s second oldest airline and is an Australian institution, similar to Bell in Canada. Qantas employs about 36,000 people in Australia and around the world. On Tuesday April 14, 2009, Qantas announced it was cutting 1,750 jobs, which is in addition to 1,500 jobs cut last year.

The job cuts are in response to the downturn in the aviation industry especially on international routes. In addition to the jobs cuts, Qantas is doing the following:

- Deferring delivery of 4 Airbus A380 aircrafts for up to a year
- Deferring delivery of 12 737-800 and 15 787 Dreamliners
- Grounding 10 planes and selling them
- Reducing capacity by 5% on international and domestic routes
- Capacity cut on high-frequency, low-cost routes such as Melbourne to Sydney

All of this is done to stop profit loss from the down turn and increased competition. Last year Qantas could charge $2000 in low-mid season for flights to London and Los Angeles. Now you can go to London for $1300 and Los Angeles for $1000 return all taxes and surcharges included.


Rudd-Net

In early April, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a national broadband network which would bring fibre to the home for 90% of Australians. The government would build this network through its own private/public company at an estimated cost of $43 billion dollars. It would take 8-10 years to be completed and would increase speeds by 100 times, faster than what is currently available.

For Mr. Rudd this is an election promise from 2007 that he is acting on. According to Rudd, “this is a huge enabler for the Australia economy for the 21st century” and “This is a very big project”.

There are many questions that have not been answered. Such as the real cost of the project over the 8 – 10 year period. How much it will cost the consumer to access this super fast network. Some industry estimates are saying between $100 – 200/month. At that cost who is going to pay for it ?