I've had several European co-workers express disbelief at the gross levels of corruption evident at all levels of large business and government (especially when the latter is buying something from the former and large sums are splashed about wastefully to line pockets of the pencil pushers).

Hopefully the recently elected new Labor-led coalition govt will follow up on their promise to implement anti-corruption trials of various members of the previous government, who were blatantly stealing taxpayer money, via their offshore Cayman Islands family trust accounts and similar.

After the recent election defeat, we now have an ex-cop opposition political leader who "somehow" is now worth $300 Million, not an inheritance, but most probably various corrupted kickbacks from giving out overly expensive contracts (it's been famously called "The Game of Mates"). And he is just one of dozens of obviously over-wealthy liars.

The list of people involved is huge at many levels, and I hope several of these people end up in jail, but the damage is already done (e.g. cancelled Fibre-to-the-Home rollout, and we already spent double the fibre costs to purchase Murdoch+Telstra copper cable instead, for only 1% the bandwidth capability).

Personal quality of life here can be excellent, especially if you earn 50% over the average wage, which is any 5+ years experience software developer role.

Just don't work for old bigbiz or govt if you want to avoid dealing with sleazy theiving weasels.

www.MichaelWest.com.au

and

"Friendly Jordies" (on YouTube)

are two of the best investigative journalists here, and helped sway the vote in the last election.

Change is coming and the exposed corruption will be a force for greater public accountability in the future (hopefully!)