The Chinese reportedly made over 100 million overseas trips last year spending a record $208 billion. Chinese investors now are looking to tap into this growth by buying up hotels and leisure properties hoping that that like the Japanese before, their tourists will choose to dine and play at Chinese-owned properties, reports The Australian.

International tourist arrivals rose by 4.7 per cent to 1.14 billion in 2014, according to the Madrid-based World Tourism Organisation. "Over the past years, tourism has proven to be a surprisingly strong and resilient economic activity," secretary general of the UN body, Taleb Rifai, said in a statement.

Outbound Chinese tourism is one of the key drivers of global tourism with Chinese tourists spending a record $US164.8 billion ($AUD 208 billion), according to figures reported by The Australian.

Some 709,000 Chinese tourists to Australia spent about $5.3 billion in Australia last year. Tourism Australia says recent forecasts indicate the spend could rise to $13 billion annually by 2020. Some tourist spots like Sovereign Hill in Victoria report that 80% of their visitors are from China.

Chasing the Chinese tourism dollar are some of China’s biggest investors who have been snapping up brands, property and other assets across the globe to serve as a magnet for China’s booming outbound tourist market, reports The Australian.

ClicksIT Recruitment  annual recruitment survey has found that although Australia’s  information technology sector is expected to expand slightly this year allowing companies to increase staffing levels, employers are saying that they will be looking to hire local staff and reduce their reliance on sc457 workers.

In what the industry sees as a surprising shift in employer’s attitude, IT companies are expected to be turning to temporary workers to fill their staffing needs this year according to a report on itwire.com.

The survey found that IT companies are forecasting profit rises of between 11% and 20% as organisations have put in place plans to increase their IT budgets and IT professionals staffing levels.

“This growth is due to an increase in projects that focus on digital transformation, cloud uptake and refreshing core systems” Ben Wood, the Managing Director of Clicks IT Recruitment told itwire.com.

“The IT role most in demand is business analyst, which traditionally is among the first skill hired at the start of a project, indicating a strong pipeline of project work,” noted Mr Woods.

To all RMA partners

Migration Alliance is very pleased to announce a new partnership with Blackwood Financial Services, a boutique mortgage & commercial finance brokerage company with a strong focus on Migrants and Expatriates.

Blackwood’s Migrant Banking section is headed by Tony Loeckenhoff. As the former Head of NAB’s Global Migrant Banking division, Tony is one of Australia’s best known Migrant bankers. By bringing his big 4 experience to the table, you can be confident of getting the best solution available.

Apparently, Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove missed Australia Day commitments and flew to Saudi Arabia to represent Australia following the death of King Abdullah.  To read more about this click here.

Some may say that Tony Abbott awarding Prince Philip a knighthood was a brain snap, mad, crazy etc.  What seems to have missed the main headlines was that our GG, Sir (yes another Sir) Peter Cosgrove, was attending to the death of a man who Anonymous calls a Despot, Tyrant and Monster.

Was Australia in Saudi Arabia because of the smell of oil?

Desparate to control the misleading and fraudulent conduct of some education brokers in Australia, the government is looking into measures to make educational institutions directly liable for the behaviour of their brokers.

Education brokers are not required to be registered unless they intend to provide immigration assistance. To provide immigration assistance, a person must register as a migration agent with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (Office of the MARA).

It is not always easy to separate the two. If you browse the websites of some education brokers, you will find some boasting of how quickly they have managed to obtain student visas for their clients. Yet nowhere on the site is there any indication that they are registered for providing migration advice.

The big issue is how exactly do the authorities weed out brokers dealing in fraudulent student visa applications or misleading and misguiding students about the streamlined visa program and thus potentially damaging the reputation of Australia’s $16 billion dollar education industry.

Regulating education brokers has been an issue the government has been grappling with for a while, according to a report in The Australian. Currently there is an ad hoc system whereby brokers have the option of undergoing voluntary training which some education institutions have put down as a requirement for brokers wanting to represent them. The overriding legislation governing broker conduct however is the very general Australian Consumer Law.