bondipom

Redfern has the carjackings but the guns are generally reserved for Lebanese family feuds out in Lakemba/Bankstown areas. Have you heard that Hillsong chart release? Even more disturbing is that it did well!!!!

diddy

Going by the RL World Cups (Ireland & the Lebanon) - the USA is probably a bunch of Aussie Expats anyway.

Pro's of Australia

George Bush is currently on the letter I for Iraq in his invasion plans. He still has most of the alphabet to go through before he reaches A again. Apparently he's looking for places beginning with J now.....Jersey is not looking too good for a holiday at the moment.

Con's

Not sure is Dubya knows the alphabet properly.

Paul.

ugez009

I lived in Los Angeles, California for 2 years few years back. I had chance of taking a green card, but chose to return to London. I got residency to Aus April. The american dream still exisits and if you are interested in making money and working in certain unique industries at the cutting edge, US is your place. I found Americans generally OK as individuals, but as a group they tend to be similar thinking. I feel Australia is not so intense and more laid back. US is a nightmare today for visa etc. I think Sydney has a simlar feel to LA, bit not so intense experience with nicer people.

CPW

The structures and institutions of Australia are much more akin to those of Britain than the US ones are (e.g. Westminster parliamentary system, similar court and legal systems, similar system of medical/nursing/pharmacist training means that similar people in the health system deal with similar things as in the UK, etc). This might or might not be important to you, and of course in time it wouldn't matter anyway as you get used to things, but it would make life easier to understand in the beginning, I should think.

JAJ

Although the Australian Senate is modelled on the US Senate, rather than the British House of Lords.

Jeremy

CPW

Yes, that's very true. The NSW upper House (Legislative Council) was conceived (back in the 1830s) on lines much more akin to the House of Lords, although the similarities are very much diluted now, if not entirely absent. And of course, there are many differences between the UK and the Australian systems in lots of fields - for example, Queensland has no upper house at all, and there is no absolute dichotomy between barristers and solicitors in Victoria (a legacy of the days when lawyers were scarce in the new colony).

Indeed, the mere existence of the states, with their own governors, legislatures, premiers, civil services etc, is an obvious Australian difference from the UK, and it is not always at all transparent whether a particular issue is a state or federal one.

In fact, as an aside, it will be interesting to see, if an Australian republic is accepted at referendum in the future, what happens in the states - the removal of the Queen as head of state of Australia would not, in theory, have any effect on the arrangements in any of the states. (This question was half-heartedly raised before the referendum in 1999, but the issue was pushed to one side and largely ignored as being not important - indeed, like the whole republic question itself it is not important in terms of people's day-to-day lives, but there could be a constitutional mess even so.)

PommieLeague

Yeah it will be a cricket score but the Americans are great at hype arent they.

Ansy

Depends....I think that if you are Caucasian, you'll feel more at home in Australia and Aussies will be very friendly to you. If you''re a person of color you will have lesser trouble fitting in in the USA. Aus has the added stress of dealing with discrimination and a lot of prejudgements of people of color.

pandya_m

I think this sums up the ans for what was asked..
This ShellFish stole words from my mouth....

My experience about US has been cool but too much of freedom...I guess..not sure how Oz is..!

RoganJosh

Difficult one this.
One country's full of highly self-opinionated wannabes who are more than happy to pass judgement on everyone else when they should be taking a good hard look at themselves, and the others are Yanks.
I just don't know.........