australia posts

When it comes to credit card regulation, American policymakers soon could be peering Down Under for a model or a cautionary tale -- or both -- when it comes to reigning in fees and some of the unintended consequences that can result.

In a twist on the usual tale of fee-plagued consumers, the New York Times highlights the fees credit card companies slap on merchants - and exposes how a well meaning attempt to curb those fees via legislation has led to merchants sticking their customers with added charges instead.

At issue are a host of charges credit-card companies charge merchants for the privilege of accepting credit cards. The charges are nominally small, generally just a penny or two, but they add up to big bucks for the banks that issue the cards -- and big losses for the merchants.

We knew KFC wasn't health food. And we know that our modern, faceless, efficient corporate food culture leaves us vulnerable to contamination and the threat of food poisoning. But brain damage?

Yes, according to 11-year-old Australian girl Monika Samaan, whose lawyers are accusing the fast food chain of selling her family a salmonella-contaminated chicken twister (fried chicken in pita bread), which they say subsequently caused salmonella encephalopathy and salmonella septicaemia.

Monika shared the KFC Chicken Twister with her parents and older brother in Villawood, a suburb of Sydney, in 2005. They all became ill, but then-7-year-old Monika collapsed. She was rushed to the hospital and soon she was changed utterly from the happy, bright, active girl she was.

Now she has spastic quadriplegia and acquired profound intellectual disability and liver dysfunction, brought on, say her doctors, by a very rare form of the common salmonella.

Her lawyers are making a case that the restaurant had a history of recklessly unhygienic practices, such as dropping chicken on the floor and then serving it to customers, and are seeking more than $10 million in damages from Yum! Brands' Australia unit, which claims it was not responsible for the salmonella poisoning.

Unfortunately for KFC, this comes in the wake of other Sydney KFC units being fined AU$73,125 for a number of breaches of food hygiene laws, including not having cleaned fryers for several months. Few customers of KFC will be impartial, it seems, in the face of really nasty kitchens.

For as much as people worry about the information collected by companies and the government, they often discard incredible amounts of personal information when they upgrade to a new computer.

Individuals aren't the only ones guilty of handing out information on old computers; in their annual study of second hand hard drives British researchers found a trove of information about a top secret U.S. missile defense system and other corporate information.

The research group also found payroll information, social security numbers, banking information, corporate secrets and even pictures of patient wounds at a nursing home on hard drives purchased from several countries on eBay and other auctions.

It's not such a g'day in the once-golden tourism destination. Qantas, Australia's main airline, is crying uncle in this economy. It has laid off 1,700, grounded 10 jets, and put its order for new jets on hold. A few months ago, the country's official tourism department was predicting a 4% drop on visitors. The reality looks like it's going to be much worse than that. Local paper The Australian predicts the plunge in visitors could be in the double digits.

Qantas is still projecting a profit -- it's got a virtual lock on most city-to-city domestic air business -- but its profit may be as little as a fifth of what was recently being projected. For years, Qantas dominated traffic to the country, and rates were correspondingly high, making a trip to Australia an impossible dream for many. But this year, the recession has hobbled vacation budgets, taking the country's tourism down.

According to our mates at Royal Adelaide Hospital, in South Australia, the choice of diet soda as a cocktail mixer will give you more fast acting bang for your boozing dollar than the old standard mixers.

CNN reports that Aussie researchers found that when using diet soda as a mixer, intoxicating beverages reach the small intestine 15 minutes sooner than with regular mixers. So, with diet soda as a mixer, you can drink at your usual pace, but you'll get drunk faster. You can decide for yourself if that's a good thing or not.

The technical explanation for this phenomenon is simple: The sugar content in regular sodas slows the emptying of the stomach, which retards the absorption of alcohol by the small intestine. The same effect can be had by consuming a light snack containing fat, protein and carbohydrates, before beginning to drink yourself silly.

So if you're in that questionable state of mind wherein you're simply out to get drunk, bypass the regular soda and tell the bartender to mix your drink with diet soda. You'll get your buzz on a quarter hour sooner than you normally would, and you'll save yourself a few calories in the process.

Of course, you might land yourself in the back of a squad car a quarter hour sooner also. Discretion is the better part of valor, they say.

Australia may have a way to help solve the world's drought problem: Charge homeowners for each flush of a toilet.

While the final solution may not be that simple, economic and water officials in Australia are promoting a plan there that would charge homeowners based on waste water output. Currently, sewage charges are based on a home's value.

"It would encourage people to reduce their sewage output by taking shorter showers, recycling washing machine water or connecting rainwater tanks to internal plumbing to reduce their charges," Adelaide University Water Management Professor Mike Young is quoted in Perth Now.

"Some people may go so far as not flushing their toilet as often because the less sewage you produce, the less sewage rate you pay," Young said.

I finished up a pile of work (hence my lack of WalletPop blog postings so far in 2009), I've got a pile of frequent-flier miles on American Airlines that's nearing their expiration date and with the daily doom-and-gloom headlines, I'm ready to blow this joint. What other excuses do I need to take a vacation? You may not feel like it's the right time to travel for pleasure, but with nearly the entire world in economic doldrums, there may never be a better time to scoop up so many travel deals that won't put a big dent in your wallet. And besides, you deserve it!

I chatted with a few travel agents about overseas destinations that offer more bang for the U.S. buck than ever before. They include:

Every job hunter knows what rejection is like, and now the world's most wanted man does too.

A video application submitted by someone as "Osama bin Laden" for a dream job looking after a tropical island in Australia was rejected by Tourism Queensland, according to a Reuters story. The video of bin Laden's application is on YouTube, or you can watch it after the jump.

More than 11,000 video applications have been sent in since the tourism group advertised the $96,000 (AU 150,000) "best job in the world" as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef.

The 30-second prank video of bin Laden has nonsensical sounds dubbed over his real voice. In subtitles he argues his case for the six-month job by describing himself as "outgoing," "familiar with sandy areas" and experienced with " large scale event coordination," according to Reuters. He lists his interests as arts, crafts and renovating.

A spokeswoman for Tourism Queensland said the prankster made an official application, including the required video that got onto YouTube, but the application was rejected because the content was deemed inappropriate

Applications are being accepted at www.islandreefjob.com through Feb. 22. The tourism group has spent $1.7 million marketing the job and has received applicants from 162 countries. The idea, obviously, is to attract tourists to the island, and the worker who gets the dream job will get to roam the island and blog about it, while living in an oceanfront villa.

Have you ever dreamed of being paid a tidy sum of money for lying on a beach and catching some rays? Your dream has just become reality.Okay, the job isn't quite that easy. But it certainly comes with plenty of time for sunbathing.

Australia's Queensland state is trying to boost tourism, and part of their plan is offering the "Best Job in the World" to one fortunate applicant. They're offering $100,000 (AU 150,000) for a six-month position relaxing on Hamilton Island.

In addition to getting a bit of sun and relaxation, the employee will be "required" to frolic on the beach, take a dip in a pool, live in an oceanfront villa, and blog about the experience. Blogging, sun, sand, and $100,000 for the privilege.... Where do I sign up?

You can apply online at a site set up to promote this employment opportunity. At the writing of this article, the site seems to be down. And I'm not surprised. I can only imagine how many millions of applications they will get.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

As hotels get ever more desperate to invent new niches to lure customers, we've have been hearing a lot about the "girlfriend getaway," vacations women take with just their girlfriends.

I confess I don't entirely get why we need the concept. Fun things to do are universal. Often, these packages include spa treatments, free cosmos, or something like that, which strikes me as more than a little sexist -- as if it's only women who like massages, and as if Carrie and Samantha would have no interest in, say, museums.

But whatever. Here's a woman-skewed concept that seems to have a place. The Naumi, a luxury hotel in Singapore, has launched a female-only wing for women guests. The concept, secured by private key-card access, reeks of boutique styling, complete with fancy Aesop skin care products, aromatherapy frills, and an entirely female staff. Since its introduction, staff says, the rooms have been at 80% occupancy, which isn't bad for a hotel, especially one charging $420 to $600 a night.

So far, the women-only zones are mostly confined to properties in Asia, Australasia and in Arab countries (such as this one in -- surprise -- Saudi Arabia), where presumably there are more women who prefer segregation for religious or privacy reasons. But the luxury execution goes way beyond simply providing a safe space. In fact, a manager at the Naumi says a big chunk of his clientele is women on shopping trips -- Singapore, a tiny city-state that is practically one big mall, is particularly attractive to the long-distance spree set. But women executives, too, not normally known for being timid, are also indulging in the new concept.

In what could probably be construed as an act of war, the United States is unleashing The Donald on the friendly folks from down under. This November, The Chump will be heading to Australia for a series of "Think Like a Billionaire" seminars

The Age reports that while promoters declined to say how much Trump is being paid, his usual fee is somewhere in the $1.5 million per hour range. All of this raises an interesting question: What could Trump possibly have to say that's worth $1.5 million per hour? Perhaps he could put together a Power Point presentation on how he actually managed to lose an enormous amount of money operating a casino.

Apparently this is Trump's first visit to Australia. The visit could do wonders for diplomacy as those wonderful folks will now get some idea of what Americans have been putting up with for the past 62 years.

Perhaps we could threaten to send Trump to Iran -- that should put an end to the country's aggression in a hurry.

We should be used to this by now. Yet another money grubbing directive has surfaced from mother eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), As covered in a story in The New York Times, eBay has decided to test market the strategy of allowing payment for transactions on its site solely through its wanton money portal, PayPal. The company intends to run this test on Australian eBayers. I wonder if our mates Down Under would be willing to tell us how they feel about this strategy?

eBay is claiming that this change in operating procedure will lower the incidences of fraud on the site. That's funny coming from them, when you consider that the worst eBay fraud nightmares generally run through its own PayPal system. I can believe that eBay's own fraud exposure might be cut by funneling everything through PayPal, but that's about eBay's bottom line. It's not about the bottom lines of its loyal patrons. The matter is further examined in this Associated Press article.

BloggingStocks reports that, as it stands right now, PayPal collects 2.9% from every sale which runs through its system in the U.S., plus another .30 cents for any sale under $3,000. The picture gets even gloomier for Australian eBayers, where PayPal charges 4.4% on sales, plus the additional .30 cents. What percentage of eBay Australia's sales currently run through alternate payment means? That's what I want to know.

If this change is enacted by eBay against the entirety of it's operations, it will be just one more step in the inevitable creation of "Wal-Bay", a site where large volumes of foreign made junk will be peddled by a thin crust of well protected sellers. In the meantime, alternate online selling strategies continue to take hold and grow as eBay's own growth has stalled. eBay can fake revenue growth for just so long. It's only a matter of time before things really start to get ugly over there.

In the United States, when you have more children, your taxes go down. For each dependent member of your family, you get a deduction, thereby lowering your taxes. Some argue that this wrongly encourages people to have children; others believe that it's only fair to lower a family's taxes in return for the future taxes the child will pay.

Australia currently has a "baby bonus," under which a family may receive up to A$4,000 per year for dependent children under the age of 5. This is similar to the "earned income credit" in the U.S., under which lower income families may be entitled to receive a refundable income tax credit for each dependent child.

A medical expert in Australia is proposing that the government do the exact opposite. Professor Barry Walters thinks that the government should charge a family A$5,000 (US$ 5,700) for each child they have after a proposed limit of two. And for child numbers three and above, Walters says the parents should have to pay an annual tax of A$800 for life.