Further on that "superior bureaucracy" note from the other day, amicable divorce is about as much better in Australia than in America as immigration is. I dropped divorce forms into the mail on Monday, and today have a letter something along the lines of "your divorce hearing will be on the 20th of October at a time and a place," only with an actual time and place, "you will not be required to attend."
Here, it's as simple as being separated for a year, filling in a very sparse 10-page form, and both signing it in front of a notary (or two separate notaries). Only one party need reside in or be a citizen of Australia. Oh, and a fee of AU$288. In Maryland and Virginia, the parts of America for which we looked into such things, one must be separated for a year, someone must be 'accusing' the other of something, and there didn't seem to be any easy way of saying "we've already split our possessions so please stay out of it, Mr Court". And the fees were, of course, much larger. We were quoted at least three months, probably six, before it would go through, with a court hearing which we would have to attend.
Even cleverer, the Australian lot are once again demonstrating some technical competence - while they won't allow you to apply for a divorce with an online form and digital signatures, which is a shame but hardly unexpected, they do provide the form as one of those posh PDF forms that you can fill in before you print it out. The only one of those I encountered in the US was some unusual tax form. And they have the URL www.divorce.gov.au for it all, which is fantastic. Even if the server is down at the moment.
On a related but less complimentary note, the Australian prime minister today said "look how good I am, we have three billion dollars more than expected." This would indeed be a good thing, except he then went on to say "because of GST." This prime minister introduced GST (Goods and Services Tax, essentially a sales tax), which is functionally an extra 10% tax to the people. He also introduced the "medicare levy", which despite being called a levy is a 1.5% tax which, at the time, he said would be a one-off charge, not an annual recurring one. So essentially he is saying "look how good I am, I took more money off you than expected." Tsk. Still, at least he didn't spend it all on something stupid. And there's an election soon.
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