The Frog and the 2014 Budget: Can Your Kids Still Afford Uni if They Speak French?

In order to persuade my French husband Maxime to move to Australia, I plugged Australia incessantly when we lived in France. But before agreeing to move, Maxime told me I had to make a ‘business case’ for it (he tends to use corporate-speak in everyday conversation).

‘I don’t want to be worse off for moving,’ he’d said. 

Oops.

Up the top of my highly sophisticated and thorough ‘business case’ (i.e., excel spreadsheet with two columns: ‘cost in France’ and ‘cost in Oz’), was a comparison in the price of petrol, quickly and persuasively followed by the price of meat. I sneakily left out the price of cheese.

‘What about tax?’ Maxime had asked.

‘Well … we won’t get to divide our taxable income by the number of kids we have, but there is no compulsory social contribution to pay, so tax-wise, maybe we’ll be even?’ I said hopefully. (Except that the social contribution means you get paid 70% of your last salary when you're unemployed. Fingers crossed Maxime's company hangs in there and he never finds out what you get if you're unemployed in Oz!) ‘And health and education are (almost) free, just like in France!’ (I chose to gloss over the Medicare levy and the curiously named ‘HELP’.)

Maxime’d been afraid Australia was like the US, with its shambolic healthcare and education system where you have to take out a mortgage in order to pay for a university degree, starting adult life behind the eight ball.

‘And how about the standard of Australian education?’ Maxime wondered.

‘No worries, we have a great education system!’ I assured him. (I based this opinion on a sample size of one. Me.)

But now everything I said back then has just been turned on its head by the new budget. We are going the way of the US. This means that down the track, the kids may well end up going to uni back in Europe. Which they can do, if they do an International Baccalaureate in year 12. And if they can keep up their French. 

But that’s another issue. Having taken wage cuts to move to Australia, we've had to do our own austere budget and French lessons for the kids were on the block! I hope Maxime makes a good homeschool teacher ...