How good is the internet? It’s made it so that many people can now work from home, using their skills and knowledge to sell products, provide services, or advice all without having to commute to a central location every day. PLUS, it means people can work for themselves and build business teams, all working from their own homes!

How good is this for our children? This is great! The children get to have parents who can work from home and be there for them. Children get to see a great role model who works hard but who is also a primary carer. This is wonderful for Australia!

In the Virtual Assistant Industry, there are thousands of mums across Australia who ease the pressure on the childcare system, and who put food on the table by running their business from home. They don’t rely on Centrelink for unemployment benefits, because they’ve created their own solution. They are amazing! They are valuable to our economy!

But wait! Why would businesses want to work with them when they can pay $5 per hour for business support services from India or the Philippines? Why would large corporations put any effort into outsourcing their administration to someone in their own country, who understands their business culture and who has incredible skills, when they can cut costs and go offshore? Especially when they get to say “we are helping disadvantaged people in other countries – these wages are huge for them”. Awww, what a humanitarian. They often forget to add “and through this we are ensuring that there is less and less work available for the highly skilled mums of Australia who are also trying to make ends meet.” Not to mention the glaring truth that they are happy to cut funds from the administrators but never the overpaid execs.

Our country is full of shit. “Let’s buy Australia made!” they yell.  “Don’t sell our companies offshore!” “Don’t let those foreigners in! – They’ll take our jobs!” But hey, if we can save a buck or two, let’s send our business administration, the core foundation of our businesses, offshore. Because we are all for the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Companies like Ernst & Young who have recently trialed sending their administrative services offshore make my blood boil. This is accounting. This is people’s money. A lot of trust goes into using an Accountant yet they obviously don’t take that trust seriously and think that the client is paying for their good looks, not for carefully managing their money and working with the best of the best. Personally I would never use an Accountant who sends any of my money management offshore so they can pay $5 an hour and charge me over $500 per hour. And all this so they don’t have to pay someone here $40 or $50 an hour.

Over the years we’ve had the whole “global economy” thing thrown in our faces. Keep up or get out. And I understand that. But I’m also watching the constant hypocrisy of our “Aussie loyal” businesses and governments, doing anything it takes to increase their profit margins.

Well you know what? All those big businesses who are sending these jobs overseas are going to demolish these industries in Australia. I see it unravelling. And those mums that are working their butts off to be there for their families? They are the financial decision makers and they won’t have a dime to spend with you.

Think about it.