It has almost nothing to do with the domestic IT product market and everything to do with demand. Australia has a very high demand for talented programmers at all levels. It really surprised me when I came back just how many companies are using node.js or Ruby on Rails. The steam games, etc, has more to do with regional pricing. So many products are more expensive in Australia for almost no reason other than that people will still pay for it.
I did not find there was high demand or high salaries for a programmer knowing Node & RoR in Australia 2 years ago. There were programming jobs, but they seemed to be mostly IT department style jobs. The job boards were dominated by recruiters and staffing firms so it was hard to figure out what the positions actually entailed.
It seemed like lower level tradesmen such as tilers made as much as programmers, and higher level tradesmen, like master electricians, made significantly more. All forms of tradesman seemed to be more in demand than programmers.
Perhaps things have changed significantly in the last 2 years?
I agree with this, although I live in one of the smaller Australian cities and cannot move for various reasons. I am desperately trying to find a reasonable programming job, but having quite a hard time. Pretty much all the jobs around here are IT department style, with long winded garble on job boards, and silly requirements about - just from memory, I've seen things like "must be familiar with at least one of C, C++, Java, XML" (Apparently XML is a general purpose language) or "Knowledge of C++ or Delphi required" (What these two have in common I'll never know). I'm sure such ads exist in other places as well, but there seem to be an unnervingly high proportion around here.
I'm not sure what it's like in Sydney or Melbourne, however. Perhaps it's better there...
