If you come to Dubai with a family and you have a job flying jets in Oz then you are a goose.
Dubai is a modern form of apartheid where local citizens have all the rights and temporary residents have few.
Temporary residents, that is anyone who must requalify for a visa every three years, can only own property (and there is still some question at the federal level as to whether they own anything) in designated zones. Sort of Soweto for the middle class.
In matters of the law only locals are guaranteed fair or favoured treatment. Try flipping the bird to a large car with blacked out windows as it cuts you off in the rush to get to the next coffee house. Or try seeing justice done when you are a young women gang raped by six young men after stumbling out of a club and then having two of them get off on lack of evidence and the rest get no more than two years.
The paper today states that the UAE is officially the most dangerous place in the world to drive. I'm sorry Saudi is the worst, the UAE is next.
Even though the industrial climate in Oz is changing for pilots, try having no protection. The companies reaction to most things is 'if you don't like it leave'. That's a big call when you've already moved everyone half way round the world at considerable cost and stress. Try having an accident in an aeroplane and see how much help you get from the bosses. The last lads who tried were first sacked, then reinstated to mindless ground jobs on appeal and two years later given their positions back, although the captain became an FO. Admittedly they must take some responsibility for what happened but the systemic failures were so big we lost tribes of mice in the cheese. We have a saftey department but they can't tell us about major accidents of our own for fear of the information getting out. It's a secret you see, even to our own pilots.
With or without DECs you will be looking at quite a few years on FO's pay before command. If you have kids expect not to have much left over for the pleasure of making the sheikhs even richer men. If your a DEC you'll love it though, as long as flying 90-100 hours a month in MFF, not getting leave when you want it having to ask for permission to leave Dubai is your thing.
Otherwise it's all good, new aeroplanes, lots of different nationalities to fly with, they pay you on time within a day or two and you'll learn how admired we Aussies are by the kiwis, poms and yarpies.