Can you describe the problems you've seen? Wife and I were over 30 when we moved to AU from the US. Certainly quite a bit of paperwork, but wasn't all that tough in reality.
It took me 12 months from start of my residency application, 4 years total to get permanent residency in Australia. I was working for an Australian company for those 4 years.
I have a MSc in Software Engineering (on the critical skill list), experience on 4 continents and it was nothing short of a nightmare.
The immigration process over here is in a state of change at the moment for residency, hopefully this means it will be a much better process than what I experienced.
As someone else noted, 3-4 years for perm residency is rather common. And just so you know, I was annoyed by that as well hoping it would be faster, but it isn't. And, yes, I do think the paperwork and runaround can be crazy in AU. My wife is a GP and I'm a MS in Comp. Sci.. There was no way for us to "hurry along" the process. To get perm residency, we needed to live in the country for 2 years before we could apply. 2 more years for citizenship. Even so, 4 years to citizenship isn't a bad deal.
I hear there is reform coming around July 2012 to expedite certain skills shortage list candidates, so hopefully that helps.
The crazier thing is the amount of paperwork my wife needed to do to prove that she was competent to practice medicine in the country. In the US, she went to a great med school, had MCATS off the charts, went to one of the best residency programs in the country and worked for the best hospital in the world for 5 years. In that regard, it was frustrating.
3-4 years for permanent residency is pretty common when you're moving into a country on a work visa. It's the same for the 3 commonwealth countries I've lived in and I believe the US as well.
I have a MSc in Software Engineering (on the critical skill list), experience on 4 continents and it was nothing short of a nightmare.
The immigration process over here is in a state of change at the moment for residency, hopefully this means it will be a much better process than what I experienced.