By Paul Hemsley An ambitious and controversial bid to overhaul Perth’s metropolitan local government areas by Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett has triggered widely differing reactions from councils targeted to have their boundaries radically redrawn. Formally revealed this week, Mr Barnett’s plan will slash the number of Perth-based councils from 30 to 15 and has […]
13 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley The New South Wales government has revealed its first Open Data Policy and will require all agencies set their online data policy as “open by default”. As part of the government’s ICT Implementation Strategy Plan, the Policy announced at an Open Data Forum in Sydney this week will require state agencies to […]
13 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley The nation’s leading engineering representative body, Engineers Australia, has backed the Tasmanian government’s move to overhaul the state’s tendering and procurement processes and development assessment and planning mechanisms. The peak body approved of the government’s recommendations that have resulted from the Tasmanian Jobs Forum in August 2013, where Premier Lara Giddings announced […]
12 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley Federal parliamentarians might be hogging the limelight on dubious expenses claims, but the Victorian state government is hard on the trail of highly questionable purchases by councillors elected to local government positions. A report handed down by Victoria’s municipal watchdog, the Local Government Investigations and Compliance Inspectorate, has found that 32 out […]
12 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley The Queensland government will deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on missions to more accurately drop payloads of herbicide on noxious weeds including prickly acacia, mesquite, parkinsonia and rubber vine to help halt their spread across the state. Commonly referred to as “drones”, the machines better known for firing lethal payloads at enemy […]
12 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The Abbott government’s promise that its cull of 12,000 positions from the federal public service will only come through ‘natural attrition’ is coming even further unstuck after the Department of Agriculture told staff it wants 220 voluntary redundancies. An all staff email from Agriculture Department secretary, Paul Grimes, candidly admits that “natural […]
12 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s campaign to reduce size and influence of the bureaucracy has shifted up a gear after the government announced that it will scrap 12 non-statutory bodies outright and amalgamate another as part of crackdown on regulatory proliferation. The government claims that the latest round of administrative demolition will save […]
8 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski Australia’s scientific peak scientific research organisation and its staff association is playing a straight bat to reports that it could be gutted and lose up to a quarter of its staff under public service staff cuts that aim to cull 12,000 positions without redundancies. As a public service hiring freeze enforced by […]
8 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The prospect of looming job cuts in the federal public service is dragging down morale and feeding into a climate of deep uncertainty over job security, unions and Canberra’s Labor politicians have warned. As the Coalition government sets about attempting to thin the ranks of the bureaucracy by 12,000 positions through ‘natural […]
8 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski The global computer security industry has spent at least a decade scaremongering and hyping-up the threat of Russian hackers and cyber-assailants through marketing and lobbying. So it perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that when Kaspersky Labs founder, Eugene Kaspersky, took to the stage for his first National Press Club (NPC) in Canberra […]
8 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley The federal government in on the move to sniff out a qualified consultant to review the methods and data used to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from dairy cattle in the Australian National Greenhouse Accounts (ANGA). The potential contractor will be expected to develop a method for estimating methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide […]
8 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley and Julian Bajkowski Australia’s metropolitan revival of light rail and tramways is showing no sign of slowing down soon. As the nation’s capital, Canberra, finally makes tentative progress towards installing one of the tramways conspicuously drawn into the designer city’s original masterplan by Walter Burley Griffin a century ago, Melbourne this week […]
8 November, 2013
By Paul Hemsley The City of Perth will swallow up all of the City of Vincent, Kings Park, the new Crown Casino and the new Perth Stadium at Burswood under Premier Colin Barnett’s final proposal to the independent Local Government Advisory Board (LGAB) to rationalise metropolitan boundaries. The ambitious plan by Mr Barnett to create […]
5 November, 2013
By Julian Bajkowski Councils across Australia have outlined a list of concerns over consequences arising from the planned repeal of the Carbon Tax, citing management of unspent carbon price liability funds and spending on carbon abatement measures as key areas of focus. The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) has confirmed it has lodged a submission […]
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