More than 10 percent of the classrooms in New South Wales public schools are demountables, built and maintained by the state’s growing prison population. Despite the Government saying they are a temporary fix, its own numbers show the numbers are rising and that there is no clear policy to replace them with permanent buildings. Indeed, […]
29 October, 2017
What separates good councils from the not-so-good? Collaboration. Innovation. Initiative. All three elements create good business in any sector. And it’s exciting that growing numbers of councils across Australasia are adopting this credo, putting themselves in charge of shaping the future of local government, individually and as an entire sector. For a long time we […]
26 October, 2017
The NSW Audit Office, in its annual ‘Report on State Finances’, has generally given the state a clean bill of health. But much of NSW’s sound financial position is because of its continued sale of government assets, which it has paid consultants hundreds of millions of dollars to facilitate. Revenues, assets, and net worth are […]
26 October, 2017
Two separate announcements this week have shown a glimpse of Melbourne’s future. The city is evolving rapidly and will soon regain its former position as Australia’s largest city. In the 19th century, fuelled by money from the gold rushes, the city was called ‘Marvellous Melbourne’. In just 40 years it grew from a village on […]
25 October, 2017
They didn’t make a big deal of it, but the Productivity Commission’s new five-year overview report, commissioned by the Federal Government, has recommended the introduction of a carbon price. The productivity commission is of course an advisory body, and the Government has explicitly ruled out a price on carbon or anything that can even remotely […]
24 October, 2017
The Productivity Commission has released its first ever five-year productivity review, called ‘Shifting the Dial’. It was released in conjunction with the Commission’s annual report. It is “a look out across the landscape of factors and influences that may affect Australia’s economic performance over the medium term, in order to offer advice on where our […]
24 October, 2017
The NSW Government has released a draft of an updated Model Code of Conduct for councillors and council staff in the state. It has been released for consultation, with submissions closing on 4 December. In a press release titled ‘Crackdown on badly behaved councillors’, Local Government Minister Gabrielle Upton said most councillors do the right […]
23 October, 2017
As the population of Australia’s two largest cities push towards the 5 million mark, increasing attention is being paid to urban sprawl and the need for people to live closer to where they work. Many people in Australia say that Australia’s two megacities are getting too big, but they are minnows on the world scale. […]
23 October, 2017
The National Symbols Office has written to satirical news site The Juice Media asking it to stop using a parody of the Australian government logo on its ‘Honest Government Adverts’ YouTube channel. The logo misspells ‘Australian’ (as ‘Australien’), has the motto ‘not the real logo’ and substitutes the emu’s head with a toilet roll (and […]
21 October, 2017
Australia is blessed – and cursed – with a federal system of government. It allows greater diversity, and also causes problems when it comes to the coordination of service delivery.
20 October, 2017
Australia could be the beneficiary of a growing trade dispute between Canada and the USA. The Trump administration is threatening to place heavy 300 percent import duties on Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier because US manufacturer Boeing says the Canadians receive unfair government assistance. Canada has responded by saying it will not buy US fighter aircraft, […]
19 October, 2017
A US artificial intelligence thinktank has raised serious concerns about the use of the technology in government, and especially in the legal system. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the use of computers to simulate human thought. AI is increasingly being used to make decisions in business, most notably in systems called robotic process automation (RPA), which […]
19 October, 2017
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has released a YouTube video showing how to create its new Govpass digital identity. The video was announced in a blog by Felicity Hitchcock, a product manager at the DTA. Govpass will replace the existing 100 point identifier used to access Federal Government services. It is still in its beta […]
17 October, 2017
The Federal Government’s refusal to adopt the Chief Scientist’s recommendation for a Clean Energy Target has been roundly criticised by its political opponents. As you would expect. But what does it mean for the relationships between Australia’s different levels of government? The Government’s new policy sees the end of any subsidy for renewable energy after […]
17 October, 2017End of content
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