Senator for the ACT, Kate Lundy, Labor Candidate for Canberra Gai Brodtmann and Labor Candidate for Fraser Andrew Leigh and Labor Second Senate Candidate David Mathews today welcomed the announcement that Federal Labor will extend NBN Co’s fibre coverage objective from 90 per cent to 93 per cent across Australia. Read more…

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*** MEDIA ALERT ***

On Monday Senator for the ACT, Kate Lundy, will walk in the shoes of a childcare worker as part of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union’s Big Steps in Childcare campaign. Read more…

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CALL it drive, call it determination or call it girl power.

In what has been deemed an Australian first, south-east Queensland’s finest female construction workers have come together to build one of the nation’s most unique display homes.

The Women into Building Housing Showcase is the brainchild of multi-award winning Sunshine Coast builder Sam Sheppard, who is known for passionately championing and mentoring women.

In June, she began working with a number of industry stakeholders to roll out a concept which will raise the profile of women in construction on a national level. Read more…

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The Government 2.0 Taskforce announced the winners of the MashupAustralia contest, which asked Australians to combine and add to government datasets to create publicly useable online applications.

The contest, which ran between October 7 and November 13, was designed to help the taskforce demonstrate why open access to Australian government information is good for the economy and society. “Open access” means releasing government information on terms and in formats that permit and enable use and reuse.

Eighty-two entries were received, making the MashupAustralia one of the most successful contests of its type globally and demonstrating the ability for open government data to drive innovation.

A key contributor to its success was a series of “hackfests” which were held during the contest. These “hackfests” bring together online designers, developers and other experts to build applications and mashups in a 24 hour period. The taskforce sponsored one “hackfest” – Govhack held in Canberra – and community groups organised three similar events in Sydney and one in Melbourne. Read more…

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The Government 2.0 taskforce today released a draft report for public comment that calls for the government to embrace Web 2.0 tools to deepen democracy and engage citizens.

The central recommendation calls for an Open Government Directive from the Government to treat government information as a national public resource to be as freely and openly available as possible.

It also recommends that government agencies and public servants use Web 2.0 tools like blogs and online forums to engage with citizens, each other and likeminded professionals around the world.
The Government 2.0 Taskforce Chair, Dr Nicholas Gruen said: “If Government 2.0 is realised, citizens won’t just be consulted by government they’ll actively collaborate with government.” Read more…

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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – As the Federal Government’s “Realising Our Broadband Future” Forum approaches this week on 10-11 December, plans for a number of remote free community events are springing up around Australia to encourage more people to join in and contribute. The Forum aims to “map the applications and business models that will thrive in Australia’s high speed broadband future” according to the website, and is organised by Minister Conroy and the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy.

Supported by CivicTEC, this Thursday 10 December a disparate network comprising social media and creative professionals, state and local government, academia and social commentators are organising impromptu free forums in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other cities to allow input from a wide cross-section of the community who could not attend the Sydney Forum. Read more…

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Despite promises before the last election to slash consultancies, Labor has reached near record levels of spending on them, according to Liberal Senator Gary Humphries.

It has been revealed that Labor have spent $454 million on consultancies in their first full year in office, yet Labor prior to the last election said in relation to consultancies that “Complacency and lack of discipline by the Howard Government has allowed unnecessary spending to flourish,” (Lindsay Tanner, then Shadow Minister for Finance, 2 March 2007, see attached Media Release). Read more…

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News that DFAT will have to cut $100 million out of its budget comes as a result of the Government’s reckless spendathon. But this is just the beginning, according to local Liberal Senator Gary Humphries.

“Cuts like this are a reminder that the day of reckoning for labor’s spending spree is not far away,” Senator Humphries said today.

“Ever since the Government began to pile up debt, I have been saying that Canberra will eventually have to pay a price, that the budgets of departments based here will be cut.

“However, this is just the beginning – the next step for the government will be to cut more jobs from the public service which will mean Canberrans out of work. Read more…

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Federal Member for Fraser Bob McMullan and Senator for the ACT Kate Lundy today congratulated the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Canberra (UC) and their hard working researchers on receiving a total of $40,742,839 to fund 107 outstanding research projects from the Rudd Government.

Funding for these projects comes from the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development, Discovery Projects and Linkage Projects schemes – announced today for funding commencing in 2010.

“These grants are extremely competitive and further highlight the first-class work being undertaken by ACT institutions.” Read more…

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Liberal Senator Humphries claim that there will be less Australian Federal Police (AFP) personnel in the ACT is utter nonsense and ‘has no basis in fact,’ ACT Senator Lundy has said today.

Not only has staff numbers for the AFP Australia wide increased by 296 and sworn police officers have increased by 341 in the last two years an increase of 5% and 14% respectively, at June 2009 there were also 42 recruits in training that were not reflected in sworn numbers.

Whilst the AFP’s total staffing has reduced between July 2008 and June 2009 as a result of attrition and voluntary redundancies, sworn numbers have remained steady, AFP are on track for an additional 500 sworn officers by mid 2013 and none of these staff changes affect the ACT. Read more…

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