This annual growth rate reflects new businesses as well as higher turnover in the middle-value section of the market.

Business is brisk and the demand for staff is only expected to go up. Sally says:

“We need people in all related occupations, from chefs to bar staff..

There is a shortage of chefs and cooks, particularly in ethnic cuisines, as well as experienced managers..

MasterChef has showcased the industry as an exciting, passionate and viable industry as a career choice..

But it’s important to pay attention to the business skills required to run a business as well as the creative side of cookery, so newcomers avoid becoming statistics.”

Advice To Those Considering A Food Career

Sally advises getting a job in a restaurant and learning as much as you can before investing your life in it!

Qld Social Enterprise Using Food Industry To Address Disadvantage

Phyllis from Queensland tells PWF she has started a food industry social enterprise. She says she is:

“Head of Kitchen in a daytime homeless shelter in Brisbane, Queensland.

In Oct 2009, I launched our Catering enterprise, a Social Enterprise to employ trainees from our client group and coach and mentor them (through a Registered Training Organisation) to achieve a Certificate 3 in Hospitality.

So far we have 2 trainees. I hope to add to this number soon. We are small but busy and hope to grow and diversify.”

Dine Out With Street Smart To Help the Homeless

Dining out is great, we all enjoy it AND it can help do something about Australia’s Silent Epidemic.

Check out Street Smart Australia.

Restaurants can sign up to this campaign to help the homeless. It asks customers to add $2.00 to their bill in the 6 weeks prior to Christmas.

100% of the money goes to grassroots agencies and projects in the form of grants that help people experiencing homelessness or at risk.

You can find a list of participating restaurants here.

Roll on food industry.

Suicide & Self Harm Prevention- TRI has just launched a national suicide/self harm You Tube channel. They’re asking for feedback.

Hunger In Australia - TRI is also reporting on the silent epidemic in Australia – familes/peope who do not get enough to eat.

Jessica Burke from Foodbank Australia says it’s estimated up to a million Australian children don’t get enough to eat, often going to bed without dinner or to school without breakfast.

It’s a hidden issue because it is often not understood in the broader community that people in Australia go hungry. Most people would have a picture of obesity being the problem in Australia rather than hunger.

Gambling Regulation the Commonwealth needing to step in on gambling regulation is another concern.

TRI says

“Gambling is licensed and regulated at state level. State and Territory governments are heavily dependent on gambling taxes and have shown little interest in implementing appropriate reforms to protect their citizens from gambling-related harms.

This paper (pdf file) critiques the prevailing addictions/informed choice model, which dominates current government and industry approaches to gambling policy. Constructing ‘the problem’ in terms of harm minimisation (as in the Productivity Commission’s terms of reference), side-steps the key issue of the mounting impact of gambling; and in particular, electronic gaming machines and casinos.”

About Tri

TRI is a nonprofit organisation managed by a committee comprised of representatives from a range of service providers.

TRI provides training, resources, information and support to the community services sector in Penrith, Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains and NSW for IT services and it works collaboratively with agencies to increase community sector participation in processes that promote social justice in their area.

Tackling some big issues..

They need someone from 22nd September to 2nd October 2010.

This ‘someone’ would be required to clean troughs, feed the animals and water the garden.

An interest in rural living and outback Queensland would be an advantage.

For More Info

Contact Doug and Fiona Nicholson Ph 07 46573833, email fuglyandfloss@bigpond.com

This registered cooperative is Australia’s first community owned wind farm.

A Strong Conclusion From Collaboration

Hepburn Wind chairman, Simon Holmes a Court’s concluding statement to reporter Rebecca Nash says it all:

“There’s a real appreciation that we can get on and take constructive action right now. We don’t have to wait for government, we don’t have to wait for a CPRS. We can take action today on climate change.”

The Inside Business Hepburn Wind Discussion

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: We’ve unlocked a whole new class of investor. The community social enterprise investor. We’ve shown that given the opportunity the community is willing to put in very patient capital into building their own renewable energy infrastructure.

The fossil fuel industry is losing its social licence. There’s not a lot of support for building more coal plants.

REBECCA NASH: Five years ago a small group of Daylesford locals resolved to build a wind farm the community could embrace.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: In the scheme of the wind industry Hepburn is a very small project. We’re building only two turbines. But what is amazing to everyone in town and what really captures our imagination is that it just takes only those two turbines to generate as much power as our town uses on an annual basis.

REBECCA NASH: A cooperative structure was chosen for the project.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: The nature of cooperatives, one member one vote not one share one vote was very important in establishing the authenticity of the project that it really was community owned and not a corporate project or a commercial project in the first instance.

Hepburn Wind is a $12.9 million project. We originally expected that we would raise about half in debt finance and then of the remainder about half through the community and half through the institutional investors.

We found very low interest from institutional investors in the project and that’s a lot due to the scale of the project, we’re very small. So we redoubled our efforts in the community and the community, we’re very proud, put together nearly $8 million for the project.

We currently have 1,200 members, the majority of whom are local and the median share holding is about two to three thousand dollars.

REBECCA NASH: Community and investor education is a constant, with tours provided to other wind farms.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: We’re still out there at least once a month just telling people about the vision for the project, dispelling any fears or myths about wind farms. A lot of people are really not sure about wind farms until they see them, until they stand underneath the turbine.

REBECCA NASH: Now the turbines are on their way, the next step is finding a buyer for their electricity.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: To the retailers we’re talking to we might represent one,two or three days of their annual demand. So we’re not so interesting from an energy sale but what we do offer is a large group of members who would be prepared to sign on as customers.

There’s obviously value to a retailer in gaining customers, but there’s also value to a lot of retailers in being associated with successful community based renewable energy project.

REBECCA NASH: Hepburn Wind has welcomed new federal legislation which separates domestic and commercial renewable energy certificates.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: Unfortunately we still have a very significant surplus of renewable energy credits that will take quite a few years to wash through the system.

There are a lot of projects that are ready to go except for financing where financing is keyed off the energy market prices so a lot of projects are waiting for a recovery in the market and won’t get up.

REBECCA NASH: Another hurdle is the differing planning laws in Australia.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: Around the country the planning frameworks are in flux and there’s quite a lot of uncertainty. A lot of the planning issues have long been solved in Europe, and Australia’s still working their way through it.

REBECCA NASH: Hepburn Wind is setting up a non-profit organisation to help other community energy projects get off the ground.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: Not a week goes by without another community calling us up and saying how do we start, how do we build our own project and communities need to know how to do it. They need large access to information resources. They also need assistance with capital raising.

REBECCA NASH: For Hepburn Wind members, the last five years have been empowering in more ways than one.

SIMON HOLMES À COURT: There’s a real appreciation that we can get on and take constructive action right now. We don’t have to wait for government, we don’t have to wait for a CPRS. We can take action today on climate change.

A great model for other collaborative community efforts in sustainable economic development

The following story about a 92 year old mum written by her daughter, Margaret Gray, recently arrived in my email from www.civilsociety.org.au and appalled me.

The message is about ‘Consumer Directed Care in Aged Care, Disability and Family Services’.

“My mother will be 92 in November. She has no dementia but is ACAS-assessed as High Care as she is wheelchair bound and frail. She lives with my husband and I in outer metropolitan Melbourne in a house we bought to accommodate her care. Mum is a DVA Gold Card War Widow who lived independently until early 2008. In January 2010 we were allocated an EACH package.

The EACH package is worth $43,205. It appears there is no requirement for Approved Providers to allocate the entire package value to my mother’s requirements. Indeed I have been told that if someone else has higher needs, as decided by the “professionals” employed by the Approved Provider, then we should feel it is appropriate that others should receive a “top-up’ from those with “lesser” needs, something called ‘Brokering’ I believe.

This means that only 75% of the package, or $32,409, is available for services for mum, which must be accessed using an agency and the rule of thumb here is that work is charged at a 50% mark-up on the rates actually paid. [When an agency charges a flat hourly rate of $36.50, care workers are paid $19. For a 24 hour shift the agency rate is $350, of which workers are paid $196.]

This means in real terms of worker hourly payments we receive hours amounting to $32,409 / 2, or $16,204 of hours service.

That is, we are only receiving services to the value of 38% of the EACH package.

Irritatingly the Provider never wants to talk about budgets and financial management of our Package but feels it is fine to ask for a co-payment on top of their 25% cut for administration and unwanted case management.

Months of feeling frustrated followed, and I could not put my finger on which bit of this upset us the most and annoyed me as a tertiary qualified retired manager. Was it

§ the lack of understanding that mum living at home is contingent on me being able to sustain this commitment and thus it is the carer who needs support?

§ Or the total lack of information and complete reluctance to discuss this generous Package in terms of effective financial management?

§ Or the enforced case management model that displays a lack respect and understanding of the capabilities and skills of the major stakeholders ie the primary carer and recipient of the package?
Eventually it was the lack of financial transparency that allowed me to see significant parallels with the Financial Services Industry and the current airing of public and government concerns. From this parallel and the proven effectiveness of Self Managed Superannuation Funds (SMSFs), we came up with a model of Real Consumer Directed Care which is applicable in many areas of aged care, disability and family services.

My husband and I have a Self Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF). We pay a specialised company to provide information and services, including set-up & statutary reporting requirements – much less than 25%. We make our own informed decisions, have flexibility and are in control of all administration costs apart from legislated payments.

When I read the Aged Care Act I could see no reason why this same model will not work for motivated carers to be Self Managed Providers (SMPs). They will need to engage the services of a suitably specialised management company just as we use the suitably specialised company to help with our SMSF but likely only at a single digit % cost of the package.

Of a package of $43,205, our overheads are $4,448, leaving $38,757 for hours of service instead of the $16,204 that the Approved Industry Providers leave us.

This approach increases available funding for real service delivery by a staggering 52%, that is from a current 38% to 90% of the package.

This SMP model allows mum and I to achieve our goal of “no more out-of-home residential respite” and still allows me, the carer, to achieve what the industry sees as the minimum expected accepted standard of

§ 9 weeks of residential respite care equivalent (24 hours care equivalent)

§ 15 hours per week respite for 52-9 = 43 weeks

In fact the SMP model allows more respite time to be taken as the SMP model comes in around $10,000 under the package allocation. What’s more we can take this respite in whatever way we choose as we are no longer locked into the allocated “9 weeks only” of available residential respite bed allocation. The extra money may also be allocated to other needs such as aids or community nurses.

What does this all mean?

The new Department of Health and Ageing Consumer Directed Care models and research projects are well-meaning but suffer from a conflict of interest by association with the current Industry Providers. I am concerned that these models are still full of administration fees for the Industry. My model is not one that I would expect to be put forward by the Industry Providers as they may stand to lose significant funding dollars.

It means we have to put it forward ourselves. Because it is our money. And it is intended for us, not the Industry Providers.

Every political party in the federal election – major and minor – believes throwing money at Industry Providers in health, disability, ageing, education, mental health, family services and indigenous affairs will change things for the better.

None believe that policies and bureaucracies need to be turned around to put the consumer and family first. In every area. Every time.”

The Parents Families and Carers Party was formed to try and make a difference. You can find out more at www.civilsociety.org.au/PFC/Index.htm.

A Personal Pre-Election Gripe

Pre-election, the National Broadband Network issue was coming across as very important – ‘the Snowy River Scheme of the 21st century’ – and one of the few real policy differences between the two major parties, but I couldn’t find any detail on it, let alone an impartial assessment of the two approaches. I do listen/read/watch to a lot of current affairs programs, but perhaps I didn’t try hard enough?

WHAT I WOULD LIKE (Apart from getting rid of politicking)
An ongoing discussion of policy evolution, accessible online, in a comprehensive, easy to navigate website, as the NZ Opposition is starting do do.

HOW WOULD THIS BE ACHIEVED?
I would like our informed, impartial bureaucrats to run an info-exchange – a discussion of policy pros and cons, inviting comment, WELL before the 5 weeks preceding an election.

COMMUNICATIONS OFFICERS
In my experience communications officers/PAs abound. A community-based info-exchange would be a worthwhile aspect of their usual workload.

AT THE LOCAL ELECTORATE LEVEL
Let every MP provide his/her electorate with their own online info-exchange focussing on local interests but linked in to the federal website for policy development info.

‘WORD OF MOUTH’ IS HUGE
I recognise that probably only a small percentage of voters would bother informing themselves BUT I do believe that ‘word of mouth’ communication is huge and if there are SOME informed members of the public the news will travel through family, schools, unis etc AND the media might even take an interest.

This would be part of the Green Paper/White Paper system – an inclusive, bridge-building 21st century approach.

SECRET GOVERNMENT BUSINESS
I also recognise that policy development is usually ‘secret government business’ but why should it be? If people were involved there wouldn’t be the terrible task of ‘getting the message out’.

A PIGS WILL FLY MODEL?
A Pigs Will Fly format with a bi-monthly editorial round-up of what people are clicking on and comments of interest might even be considered.

About That NZ Website

OPENLABOURNZ PRINCIPLES:

• That open engagement at all levels of government is integral to promoting an informed, connected and democratic community, to public sector reform, innovation and best use of the national investment in broadband
• That Labour’s open government policy will be able to translate from opposition into government. That we can live up to what we say we will do

Major themes

1. Transparency in political offices
2. Open public sector data and information
3. Opening up the public sector
4. Collaborative and participative policy development
5. Citizen-centric services
6. Open infrastructure

Click on any of the above links to ‘see and edit’ the ideas generated so far.

For More Info

You can contact open@labour.org.nz

Times DO seem to be changing.

A ‘Melbourne-World’ Comparison

Andrew Bolt in Melbourne’s Herald-Sun observes:

• Most cities around the world with similar networks of docking stations of hire bikes find the system works ‘a treat’. Montreal, a city Melbourne’s size, in its first five months logged a million rides
• In Melbourne, with 600 bikes available in 50 docking stations in the city, people have bought 70 rides a day in two months
• Melbourne Bike Share’s surveys show the greatest disincentive is having to wear a helmet
• Mexico scrapped helmet laws to make its system work
• Holland, with one of the world’s safest cycling records, rejects helmet laws, arguing that the best way to make cycling safer is to build separate cycling paths and lanes

Andrew finds Victorian nanny-state policies offensive.

From A NSW Cycling and Transport Policy Briefing Paper

The Crikey health blog asks why Sydney is so slack about cycling and cites a recent research paper:

• In 2006, of all Australian capital cities, Sydney had the lowest percentage of trips to work by bike and the lowest percentage of the population who were regular cyclists.

• Melbourne has: twice the amount of journey-to-work cycling; three times the rate of growth in cycling; proportionally more cycling for commuting purposes; better cycling advocacy; and spends roughly three times more per capita on cycling.

• Commuter cycling is much higher in some European countries than in Australia: for example, an average of 27%, 19% and 10% respectively of commuters in Holland, Denmark and Germany cycle to work. In contrast, only 0.7% of commuters in Sydney cycle to work.

• With roughly double the amount of investment per capita, San Francisco has demonstrated that cycling levels can be increased with an appropriate mix of investment, government commitment and policy options. Sydney has lower levels of cycling than San Francisco, arguably a city of comparable topography.

Some Conclusions

A higher government commitment to cycling in the shape of greater expenditure on cycle-friendly policies and infrastructure appears to be the bottom line.

For Melbourne’s helmet problem this comment on Andrew’s article is practical:

“I hope it has been thought by others but surely basing the racks alongside motel and back packers residences is one way to enable riders to get to hire bikes and helmets together. I can not comment on the worth of helmets, I know I wear one when on the bike, prefer not to but I do have some excellent bike tracks to ride on. Think I would stay with kids wearing them but could be convinced otherwise.”

More carrots and less sticks in social policies generally?

Our finely-tuned marketing/political leaders see Indigenous issues as

‘politically risky, tapping into a deep vein of complex feeling among voters about our colonial past and the disadvantage experienced by many Indigenous people in Australia today’, as Sarah observes.

The Howard Government’s NT interventionist approach was continued by the Rudd Labor Government despite considerable domestic and international criticism.

Sarah says

“Despite the fact that controversy over this policy has burbled away uninterrupted since 2007, there will not be any debate on this issue in this election campaign. Both sides of politics are in complete accord on Indigenous affairs, and both believe there are no votes in black politics.

Thus far in the campaign the only policy ‘initiatives’ that have been announced come from unexpected sources and are unlikely to attract any serious attention. Who could have predicted that Rod Evans, a candidate for Pauline Hanson’s former party, One Nation, would be calling for reserved seats for Indigenous people in the federal parliament?

And who would believe that controversial National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce would decide to use the election campaign to call for a ‘tax holiday’ for Indigenous people in regional areas in order to stimulate employment and investment? Joyce’s call was quickly dismissed by Tony Abbott’s office, which declared it ‘not policy’.

What is interesting to note during the general campaign silence on Indigenous affairs is the extent to which this differs from the constant ‘white noise’ the rest of the time. Rarely a day goes by in Australia where Indigenous issues are not subject to media scrutiny and public debate. Except, it would seem, during an election campaign.”

Observing Indigenous Populations In Canada And US

Sarah has just returned from a Churchill Fellowship-funded trip to Canada and the United States. She found :

“One striking difference in North America is the extent to which Native American and Canadian Aboriginal affairs go under the radar. Unlike in Australia where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues remain a constant ‘hot button’, in Canada and the US Indigenous affairs are rarely, if ever, front page news.

Of course, the other difference in North America is that Indigenous peoples have a stronger legal foundation upon which to base their relationships with government. Whether it be constitutional recognition in Canada or a range of treaty arrangements in the United States there is a strong sense that greater legal certainty and a higher degree of autonomy are allowing native North Americans to get on with the job of improving their own lives and the lives of their children.

Self-Government And ‘Getting On With Life’

Sarah was impressed by organisations like the National Congress of American Indians and the Assembly of First Nations.

Driven by strong tribal agendas and recognised by Government, these organisations believe that self-government is the only way forward for Indigenous peoples. They are not front page news and they are quietly getting on with the job of managing and improving their own lives.

In light of these observations Sarah returned to Australia and to an election campaign in which Indigenous concerns barely rated a mention.

“This is a great shame. The other important commitment made by both our previous prime ministers in the lead up to the 2007 election was to work towards the constitutional recognition of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. It is time we saw that commitment honoured.”

About Sarah Maddison

Associate Professor Sarah Maddison is the research director of UNSW’s Indigenous Policy and Dialogue Research Unit, based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Do our leaders listen to our academics I wonder?

Terry Hazen, researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, reported the finding in the online journal Sciencexpress. He says

“Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea..

The influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes..”

About The Investigation

The findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deepwater sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.

This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit).

Terry Hazen suggests the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.

SOME CONCERNS ALLAYED
Scientists had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a ‘dead zone’ dangerous to other life. But the new study finds that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67-percent while within the plume it was 59-percent.

RESEARCH FUNDING
The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Fascinating to see Mother Nature at work..but YES, there IS a conspiracy theory!

Dodging Climate Change

Climate change is roughly equivalent to the GST in unpleasantness for the public. In dodging it our leaders are likely to:

“destroy or significantly damage much of our stock of private and public physical capital. To avoid the small cost of growth forgone as we tackle the problem, we’re willing to risk incurring much greater losses.

Both sides (are)… willing to waste taxpayers’ money on ineffective schemes while also causing the cost of eventual action to be higher than it need be.”

Productivity Deficit Leads To Cyclical And Structural Problems

Our improved annual rate of productivity in the 90s – measured as output per hour of labour – has slumped in the noughties. This, and its adverse effect on our rate of economic growth and our continually rising living standard, have been clouded by the resources boom.

Ross notes that with easy prosperity come two challenges:

1. THE CYCLICAL CHALLENGE

“The mildness of the recession means we’re already close to full employment, so it may not be long before the Reserve Bank is struggling to control a booming economy with interest rate rises. Neither public nor politicians has any real understanding of the way being at full employment constrains our ability to press ahead with every job-creating project we dream up.”

2. THE STRUCTURAL CHALLENGE

“The structural problem has two elements: worrying about the perceived Dutch disease problem (the temporarily high exchange rate wipes out other export industries, so we’re left with a vacuum when the resources boom ends) and deciding how to ensure we gain some lasting benefit from all the extra revenue flowing into government coffers.”

LET’S BE CAREFUL

“If we’re not careful, we could end up with the same disastrous solution to both problems: pumping a lot of taxpayers’ money into propping up declining manufacturing industries in the name of ‘value-adding’.”

Our NON-Mining Future

As our future lies in high-value services, not manufacturing, Ross Gittins believes the right answer is to increase our public (and private) investment in education, training and research, all of which should raise our productivity in due course.

The Infrastructure Problem

We acknowledge the failings in our present social and economic infrastructure but with the narrow campaign focus on the budget it would appear we will not be spending (and therefore borrowing) as much as we need to.

“Infrastructure investment adds to demand in the short term but also adds to supply (production capacity) in the medium term and productivity improvement (output per unit of input) in the longer term.

So, remembering our full-employment constraint, a great challenge facing the economic managers will be to (temporarily) constrain consumer spending to make room for more business investment and public infrastructure spending.”

Housing: Supply-Side Reform Needed

Housing construction has fallen behind demand forcing up prices and rent.

“We need to remove state and local governments’ obstructions to medium-density housing and the release of serviced land.”

High Immigration – Dumb?

Ross says

“The unthinking advocates of high immigration need to understand it makes a negative contribution to productivity improvement, and demands increased investment in business equipment, housing and public infrastructure.

Unless the goal is growth for its own sake, it’s a dumb way to go about raising living standards. It also greatly increases our difficulty in achieving targets for the reduction of our emissions of greenhouse gases. It’s all very well for the advocates of high immigration to say the underlying problem is one of adequate infrastructure not immigration as such. What do they propose to do about it – abolish the states? Who will pay for the extra infrastructure and how will it be financed?

We do need a careful, evidence-based examination of what is a ‘sustainable’ population, in which the economists, technological optimists and natural scientists box it out. All sides need to confront the elements of truth in the other side’s positions.”

Concluding..

The above is what Julia and Tony should have been debating, but didn’t. Whoever wins, the economy will lose, concludes Ross Gittins.

It’s the economy, stupid…