Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
New funding will allow for expanded services and more healthcare professionals for Canberra’s Walk-in Centres.
Canberra’s nurse-led Walk-in Centres have become part of the national network of Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, providing more health services and care options for Canberrans.
Building off the success of the walk-in centre model of care, the Commonwealth Government will invest more than $7 million to expand services and hire more healthcare professionals.
Funding to integrate the Walk-in Centres with the Urgent Care Clinic network will increase the number of nurses and allied health professionals including:
three new nurse practitioners and three new advance practice nurses
an advanced scope physiotherapist for the Weston Creek Walk-in Centre to treat patients with musculoskeletal injuries, and provide virtual assessments and support for nursing staff in other Walk-in Centres
a radiographer and sonographer for the Weston Creek Medical Imaging Service to extend the service to provide afterhours imaging.
Funding will also provide more equipment for the Walk-in Centres to treat a wider range of conditions. This includes:
slit lamps and tanometers for eye examinations and removal of foreign objects in the eyes
handheld ultrasound machines for examination of lacerations and other wound types
vascular doppler for investigating blood flow.
The scope of services will expand further over time to include treatment for shoulder injuries, male urinary tract infections, injury in pregnancy and screening for sexually transmitted infections.
Canberra Health Services has commenced the recruitment of new staff and purchase of new equipment, and it is expected the full scope of additional services will be available from early 2024.
Nurse-led Walk in Centres are open seven days a week, including public holidays. For current opening hours and waiting times, visit the Canberra Health services website.
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Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
The upgrades will keep homes cool in summer and warm in winter.
The Australian Government and ACT Government have committed $35.2 million to ease the cost-of-living pressures for Canberra’s public and community housing tenants.
Over the next three years, the ACT Government has allocated $28 million under its Home Energy Support Program package to provide energy efficiency upgrades such as ceiling insulation of up to 5,000 properties and some electrification upgrades.
To date 186 public houses have already received insulation upgrades and over 100 electric appliance upgrades have been made.
The additional $7.2 million investment from the Australian Government will allow for the full electrification of at least 900 properties.
These upgrades will keep homes cool in summer and warm in winter.
The upgrades also support a just transition for Canberrans who need the most support as the Territory moves towards an electric future.
The project is in line with the ACT’s broader commitment to phase out fossil fuel energy use (including fossil fuel gas) and become a net zero emissions city by 2045.
Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
Calwell High School students with Mr Ricky, Deputy Principal of Happiness
Everyone knows educators make an enormous difference in a student’s life. But did you know some of those educators have four legs and a tail?
In some ACT public schools, animals are playing an important part in supporting learning and emotional wellbeing and making a significant impact on students, staff and families.
Calwell High School’s beloved therapy dog, Mr Ricky, quickly became an integral part of the school community.
So much so he has been given the title of Deputy Principal of Happiness.
Recognising the power of therapy dogs in promoting student wellbeing, Principal Steve Collins eagerly sought to bring Mr Ricky, who was trained by Guide Dogs NSW/ACT, to the school.
Since his first day of school in March, Mr Ricky has been a daily presence, bringing smiles and comfort to everyone he encounters.
He spends his days traversing the hallways, visiting classrooms, and responding to signs of student anxiety by offering a reassuring paw on the lap – a gesture that can bring comfort to those in need.
Collaborating with the school psychologist, social worker, and school youth health nurse, Mr Ricky has proven to be a calming and supportive presence during important sessions and discussions.
At Arawang Primary School, 10-year-old rescue greyhound Tom helps students with their reading.
Tom is part of the Story Dogs program and visits the school library each week with his handler, Amalia, to read with students, one on one.
Students select books based on their own interests and read directly to Tom, who is quiet, gentle and loves cuddles.
“Story Dogs has been in place in our school for only a term and during that time we have already witnessed the wonderful benefits of the program,” Arawang Primary Deputy Principal Cindy Condon said.
“The students who participate count down the days each week until Tom arrives and cannot wait to choose a book to read to him. Tom gently relaxes beside them and listens to them read each week and his calmness and happiness is felt and mirrored by the students. Students’ reading and literacy has improved and most of all we have witnessed an amazing boost to their confidence!”
Story dogs also assist children’s reading at several other ACT public schools and at regular sessions in ACT libraries.
In term 3, students at Alfred Deakin High School had their learning supported by three-month-old calves Cookies and Cream.
Part of the Cows Create Careers program, Cookies and Cream helped students improve their understanding of and interest in the dairy industry and farming.
The program has run at Alfred Deakin since it began 20 years ago.
Students from nearby schools, including Hughes Primary, also visit Alfred Deakin to learn more about the program.
“Our students came away with big smiles on their faces and then had a rich discussion about what we learned and develop further wonderings to continue our inquiry about farming,” said Hughes Primary teacher Sally Baker.
Story Dog Tom and his handler Amalia assist with student reading at Arawang Primary School.
Cookies – or is it Cream?
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Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
The new electric buses will provide clean, quiet, and comfortable services with zero emissions.
The ACT Government is continuing the transition to a zero-emissions future with the first of four new electric buses to hit the streets of Canberra.
The battery electric buses will be based at the Belconnen Depot, bolstering the number of zero-emission bus services running out of north Canberra.
The depot will be upgraded to install the appropriate charging infrastructure, which will use existing grid capacity to supply energy.
Each bus takes approximately five hours to fully charge and can operate up to 400 kilometres on a full charge, cutting noise pollution and harmful emissions from public transport interchanges and on Canberra streets.
The new buses will bring Canberra’s total electric bus fleet to 16, with an additional 90 electric buses set to be delivered in the next three years.
To facilitate the growing fleet of zero emissions buses, the Zero-Emission Transition Plan for Transport Canberra supports the transition for public transport workers, with diesel mechanics trained with the skills they need to work on the new electric fleet, and power a more sustainable future for public transport in the ACT.
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Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
Kaitlyn Lucas says the Women in Construction program gave her the tools to pursue a career in the construction industry.
The ACT Government is encouraging women to consider careers in Canberra’s construction industry through an innovative training program.
The Women in Construction program, which recently received recognition in the ACT Training Awards, encourages women and gender diverse Canberrans to enter the construction industry through a traineeship or apprenticeship pathway.
Over five weeks, the program combines theory and practical hands-on learning with site tours, work preparation sessions and training courses to prepare participants for their placements.
Kaitlyn Lucas is a first-year electrical apprentice who is currently working on the new CIT campus in Woden. She says the Women in Construction program set her up with the qualifications and confidence, to pursue a career in construction.
“A lot of the program was preparing for construction, so getting your basic qualifications, basic cards to get on site, elevated work platforms training, and first aid, which is important,” she said.
“My goal now is to get my qualification, and then one day I’d like to become a project manager.
“These skills and qualifications set you up. It’s a good starting point.”
As part of the program, participants undertake training courses including:
Work safely with asbestos containing materials
Identify and report asbestos containing materials
Apply WHS requirements, policies, and procedures in the construction industry
Prepare to work safely in the construction industry (White Card)
Handle Construction Materials
Course in Crystalline Silica Exposure Prevention
Course in Workplace Impairment Prevention
Bullying and Harassment and WHS Hazard Identification
Gender Equity Awareness – Safe and Respectful Workplaces
Workplace Mental Health Awareness.
Each program participant is also supplied with their own personal protective equipment.
Women in Construction Information Session
An information session about the next round of the Women in Construction program will be held at the Canberra Institute of Technology in Bruce. All individuals seeking to be part of program must attend the session.
Where: CIT Bruce
When: Thursday 26 October 2023, 10:30am-12:30pm
Women in construction is delivered by Lendlease in collaboration with Major Projects Canberra and in partnership with Australian Training Company, The Umbrella Collective, Creative Safety Initiatives, The Canberra Institute of Technology, The ACT Building and Construction Industry Training Fund Authority and Icon.
More on the CIT Woden Campus’ social objectives can be found online.
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Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
Heating water is the second-highest source of energy use in an average household.
Canberrans looking to save money on their energy bills can now access new CHOICE product recommendations on hot water heat pump systems.
The appliances have now been added to the Make Your Next Choice Electric online tool, developed through a collaboration between CHOICE and the ACT Government.
Heating water is the second-highest source of energy use in an average household.
As more Australians electrify their homes, CHOICE reviews of the latest hot water heat pump products on the market will help Canberrans develop their own plans to switch off gas.
With this data now integrated into the Make Your Next Choice Electric experience, it’s easy to find the best heat pump to suit your household’s needs.
Heat pump systems are more energy efficient than conventional electric water heaters.
Upgrading to an electric heat pump can help reduce your emissions by about 10 tonnes over the heat-pump’s useful life.
This can potentially save you about $150 per year.
“Water heating can account for up to 25 per cent of a home’s energy use. Heat pumps can drastically reduce electricity usage, in the same way a reverse cycle air conditioner reduces cooling and heating energy use,” Director of Reviews and Testing at CHOICE, Matthew Steen, said.
“Heat pumps deliver two to three times the amount of heat energy for every kWh of electricity they use. Compare this with traditional electric resistance hot water systems which deliver 1:1 at best. Heat pump hot water systems are the logical choice if you want the most efficient electric hot water system,” Matthew said.
The Make Your Next Choice Electric tool:
showcases the latest energy efficient electric appliances on the market that are best suited to individual household needs
identifies when fossil fuel gas appliances need to be swapped out
provides cost estimates for upgrades
provides estimates for cost and emissions savings as a result of appliance upgrades.
Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
The vision for Sullivans Creek is to re-naturalise concrete waterways.
The inner north is set for an environmental transformation as Canberrans are asked to comment on a vision for Sullivans Creek that will re-naturalise concrete waterways.
The proposal will replace concrete in Sullivans Creek with native water plants that will trap nutrients and bolster biodiversity in the region.
Habitat connectivity projects like these ensure more native species have a place to call home. In addition, they help to beautify Canberra’s urban environment and give Canberrans opportunity to consider how the city can be more climate resistant.
The ACT Government’s vision for Sullivan’s Creek is to create an ecological corridor through the city.
As well as giving wildlife space to move through the landscape it helps preserve Canberra’s natural beauty and cultural heritage.
The vision forms part of the Government’s $2.95 million investment in the 2022-23 ACT Budget’s ‘Connecting Nature, Connecting People’ initiative.
The waterways and landscape linked to Sullivans Creek hold significant cultural importance to the local Ngunnawal community.
There will be two opportunities to provide in-person feedback.
Community pop-ups will be run on the 11th of November at the EPIC Markets and on the 15th of November at the Dickson Shops.
Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
Sita Sargeant, Capital of Equality grant recipient.
A passionate researcher and storyteller, Sita Sargeant successfully applied for a Capital of Equality grant through the ACT Government’s Office of LGBTIQ Affairs.
She is using the funding to produce a queer history podcast which she expects to publish by the end of the year.
In 2021, the founder of She Shapes History began organising walking tours around Canberra after noticing an absence of easily accessible women’s history in the ACT.
In addition to a ‘Badass Women of Canberra’ tour and a ‘Spies in the Capital: Women in Espionage’ tour, She Shapes History runs weekly LGBTQIA+ History of Canberra tours, bringing the city’s queer secrets out of the closet.
Sita brings gems of insight from the tour to the recording studio. There will be six half-hour – or “commute-length” – episodes of the podcast.
Sita’s fellow She Shapes History guide Zev Aviv co-presents the podcast, bringing a trans perspective to the conversation.
Each episode will dive into the history of an iconic site of queer Canberra history and will feature an interview with someone who has contributed to the social fabric of queer Canberra.
“I don’t think the podcast would have been possible without a Capital of Equality grant,” Sita said.
“It has allowed us to pay for all the recording equipment. As a small business I’m not sure we could have justified the spend otherwise.”
But perhaps most importantly for Sita, the grant ensures she can pay her guests for their time.
“There are so many queer people whose emotional labour is exploited time and time again. It just wouldn’t have aligned with our values as a business not to pay them for speaking with us,” she said.
Sita says a lot of queer history is white and under-documented, and conflicting views abound.
“Queer history is especially interesting in Canberra, and both the tour and podcast offer an interesting insight into our city in a way you wouldn’t expect,” she said.
“We invite people to the podcast who are active in the queer community today or were in the past. We create a space for them to share their story, which we then use as a starting point to delve into the history of key queer landmarks in Canberra. We find that this is a really engaging way to get the history across and to help people feel more connected to Canberra.
“A woman named Sam Edwards features in one episode, for example, and she’s a cornerstone of Canberra’s queer community,” Sita said.
“She helped establish the first SpringOUT Pride Festival and moved here at a time when it was quite uncommon to be out. She helped get Canberra’s queer scene up and running. Hers is a great episode.”
As well as recording the podcast, running She Shapes History and working another part-time job, Sita is going from strength to strength, having landed a book deal to write a women’s history travel guide to Australia.
She found the Capital of Equality grant application process simple and said she received a lot of support along the way.
“This grant was the second I’d applied for – I was unsuccessful the first time, and I took away some key learnings from that. I’d really encourage people to apply for a grant, but not to be discouraged if they don’t get it the first time,” Sita said.
Capital of Equality grants are open until 22 October 2023.
Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
The new National Skills Agreement will establish a skilled workforce for critical and emerging industries.
A new National Skills Agreement between the Commonwealth Government and all states and territories will support a strong and skilled workforce for Canberra’s future.
The five-year agreement will focus on lifting the national skill level and attracting more skilled workers into critical and emerging industries.
The investment will aim to grow the ACT’s total workforce to 300,000 by 2030.
The agreement incorporates funding for a number of new initiatives in the ACT which will support key priorities in skills and workforce development, including:
Over $24 million in matched ACT-Commonwealth funding for TAFE Centres of Excellence, with a focus in the ACT on the transition to a net zero economy
$6.5 million in matched funding for Closing the Gap initiatives to support training for First Nations Canberrans
$14 million in matched funding to improve VET and apprentice completion rates, with a focus on groups such as First Nations students, women and other vulnerable cohorts
Approximately $13 million in matched funding to foster collaboration between CIT and other public training providers to enhance quality and capability in the VET workforce and sector
Close to $1.5 million to improve access to foundation skills and learning
The ACT Government will continue to support Fee Free TAFE at CIT, so priority cohorts such as young people, jobseekers and women in non-traditional fields will have access to free training in areas of skills need.
We have committed to delivering thousands more Fee Free TAFE places over the coming years, with a specific focus on renewable energy, cyber security, the care sector, construction, hospitality and foundation skills.
With more than 2500 Canberrans already taking up this opportunity for free training in 2023, the Government will continue this popular program to achieve better education outcomes and support local businesses with the skills they need to succeed.
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Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
Diversity Arrays is a Canberra-based social enterprise using science and data to help address some of the world’s greatest challenges, including climate change and food sustainability and food security.
Dr Andrzej Kilian founded Diversity Arrays in 2001. What started out slowly, has grown to a large organisation with over 60 employees and over 2,500 clients across 70 different countries.
As a spinoff from private not-for-profit, Diversity Arrays received initial funding through the Commonwealth’s Biotechnology Innovation Fund Project.
The ACT Government played an early role in Diversity Array’s journey too, by matching federal funding with $200,000 to help them start.
Diversity Arrays came to life when Dr Kilian invented a process for rapidly genotyping any organism without the need for previous DNA sequence information.
Dr Kilian said this meant they could take the DNA from any microorganism, plant or animal to analyse many fragments of DNA. Essentially his invention could generate genome profiles based on thousands or even millions of DNA fragments and generate more data, faster and more cost effectively than ever before.
“When we started 20 years ago, any kind of DNA sequencing was very expensive. Diversity Arrays was transformative at the time, and it reduced the cost significantly. We primarily worked in agriculture, but as we evolved, our services became more diverse too,” Dr Kilian said.
“Now we have three domains to our business, laboratory services, software development and data analytics. We were producing all this data, but we had to come up with a way to process all this knowledge and make it available in a way our clients could understand and put it to best use. That’s when the software arm of our business developed.”
In 2018, Diversity Arrays received matched funding of $1.2 million from the ACT Government’s Priority Investment Program (PIP).
The PIP grants foster innovation and collaboration between, industry, research institutions and universities to solve industry needs.
Working with the Australian National University (ANU) and University of Canberra (UC), Diversity Arrays invested about $3 million to help bring a new arm of software to life in a platform then known as EcoKDDart.
They combined DNA sequencing with a host of ecological data that was being published in academic journals, but not stored securely for longer term usage and in a more meaningful way to help industries relying on such research.
“The PIP grant helped us develop the software and analytical tools with ANU and UC for an ecological data management system,” Dr Kilian said.
“We already had a data management system for breeding and agriculture, but ecology had very different needs. By integrating the two systems it’s allowed us to answer questions we didn’t even know we could ask.”
Dr Kilian said the evolution of EcoKDDart was in progress and would be launched later this year or early in 2024. Known as Ecologue, it will combine the three parts of their business – lab, software development and data analytics – into one integrated platform.
Ecologue will allow farmers, breeders, scientists and ecologists to improve the viability of their farms, quality of their yields and the value of their research.
“Practically, it means we generate large volume of genetic data from a small piece of a leaf, a single grain, small biopsy or hair sample. Alongside historical data on crop performance, weather, soil and biodiversity in the area, we get data we’ve never had before,” Dr Kilian said.
“It allows farms to select new varieties of crops and adapt them to meet future changing global weather patterns and climate change, produce better yields and improve food security and sustainability.
“The impacts are huge. We’re seeing modern genetic research and technology, and big data help deliver better economic, social, agricultural and environmental outcomes for the planet.”
Dr Kilian became an “accidental entrepreneur” through failure to commercialise his invention over 22 years ago.
“I didn’t want this technology to fall under exclusive rights with a multinational corporation. I wanted this technology to be available to for everyone,” he said.
“I believe it can help provide a solution to our planet’s greatest needs, climate change, food security, sustainability and nutrition. We need a new food production and cropping system for the world that’s more sustainable and moves away from mono-cropping. One that reduces chemical intervention, but still meets the world’s food needs and is sustainable for our planet.”
The ACT Government’s PIP grant is currently open and close 31 October 2023.
For more information, visit the PIP website.
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