Nominations for the Premier’s Multicultural Community Medals and Honour Roll are now open! This awards program honours significant achievements across diverse sectors including community service, youth, business, not for profit, local government, arts and culture, regional community service, sport, language services and human rights.
If you know someone who has made an outstanding contribution to our society, don’t miss out on your chance to nominate them!
Public consultation is now open on the draft program guidelines for the Albanese Government’s new $30 million On Farm Connectivity Program (OFCP) funded in the October 2022 Budget.
This innovative $30 million program will enable primary producers to extend connectivity to boost productivity, improve health and safety and support sustainable resource management.
Rebates of up to $30,000 will be available for a wide range of technologies, including external antennas, boosters and repeaters to extend coverage, and a range of devices to optimise and automate such as soil moisture probes, plant growth monitors, valve and irrigation controllers, and livestock monitoring systems.
Applications are now open under the first two focus areas of the Australian Government’s new National Road Safety Action Grants Program.
The grant program, announced in the 2023-24 Budget, will provide vital funding to non-infrastructure road safety projects and programs across the country. The launch of the program comes at a time where more Australians are being killed on our roads than in years before, with the road toll sitting at 3.2 per cent higher than this time last year
Read MoreCouncils across Australia will be able to fast-track local repair works following two devastating years of floods, fires and cyclones, with the Albanese Government to advance nearly $1.8 billion in disaster payments to the states. The payments will help all levels of government get on with the massive job of repairing roads and essential public assets after years of disasters.
Read MoreThe Minister for Communications, the Hon Michelle Rowland MP, today announced her intention to continue the Customer Service Guarantee (CSG), which regulates the timeframes for connection, repairs and appointments for fixed telephone services.
The Minister will now develop new instruments in consultation with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to give effect to this decision. The intention to continue this long-standing retail consumer protection follows a thematic review of the CSG undertaken earlier in the year, which was due to sunset on 1 October 2023.
Do you live in, rent out or manage a rental property in NSW? The NSW Government is now seeking feedback about changes to rental laws. The changes aim to deliver on the NSW Government’s key election commitments to improve the renting experience.
Read MoreEpisode 1 of The AgTech Revolution, a new online series exploring the transformative power of technology in Australia's agricultural sector, is available to watch now. Episode 1 features Chief Scientist Professor David Lamb, alongside Ben van Delden (Deloitte), Andrew Bate (SwarmFarm), and John Harvey (AgriFutures).
Read MoreLocal communities, councils and telcos are encouraged to have their say on new guidelines to improve mobile coverage on the urban fringes of communities across Australia.
The $20 million Peri-Urban Mobile Program Round 2 (PUMP) targets longstanding mobile coverage and connectivity issues for impacted peri-urban communities by co-investing with mobile network operators on local projects.
Read MoreHeywire is a chance for regional and rural young people to have their voices heard. This annual storytelling competition, run by the ABC, showcases what it’s like to live in regional, rural and remote Australia. If you’re aged between 16-22, this is your opportunity to share with the nation what life is like in your part of the world. Up to 40 winners from across Australia will work with ABC producers to have their story told on the ABC and see the impact their story can have.
Read MoreThe Order of Australia is our nation’s highest honour for outstanding achievement and service. It belongs to all Australians, and it’s uniquely ours.
Every year, hundreds of Australians are celebrated through the Order of Australia. People from all backgrounds, all parts of Australia and who have contributed in all areas are honoured and celebrated through the Order.
Read MoreNominations for the 2024 Australian of the Year Awards are open until 31 July 2023. If you know an amazing Aussie doing great things in their community let us know.
The Department of Home Affairs partners with the National Australia Day Council and supports active citizenship by sponsoring the Local Hero category in the Australian of the Year Awards. The Local Hero Award acknowledges extraordinary contributions made by Australians in their local community.
Read MoreCouncil is pleased to announce that construction works on the Roxy Community Theatre are set to continue with local trades stepping up to complete the remainder of the build under the direction of Council’s newly formed Roxy Project Management Office (PMO).
After the news of the Lloyd Group's voluntary liquidation, Council was faced with the challenge of picking up the pieces. An interim PMO was set up to carry out extensive inspections across all disciplines to assess where the build was at, estimate the cost to complete, and recommend how best to move forward. In May 2023, Council determined to proceed as Principal instead of procuring a new Head Builder as this would have added significantly to the cost.
Read MoreDr Louisa Mamouney, Executive Director of the Credits Supply Taskforce - NSW Department of Planning and Environment, spoke recently at workshops held in Wagga Wagga and Dubbo, on the topic of ‘Farming biodiversity for a more sustainable future’.
Read MoreThe unemployment rate remained at 3.5 per cent in June (seasonally adjusted), in line with the updated figure for May, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics, said: "with employment increasing by around 33,000 people and the number of unemployed decreasing by 11,000 people, the unemployment rate remained at 3.5 per cent.
Read MoreThe Albanese Government’s First Nations Digital Inclusion Advisory Group met in Sydney yesterday and considered proposals to support progress towards Target 17 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap – delivering equal levels of digital inclusion for First Nations Australians by 2026.
Read MoreThe Albanese Labor Government is continuing to support First Nations cultural expression by investing more than $5.1 million in community-based organisations delivering vital languages and arts activities around the country.
44 organisations will share in the funding from 2023-24, which is being delivered through the Government’s Indigenous Languages and Arts program.
The program supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to express, preserve and maintain their cultures through Indigenous languages and arts activities.
Read MoreReducing road trauma in Australia by driving down risky road behaviours was the key priority for an industry roundtable held in Adelaide today by the Australian Government.
Chaired by Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Carol Brown, the roundtable brought together representatives from 20 organisations that directly support or rely on advancing road safety
Read MoreTelstra has announced it had signed an agreement to become the first provider in the world to offer voice-only and voice plus broadband powered by Starlink to rural and remote Telstra customers in Australia.
Telstra CEO Vicki Brady said the Starlink agreement was part of Telstra’s T25 strategy commitment to launch a satellite product with the voice and broadband options being available to consumer and business customers.
Read MoreTelstra and OneWeb have announced an agreement to deliver one of the world’s largest rollouts of OneWeb Low Earth Orbit (LEO) backhaul for a commercial mobile network.
Telstra and OneWeb have agreed commercial terms and later this year will begin moving hundreds of existing remote mobile base stations currently using satellite backhaul to OneWeb’s LEO solution. Telstra will also use OneWeb LEO services for future sites where satellite backhaul is the preferred or only viable option.
Read MoreRegional Australia Institute (RAI) is embarking on the nation’s biggest ever recruitment drive to showcase the 91,000 compelling, fulfilling, and well-paying jobs on offer in regional Australia.
Right now, there are more than $1.7 billion in untapped wages in our regions, with jobs in some of the most idyllic locations Australia has to offer. Filling these vacancies would provide regional Australia with an instant economic boost of more than $1.2 billion.
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