Industry News

Low Carbon Australia’s CEO Meg McDonald addressed the Property Funds Association Conference at Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast about the opportunities that existed for transforming existing buildings into greener, more highly desirable commercial space.

"While businesses are focused on the impending introduction of carbon pricing, they haven’t lost sight of the fact that we are already in an era of rising energy prices that are increasing building operating costs, which ultimately can lead to an impact on valuation prices," she said.

"But the threat of increased costs can also provide the incentive to act now to create greener commercial properties."

Ms McDonald said upgrading commercial buildings to make them more energy efficient had a range of advantages including:

• Increased attractiveness to tenants looking for greener, more energy efficient premises
• Prospect of higher rental returns based on evidence that higher NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Ratings System) ratings deliver higher rates of return
• Improved property values
• Compliance with compulsory NABERS disclosure at sale and lease

Low Carbon Australia, which was established by the Australian Government in 2010, partners with major financial institutions and utility services including Origin, NAB, Macquarie, Alleasing and FlexiGroup to provide financial packages to allow the commercial property sector to upgrade buildings with energy efficient equipment and systems.

Low Carbon Australia has certified Western Water’s Class A Recycled Water Plant in Melton, north-west of Melbourne as carbon neutral.

Low Carbon Australia’s CEO Meg McDonald said the Melton plant’s biogas cogeneration facility, which began operating in 2010, uses methane emissions generated from the water recycling process to power the Class A Recycled Water Plant’s operations.

"The plant has been able to reduce its total carbon footprint by just under 75 per cent through cogeneration. It has then purchased offsets approved under the Australian Governments National Carbon Offset Standard to achieve carbon neutrality," she said.

Western Water’s Managing Director John Wilkinson said Western Water was committed to reducing its carbon footprint and adapting to climate change in a way that was socially, environmentally and economically sustainable.

"For us, gaining carbon neutral recognition has been an important step towards a sustainable future," he said.

The Class A recycled water is used in Eynesbury for domestic uses other than drinking including toilets, garden watering and car washing. It has helped reduce the pressure on drinking quality water. The planned suburb of Toolern will also receive recycled water from the Melton Plant through a dual-reticulation system.

The Class A recycled water is also accessible for fire fighting.

Claims by the NSW government that public transport would be safer by replacing Transit Officers with Police is merely a smoke and mirrors trick said the Rail, Tram and Bus Union.

Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) NSW Secretary Alex Claassens said the move would compromise the safety of commuters and rail workers.

“Replacing 600 Transit Officers dedicated to the train network with 300 Police Officers tasked to cover the whole public transport system cannot possibly improve public safety,” Mr Claassens said.

“By the Government’s own admission they will not increase police numbers back up to 600 until the end of 2014, more than 18months away, and even then they will be stretched across trains, buses and ferries.

“This is a net loss of security presence in the system and a negative outcome for the safety of commuters. “In the meantime dedicated Transit Officers have lost their jobs or been re-tasked to the Revenue Protection Unit – raising revenue for the Government.”

Mr Claassens said using Police to patrol public transport had been tried and failed before.

Economist, business-owner and environmentalist, Peter Whish-Wilson has been selected by the Tasmanian Greens to replace Bob Brown in the Senate.

"Peter will be a superb representative for Tasmania. As an economist, business owner and campaigner to stop a polluting pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, he brings great experience and an excellent skills-set to the Senate and the Greens party room,” Australian Greens Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.

Mr Whish-Wilson said "I feel honoured to have been chosen by the Greens to be their new Tasmanian Senator, and I'm very excited to be working with Christine Milne.”

Australian Greens spokesperson for communications Senator Scott Ludlam warned against further extending the loosely defined and already over-reaching online surveillance powers of Australia's intelligence agencies.

"[The] announcement starts the next chapter of the 'data retention' debate (#ozlog) which the Government should have backed away from. This is the idea that all our personal data should be stored by service providers so that every move we make can be surveilled or recalled for later data mining. It is premised on the unjustified paranoia that all Australians are potential criminal suspects."

"Australians are already under a phenomenal amount of government surveillance. Nearly a quarter of a million telecommunications data warrants were granted in 2010-11 according to the annual Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act report.

"This includes detailed locational data logged by every smartphone, every minute of the day," says Ludlam.

Six workers in Albury-Wodonga have been back-paid a total of $48,700 following recent intervention by the Fair Work Ombudsman.

The largest recovery was $31,100 for two workers at a Wodonga consultancy.

The employees - a male and female in their 40s - lodged complaints with the Fair Work Ombudsman after they were incorrectly classified as independent contractors and underpaid annual leave and long service leave entitlements.

After a Fair Work inspector contacted the business and explained its obligations, the workers were reimbursed all the money owed without the need for further action against the employer.

The two workers were back-paid $17,700 and $13,400 respectively.

In a separate case, three retail workers in Albury have been back-paid $11,100 after they were underpaid the minimum hourly rate.

And in another case, an Albury shop assistant has been back-paid $6500 after she was underpaid annual leave entitlements.

Between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2011 the Fair Work Ombudsman recovered a total of $68.2 million for 41,224 underpaid workers nationally.

“When we find mistakes, we’re here to assist and give practical advice to employers on how to voluntarily fix them,” says Fair Work Ombudsman Nicholas Wilson.

Mr Wilson says that the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Assisted Voluntary Resolution team is now achieving resolution of about half its referrals with the first month.

“These Albury-Wodonga businesses have now corrected the errors that led to the underpayments and put processes in place to ensure they will not happen again.”

More information about independent contracting and sham contracting is at www.fairwork.gov.au/contractors.

The NSW Minister for Primary Industries, Katrina Hodgkinson, has announced the completion of three Cap and Pipe the Bores schemes in the state’s north-west, providing a combined savings of 1,400 ML of water annually.

Twenty landholders participated from the Goodooga, Burren Junction and Walgett areas.

“Replacing the free flowing artesian bores and bore drains with efficient piped systems, ensures landholders receive a clean, reliable stock and domestic water supply,”  Ms Hodgkinson said.

“The well-designed piped systems will prevent water being lost through evaporation and seepage as previously experienced with the open earth drains.”

Ms Hodgkinson said as well as saving water, the schemes will stop around 1,300 tonnes per year of salt from entering the Murray-Darling River system.

The construction of the schemes has supplied and installed a combined total of 323 km of pipeline, four new bores, 212 tanks and 480 troughs.

“The landholders will benefit from the schemes through improved water use efficiency, and opportunities for more sustainable land and stock management practices.”

“Capping and piping these artesian bores also assists the recovery of artesian pressure in the Great Artesian Basin.”

“In addition, the new piped schemes will help prevent pests, weeds and land degradation.”

The program has been jointly funded by the NSW and Australian Governments, through the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative (GABSI).

“This valuable work will help protect and restore the Great Artesian Basin for future generations,” said Ms Hodgkinson.

 “This infrastructure investment is a great benefit to many landholders and the environment across a vast area of north-western NSW,” Mr Humphries said.

“As well as saving water, the capping and piping of these bores will restore artesian pressure and stop large volumes of salt from entering the Murray-Darling Basin system.”

Additional information regarding the Cap & Pipe the Bores Program is available on the NSW Office of Water website: www.water.nsw.gov.au

A property manager employed by a Sydney commercial property management company has been convicted of seven counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception and sentenced to a maximum of 18 months imprisonment, suspended on him entering into a bond.

Paul Francis Charles Stevens worked as a property manager at a Sydney commercial property management company for more than six years and in that time he stole tenants’ rent cheques from his employer and deposited cheques into his own account.

Unlawfully having possession of the cheques, he over-wrote the payee name particulars with ‘P Stevens’ and overlayed it with a ‘Not Negotiable’ stamp imprint to disguise the true payee.

Later, he presented the forged cheques to cause deposit credit entries to be recorded in a bank account of Paul Stevens Property Services Pty Limited, trading as Paul Stevens Property Services.

The District Court in August last year upheld the sentence of an unlicensed real estate agent, Phillip Chau, to 18 months imprisonment, with a non parole period of 12 months, for misappropriating monies from clients’ property trust accounts. Mr Chau was ordered to pay $123,830 to the Property Services Compensation Fund.

Earlier in 2011, Fair Trading prosecuted Navid Azzati, the director of a company formerly trading as Raine & Horne Fairfield. Mr Azzati was sentenced to seven months imprisonment, suspended on him entering a bond, for fraudulently misappropriating monies. He was ordered to pay $58,855 to the Property Services Compensation Fund.

The Queensland Government has announced a new wages framework providing pay increases of up to 3 per cent to public servants in return for productivity savings that deliver better services and value for money for Queensland taxpayers.

Treasurer Tim Nicholls said the State Government was committed to good faith bargaining and delivering fair wage outcomes for public servants.

“With headline inflation running at 1.6 per cent nationally, the Newman LNP Government’s wages framework is very fair and reasonable and fulfils our commitment to good faith bargaining," he said.

“The Newman LNP Government is removing Labor’s arbitrary 2.5 per cent wage cap because we know the public service can and will deliver real benefits through savings and improved productivity in return for higher wages.

“This is about delivering fair wages in return for fair outcomes.

“Labor left the state’s finances in a mess, with a $2.8 billion deficit and debt heading towards $85 billion, and we need the assistance of unions and public servants to identify waste and deliver real, bankable productivity savings.

“We believe it is possible to properly reward staff, while also ensuring financial sustainability and good returns for the public.

IP Australia has launched its online service, eServices, which provides a secure electronic business portal to register, login and conduct selected transactions.

In the first release of eServices customers can renew all IP rights and submit trade mark registrations electronically, and pay for them online using VISA or MasterCard. You can also access new features such as the option to save your requests, access your eServices transaction history and update your details.

The services and transactions within eServices have built-in checks and pre-populated fields to save time and help ensure the accuracy of the information.

Over the coming months IP Australia will be adding more transactions and services to the portal to make it a one-stop-shop to help in the management of IP assets.

Poor demand and subdued workloads - particularly in the apartment building sub-sector – has pushed the national construction sector further into the red over April, according to the latest Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Construction Index (Australian PCI).

The Index, prepared in conjunction with the Housing Industry Association, was 1.3 points weaker at 34.9 in April (readings below 50 indicate a contraction in activity with the distance from 50 indicative of the strength of the decrease).

Continuing the recent trend, apartment building was the weakest of the four sub-sectors with an index reading of 22.9. The index of house building (33.3) and commercial construction (35.2) activity also remained well below the expansion-contraction threshold of 50, reflecting the persistence of weak demand conditions in both sectors. Despite declining in the month, engineering construction continued to be the sector showing the greatest resilience due to the strength of resource related projects.

Australian Industry Group Director Public Policy, Peter Burn, said: "The fall in construction activity in April is further evidence of the widespread nature of the current slowdown in the broader economy.

The ongoing weakness in the residential and commercial construction sub-sectors was exacerbated by the slowing in engineering construction activity that has now been in train since the start of the year.

Last week's reduction in interest rates will help counter the existing headwinds while the construction industry will have a close eye on tomorrow's Budget and the impacts it may have on business, household and public sector demand over the year ahead," Dr Burn said.

Housing Industry Association Economist, Geordan Murray, said: "Evidence of a persistent weakening in Australia's residential construction industry is continuing unabated in 2012. This latest, softer, Australian PCI result vindicates the larger interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank last week and justifies the case for further action. Federal and state government support and policy reform is a vital plank in restoring confidence and activity in the residential construction industry - interest rate relief can't do all the heavy lifting," Mr Murray said.

Australian PCI Key Findings for April:

• The national construction sector contracted again in April with particular weakness in apartment building, housing and commercial construction.
• The latest Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Construction Index (Australian PCI) in conjunction with the Housing Industry Association, dropped 1.3 points to 34.9 in April (readings below 50 indicate a contraction in activity with the distance from 50 indicative of the strength of the decrease).
• The Australian PCI has now been in negative territory for almost two years.
• While resource-related projects are giving some support to the engineering construction sector, weak demand and difficulties securing funding for work continue to hamper the apartment building (22.9), house building (33.3) and commercial construction (35.2) sub-sectors.
• New orders sub-index contracted for the 23rd straight month in April - recording 32.3.
• Employment continued to contract at a broadly unchanged rate in April (39.6).

The Australian Water Association (AWA) and Opus International Consultants (Opus) have established a new registered training organisation for the water sector, AWA Opus Water Industry Training Institute (WITI).

AWA Chief Executive Mr Tom Mollenkopf says WITI has been set up to ensure that AWA can continue to assist industry to meet skill needs.

“Through this unique partnership, we will be able to deliver efficient and responsive training programs to industry. The establishment of this joint venture RTO will bring a sharp commercial focus to the challenge of delivering quality training particularly in hard-to-service areas of rural and regional Australia”, said Mr Mollenkopf.

Initially WITI will focus on delivering NWP30107 Certificate III in Water Operations and intends to provide NWP20107 Certificate II in Water Operations in the future upon application. Qualifications initially focusing on Water Treatment, Wastewater Treatment and Reticulation and Distribution will be offered and can be customised to suit workplace needs.

In the future WITI will also offer short courses based on clusters of units of competency as required for the accreditation of employees.

Australia may need to consider selling off some of its National Parks if it is to be able to afford to conserve its most important landscapes and species for future generations, according to Professor Hugh Possingham, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) at The University of Queensland.

“Basically, Australia is facing some very tough decisions," Professor Possingham said.

"For all our present nationwide investment in conservation, we are still losing both species and ecosystem integrity.

"We clearly need better ways to decide what we can afford to save, because the current system plainly isn't working as well as we'd hoped.

“The evidence indicates that Australian native species are still disappearing at a rate 100 to 1000 times faster than normal.

"Over the past 200 years, 22 mammal species have become extinct, over 100 are now on the threatened and endangered species list, and 6 more bird taxa were recently declared extinct.

"Fourteen species of frogs are on their last legs.”

With limited funds, both government and private, for conservation the nation may have to look at a new system for allocating those funds where both the need and the prospects of success are greatest, Professor Possingham said.

This implied that public funds may have to be withdrawn from some areas and reinvested in others.

“You could liken it to triage in a World War II military hospital: tough decisions may need to be taken about which patients have the best chance of survival and the resources allocated accordingly.

"Otherwise you spread your effort too thinly and achieve too little.

“This is not a popular point of view – but it is grounded in reality.

“While 12 per cent of the continent is enclosed in National Parks, few have sufficient resources to manage their biota intensively.

In the absence of major new sources of funds, we need to consider where the prospects of success are greatest and, indeed, what success in conservation actually consists of.”

In the past, Australian conservation tended to be driven by a wish to restore parts of the continent to a pre-European state – but this had proved impractical.

“It can't be done in a dynamic world, where human influences and changing climates are constantly altering the rules for survival,” Professor Possingham said.

Across the whole of Australia, current conservation investment was probably about a tenth of what would be needed to protect most species and ecosystems and reduce rates of extinction, he estimated.

“As funding at this level is unlikely to become available in the short run, we should look at putting resources into those National Parks and species where we have the best chance of achieving something - and that may mean selling off smaller parks that are not viable,” he said.

However, selling national parks need not mean their loss in a conservation sense – many well-off Australians now had a strong desire to look after native bushland and its species on a private basis, while many farmers were revegetating cleared land with native trees, leading to recovery in native species.

“Also there are enough covenants and restrictions in force now to ensure conservation of the landscape even when it is managed privately,” he said.

“If we have to refocus public investment on the National Parks where we can achieve the best conservation results, then maybe we should also find ways to encourage more Australians to take care of their own landscapes and endangered species privately.”

For effective decisions to be taken about which aspects of Australian biodiversity we can afford to manage well, there are two requirements, he said: better quantification of the actual costs of conservation – and better mathematical models for predicting the probable outcomes of various conservation actions.

Both were now becoming available.

“This thinking is exactly the way business operates – where can we invest to get the best return on our investment.

"The logic is equally compelling when applied to conservation.

“In short we have a basis for taking much better decisions about our environment which can ensure quintessential landscapes and key species are better protected.

"But those decisions will not happen without some losses and public controversy.

"It's a case of deciding which battles we can win with the resources available – and fighting those.”

CEED is an Australian Research Council funded Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions and is part of the Commonwealth's National Environmental Research Program (NERP). CEED's research tackles key gaps in environmental decision-making, monitoring and adaptive management.

Australasian data centre company, Harbour MSP, is set to commence operations from its Melbourne data centre, creating 20 new technology jobs in Victoria over the next four years.

Harbour MSP, a subsidiary of NTT Communications,  specialises  in fully-integrated co-location, private cloud and managed IT services. It has a global network of 150 data centres.

Harbour MSP is investing  capital expenditure of $15 million in the new Port Melbourne IT facility included a new data centre and a network operations centre.

The facility will offer a full suite of services including co-location, 24/7 infrastructure monitoring, management, security, networking, private cloud deployment and disaster recovery.

The Melbourne operations will help the company support its business partners and expand its customer base in financial services, ICT and cloud computing sectors.

Harbour MSP commercial director and co-founder Andrew Hardy said the new facility will allow the company to tap into demand for high quality services in Victoria, and  serve local organisations who are in need of highly accessible, secure facilities.

Further information  about Harbour MSP is at www.harbourmsp.com.au 

The Federal Government ihas announced it will provide $490 million over five years for the Medicare Teen Dental Plan.

Since 1st July 2008, Medicare has provided vouchers to eligible teenagers towards an annual preventative dental check, including an oral examination and, if required, x-rays, a scale and clean, removal of calculus, fluoride treatment, oral hygiene instruction, dietary advice, and/or fissure sealing.

Vouchers may be used through either a private dentist, or through the public oral health service.

The University of Ballarat’s Technology Park, established in 1995 as an information and communications technology (ICT) hub, is set for $155 million expansion, following rezoning of the land by the Victorian Planning Minister, Matthew Guy.

Currently there are nine buildings within the technology park and tenants include Ambulance Victoria, Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, IBM Aust/NZ, iGlass Pty Ltd and the State Revenue Office. The park also hosts numerous small enterprises and two ICT business incubators.

The NSW Minerals Council has released a research report undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Monash University which claims that NSW will lose billions of dollars in mining revenue and thousands of jobs if the current draft Strategic Regional Land Use Policy goes ahead.

The  economic study carried out for the NSW Minerals Council found that under a medium impact scenario the draft plans will result in the loss of an average of around $1 billion a year in royalties for the next twenty years.

The study also found that under the same scenario, the draft plans would cut a full one percent from the State's forecast economic growth in 2018, lower consumption and investment, and result in over 8000 less jobs across NSW.

"Slowing the State's biggest export industry will have an impact that will be felt right across the economy," NSW Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee said.

“Losing a billion dollars a year is a big budget cost that will hit hard. It's funding that could be spent on better infrastructure and services for the community. It's also funding that’s needed in regional NSW where mining occurs,” Mr Galilee said.

“To put this in context, current mining royalties of $1.2 billion a year are estimated to be enough to fund 13,000 nurses or 11,000 teachers or 2,500 buses every single year,” he said.

The research found that the regions covered by the draft Plans will be hit hard:

• Nearly 16 per cent lower gross regional product of the Upper Hunter region by 2018;
• 5000 fewer coal mining jobs in the Upper Hunter in 2018, leading to an overall impact of nearly 1000 fewer jobs across the Upper Hunter region;
• 5 per cent hit to gross regional product of the New England North West region economy by 2021 and nearly 800 fewer coal mining jobs in the region over the next decade.

“This research confirms that the draft Plans are skewed against mining in NSW,” Mr Galilee said.

The research also finds that the decline in mining triggered by the draft Plans will lead to declines in other sectors, including construction, hotels and cafes and transport services.

The findings form part of the NSW Minerals Council’s submission on the NSW Government’s draft Strategic Regional Land Use Plans released for the Upper Hunter and New England North West regions in early March.

The NSW Minerals Council’s submission provides a detailed assessment of the impact of the draft Plans, including the economic cost to the State of more restrictions on the already heavily regulated mining sector.

“The Government intends to roll-out this policy across the entire State so it’s critical that we get it right. The economic price is too high to ignore the facts and get the balance wrong.”

The NSW Minerals Council has also launched www.landusefacts.com.au to outline facts about mining in NSW and dispel myths about land use and the minerals sector.

A copy of the economic modelling is available here.

Prospects for trades employment in South Australia have received a boost from the Federal Government’s announcement that the $36 billion project to build 12 future submarines will go ahead in the state, with initial funding of  $214 million to be provided for further detailed studies and analysis on the design of the submarines.

The Government’s commitment to acquire 12 new Future Submarines to be assembled in South Australia over the next three decades was outlined in the 2009 White Paper outlined the.

Mr John Coles is currently undertaking a review of the Sustainment of Australia’s Collins Class submarines to avoid repeating the mistakes of the Collins class submarine project and minimise risks.

The Coles Review involves a detailed examination of complex engineering issues associated with submarine sustainment and support from international experts and companies in this field.

The Government is considering four broad options for the Future Submarines:

• An existing submarine design available off-the-shelf, modified only to meet Australia’s regulatory requirements;
• An existing off-the-shelf design modified to incorporate Australia’s specific requirements, including in relation to combat systems and weapons;
• An evolved design that enhances the capabilities of existing off-the-shelf designs, including the Collins Class; and
• An entirely new developmental submarine.

The results of the newly funded studies will be available to the government next year and will inform its decision on the combat systems, torpedos, sensors and other weapons systems.

The studies will be conducted across three broad areas:

• Design studies;
• Scientific and technological studies; and
• Future Submarine Industry Skills Plan. The Future Submarine Industry Skills Plan will identify what is required to build and sustain the skills required to successfully deliver Australia’s Future Submarine capability. The plan will be developed by a team be led by the Chief Executive Officer of the Defence Materiel Organisation Mr Warren King. It will be supported by an Expert Industry Panel headed by Mr David Mortimer, AO. The Expert Industry Panel will include representatives of DMO, Navy, the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, Skills Australia, unions, the CEOs of the four principal Australian naval shipbuilding companies; ASC, Austal, BAE Systems and Forgacs Engineering and the CEOs of the principal naval systems integration companies: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Thales, Saab Systems and BAE Systems. This group will consult widely with State Governments, Australian industry, industry associations, universities and other academic organisations to develop this plan.

These studies are in addition to the Government’s announcement in December that it had approved the release of Requests for Information to three overseas submarine designers (DCNS, HDW and Navantia), and that Defence had entered into a contract with Babcock for a study into a land-based propulsion site.

Second Pass approval is scheduled for around 2017 with construction expected to begin following Second Pass. 

Two Queensland councils have received top awards at the 2012 Planning Institute of Australia Awards for Planning Excellence.

Brisbane City Council's Urban Renewal Program Urban Renewal Brisbane - 20 years took out the inaugural category From Plan to Place Award.

Urban Renewal Brisbane is a program of rejuvenation started by the council in 1991. It is responsible for managing and revitalising Brisbane's inner city areas and has been awarded a dozen PIA planning awards in the past 20 years.

The project was judged to be a clear demonstration of a long-term vision being delivered in partnership with the private sector and the community over two decades.

Redland City Council played a key role in the Best Planning Ideas Award which was presented for a project called Child and Youth Friendly City. The project was classified by the judges as a case study for city planners to consider.  The project team of Redland Council, Griffith University, Laurel Johnson and Play Environment Consulting provided an important insight into how planning and design of the built environment should consider young people with exercise at the centre of child and youth happiness.