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الاثنين، 30 مارس 2015
Easter public service strike primed to hit airports
The gloves have come off in the battle between federal public servants and the Abbott government after the Community and Public Sector Union warned air travelers and welfare recipients to expect delays and disruption at airports and Medicare and Centrelink Offices across Australia over the Easter break.
The CPSU on Monday issued a warning that around 15,000 members across 500 worksites will launch a coordinated series of actions over the next two weeks as the union attempts to force the government’s hand on deadlocked enterprise bargaining talks that have failed to reach a resolution after more than a year.
The warning of Easter travel disruption is the biggest escalation to date by the CPSU which had until Monday largely targeted its action at directly agency management in an effort to minimize public inconvenience.
While the union is again emphasising the direct target of the bans and stoppages are the Abbott government and agency management it’s also candidly warned the public could well be affected by the action.
“The community is not the target here but people will be affected. We would strongly advise people to take extra time in travelling and avoid calling or visiting Centrelink or Medicare during this period,” said CPSU National Secretary Nadine Flood.
“Department of Agriculture biosecurity staff at airports, ports and regional centres across the country will stop work at 10.30am for half an hour on Thursday 2 April. They will also be reading statements and distributing flyers to tens of thousands of passengers over the busy Easter long weekend,” the CPSU said in a statement.
Aviation industry sources said they expected that while there may be some minor disruption for travellers, it was more likely that there would be a concerted effort by union members to leaflet travellers to try and garner public support for the CPSU’s campaign.
The prospect of uniformed staff working in critical areas of the transport industry and openly protesting the Abbott government’s industrial relations tactics has the potential to become a major publicity problem for Employment and Public Service Minister Eric Abetz as the Prime Minister and his Cabinet attempt to demonstrate their capacity to better take on board the concerns of the public and stakeholders after large parts of the Budget were either voted down or withdrawn in the face of a hostile Senate.
Despite an easy win by the Coalition in the New South Wales state election on Saturday, industrial relations changes at the federal level remain a highly volatile issue in the electorate against the background of a sluggish economic growth, stubborn unemployment and growing fears over job security.
The scale of public service cuts in Queensland under the now ousted Newman government provided a catalyst for public anger after the axe swung on as many as 14,000 public sector jobs.
Those cuts were then compounded by federal job losses that often re-centralised regional departmental resources outside Canberra leaving state offices often reeling.
The CPSU is pushing the topic of cuts particularly hard in its publicity as it seeks to characterise the dispute as a fight that was triggered by an unnecessarily heavy handed and ideologically driven push by the Abbott government to prove its toughness against unions in its own backyard.
“These are frontline workers who do not take industrial action lightly. But they have been pushed to this point by a belligerent government that has already hurt services by cutting 11,000 jobs and is now intent on attacking workplace rights and conditions,” Ms Flood said.
The looming action, which is legally authorised by the government’s industrial relations umpire the Fair Work Commission after a series of protected action ballots comes after the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) finally backed away from trying to strip out explicit references to government employees’ superannuation guarantee in the next agreement.
It’s believed that that move came at the instigation of new APSC chief John Lloyd so that the government could exhibit some flexibility in the bargaining process.
Although the CPSU hailed that development as a victory for common sense, it is adamant the rest of the deals offered to APS staff still stink.
“For too long Employment Minister Eric Abetz has been trying to force workers to accept his unfair and unworkable bargaining policy. Clearly that strategy isn’t working. Minister Abetz now needs to take the next step and sit down with us and talk about how we can reach sensible agreements,” Ms Flood said.
The post Easter public service strike primed to hit airports appeared first on Government News.
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Press release: Nottinghamshire landfill site shut down after enforcement action
Enforcement action led to a formal caution and a legal agreement resulting in the closure a landfill site in Nottinghamshire, the Environment Agency announced today (27 March).
In June 2013 the Environment Agency found that FCC Recycling (UK) Limited (also trading as FCC Environment), who operated the Dorket Head Landfill site in Arnold Nottinghamshire, had failed to act in accordance with its landfill gas management plan, when methane was detected at one of its monitoring boreholes.
Following the investigation, the Environment Agency worked with FCC Recycling (UK) Limited to bring forward the closure of the site. The Environment Agency varied the permit to prevent further waste being accepted and set a timescale for the operator to permanently cap the site. The operator accepted a formal caution for its failure to act in accordance with its landfill gas management plan and accepted warning letters for other associated breaches of its environmental permit, including a failure to adequately cover waste in February and March 2014. FCC Recycling (UK) Limited also met Environment Agency’s investigation and legal costs. The site closed its doors in September 2014.
The Environment Agency balanced the need to take enforcement action against the operator for its failures with the impact that early site closure would have on the local community. The Environment Agency concluded that the proposal to close the site with agreed steps to ensure capping works are concluded by November 2016 was the best environmental outcome in this case. The Environment Agency is pleased that capping works are already underway.
Although the site has ceased to accept waste, FCC Recycling (UK) Limited will still be responsible for managing the site’s environmental impact. Environment Agency engineers will ensure that the works are undertaken to the highest standard and will continue to regulate the site and will conduct regular inspections to ensure that the environmental impacts of the site are minimised.
It is natural for gas to be produced from landfill sites and is one of the main reasons that they are regulated. The Environment Agency insists that the monitoring boreholes which surround the site are closely checked sometimes on an hourly basis and that the site is adequately ‘capped’ and managed to minimise odours and prevent gas escaping the site
from Announcements on GOV.UK http://ift.tt/1NxxQ7n
Press release: Lincoln man guilty of dumping waste near Leicestershire river
On 26 March 2015, Frank Nicklinson, 39, from Lincoln pleaded guilty at Leicester Magistrates Court to two offences relating to the illegal transportation and dumping of controlled waste on land at Lounge Colliery, Ashby Road, Ashby de la Zouch on 5 August 2014. Mr Nicklinson received a fine of £660, was ordered to pay costs of £1700 and a victim surcharge of £66.
On 5 August 2014 an on-duty police officer witnessed Mr Nicklinson and a colleague driving onto the Lounge Colliery site in Ashby de la Zouch and depositing construction and demolition waste from a trailer onto the land without permission and without a valid waste carrier’s licence.
The Lounge Colliery site is within the catchment area of the River Mease which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The river supports nationally significant populations of two fish species, Bullhead and Spined Loach. The main watercourse within the colliery feeds into the River Mease via a brook and therefore any contaminants coming from the waste have a direct link to the river. The River Mease is classed as being in an unfavourable condition due to poor water quality. In addition, the colliery itself is home to a large, regionally significant, population of great crested newts which are a protected species.
Speaking after the case, an Environment Agency officer involved with the investigation said:
The site where the waste was tipped is within the catchment area of the River Mease which could pose serious threat to the natural habitat. The accumulation of waste at the site has also sparked recent arson attacks which again can have significant environmental and economic impact.
The crime was committed for financial gain and has contributed towards significant cleanup costs. This prosecution demonstrates that we take cases such as this very seriously and will not hesitate to prosecute if necessary, to protect the environment and local communities.
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'You feeling thirsty?': Warne slammed for drinking comments
Australian cricket great Shane Warne has been criticized for promoting an unhealthy drinking culture, following post-match interviews at cricket's World Cup final.
source CNN.com - Sport http://ift.tt/19z2b60
source CNN.com - Sport http://ift.tt/19z2b60
News story: Celebrating three great English exports in 2015
In 2015, England marks two major anniversaries. It will be 800 years since the signing of the Magna Carta and 750 years since the formation of the first English parliament.
Anyone who is interested in seeing the document that has been described as England’s greatest export need only visit the British Library, where not one but two copies are on display in a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition.
Embodied in the Rule of Law in over 100 countries, the Magna Carta established for the first time that everyone, even the king, had to obey the law.
The document inspired early American settlers, with its principles echoed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights; it has been used to argue for freedom of the press; and for extending the vote to ordinary people and to women.
It is also the foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Written after the atrocities of World War II, this declaration states that people around the world are protected by fundamental human rights, regardless of their citizenship, race, gender or beliefs. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that the Declaration may well become ‘the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere’.
Events are taking place around the UK to celebrate the anniversary of the Great Seal being placed on the document at Runnymede, in southern England, in June 1215.
The UK’s stable and prosperous democracy is among the legacies of the Magna Carta.
Over the centuries, England has developed rich traditions that include the pageantry of the State Opening of the Houses of Parliament, the Queen’s Speech, and the lively debate of Prime Minister’s Questions.
The second great English export has to be a sport – but which one? Sports that can trace their origins to England include cricket, rugby and football.
Take the Afghanistan national cricket team. They have just debuted in the 2015 World Cup, playing six matches and winning one against the finest players in the world, and dismissing two of their opponents’ opening batsmen for golden ducks (for non-cricketers, a golden duck means that a batsman is out at the first ball).
Rugby draws its name from Rugby in Warwickshire, where schoolboy William Webb Ellis picked up a ball and ran with it in 1823.
This year, the Rugby World Cup comes to England. Twenty teams from six continents will compete to lift the William Webb Ellis Cup on 31 October in Twickenham, the home of English rugby.
And it was at the Freemasons’ Tavern in London where the rules of association football were first standardised.
Representatives of football clubs and schools met in the Covent Garden pub, and over the course of six meetings in autumn and winter 1863 they codified a definitive set of rules. From these humble beginnings, football spread across the globe and is now the most popular sport in the world.
England cannot claim to have invented athletics, despite the unforgettable 2012 London Olympics, but it was an Englishman, Roger Bannister, who first broke the Four Minute Mile at a running track in Oxford in 1954.
The third great English export has to be the English language, which is now spoken by many times more people than the 53 million who live in England itself.
It is the language in which Shakespeare wrote, and The Beatles sang, and the number one language on the world wide web, which was itself invented by English computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
English language and English literature are now taught to hundreds of millions of school children around the world.
St George’s Day falls on 23 April, and is the day that England celebrates its patron saint.
To mark the occasion, and for all of those who are studying or have studied English literature, we have produced a quiz about England’s poets, looking at their international links and the landscapes that inspired them.
Did you know, for instance, that three of our greatest poets all died on St George’s Day? This is why we commemorate not only William Shakespeare but also the poets Rupert Brooke and William Wordsworth on 23 April.
Enjoy the quiz, and I hope you’ll be inspired.
from Announcements on GOV.UK http://ift.tt/1DjuGmh
Turnbull tells APS to get Digital Services religion
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned federal and state public sector agencies that they need to urgently accelerate their level of digital innovation and service delivery to the public or risk being involuntarily left behind by external forces beyond their control.
In a passionate official launch of the federal government’s new Digital Transformation Office in Sydney on Friday, the Communications Minister laid-out his plan for pulling hundreds of government entities up to the same ‘agile’ online and mobile transactional standards as the banking and travel industries by 2017 by reforming public service culture.
It’s a tall order, not least because the Abbott government has very publicly committed to having almost all of its public facing interactions, especially transactions, digitised and available online by 2017 as its core e-government policy across agencies.
However Mr Turnbull’s latest pitch is certain to unsettle the nerves of many senior public service executives and managers.
The imperative as outlined by Communications Minister and the DTO is an insistence that APS chiefs throw away the established technology playbook that has traditionally looked to internal, heavily demarcated department IT resources that have been largely focused on back-end systems rather than what the public sees.
Instead quickly conceived and rapidly prototyped projects that automate or streamline existing public interactions, preferably online, should be pursued to make government more flexible and responsive with ‘customer centricity’ put at the core of new developments.
That imperative should come in addition to, rather than substitute for, existing tech activity.
On Friday Mr Turn bull made it clear he wasn’t about to start encroaching onto the turf of departmental enterprise systems – where individual agencies or the powerful Department of Finance set the rules — but was equally emphatic that public facing systems, tools and apps had to start being innovated immediately.
He also confirmed, as was widely anticipated, that while the new DTO will not carry coercive or compulsive powers that can force agencies to act (like Finance does) strong cooperation with the DTO was still a core policy expectation across government.
The message for not just the public service, but also industry that supplies it, is that things need to start changing and changing immediately.
“There has never been a time that is more disruptive, subversive, more exciting than we have at the moment,” Mr Turnbull said. “The pace of change is unprecedented and it is all driven by digital technology.”
He said that big organisations in general, including government, had been too inwardly focussed adding that commercial competitive business were now realising that they needed to start asking how to better service their customers
“If you don’t meet the customer’s needs you’re going to be out of business,” Mr Turnbull said.
A big part of Mr Turnbull’s challenge is that customers of government agencies like Tax, Immigration and Centrelink can’t really shop around giving them a captive audience that has to take what it’s given — hardly an imperative for change.
That so-called ‘dead hand’ and siloed approach, where agencies often develop the same kinds of systems and capabilities differently many times over, is now what is clearly under fire.
To address the kind of intergovernmental ambivalence that sometimes confronted the Australian Government Information Management Office Mr Turnbull and the DTO’s approach seems to be a heavy amount of charm baited with the potential for innovative managers to be publicly recognised matched with the tacit threat of embarrassment for those who drag their heels.
It is understood that the DTO’s small number of staff will be almost entirely recruited, at least initially, from within the public sector with sources close to the project saying the calibre of talent and passion for productive reform was already in government was too often underestimated.
A further incentive for senior public servants to back the DTO is that unlike tech functions at the Department of Finance, the Communications portfolio can develop and set down policy as opposed to merely having to apply it.
Mr Turnbull also took an unashamed swipe at the often risk averse culture of agencies which could create the long term expense of impeding strategic progress for the short term saving of avoiding even minor failures in the pursuit of change.
The Communications Minister openly attacked the idea of hedging against future disruptions and uncertainty rather than seeking new opportunities to exploit from it.
“I hate the term future proofing, because it suggests the future is something we’ve got to protect ourselves against, [so we] build a big breakwater or a great wall,” Mr Turnbull said.
“What we should be doing is embracing the future. Recognise that there is unpredictability.”
“We want to break down all the inertia that comes from empire building,” Mr Turnbull said.
Not all empires may feel his passion for change.
A key philosophical and policy stance that underpins the DTO is that of open government and open data where publicly held information assets are made available essentially for free to external developers to play with to create new solutions that they can either market back to government or the public.
The pin-up example is the clutch of public transport apps like TripView that give passengers train, bus, tram and ferry times on smartphones that have been credited with increasing not just with traveller satisfaction, but boosting public transport patronage as well.
One of those is the Australian Securities and Investment Commission that charges substantial and unpopular fees to access its holdings of corporate financial documents that largely put it beyond the reach of small developers looking to build new applications.
Although Mr Turnbull has previously remonstrated over the shackles ASIC’s fees place on creating new applications, there is far less clarity on how such income streams might be replaced or compensated for.
Mr Turnbull’s own department is also acutely aware of the nuances, complexities and challenges the open data agenda brings with it.
At the Locate15 geospatial conference in Brisbane in March, Department of Communications Secretary, Drew Clarke, acknowledged although government data could be made available for free as an asset, its creation usually incurred a cost that organisations had for some time either wholly or partly tried to recover.
On Friday Mr Turnbull was explicit about his desire to push a change in thinking among agencies that broke from finding ways of why things couldn’t be done.
“What’s missing is the ability to think laterally, creatively,” Mr Turnbull said.
“The question is how do you make volatility your friend as opposed to your enemy?”
The post Turnbull tells APS to get Digital Services religion appeared first on Government News.
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