RDASI Newsletter - July 2023
CEO Report
Ally Dunwoodie - Project Officer - Welcome Experience
Well, here we are into the first week of the new financial year and already I can start to hear the jingle of not-too-distant bells. I’m not sure about you, but my social feeds are being inundated with lucky holiday makers from Bali to Brazil and let’s give thanks to the incredible snow conditions we’ve been blessed with so early in the season. Our tourist towns have been enjoying welcome influxes over the weekends and with accommodation in the snowies well and truly booked out, we are pleased to hear that this winter season is kicking off positively.
RDASI is continuing to expand, and I’d like to welcome our newest member of the team, Alexandra Dunwoodie. Ally has joined RDASI as the Projects Officer for the Welcome Experience program we are proudly piloting in Goulburn. Coming from Trinity College, Ally is a well-known teacher with four children of her own. Her multi-tasking capabilities and strong community connections made her the perfect fit for this role and we’re so pleased to have Ally join our team.
The Welcome Experience program supports state government employees settle into a new region when they move for a role. The government realises that embedding a person and their family into community early on their relocation journey, serves to extend the likelihood of them staying long-term. This is an exciting program with the potential for expansion into other regions and extension over a three-year period. As the host agency and delivery partner we are working closely with our colleagues from the Department of Regional NSW (DRNSW) to measure and evaluate every aspect of the program for continual learnings to improve. We’re looking forward to introducing this program to Goulburn with our first social event being held on July 13th. If you are a Goulburn local and interested in learning more about this program, please contact Ally on welcome@rdasi.org.au.
June for RDASI was seriously busy with the facilitation of our JobsSI program in Goulburn, Queanbeyan and Cooma. We produced multiple industry tours in these targeted regions focussed on construction, trades, aged and disability care services which were both well attended and achieved excellent jobs pathways outcomes for numerous participants. We wish to thank all of our industry partners who went above and beyond in a very short time frame to provide our participants with engaging experiences to encourage applications. This program has been very successful and with the support of our wonderful Local Jobs Facilitator, Marcus Caldwell, we hope to extend this further over the coming months. I’d especially like to acknowledge the enthusiasm of our incredible Suzie Presswell, who passionately advocated for the multiple cohorts of individuals who joined this program and publicly announce from this exceptional project delivery, Suzie has earned a promotion as RDASI’s Projects Manager. Congratulations!
You may not know that RDASI is full of nerds. We love tech, we love research, and we love education. And on June 20th, those three passions came together for our Digital Connectivity forum in Yass. This event brought council staff from across our LGAs to the one location to learn about phone and internet communications in the bush and formulate an action plan on how to improve services through future – proofing and planning. The insights and knowledge we have taken away from this event have been mind boggling and we’re on the way to developing some key strategies for our councils to consider.
Stay tuned for more on improving regional communications services with our Regional Connect Roadshow back on tour again in August and September.
By next month I hope to announce what the revitalisation of the RDA program looks like, and in the meantime, you will start to see some rebranding taking place. We are very pleased our department has taken the active step of creating templates for most of our IP and we are looking forward to revealing the updated look and feel over the coming months. Our Chair, Rowena Abbey, Deputy Chair, Suzanne Gearing and I will be heading up to Toowoomba later this month, for the first National RDA conference being held since covid hit. There, we expect our new charter to be announced in line with the Regional Investment Framework (RIF) Minister Catherine King announced over the budget period. Ongoing support and funding for regional communities is imperative to further the economic and social development of our regions, and we welcome the federal government’s commitment to this.
If you have a project or passion you think may qualify for regional funding support, please contact Tash at grants@rdasi.org.au to discuss.
As always, we are here to advocate for our regional communities and please share this newsletter with anyone you think may benefit.
Carisa
Digital Connectivity
Digital Connectivity is the Great Equaliser for regional and rural NSW and on Tuesday 20 June in Yass, we hosted what will become an annual event to drive communications improvements for our region.
The discussion was based on our core strategic directive to encourage increased economic and social development that is underpinned by technology capabilities.
The purpose of the Digital Connectivity forum was to:
Build relationships across our Southern Inland LGAs to collaborate on ideas,
Share information and learnings,
Seek collective and consistent outcomes and
Drive critical infrastructure improvements for optimal digital connectivity throughout our regions.
It was a successful and informative event, and we are currently in the process of developing an action plan for future direction. Thanks to everyone who participated, your contributions have been invaluable.
Welcome To Region
Our Welcome to the Region event held in Queanbeyan, specifically for new migrants was a huge success last Tuesday. It was an informative night for attendees, learning about the services available to them in Queanbeyan, through the participation of our helpful stakeholders.
We wish to thank everyone for coming, who represented:
Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council
Queanbeyan Multicultural Centre
Multicultural Employment Service
Monaro Police District
Service NSW
Enterprise Plus
Department of Home Affairs
Health Southern NSW Local Health District
Workforce Australia - Capital Jobs
Migration Institute OF AUSTRALIA
NSW Tafe
Superannuation Guarantee Increase
From the 1st July 2023 the superannuation guarantee, (SG), rate will increase by 0.5% from 10.5% to 11%.
The SG is based on Ordinary Time Earnings or OTE and is now applicable to all employees, even those earning less than $450/month. The exception being employees under 18 years of age and working less than 30 hours per week.
Increases will continue to rise by 0.5% each 1st July until 12%.
NSW Small Business Month
The NSW Small Business Month program is kicking off for another year, with applications now open for grants to help organisations host events in October.
Business chambers, industry groups, councils and not for profits can apply for a grant to help them host an event that supports small business. Applications close on 1 August. You can also host an unsubsidised event by applying to become a Small Business Month collaboration partner.
Growing Regions Open For Business
The Albanese Government’s new $600 million Growing Regions Program is now open for expressions of interest. It provides grants of between $500,000 and $15 million to local government entities and not-for-profit organisations, for capital works projects that deliver community and economic infrastructure projects across regional and rural Australia.
The Growing Regions Program stands in stark contrast to the discredited grants programs run by the Liberals and Nationals who ignored guidelines and proper process in favour of pork barrelling the schemes for their own electoral advantage.
We have been determined to provide something better for regional Australians.
We have spent time working on guidelines that are merit based, transparent and fairer for regional Australians.
The program will invest in critical regional infrastructure and community projects across regional and rural Australia through two $300 million funding rounds.
Local Roads and Community Infrastructure
More funding for rural, regional and outer urban roads
The next funding phase of the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure (LRCI) program, totalling $750 million, is now available for councils across Australia to nominate projects.
Phase 4 funding allocations include an additional $250 million targeted to improve rural, regional and outer urban roads.
Projects funded under Phase 4 are expected to be completed by 30 June 2025.
Read: Local Roads and Community Infrastructure
Learn: LRCI resources
Nominate: local priority projects
Help: LRCIP@infrastructure.gov.au
TAFE - Certificate III Conservation and Ecosystem Management
This nationally recognised online course contains 16 units of study, delivered 2 evenings per week over an 18-month enrolment duration. Commencing Wednesday 19th July 2023, students will develop knowledge and skills required to perform a range of tasks in the conservation and ecosystem management industry including:
Conducting ecological & cultural site inspections
Applying workplace health & safety policies & procedures
Plant identification
Ecological restoration and assisted regeneration techniques
Environmental weed control and biosecurity
Maintaining lands, parks & wildlife
Reading and interpreting maps
Recognising landforms and soil types
Telstra Media Release
Telstra has been working closely with global satellite provider, OneWeb. and have agreed commercial terms for the rollout of OneWeb Low Earth Orbit (LEO) backhaul for their commercial mobile network.
Following a successful testing program, Telstra and OneWeb will begin moving hundreds of existing remote mobile base stations currently using satellite backhaul to OneWeb's LEO solution from later this year.
It's great news for their customers located in hard-to-reach places across regional, rural and remote Australia - especially those that require added redundancy.
