MJA Supporting the North Warrandyte CFA and Red Cross

One of our team members is a volunteer in the North Warrandyte CFA. Along with every man, woman, child and dog he's been busy fighting the bushfires in Victoria. As part of fighting the Kinglake fire, where most people first heard of the tragedy, the Captain of North Warrandyte CFA received spinal injuries.

The report from our team member:

Unfortunately, our Captain, Rohan Thornton, was admitted to hospital suffering some minor spinal injuries resulting from Kinglake incident. He is currently doing well, but needs to remain in hospital for the time being - much to his disappointment! He is expected to make a full recovery. However, The Tanker, whilst damaged, managed to escape the flames. It is currently undertaking a damage assessment and we hope to have it returned to service as soon as practical. To ensure fire coverage for our area as we currently have a Region loan tanker to fill the gap.

MJA has made donations to North Warrandyte CFA and the Red Cross Bushfire relief program.

Our thoughts are with all of those serving on the front line, and the families, friends and loved ones of the victims and survivors.

Climate Ready: First round offers are out

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Resources has announced the first round of recipients for Climate Ready, the government's four year, $75m grant funding program for technologies to achieve climate change. The list of recipients is available here (pdf).

It's interesting to observe that this round has provided $27.7m of grant funds. That means that the first round has consumed over one third of the available funding for the program, a level of funding that is probably unsustainable unless there is an announcement of significant further investment as part of the economic stimulus, budget or Cutler Review/Venturous Australia response.

This may actually happen, as commentators on the automotive grants Clean Car Innovation Fund are already recommending that the non-motor vehicle producers may be better off if the $400m is reallocated to Climate Ready and invested in these projects, if only because grants are dollar for dollar rather than 1:4.

Also, my speculation that the likelihood of getting a $5m grant was low was wrong, as one project received the maximum amount of $5m (Hofmann Engineering), and another two received over $2m.

Another round of projects closed in December, and we would expect announcements on those projects over the next month or two.

Bradley Review due early March - no official word on Cutler Review Response

In a press release yesterday, Julia Gillard MP confirmed that the government's response to the Bradley Review of Higher Education would be released in early March 2009.

She noted that a interdepartmental committees have been formed to deal with issues where the Bradley and Cutler Reports intersect.

Interestingly, given the point we are at in both processes, six roundtable discussions are being held by the Minister on the Bradley Review to provide a confidential forum.

I wonder whether anything similar will be done for the Cutler Review response.

Cutler Review: National Innovation Policy delayed until late March 2009

The latest whispers reaching us suggest that the federal government's response to Venturous Australia, also known as the Cutler Report, will not be public until late March 2009.


With talk of business and investment stimulus packages currently being developed I was hopeful that the policy would be announced sooner. This rumour, combined with the announcement that the budget will now be in deficit, compounds the likelihood that initiatives in the innovation policy will perhaps be more modest than Venturous Australia recommends.

Moreover, we anticipate a staggered introduction of initiatives, with some immediate, some in the 2009/10 federal budget and others not implemented to 2010/11.

Those readers with a keen eye will observe that this is a very interesting timeline given the Australian electoral cycle. Engaging the opposition parties on this subject would seem prudent. After all, knowing what will and will not meet with bipartisan support is going to be a key in understanding what investments will be made in our innovation policy over any workable timeline - particularly the ten year horizon that the Minister has mentioned.

I'll keep you up to date on developments.