Category: General news

UTOPIA is an epic new production by the Emmy and BAFTA winning filmmaker and journalist John Pilger, which opens in Brisbane at the Palace Centro in James St, Fortitude Valley this Thursday 27th February.

“This powerful film by John Pilger looks at the awful truth behind white Australia’s dysfunctional relationship with Indigenous Australians.” – The Guardian

As your business grows, you will need to find money to pay for more staff, bigger facilities and increased production costs. If your business grows rapidly and the growth is largely unplanned, you’ll risk overtrading by not having enough working capital (cash for day-to-day expenses) to fulfil your expanding orders.

Not having enough working capital in the critical time between investing in growth and realising the profits is a common problem for businesses experiencing rapid expansion. It can easily ruin a business. However, there are a number of strategies for dealing with short-term cash shortfalls.

Dealing with cash shortages

There are number of immediate ways to fund unexpected cash shortages, including:

• collecting outstanding debts
• increasing prices
• borrowing money – for example, by refinancing or arranging an overdraft
• negotiating better payment terms with suppliers – for example, delaying payment in exchange for regular or bigger orders
• negotiating better payment terms with customers – for example, by offering discounts for prompt payment, encouraging automated payments or insisting on deposits first
• identifying any non-core business assets that can be sold for cash
• using factoring or invoice discounting services – a company lends you money, collects your debts and manages your books for you.

Reducing costs

An equally effective way of increasing your liquidity is to reduce or avoid any unnecessary costs to your business by:

• taking no unnecessary money out of the business while its cash flow is limited
• opting to lease or hire-purchase new premises or machinery rather than buy outright and incur more debt
• delaying any increases in salaries
• reducing overheads – for example, substituting business travel and face-to-face meetings with conference calls.

Monitor and forecast cash flow

To improve your cash flow in the longer term, however, your business will need to better manage its cash flow, particularly if you are planning further expansion.

By monitoring and forecasting your cash inflows and outflows, you can better predict cash flow shortfalls and organise debt finance ahead of time if necessary. With adequate working capital in order, you’ll then have more time to manage other aspects of your rapidly expanding business.

Related links

• Find out more about the Mentoring for Growth (M4G) program, which can help your business deal with rapid growth.

The main challenge of G20 for Micah Projects, a community organisation working with homeless people in the inner city, will be locating temporary accommodation during the G20 period, along with all the other visitors to the city.

“We need to plan ahead”, Karyn Walsh Micah Projects’ Coordinator said.  “Finding temporary accommodation further afield is not about displacing people in crisis during G20, but a response to reduced availability of affordable short-term accommodation in the inner city and nearby locations.”

Ms Walsh said “G20 won’t change how we work with people who are homeless.  For Micah and other non-government organisations we work with, the first response is always to ensure people sleeping rough are safely placed in temporary accommodation.  Short term accommodation is critical to provide safety and a place to start the process of resolving crisis and accessing housing.”

“Like everyone else in the areas affected by G20, people who are living on the streets of Brisbane will be affected by G20” she said, ‘but good communication, working together with police, accommodation providers, mental health services, domestic violence services  and our knowledge of the people we work with, we can mitigate any adverse effects the change inevitably brings. “

Micah Projects funding from government includes funding to broker short-term accommodation, and Micah raises additional funding from the community where exceptional circumstances create additional demand.

Ms Walsh said “Our goal to raise funds to plan for providing people with options is based on experience.  Over the Christmas and New Year holiday period, private donations were received which provided approximately $7,000 in assistance to 5 individuals and 24 families – a total of 38 adults and 56 children – for accommodation, food, housing set up costs and emergency removalist expenses, etc.

Ms Walsh said that Micah’s aspiration for G20 would be that

• individuals and families in crisis are supported to access services
• people living on the streets are supported in understanding the locational changes without fear or harassment
• G20 leaders would spend time addressing homelessness at a global, national and local level in our countries as economies create conditions where so many citizens across the globe are faced with living without a home.

Giant hot air artwork The Skywhale to hover over Brisbane Powerhouse this week.

Don’t be alarmed if you see a giant anomalistic creature residing near Brisbane Powerhouse later this week. First seen hovering over the city of Canberra last year, the controversial hot-air artwork, The Skywhale, is making her way to Brisbane. Gifted from the Centenary of Canberra, The Skywhale will make three appearances from Wednesday 19 – Friday 21 February 2014 – coinciding with the APAM.

Created by internationally renowned artist and former Canberran Patricia Piccinini, at 34m long and 23m high, The Skywhale is at least twice as big as a standard hot-air balloon, weighs half a tonne and used more than 3.5km of fabric. It took 16 people seven months and more than 3.3million stitches to design and make and will carry a pilot plus two passengers to an altitude of 3000ft.

Patricia spoke of her creation, highlighting that the key purpose of its nature is to be a cryptic work.

“I don’t really want to tell people what exactly to think about the Skywhale. That is very much up to them. However, Skywhale for me is something of a meditation on nature and evolution, which are two things that fascinate me.

“Fifty million years ago whales were small dog-like mammals with hoofs called pakicetidae. Somehow they went back to the sea and became huge and intelligent. In that context, the idea that the journey could have ended in the air, with a creature like the Skywhale, is not so ridiculous.”

Piccinini is one of Australia’s best-known contemporary artists and works in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, video, sound and digital prints and has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Victoria and Albert Museum London, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and one of the world’s leading art shows, Documenta in Kassel, Germany.

According to Patricia she was very happy for the Centenary of Canberra commission to be gifted to Brisbane Powerhouse with the vision that it would tour throughout Australia and the world.

“I hope that she can be source of joy and wonder; that she can just fly and fly and fly.”

Viewings of The Skywhale are scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, from 6 – 8pm. It will be tethered at the Powerhouse Plaza, near the main entrance to the Brisbane Powerhouse.

Jasmine Phillips is delighted to step in to sign for the deaf community in the forthcoming production of The Vagina Monologues at the Judith Wright Centre in March, particularly since it’s a family affair.

West End resident, political activist and Auslan interpreter, Jasmine will not only share the interpreting role with her sister, Michelle Phillips but is doing so at the request of her Producer-Director mother, Sally Lattin.

Jasmine was first in the family to discover the language of the deaf community when she studied Cultural Studies and Politics at university and met and became close friends with a fellow student who was deaf. This gave her an interest in signing so that she could communicate effectively with her friend but, having become more involved in the deaf community,

Jasmine decided to become an Auslan interpreter.

“My sister Michelle developed an interest in the Auslan language too along with the rest of the family but it was Michelle and I who became passionate about it,” Jasmine said.

“Auslan is the language of the deaf community in Australia and we as interpreters are thrust into many scenarios that are challenging and with unusual circumstances that require us to think on our feet and draw on interpreter training and ethics,” Jasmine said.

“I’m thrilled to be signing for The Vagina Monologues after their sell out season in Maleny last year. Making thought-provoking and entertaining arts accessible to Auslan users is a fantastic feat.  I’m very glad to be a part of it.”

She has been signing for the Woodford Folk Festival events for many years such as the opening and closing ceremonies which she has done on many occasions. She was immortalized on film by Darmin Cameron who won the Spirit of Woodford Video Award for his film Interpreting Woodford, a 12-minute documentary about Jasmine when she interpreted comedians performing at the Woodford Comedy Club.

“Interpreters rarely have access to materials in order to prepare in their day to day work. The good thing about theatre interpreting is that you have a script to familiarize yourself with before the big day, a luxury that interpreters rarely receive. “

Sally Lattin’s production company, Wild Women Productions brings Eve Ensler’s award-winning play to Brisbane at the end of March. The play is made up of a series of monologues, inspired by Ensler’s interviews with over 200 women from around the world. Through these monologues—which range from riveting manifestos to comedic recounts of real women’s stories—Wild Women Productions will celebrate women’s strength and sexuality, address issues such as violence against women, and work to create an empowering, positive perception of women.

M15+ classification. Explicit language and adult themes.

Find us on Facebook:  www.facebook.com/WildWomenProductions

BRISBANE– Judith Wright Centre
Friday March 28 2014 at 7.30pm
Saturday March 29 2014 at 2.00pm
Bookings: judithwrightcentre.com, 07 3872 9000

The Australian Marine Conservation Society has cautioned the Newman Government over a proposal to allow fishing in a green zone at Redcliffe, Moreton Bay Marine Park in South-east Queensland.

“This decision is clearly a complete misread of community sentiment on our marine park,” said Fiona Maxwell from the Australian Marine Conservation Society.

“The science and public sentiment are solid. Marine conservation and great fishing go hand in hand in Moreton Bay, and the public want them to stay.  The Newman Government has clearly not considered the science or the real sentiment of the community in this announcement,” said Ms Maxwell.

There was extensive community consultation through the Moreton Bay Marine Park process finalised in 2009, with over 8000 submissions received from ocean lovers, scientists and recreational users of the marine park. Recent scientific surveys of recreational fishers show that a clear majority believe that green zones are good for Moreton Bay, further evidence that marine parks are delivering clear benefits for fishers and conservation alike.

“The scientific and Government studies clearly show the great majority of recreational fishers, both in Brisbane and throughout Queensland, believe that our highly protected green zones are a good and pretty reasonable thing, and that great conservation and great fishing go hand in hand,” Ms Maxwell said.

“We question why Premier Newman is going against the science and the rigorously surveyed opinions of local recreational fishers to adopt a proposal that was being pushed by disgraced former MP Scott Driscoll whilst he was still the member for Redcliffe. There was no scientific process behind this decision.

“History, the science and simple common sense shows that recreational fishers and  other recreational users continue to enjoy the Bay as much as they always have – a point obvious to anyone that spends any time on the waters of Moreton Bay. It is difficult to understand the motive behind this retrograde proposal,” said Ms Maxwell.

Two recently published peer-reviewed studies from the CSIRO and local universities clearly show that the majority of local fishers think the Marine Park and its green zones are positive for the bay, and that the new zoning plan is delivering benefits to the community.

Main findings from the recent research (available here) include:

64.7% of surveyed recreational fishers said that the current zoning of the marine park would be positive for the biology’ of the bay.

Far from impacting fishers negatively – as scaremongers predicted – Moreton Bay Marine Park is delivering significant economic benefits to local recreational fishers ($1M-$2.5M per year).

A survey of north Queensland recreational fishers also showed that, in the much larger Great Barrier Reef Marine Park with double the proportion of green zones, 73% of fishers believed the green zones had either no effect or a positive effect on their fishing.