Griffith by-election Labor candidate Terri Butler stood up for motorists, truckies and their families this morning when she took her pledge to save the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal for a safer and fairer road transport industry.

Held at a Transport Workers’ Union members barbeque, TWU State Secretary Peter Biagini said Ms Butler showed her commitment to the people of Griffith and to the unacceptably high level of fatal truck crashes on our roads.

‘Hundreds of people die in truck crashes each year on Australian roads, devastating families and communities in Queensland and across the country,’ Mr Biagini said.

‘Truck drivers share the roads with everyone else, that’s why Safe Rates is so important.’

‘Look at the last week, already we’ve seen far too many truck fires, crashes and deaths on Queensland roads.’

‘Safe Rates through the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal will remove the economic pressures major companies put on drivers to skip breaks, delay maintenance and work faster and longer to deliver their goods,’ Mr Biagini said.

‘Truck drivers are out there on the roads everyday trying to make a living and deserve to get home to their families safely at the end of the day.’

Joined at the barbeque by Opposition Leader and Safe Rates advocate Bill Shorten, Ms Butler said she understood the pressures on her community and looked forward to delivering in parliament on their behalf.

‘Safe Rates is important to the people of Griffith because it means drivers can afford to properly maintain their vehicles, can drive safely without having to meet impossible deadlines, and can earn a fair wage that allows them to put food on the family table,’ Ms Butler said.

‘Safe Rates make our trucking sector viable and sustainable – and they save lives.

‘Now it’s time for Mr Glasson to let the local community know if he think it’s ok for truckies to be squeezed to breaking point just to put food on the table.’

Healthy Waterways and Sea World Research & Rescue Foundation have announced a grants program to help fight plastic pollution

Healthy Waterways and the Sea World Research & Rescue Foundation have launched a Community Marine Debris Grant Scheme to fight against the staggering amount of litter entering South East Queensland’s waterways and threatening marine wildlife.

Healthy Waterways’ Clean Up Crew collects over 250,000 items of floating litter from South East Queensland’s waterways every year – and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Community Marine Debris Grant Scheme is offering 14 grants to support catchment groups, schools, landholders and the general community in South East Queensland to undertake on-ground waterway litter cleanup activities for the long-term prevention of marine debris.

Chief Executive Officer of Healthy Waterways, Ms Julie McLellan, said Healthy Waterways and the Sea World Research & Rescue Foundation hope to inspire the community to get involved in the issue of waterway litter.

“Waterway litter and marine debris, particularly plastic, pose a serious threat to sea turtles and other marine wildlife. These grants are a great opportunity to monitor the impacts of waterway litter while encouraging people to lend a hand in cleaning up their local waterway,” Ms McLellan said.

“Up to 14 projects can be supported through the grant scheme and each successful applicant will receive up to $1,000 to support waterway litter cleanup activities,” she said.

Director of Sea World Research & Rescue Foundation, Trevor Long, said marine debris is a huge problem for marine life especially for some of the many turtles the foundation rescue and rehabilitate each year.

“This program aims to gather information regarding the extent of marine debris in South East Queensland while also raising community awareness about the issue. Together with Healthy Waterways and the community we feel we can make a difference in addressing this growing problem,” he said.

Grant applications close on Monday 10 February 2014. For more information, visit www.healthywaterways.org

The Coffee Club today announced their new range of colourful babycino karma cups, which are now available at all Queensland stores to help raise funds for the Children’s Hospital Foundation Australia. $1 from each cup sold will help fund ongoing treatments and long stays of little patients in the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Babycinos are free at The Coffee Club and are proving more popular than ever with young customers, as over 7,000 babycinos are ordered each week across the 140 Coffee Club stores throughout Queensland.

John Lazarou, Director of The Coffee Club, said the group has loved supporting the Children’s Hospital Foundation for the past 13 years and is very excited to launch the range of babycino karma cups as its latest initiative to help raise funds for an extremely worthwhile cause.

“What better way to raise money for the Royal Children’s Hospital, than making something for the kids. Our junior customers can collect and re-use these on each trip to The Coffee Club with mum or dad, all while helping the Children’s Hospital Foundation. They are colourful, fun, lightweight and a nice take home too,” said John.

According to the Children’s Hospital Foundation, the funds raised will also go towards providing fun bedside entertainment to help brighten the day of little patients while they are in hospital.

The Coffee Club are big supporters of the Children’s Hospital Foundation; donating funds raised from The Coffee Club’s Charity Ball and also supporting the Special Children’s Christmas Parties as well as the B105 Christmas Appeal each year.

The babycino karma cups are refillable, reusable and collectable, available in five different colours – pink, purple, green, blue and black.

Last year, The Coffee Club served 364,000 babycinos and 40 million cups of coffee and proudly employs more than 6,000 people nationally. The Coffee Club is open seven days a week with varying trading hours across Australia, depending on location.

Green preferences will go to  five progressive micro parties ahead of the ALP in the Griffith by-election.

“The Greens spearhead a progressive movement that is a coalition of concerned citizens and activists opposed to putting short term profits first and everything else a distant second,” Griffith candidate, Geoff Ebbs said.

“The ALP has spent the last thirty years with one hand in the bosses’ pocket and one hand in the workers’. That is the fundamental reason it has lost its way.

“The Greens are a force in our own right. We effectively stand up for people, community and the environment in local, state and federal government. We are the party of the future.”

Mr Ebbs said that the five parties they have placed ahead of the ALP are all well aligned with Green values and contain many activists concerned that the Greens are too moderate on their particular issue.

“As a mature party with real power, we cannot push every agenda as strongly as its advocates would like. Our role as the political wing of the movement is to support these micro-parties and to represent their interests in parliament.”

In order of Greens preferences the parties are:

• Bullet Train for Australia – The bullet train is a Greens initiative and official party policy.
• Stable Population Party – Over-population and consumption are the underlying causes of our current crises.
• Pirate Party of Australia – Big Brother is here and is not working on behalf of the people
• Secular Party of Australia – The separation of church and state is an important plank in democracy
• Karel Boele Independent – The People Decide is part of a movement to build the grass roots democracy that is one of the four pillars of the Greens.

Social media isn’t as mysterious as the myriad of business seminars indicate, according to a new article by Geoff Ebbs in the February edition of Westender

We all know that it is easier to sell something to an existing customer than it is to find new customers and we all know that eighty percent of our business comes from twenty percent of our customers.

We can’t grow our business, though, just by selling new things to the best one in five of our existing customers.

The challenge is to find and convert new customers without breaking the bank.

The core message

Many local business owners have attended seminars in the last year extolling the virtues of facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr or pInterest. I know. I’ve seen you there.

Most of these seminars provide compelling evidence that social media works.

Facebook’s Australian small business marketing manager, Nick Bowditch, is a three time netrepreneur who built and sold his three businesses from his PC. Two of them sold for more than a million dollars. Addressing the Small Business Summit at Rydges in July, Bowditch pointed out that searches are increasingly local and predominantly mobile and that social media is the glue that underpins an increasing proportion of communications.

Andrew Bleeker spoke passionately at DNA://13 in Sydney last year about the lessons learned in three US presidential campaigns and how they impact on business.

Most of these seminars leave business people feeling that they somehow missed the point.

Geoff’s article goes through the connection between using social media to connect with your potential customers and actually making a sale.

In the meantime, Westender is keen to hear your stories, successful or otherwise and share them with our business readers through our online weekly business eNews and the business pages of our print publication.

Geoff Ebbs is the author of the Australian Internet Book which sold 45,000 copies in 1995 and went on to a fourth edition, the pioneer of online content management systems and a management consultant with the Ebono Institute.

Declaration of Interest: The Ebono Institute is a shareholder in Urban Voice, the publisher of Westender.

Andrew Bleeker’s talk is available at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/browse/video_popup.htm?vidURL=/tv/bigideas/stories/2013/03/04/3702777-mediarss-full.xml&vidTitle=Andrew%20Bleeker%20on%20Social%20Campaigning&vidLength=Full

The Westender’s coverage of social media issues is available at http://westender.com.au/tag/social-media/

With Brisbane City Council investing heavily in a broadband strategy to bring Brsibane’s small businesses into the 21st century, “ready or not” it is woth considering the lessons learned in broadband implementation programs in the USA. While the Minnesota program described here was strikingly successful, the lessons learned indicate that you cannot simply give people fast broadband and wait for the results. The examples concern relatively small cities in the USA  1 million people and so are referred to as rural, but there are many characteristics in common with Brisbane.

A link to the full article is provided below.

KEY ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL ADOPTION EFFORTS

1. Communities know best.

Involve citizens directly in articulating their community’s broadband adoption and utilization goals to catalyze long-term engagement needed to increase adoption.

2. Local leadership matters.

Help local broadband champions get and use skills to frame issues, build and sustain relationships and mobilize people to build a community’s capacity to achieve its broadband goals.

3. Broadband is not an end in itself.

It is a means to the higher ends of  increased economic vitality and improved quality of life. Framing it this way helps.

4. High-touch outreach works.

Effective recruitment strategies are intracommunity, hyperlocal and personalized. Change follows relationship lines.

5. Peers make great teachers.

Peer-based learning formats are popular, low-cost and easily sustainable tools to build a community’s technological savvy.

CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Broadband access alone is not enough.

Without concerted, community-based efforts to ensure that all citizens are able to take advantage of the Internet, the digital divide will continue to grow and to undermine America’s promise as a democracy where equal opportunity is available to all.

Educate and support

Community-based broadband literacy and market development efforts can and do help ensure that all Americans can participate fully in [the] nation’s economy and civic and cultural life. Eliminating the digital divide is an urgent challenge that must be part of [the] national agenda. States and communities need the federal government and its resources as a partner in this work.

Access to broadband is key:

Evidence abounds that high-speed Internet access has economic benefits (positive impact on median household income, employment and business growth). But so is adoption. According to the report “Broadband’s Contribution to Economic Health in Rural Areas: A Causal Analysis,” by B. Whitacre, S. Strover and R. Gallardo (March 26, 2013), “Non-metro counties with high levels of broadband adoption in 2010 had significantly higher growth in median household income between 2001 and 2010 compared to counties that had similar characteristics in the 1990s but were not as successful at adopting broadband.”

This point was eloquently echoed in a recent edition of ”The Daily Yonder,” published on the Web by the Center for Rural Strategies, a nonprofit media organization based in Whitesburg, Ky., and Knoxville, Tenn.: “While most government broadband policies have traditionally focused exclusively on providing infrastructure, there is a case to be made for focusing on demand. Investments in people, education and training are essential to achieve meaningful use of the lnternet.”

The full text of this article is available at http://www.bbpmag.com/2013mags/november/BBC_Nov13_BroadbandAdoption.pdf