CES offices to get the axe
ADELAIDE — Some 18 CES offices across South Australia are being targeted for closure as a result of the upcoming federal budget cuts. According to leaked information from the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs reported in the Advertiser, federal funding cuts make the closures "inevitable".
The loss of two-thirds of CES offices across the state will severely affect unemployed people in rural areas, as well as those in some of the more isolated suburbs and towns around Adelaide. Three to four hundred CES staff face the sack, with the department prepared to offer only 125 voluntary separation packages.
Tribute to wilderness photographer
HOBART — One hundred and eighty people packed the Mecca Cafe on June 11 for a tribute to the late Peter Dombrovskis, renowned Tasmanian wilderness photographer, who died while bushwalking in the south-west. The event was organised by the Wilderness Society, and drew many of Dombrovskis' friends, as well as environmental activists who had worked with him during the big environmental campaigns of the late '70s and '80s, and still others inspired by his work, which brought so much of the beauty and fragility of the south-west wilderness into people's consciousness.
His photographic images on pictures, postcards and in wilderness diaries can be found in every wilderness and tourist shop around Tasmania. A number of short films and slide presentations were shown at the tribute, capturing the essence of Dombrovskis' life, working to preserve areas like the Tasmanian south-west wilderness from further destruction.
Cuts to migrant English classes
SYDNEY — The NSW Teachers Federation and the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW are organising a public meeting on June 22 to protest against federal cuts to migrant English classes. The Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs has frozen its share of the funding for the classes — about $70 million or half of the total — until at least July 1. This has resulted in 121 Adult Migrant Education Service classes being cancelled, with another 54 classes under threat if the freeze is not lifted on July 1, and more if funding is not restored in the August budget.
The meeting, entitled "Migrants need English — stop the federal cuts", will take place at 10.30am at Parramatta Town Hall, Church Street, Parramatta. Education minister Amanda Vanstone, shadow minister Martin Ferguson and a representative from the Democrats will speak at the meeting which is being billed as an opportunity to tell politicians that migrants have a right to adequate English classes.