Local Futures

July 17, 2014

Natural Disaster Mitigation – To Save Taxpayers Billions?

“An open-source platform that provides access to information about disasters such as floods and bushfires could help yield savings of $500 million to $2.4 billion alone.” The Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safer Communities. About The Roundtable’s Report […]
July 16, 2014

Students Doing Well With Early Start/Finish

A year after Merrylands East Public principal John Goh introduced early start and finish times the ‘experiment’ has been declared a huge success. The 370 students are enjoying school more for the right reasons and boys in particular have improved […]
May 29, 2014

Free ‘Organic Origins’ Delivery To Warrandytians!

Local organic delivery company, Organic Origins, is offering free delivery to all PWF readers who live in or near Warrandyte – a leafy part of Melbourne’s northern fringe – AND Liane and Josh are happy for this discount not to […]
May 29, 2014

Would Someone Like To Visit / Help Out In Dampier, WA?

Would someone like to spend some time in Dampier, in WA’s Pilbara region – Red Dog territory? PWF has just received the following letter from a very good-hearted semi-retired school teacher, Julie McGowan. She writes: Hi My name is Julie […]
May 29, 2014

Farm Technology Opportunity: Some Innovating, Some ‘Need Vision’

New predictive GIS (Geographic Information System) technology is being hailed with “Farmers in Queensland’s peanut capital of Kingaroy.. at the front line of a precision agriculture program which could revolutionise the Australian farming industry”… BUT multinational Israeli fertilizer company Haifa […]
May 25, 2014

Smart Phone Taxi Booking App – Disruptive, But Better?

Cabcharge – Australia’s virtual taxi monopoly – faces reduced fares during off-peak hours from competitors such as gocatch, Ingogo and Uber, as smart phone algorithms supporting alternative taxi booking services continue to improve. Uber fare reductions up to 40% in […]
May 23, 2014

Participatory Democracy – Learn How Indi Did It…Is Doing It

Remember how Independent candidate, Cathy McGowan and her team in Indi, NE Victoria, won a safe federal Liberal seat on the basis of participatory democracy in 2013? Voice for Indi (V4I) will run a ‘How we did it forum,’ Indi […]
May 16, 2014

Interested In Participating In Sydney’s EcoXpo 2014?

Last year Dr. David Suzuki helped the EcoXpo celebrate its 5th anniversary – a great success, by all accounts – and this year the City of Sydney will be a partner, recognising the EcoXpo as the major sustainable event in […]
May 15, 2014

‘The Problem With The Way We Educate Economists’!!

Congrats to Fairfax Media for publishing Dr Tim Thornton’s article on problems with the way we educate economists…the morning after the Coalition’s budget launch! Economics has long been recognised as an ‘inherently precise discipline’ (M A Salinger) and apparently even […]
May 13, 2014

Tackling Rhino Poaching – A Realistic Female Approach

The Guardian has reported a fascinating piece of realistic communication strategy from Melbourne businesswoman, Lyn Johnson, who wants to stop the multimillion-dollar business of importing rhino horn into Vietnam. 100g of rhino horn can fetch $6000, dearer than gold. Lyn […]
April 30, 2014

Energy Storage: New York MTA, Towoomba Airport…

RenewEconomy has a special edition on Energy Storage and tells us that NYC transit authority has installed a huge on-site energy storage system as part of an effort to cut its energy consumption by ‘increasing its smarts and shaving peak […]
April 29, 2014

Can’t We Do Better With Our Super System?

The Grattan Institute’s Jim Minifie of has some clear pointers on how to halve Australians’ super fees. Given the commentary that government expenditure in the superannuation arena predominantly benefits the well-off and is therefore ‘sacrocanct’, could we see a $10 […]