Businesses in the Parkes Electorate are able to apply for support to boost the skills in their workforce with applications now open for the new $476 million Industry Skills Fund. The fund will provide up to 200,000 training places and skills advice for businesses over the next four years. The Industry Skills Fund is a…
REGIONAL Development Australia (RDA) will greatly benefit from new appointments to each of its committees. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Warren Truss said the three-year appointments will provide leadership to RDA organisations to develop a model where all three tiers of government work together. “The RDA committees can play a…
Federal Member for Parkes, Mark Coulton has said that vocational education and training (VET) students now have a complaints hotline to bring rogue training providers to the attention of regulators. “Our Government is taking firm action to crack down on unscrupulous and misleading behaviour by some training providers and brokers, and this one-stop-shop hotline will…
The benefits stemming from Australia’s Free Trade Agreement with Japan will be felt right across regional Australia with local businesses and consumers set to reap the rewards of the deal. The landmark Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement (JAEPA) entered into force last week. This means more than 97 per cent of Australia’s goods exports to Japan…
In December last year, Minister for Small Business, Bruce Billson issued a new direction to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to increase efforts to monitor pricing and profits in the fuel industry over the next three years. These monitoring reports will be useful evidence for identifying where fuel pricing has not responded to…
Federal Member for Parkes, Mark Coulton, has said that new regulations introduced by the Federal Government and effective from 1 January 2015 are targeted at rogue operators within the training sector. Mr Coulton said that there had been cases within the Electorate where training brokers had employed unscrupulous practices to sign prospective students up. “Most…