1. Twenty-eight civilians serving the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and AusAID were honoured this week 10 years ago for their service in war-torn Afghanistan.
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd presented 28 staff with plaques to thank them for their work in tough and often dangerous conditions.
“There are few places in the world that offer Australian Government personnel an assignment as important, demanding or rewarding as service in Afghanistan,” Mr Rudd said.
2. NSW State Records launched a new website this week aimed at increasing public accessibility to the State Archives collection.
State Records said the project could lead to new ways of collecting information and create new possibilities for searching the archives.
The information published on the new website contained background data on its content, which would help search engines find information faster and more easily and therefore allow better accessibility.
3. Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh unveiled Operation Queenslander this week, a policy for recovery and reconstruction after natural disasters had brought serious damages to the State.
Based on a report by the Queensland Reconstruction Authority, the policy was to guide the reconstruction and enhancement of all flood and cyclone affected communities, including rebuilding billions of dollars worth of buildings and infrastructure.
“We know that during the next two years we must rebuild lives as well as buildings,” Ms Bligh said.
4. Also in Queensland, a new national park was declared over 20 per cent of North Stradbroke Island.
The Premier, Anna Bligh said 5,240ha had been given the highest possible conservation protection and was named Naree Budjong Djara, meaning “My Mother Earth” to be jointly managed by traditional owners.
Ms Bligh said she wanted to see North Stradbroke transformed from a mining island to an island paradise.
5. The South Australian environment was also benefiting this week in 2011, with 900,000ha of the Nullarbor Plain declared a Wilderness Protection Area, effectively doubling the amount of land enjoying the highest level of protection in the State.
Premier, Mike Rann said the Nullarbor Wilderness Protection Area would stretch almost 200 km from the West Australian border along the Great Australian Bight and would “help conserve our famous treeless plain, the towering Bunda Cliffs and the Nullarbor’s internationally renowned arid environment”.
6. Public schoolteachers in Western Australia were winning high praise from the Minister for Education, Liz Constable for ensuring students at Bayulu Remote Community School continued their schooling during that year’s recent Kimberley floods.
When Bayulu was cut off by flood waters, teachers took extraordinary measures to keep the school running, including sleeping on swags in classrooms, after which school Principal Ken Molyneux said mosquitoes, a lack of hot water and brown snakes were some of the challenges the teachers faced.
