This week has seen communities across the country pay thanks to volunteers as Australia celebrates National Volunteer Week (NVW) from 14-20 May.

There are more than six million volunteers in Australia, all of whom are essential to society.  Many charities would struggle to survive without the support of their volunteers. 

Australian volunteers contribute more than 700 million hours of community service to areas such as community health care, heritage and arts, conservation, emergency services, education, social justice and sports.   

The NVW website provides information to help celebrate this important week, whether you are a volunteer, volunteer organisation, or a corporate organisation seeking ways to help recognise and thank employees who are also volunteers.

For promotional materials, including Certificates of Appreciation and posters to download, click here.

State Emergency Service (SES) and Rural Fire Service (RFS) volunteers believe they should be compensated for working outside of their communities, according to research by Southern Cross University.

Anthony Baxter-Tomkins, who will graduate with a PhD this month from the Southern Cross Business School, focused his thesis on volunteers in the SES and RFS in NSW.

"While Australia's population continues to grow, membership rates are steady in both organisations," Mr Baxter-Tomkins said.

"I specifically wanted to know why people volunteered in these organisations; what they got out of volunteering; how were they recruited and what made them either stay or leave."

"The motivation as to why people wanted to volunteer was interesting. I expected most of the responses to say they did so to serve the community or help the community.

"And while that may have been partially the case, volunteers also said they got a lot of rewards through things such as skills development, respect from the community, acceptance within the primary volunteer unit and positive media portrayal.

"Many volunteers lose wages when they go outside of their own area for extended periods which is an important growing trend.

"All of the participants of this study flatly refused to entertain the idea of any form of payment for work within their local area however.

"While they do get out of pocket expenses they could lose two weeks pay.  To get around this most of them take holiday pay to keep the money coming in to the family but then that means they don't have holidays with their family.”

A program that has helped more than 17,000 Australians with severe mental illness will continue to provide support to people in need, thanks to a $51 million boost from the Australian Government.

Seventy-eight community mental health services will share in the extra funding, which will keep about 400 professional helpers and mentors working to support people with mental illness in communities across Australia, as part of the Government’s successful Personal Helpers and Mentors initiative.

This investment means that more than 1,000 mental health workers are now funded by the Australian Government through to June 2014 – providing intensive, one-on-one support to people with mental illness in more than 170 communities.

Personal helpers and mentors provide practical support to people with mental illness and help them to set and achieve personal goals.  This can include finding suitable housing, looking for work or improving relationships with family and friends.

By working with mentors, people with mental illness can build their confidence, improve their health and wellbeing and increase connections with their community, reducing social isolation.

This investment builds on a $2.2 billion investment by the Federal Government over the next five years into Australia’s mental health system, under the National Mental Health Reform package.

The Petcare Information and Advisory Service, in partnership with the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA), is delighted to announce the inaugural Pet Friendly Planning Award.

This award will recognise planners whose work accommodates and encourages socially responsible pet ownership in Australia.  For the 2012 award, planners are invited to submit research and implementation strategies focussed on creating pet-friendly public places.

The award value is $8,000, which incorporates a $4,000 travel grant and $4,000 stipend.  The winner of the award will be announced on World Town Planning Day in November 2012 and their project will be presented at the 2013 PIA National Congress.

Planning is primarily about developing residential, commercial and public environments that cater for society’s needs.  63 per cent of Australians are pet owners, and there is an unknown further number who are members of what might be loosely described as the ‘pet alumni’.  Given pets affect such a large percentage of the community, the Petcare Information and Advisory Service and the PIA believe that this is a timely and important award that will draw attention to the need for more pet-friendly planning in Australia.

For further information, please visit the PIA website in the coming weeks.

Queensland's Local Government Minister has embarked on a tour of the state's 73 councils, starting in Townsville this week in a bid to strengthen relationships between state and local governments.

Minister David Crisafulli says it is important that the relationship between the state government and local councils is built on respect.

"My role is to make sure that local councils know that they are a valuable part of governance in Australia," he said.

"Look, we won't always agree, there might be times when we have an odd tiff but we're always going to treat them with respect because it's a level of governance that means something to me and to Campbell Newman."

Australia’s natural capital or environment assets are worth $4,574 billion and accounted for more than half of Australia’s total economic wealth in 2009-10 found the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).  The value of Australia’s natural capital in current price terms, trebled between 2000-01 and 2009-10, driven by rises in mineral commodities and land values.

Some of the key data included in the publication are:

• Water consumption in Australia fell by 43% between 1996-97 and 2010-11;
• The biggest net energy users within Australia in 2008-09 were the manufacturing industry at 1,034 Petajoules and households at 1,015 Petajoules, each representing about 26% of net use by industry and households in Australia (excluding exports and conversion losses); and
• Greenhouse gas emissions (excluding LULUCF) for Australia increased by 33% between 1989-90 and 2008-09.

The new ABS publication Completing the Picture: Environmental Accounting in Practice explores the relationships between economic activity and the environment.  This publication follows the adoption of the System of Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) as an international statistical standard by the United Nations Statistical Commission in March this year.

The adoption of the SEEA provides an opportunity to inform government decision-makers, policy analysts, scientists, industry and other groups about how SEEA style environmental accounts could be used and further developed in Australia. The ABS will be hosting a conference next week in Melbourne (14-15 May) to examine how environmental accounts can be developed and used in Australia.

Port Macquarie-Hastings Council has approved a sustainable residential village development that will be self-reliant for potable water and sewage treatment, and utilise solar power.

Infrastructure works for The Chimneys Sustainable Village are due to start in September.  An architectural competition, determining the design of the first three dwellings, is expected to be officially announced in August 2012.

Ian Bailey and Annie Georgeson - architects, planners and owners - have nominated Mitchell Builders as developer for the Village.

Each dwelling will generate green energy, fed back to the grid.  All lots are oriented to facilitate passive solar design and the community centre will feature a solar-heated pool and a grid-connected solar-lit tennis court.

Native bushland on site is to be set aside as environment protection zones.  Two historic chimneys near the site entrance are to be preserved with heritage protection zoning.

The site will be free of council water and sewage systems. Consulting engineers concluded that the project will cut greenhouse emissions by 50 per cent compared to a conventional development of the same size.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has updated its website to reflect developments in respect of Division 81 of the GST Act.

On 27 March, the ATO updated the website page “Payments to government agencies under Division 81” to include frequently asked questions.  The new material can be accessed by clicking here.

The ATO has also published two ATO interpretive decisions in respect of Division 81:

• ATO ID 2012/21 - GST and Division 81 of the GST Act: fee imposed before 1 July 2012 that was specified in the final determination
• ATO ID 2012/22 - GST and Division 81 of the GST Act: judicial system daily hearing fee imposed after 30 June 2012

On 2 May 2012, the Assistant Treasurer and Minister Assisting for Deregulation released exposure draft regulation and explanatory material specifying the GST treatment of certain Australian government fees and charges for public consultation.  Further information is available on the Treasury website.  

Any comments should be directed to the nominated Treasury representative.  The closing date for comments is 30 May.

The federal Department of Regional Australia has updated its website to include a number of new features and provide localised information about Regional Development Australia.

By entering a postcode into the new Find my RDA tool, visitors can instantly get up-to-date information about their local RDA committee.

To keep up to date with the work that each RDA committee is doing, visitors can access news from any RDA area.  There is also an events calendar to find out what is happening in local areas.

Click here to visit the website.

Johan Diepens, CEO and founder of Mobycon, the leading edge Dutch transport and mobility consultancy will give his vision of what the future holds for bike riding at the Bike Futures 2012 conference to be held in October at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Now in its fourth year, Bike Futures will tackle the issue of ensuring that the growth in bike riding around the country now requires its own transport and planning response.

Harry Barber, CEO of Bicycle Network, said: “What was once seen as a sub-culture is now fashionable, healthy and part of the transport solution.”

“While bike riding is a key factor in reducing traffic and public transport congestion, it does need a new approach that many political and planning leaders are now grappling with.”

Bike Futures 2012 will discuss how to best provide bike infrastructure, essential for mobility, to changing the ways cities work. World leading experts as well as some of Australia’s leading practitioners will explain how to best respond to the issues confronting communities as they embrace the bicycle revolution.

The two-day conference is presented by the Bicycle Network and hosted by Bicycle Network Victoria.

Public enquiries Bike Futures 2012: www.bikefutures.com.au