the campaign trail - 20 oct

I'm running in the upcoming state election in the upper house seat of Eastern Metropolitan. It's been another busy week on the campaign trail. This week includes updates on:

- Doncaster Rail petition presented to state parliament

Greens Leader, Greg Barber MLC joined with
the We Support Doncaster Rail group and Greens
candidates Samantha Dunn - Eastern Metro,
Richard Cranston - Warrandyte and Ben Cronly - Bulleen.

- Greens commit to business case and detailed engineering for Doncaster Rail  
- Greens candidates Liezl Shnookal - Eltham, Ben Cronly - Bulleen and Richard Cranston - Warrandyte take the TAFE4all pledge
- Public Transport Rally, Greens support the call for Doncaster Rail
- Daniel Andrews refuses the Greens invitation to catch the bus from the Doncaster Park and Ride to the city
- Huge turn out in for the Greens Statewide Day of Action

- Greens support the Reclaim the Night march

- Doorknocking across Eastern Metro, be part of the success story, find your local event here

- Greens head to the Whitehorse Spring Festival
- Greens take the pledge to put Education 1st

You can keep up to date with campaign news on:

facebook - Samantha Dunn EasternMetropolitan
  or
twitter - @greens4eastmet 

to volunteer or donate

web - Samantha Dunn, Candidate for Eastern Metropolitan

the campaign trail - 8 sep

I'm running in the upcoming state election in the upper house seat of Eastern Metropolitan. It's been another busy week on the campaign trail. This week includes updates on:

- Threatened Species Day - a visit to Toolangi with Greens Leader, Senator Christine Milne, and Victorian Senator Janet Rice
- Greens call for inquiry into Crown license extension
- Greens support Knox Council's call for action on Rowville Rail
- Greens will phase out gambling, alcohol and junk food advertising on public transport and billboards
- I sign the TAFE4ALL pledge
- Old parties block misconduct reform
- Filling the missing tram links  
- Greens say school autonomy going too far - schools need more support
- Be part of the phonebank action in Maroondah Knox
- Campaigning at the Warrandyte Market
- Manningham Greens campaign at the DART 

You can keep up to date with campaign news on:

facebook - Samantha Dunn EasternMetropolitan

  or
twitter - @greens4eastmet 

to volunteer or donate

web - Samantha Dunn, Candidate for Eastern Metropolitan

the campaign trail - 12 aug

Another busy week on the campaign trail. This week includes updates on:

PTV 'Public Forum' Farce - The PTV and Transdev 'only by invite' consultations
Ben Cronly preselected for Bulleen
Lib/Lab vote down Greens Pokies Bill to support $1 bets
Manningham Greens talk to commuters
Fundraiser for Eltham and Ivanhoe
TAFE in trouble - VAGO report
Your invitation to the launch of Bulleen and Warrandyte campaigns


You can keep up to date with campaign news on:
facebook - Samantha Dunn EasternMetropolitan
or
twitter - @greens4eastmet

to volunteer or donate
web - Samantha Dunn, Candidate for Eastern Metropolitan

want higher ed in lilydale? then it’s time to act

There’s a push by key prominent people in the community as well as the Shire of Yarra Ranges to see the Swinburne site in Lilydale continue to be used for education.

A recent community forum saw 200 people come together concerned about access to ongoing higher education for the outer east. Their vision is for a Yarra Valley Education Precinct.

Yarra Ranges Council has been seeking interest from potential education providers with the aim of continuing the delivery of tertiary education and skills training. Part of council’s work includes finalising a masterplan for the site which envisages cultural and community uses to complement the core educational use.

8 Things you can do

The need is apparent, the reason the site was sought in the first place was due to the low retention rates in the outer east, to encourage students to further their studies and provide local employers with a skilled workforce.

The Education Precinct needs a lot of support, not only from council or a small group of organisers, this is a whole of community effort to make sure we keep higher education available in Lilydale.

10 Key things

Forum organisers came up with a nifty list of 8 Things you can do to support further educational opportunities in Yarra Ranges and 10 Key Points for the ongoing provision of a Yarra Valley Education Precinct in Lilydale.

There you’ll find hints on who to speak to, what to say and why it’s important.

And in the broader TAFE4ALL campaign, there’s a short video competition so you can tell everyone why TAFE is awesome. TAFE4ALL are looking for 2–3 minute videos that illustrate the value of TAFE for students and the community.

To find out more you can download a poster here or visit TAFE4All for full details, including terms and conditions. Deadline for entries is October 29.

Win from a total prize pool of $2000. One Victorian TAFE student will also be selected to undertake a two-week internship in Madman's Entertainment's DVD authoring department.

Entrants can submit a short video in any category on the theme "Why TAFE is Awesome". Let your friends and family know that this is a great — and creative — way to support TAFE.

So don’t hold back, time to act, we need to keep higher ed in Lilydale.

emergency rally - tafe4all

tafe4all, swinburne lilydale, the impacts continue

Me with Amie and Jacinta, students at Swinburne
Lilydale. Last week Amie spoke to us about
the impacts the closure will have on students.

Last week I attended the TAFE4All rally in Melbourne, I was there to support locals also attending.


The petitions so far, in the thousands.

At its meeting of 12 June, the majority of Yarra Ranges Councillors voted to support the TAFE4All campaign. At our meeting of 10 July, we unanimously resolved to write to local, state and federal members of parliament expressing concern regarding the state government’s decision to reduce funding to the sector, which has resulted in Swinburne University of Technology’s announcement that it will close its Lilydale campus. To support students we’ve also had copies of the petitions available at all of our community links throughout the shire.

As has been well documented, Swinburne University of Technology will close its Lilydale campus, with up to 240 staff to lose their jobs. 

TAFE courses in hospitality, leisure, recreation and tourism will no longer be offered. With health related courses in nursing, community health, childcare, children’s services and home and community care will be a direct blow to the skills base of Yarra Ranges.

The march took up a few blocks from the State
Library to Parliament House.

This decision will see withdrawal of the following opportunities for local students:
·6 post graduate courses
.6 research courses
·69 TAFE courses
·26 undergraduate courses



Greens MLC Sue Pennicuik was at the rally.
The same day in Parliament she raised the
 issue of training rorts, you can read more
 in hansard.

Similarly, the closure will impact international student options with the loss of:
·3 research courses
·9 TAFE courses
·27 undergraduate courses

The decision comes after the Victorian government slashed $290 million from TAFE funding in the 2012/13 budget. Swinburne had $35 million cut from its budget for this financial year.

The Economic Development Unit of the Shire has analysed the economic impacts to the region. As a result of the closure of Swinburne will see a substantial loss of jobs in the education and training sector for our municipal economy.

At this stage definitive numbers on the amount of job losses that will be lost from the Lilydale campus across teaching, administrative support and maintenance staff has not been fully detailed by the University.

Whilst these NMIT students performed 'We are the
Champions', the Lilydale students leapt up on the stage.

The education sector is the sixth most important sector for output and is the third most significant sector of employment in Yarra Ranges (source Remplan 2012). Any impact to this sector will be immediately felt within the municipality leaving a significant challenge to replace this economic activity. Furthermore, the negative social impacts to our community by reduced access and opportunities for higher education will be significant and long term in effect.

If the assumption that the loss of direct jobs is 240, this loss corresponds to a decrease in output of approximately $26 million to the municipal economy. From this direct contraction in the economy, flow on impacts of the reduced purchasing of local goods and services could result in the loss of a further 25 jobs, as well as secondary job losses which could generate a further 51 job losses.

Modelling completed by the Shire’s Economic Development Unit shows that the cumulative loss is as much as $46 million for our local economy when you take into account the direct, industrial and consumption effect of the losses.

Add to this the harrowing story of Swinburne Students, who we heard from at last week’s council meeting, who will have to face 2 hour plus one way trip to alternate campuses to access their courses, would you travel 4 hours a day?

It is even more galling when considering the response of the Member for Gembrook who says “the government welcomes the strengthened focus on these areas” (science and technology.. by Swinburne) and goes on to say that the decisions made by Swinburne “makes sense”. Tell that to students in the Upper Yarra who now have to travel a considerably longer time to take up vocational education. 

If you’d like to keep in touch with what’s happening you can visit the TAFE4All website or Save Swinburne Lilydale/Prahran Campus facebook site.

samantha in the press - tafe

Council split on education union action
Mail Newspapers
by Mara Pattison-Sowden
20 June 2012


Swinburne TAFE faces staff and course cuts
Leader Newspapers
by Angus Livingston
19 June 2012

council supports TAFE4All

report from the roundtable - 12 jun

At this week's meeting I moved a motion (item 9.1) in relation to the state government's funding cuts to TAFE.

I'm pleased that the motion (wording below) was supported by the majority of councillors. 

For: Crs Samantha Dunn, Richard Higgins, Len Cox, Noel Cliff, Tim Heenan, Terry Avery and Graham Warren
Against: Crs Jeanette McRae and Chris Templer

Yarra Ranges joins with 16 other councils in Victoria concerned about the effect on their local communities, who have voted to advocate to reverse the decision to cut funding from TAFE.

For Yarra Ranges students, the effects of the cuts are likely to be very detrimental to their ability to access training. Already students in Yarra Ranges are disadvantaged due to poor public transport services, if the funding cuts mean students need to travel even further for their studies this could be disastrous for ongoing vocational education and training. 

The Lilydale campus of Swinburne TAFE had 1,479 students enrolled in 2010.

The overall cost impact of the Government’s decision for Swinburne is likely to be in the order of $35 million in 2013, whilst exact figures are not yet known

for the Lilydale campus, it is evident that there will be a significant impact.

It is highly likely that such impacts include a reduction in the number of courses offered and to the shared support services to TAFE and higher education. Added to this, the flow-on impact to the pipeline of TAFE students who articulate into higher education will be significant owing to the budget changes.

We also know that the education sector is the sixth most important sector for output and is the third most significant sector of employment in Yarra Ranges. Any impact to this sector will be immediately felt within our municipality owing to is location on the urban fringe and difficulties in generating employment opportunities within the local region.

It goes without saying that the negative social impacts to our community by reduced access and opportunities for higher education will be significant and long term in effect. Given the lack of replacement strategy in the interim to improve skills and productivity of those relying on TAFE education, the budget cuts will have far reaching negative impacts on local communities.

This week the local paper ran a story on the job cuts at Swinburne, I encourage you to have a look: Swinburne TAFE to axe jobs.

I also encourage you to support the TAFE4All campaign.


MOTION:
That Council:
a) Resolve to write to the Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Higher Education and other relevant ministers, seeking that the State Government reverse its decision to cut the training and salary budgets of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges across the state.
b) Express concern that the cuts will put up to 1,200 jobs at risk and appear designed to put TAFE into direct competition with private providers, which will lead to fee rises, course closures and the eventual privatisation of TAFE.
c) Consider the cuts are particularly ill conceived in a period where there are increasing job losses in other industries and an Australia-wide skills shortage.
d) Support the joint Australian Education Union (AEU)  – National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) TAFE4All campaign.
e) Write a letter of support for the campaign to save TAFE funding, to the Australian Education Union and the National Tertiary Education Union.
f) Send a copy of this motion and campaign information to the MAV and VLGA 
requesting that they also make representations to the Government seeking reversal of its decision.
g) Call for a report investigating the economic, social, community service, and 
educational implications of any proposed cuts in Yarra Ranges.
h) Send a representative to the public meeting being held by the NTEU at the Melbourne Town Hall on 20 June at 12pm.