Cable business booms

ONE of Tasmania's largest locally owned electrical services firms is defying economic tough times and creating new jobs.

Contact Electrical has hired 30 new staff, including 16 apprentices, since a crucial meeting 18 months ago.

Contact's Hobart manager Martin Jackson said the firm had fought for its life, and won, during two of the construction and home improvement industry's most difficult trading years.

Mr Jackson said the business had gone into a huddle 18 months ago after it became clear it would fail if it continued down the same path.

He said it was decided they would need to broaden the business to involve just about anything that had a cable attached -- from CCTV and security systems to solar panels and sewage treatment infrastructure.

Hamilton's Simon Brown was one of the newest recruits and said it was a great feeling to be back at work.

Mr Brown, 40, was unable to find a full-time job when he moved back from Victoria for family reasons 18 months ago.

This week he began a new career path.

He said if everything went to plan he would start an apprenticeship to train as an electrician.

Mr Brown was this week engaged in the rollout of NBN optic fibres in Kingston -- another small part of Contact's business.

Mr Jackson said Contact had also made a pitch to convince its clients -- from households that needed new power points to multi-million dollar developers -- that a strong locally owned electrical services firm was worth saving.

"The work has kept on pouring in," Mr Jackson said.

He said the downturn had forced many operators, particularly smaller ones involving one or two electricians, to leave the state or go out of business.

Contact has helped some of those operators by taking them on as employees.

Mr Jackson said the firm's new apprentices were a mixture of school leavers and mature-aged workers moving across from forestry and other troubled industries.

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Prison's 11,400 leave passes

TASMANIA'S prison system is issuing 20 times more leave permits for inmates than four years ago in a bid to link more inmates with the community.

Corrections Minister Nick McKim said yesterday the number of leave passes, which allow prisoners outside the prison gates for education, work opportunities and family reasons, had increased from 589 in 2008 to 11,402 last year.

"This is about delivering safer communities," Mr McKim said.

"We are trying to help inmates build the life skills, get the education and form the relationships with prospective employers that will help them with their transition back into the community and this will ultimately help us to make the community a safer place."

The news comes as Mr McKim announced a suite of programs inmates have been working on in the community.

Inmates have retained traditional relationships with the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens and Government House. Inmates also work on setting up the Taste Festival site, helping at the Dogs Home of Tasmania, continuing clean-up work at the Risdon Vale Creek area, tending to a community garden in Risdon Vale and working with the City Mission every week collecting donations of furniture and bric-a-brac.

Football umpiring that started in 2011 has also been continued this season, with six minimum security inmates umpiring at weekends.

And Mr McKim announced for the first time prisoners have been working at the Lea scout camp at Kingston constructing a flying fox, fitting out the stairs and safety equipment in the climbing tower as well as extensive maintenance to trails and bush areas on the property.

New programs in the pipeline include minimum security prisoners conducting general maintenance and restoration of the historic buildings and grounds at the Penitentiary Chapel, computer refits for charities and worm farming, taking advantage of the vast horticultural work and training being done in Tasmania's prison system.

Acting Prison boss and inaugural change manager Brian Edwards said despite concerns in the community that inmates would escape from custody, it is not the case.

One high profile escape from day release last year prompted a review of risk assessments and no further breaches have been recorded since, Mr Edwards said.

He said from his experience in other countries 11,000 leave passes would translate to six or eight escapes a year.

"If we just separate them they will never get included into the community," Mr Edwards said.

Corrective Services director Robert Williams said extra time in the community was in line with the "Breaking the cycle" strategy aimed at reducing recidivism and keeping the community safer.

"If they come out and we haven't done a good job in prison they will come out worse," Mr Williams said.

"It is not just a secure fence that keeps the community safer -- if they come out worse they are not safer."

In line with a push for greater engagement with the community, family days have been expanded at the prison, growing from one or two a year to about one a month.

Mr Edwards said training was also being tailored to industries like horticulture that gave inmates the greatest possible chance of getting a job when released.

matthew.smith@news.com.au

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Experiencing life on $2 a day

Molly Port, left, Robert Hortle and Ian Kam dining out on the pontoon at Long Beach, Sandy Bay, yesterday for Live Below the Line. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE

NOT many people would brave a quick dip in the River Derwent in 13C, but that did not stop three young Tasmanians from doing just that yesterday at Sandy Bay.

With a table and chairs in tow, the anti-poverty campaigners swam out to the Long Beach pontoon for a humble meal of bread, jam and juice.

Raising awareness for the Live Below the Line campaign, which starts next week, the Oaktree Foundation's state director Robert Hortle invited everyone to take on the challenge of living off $2 a day for five days.

"Live Below the Line is a fresh and impactful way of understanding extreme poverty," he said. "It's all about changing perspectives and empowering people living in poverty to escape the poverty cycle.

"I've been Tasmanian director of the Oaktree Foundation for nearly two years now so this is a campaign that's really close to my heart. I'm with Oaktree because we focus on educating young people in some of the world's poorest countries, which also happen to be near Australia."

More than 400 Tasmanians have signed up for the challenge and all money raised by donations from participants' friends and family will go towards education projects in East Timor, Papua New Guinea and Cambodia.

To get involved, visit www.livebelowtheline.com.au

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Cable business booms

ONE of Tasmania's largest locally owned electrical services firms is defying economic tough times and creating new jobs.

Contact Electrical has hired 30 new staff, including 16 apprentices, since a crucial meeting 18 months ago.

Contact's Hobart manager Martin Jackson said the firm had fought for its life, and won, during two of the construction and home improvement industry's most difficult trading years.

Mr Jackson said the business had gone into a huddle 18 months ago after it became clear it would fail if it continued down the same path.

He said it was decided they would need to broaden the business to involve just about anything that had a cable attached -- from CCTV and security systems to solar panels and sewage treatment infrastructure.

Hamilton's Simon Brown was one of the newest recruits and said it was a great feeling to be back at work.

Mr Brown, 40, was unable to find a full-time job when he moved back from Victoria for family reasons 18 months ago.

This week he began a new career path.

He said if everything went to plan he would start an apprenticeship to train as an electrician.

Mr Brown was this week engaged in the rollout of NBN optic fibres in Kingston -- another small part of Contact's business.

Mr Jackson said Contact had also made a pitch to convince its clients -- from households that needed new power points to multi-million dollar developers -- that a strong locally owned electrical services firm was worth saving.

"The work has kept on pouring in," Mr Jackson said.

He said the downturn had forced many operators, particularly smaller ones involving one or two electricians, to leave the state or go out of business.

Contact has helped some of those operators by taking them on as employees.

Mr Jackson said the firm's new apprentices were a mixture of school leavers and mature-aged workers moving across from forestry and other troubled industries.

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Act now on forest truce: PM

TASMANIAN conservationists and loggers who signed a historic peace agreement must now deliver its jobs and environmental objectives, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

The Tasmanian parliament last night passed legislation formalising the agreement between the opposing groups, after green groups and the forestry industry backed amendments raised by the state's Upper House.

Passage of the laws will now unlock more than $300 million in federal assistance to help the logging industry restructure, while more than 500,000ha of forests will eventually be protected.

Visiting Wynyard in Tasmania North-West today, Ms Gillard said the peace deal was "a new day, a new opportunity" that had to be seized by conservationists and loggers.

"The obligation is now on everyone to seize the prospect that this peace gives and to get on with creating jobs in Tasmania as well securing the conservation outcomes that come out of this agreement," she told reporters.

"The obligation is on the signatories that first came together, the parties who started this process, to do everything they can to use their abilities to silence those who haven't gone with the mainstream consensus."

Signatories to the deal include the Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Environment Tasmania, and the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania.

Australian Greens leader Christine Milne is critical of the agreement, despite the majority of her Tasmanian Greens colleagues and environmentalists giving it their support.

She says it's "fantasy" to believe that anything more than the deal's 123,000ha first tranche of forests will ever be protected.

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'Hateful' flyer sparks inquiry

TASMANIA Police have been asked to investigate "hateful" pamphlets being distributed in the southern electorate of Nelson.

The Mercury understands about 3400 of the pamphlets – claiming to contain "homosexual stats" -- have been distributed since Monday.

Tasmanian Electoral Commissioner Julian Type today said he deemed the pamphlets to be in direct contravention of the Electoral Act.

"The material is hateful," he said.

"I have asked police to conduct an investigation and the matter has been raised with the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner."

Mr Type said the pamphlets were clearly classed as electoral material because gay and lesbian rights had become a major issue in the Upper House poll.

The pamphlet, which is not authorised, compares the lifespans of homosexuals to others with different sexual preferences.

Greens candidate for Nelson Tom Baxter, who alerted the Mercury to the pamphlet, said he believed it was homophobic.

He said it quoted so-called "death statistics" for lesbians and gays.

"This is yet another argument for Parliament to send a strong message against homophobia like this by supporting marriage equality," Mr Baxter said.

Voters will go to the polls in Nelson, Pembroke and Montgomery on Saturday.

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Forest war over, says Burke

FEDERAL Environment Minister Tony Burke has declared an end to Tasmania's forestry wars, after key environmental groups signed up to an amended agreement with the state's logging industry.

Tasmania's Lower House is expected to sit late tonight to debate the forestry peace deal legislation, which is designed to end decades of bitter wrangling.

Environmentalists and the timber industry were forced to recommit to the agreement after the state's Upper House made amendments that delayed the protection of more than half the forests originally earmarked.

With agreement reached between signatories including The Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Environment Tasmania, and the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, Mr Burke said the state's forestry war was now over.

Passing of the legislation will unlock tens of millions of dollars in federal and state assistance, aimed at helping Tasmanian struggling forestry industry restructure.

"Instead of an industry that was going through a significant decline ... as of tomorrow we get a story where conservation and forestry jobs get to move forward hand in hand," Mr Burke told reporters in Hobart this afternoon.

"In terms of wars, yes (it's over). You might get the odd skirmish from small minor groups. But what we have seen from the last 30 years ends tonight, and that is something to celebrate."

Despite her Tasmanian Greens colleagues and environmental groups backing the forestry agreement, Australian Greens Leader Christine Milne labelled the deal "dead" because of the Upper House amendments.

"Now there is a salvage strategy at best, a picking over the bones of the dead body," Senator Milne said.

"It died in the Upper House when the Legislative Council in Tasmania took a chainsaw to this agreement and destroyed its integrity."

READ THE FULL STORY IN TOMORROW'S MERCURY

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Testing time for childcare

TWO out of three Tasmanian childcare centres have failed to meet national quality controls -- including kids' health and safety standards.

But the sub-standard centres will not be given a deadline to come up to scratch.

Official data to be released today reveals that 17 out of the 26 Tasmanian centres assessed under the national quality benchmarks have been rated as "working towards" the standards.

The 65 per cent failure rate is well above the national average of 44 per cent.

But one in four of the Tasmanian centres "exceeds" the national standards and will now be able to apply for an official "excellent" rating.

Parents will be able to check the "report card" for individual childcare services today, when the Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) publishes the first inspection results on its website.

ACECQA has assessed 1620 childcare services nationally -- 13 per cent of the total.

It has found one in four childcare providers nationally does not meet the national standard for children's health and safety.

One in three is below the standard for "educational program and practice" or for "physical environment".

And at least one in 10 does not meet the minimum staffing requirements, while one in six is below-standard for "relationships with children".

Childcare centres are being marked in seven areas -- education, health and safety, physical environment, staffing, relationships with children, partnerships with the community and leadership. If they fail in just one field, they get a low "working towards" rating.

News Ltd revealed on April 8 that barely half the nation's childcare centres met the tough new standards, based on preliminary data.

ACECQA board chairwoman Rachel Hunter yesterday said centres would not be given a deadline to meet the quality standards.

"This does raise the bar on quality," she said.

"There is no time limit in the national law for a service to (attain) a rating of meeting the national standard."

Federal Childcare Minister Kate Ellis said the publication of centres' ratings was a "a watershed day for high quality childcare in Australia".

"For the very first time, parents will be able to know exactly how their local childcare centre is tracking against national standards," she said.

"This is the first tranche of ratings to show up and we expect a significant roll out over the next year."

Ms Ellis yesterday launched a trial in Brisbane of the government's $5.5m program to make childcare more flexible for shift workers.

Australian Childcare Alliance president Gwynn Bridge said Australia did not have enough childcare workers for all centres to comply with new staffing ratios next year.

"The bar is set very high and we've had such little time to implement (the changes)," she said.

"All the bells and whistles don't necessarily make a centre the best one for education and care".

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Rat numbers rise in city

GREATER Hobart is in the grip of a rodent infestation, with a big rise in the number of residents seeking pest control services.

Pest exterminators say rats and mice have been out in force, and hardware stores have reported a jump in sales of traps and baits.

Scorpion Universal Pest Management owner Jason Eyles has had a 200 per cent increase in calls in the past fortnight from Hobart residents worried about rats and mice in their homes.

Millipedes had been a problem earlier this year, but in the past few weeks the focus was on rodents.

"Call-outs have skyrocketed. People are sighting them everywhere," Mr Eyles said.

"We might be heading for another plague .... all indications tell us we could be facing plague proportions this year."

The rodent season had started earlier than usual and would continue until July or August.

Mr Eyles said an unusually warm spring and summer had created favourable breeding conditions.

With the arrival of cool weather, rats and mice were looking for warmth in homes and sheds.

Mr Eyles said they were appearing in "nearly every suburb" in Hobart, especially those near bushland, such as Cambridge, South Hobart and Rosetta.

Rats are most prevalent in inner city areas, while mice are more common in outer suburbs. Possums are an increasing problem in city fringe areas.

Other pest controllers report a similar rise in demand for rodent extermination.

Mr Eyles said newer homes were as susceptible as older homes, because many were not built to keep pests out.

K&D sales assistant James Gunst said customers had been stocking up on traps and baits recently to rid their homes of pests.

He said mouse traps were becomingly increasingly hi-tech, with traps ranging from a couple of dollars for more traditional varieties up to $45 for electric traps.

He said more humane traps, which enable live mice and rats to be released elsewhere later, were also popular.

linda.smith@news.com.au

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More track access in Pipeline

Simon Palmer, 16, left, of Bellerive, and Andrew Weatherhead, 18, of Mt Nelson, are happy about a trial extension of Pipeline Track access for bike riders. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

BIKE riders will have more access to Mt Wellington under a Hobart City Council trial that will open up the Pipeline Track between Fern Tree and Gentle Annie Falls.

While mountain bikers have been using parts of the Pipeline Track for some time, they have been prohibited from using the route down to the falls.

The council announced on Saturday a trial would be conducted over the next 12 months to open up the track to bikes. A decision on whether bikes will be permitted on the entire track permanently will be made after the trial.

Hobart Lord Mayor Damon Thomas said surveys of pedestrians and bike riders would determine if both groups could happily share access.

"We acknowledge that bicycle riding is growing in popularity and people want more experiences open to them. The situation will be monitored to ensure users, both bike riders and pedestrians, can use the track in harmony," Alderman Thomas said.

The council said bike riders needed to stay on the designated bike riding tracks and stay off, and not damage, the sandstone capping in the area.

Ian Ferrier, of Mountain Bike Tasmania, said opening up the track would provide more biking options.

"That has to be a good thing," Mr Ferrier said.

Mountain biker Simon Palmer, 16, was up the mountain with friends yesterday.

"I will ride the pipeline down to Gentle Annie Falls now it's open to bikes," he said.

"It will be good to have other options. Things can get a bit mundane otherwise."

helen.kempton@news.com.au

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Giant wind farm hope

HYDRO Tasmania remains confident it will secure the money to build a massive $2 billion wind farm on King Island.

What is less certain is whether it can garner enough support among the 1600-resident King Island community to start a feasibility study of the 200-250 turbine project.

Hydro Tasmania will conduct an independent survey of residents and off-island property owners in June to assess community support.

If 60 per cent of the people surveyed say they are in favour of studying the feasibility of the TasWind project, Hydro will spend $30 million over two years.

If built, the wind farm would be the biggest in the southern hemisphere and much larger than its two mainland Tasmanian counterparts -- Woolnorth and Musselroe.

King Island resident and chairman of the TasWind Consultative Committee John Brewster said it was hard to tell if the proposal had gained the support needed.

"There are some who definitely support the wind farm proposal and others who definitely do not," Mr Brewster said. "But there are also a lot who are undecided. There will be a lot of thinking going on over the next month."

Those who support the project say it will not only change the landscape forever but ignite a power-led boom.

The island has been losing residents over many years and the closure of JB Swift's abattoir left almost 100 out of a job and had residents questioning how the island was going to survive.

Those against the proposal have established a 10-member committee called No TasWind and a Facebook page, "King Island Wind Farm -- The Debate", provides an outlet for residents to discuss the pros and cons of the proposal.

The No TasWind committee wants the King Island Council to conduct a democratic vote to ascertain community support.

No TasWind committee member Chris Porter said the height of the proposed turbines -- 80 to 90 metres -- was equivalent to a 34-storey building.

"And we are talking about 200-250 of these turbines," Mr Porter said.

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Storm over market halt

Unhappy that Salamanca Market was cancelled, flower stallholder Lisa Kingston, of Woodbridge, decided to trade from the back of her van. Pictures: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

HIGH winds battered southern Tasmania yesterday, resulting in road closures, police warnings for motorists and the cancellation of the popular Salamanca Market.

The Hobart City Council's decision to call off yesterday's market disrupted the plans of stallholders and customers alike.

Council general manager Nick Heath made the decision after the forecast from the Bureau of Meteorology predicted destructive winds, with gusts expected to exceed 100km/h.

"We have not taken this decision lightly and have cancelled the market because the current forecast weather conditions are seen to pose a threat to the safety of the public, stallholders and the market crew," he said.

The stallholders had been informed by text message where possible, and also by the council's market crew.

But many vendors and customers were left perplexed by the council's cautious decision.

"We live in Tasmania, and it is windy here. I think it's paranoia," said flower seller Lisa Kingston, of Woodbridge, who had set up her van outside Knopwoods Retreat to try to salvage her day's trade.

"The market's other flower people have gone home and I've discounted everything.

"Other stallholders have come and supported me, which is fantastic."

Marie Van Degumster, of the Summer Kitchen Organic Bakery, said the council was treating stallholders like children.

"This is an absolute disaster. I have a bakery full of product that I can't sell," she said.

"There's no way I can recoup our money."

As well as perplexed interstate and overseas visitors, local regular Susie Riddich said the market's cancellation had ruined her entertaining plans.

"I'm devastated," she said. "I was here to get fruit and vegetables for my dinner party.

"Now I'm really stuck. I buy vegetables from the Hmongs very week. The opportunity is gone now.

"I'm going back to the UK next week and was also here to buy presents."

But Salamanca Stallholders Association president Kerry O'Rourke said he was "100 per cent behind the council's decision".

"If the council knew about the wind forecast and someone got injured, there'd be real trouble," he said.

Mr O'Rourke said he understood the frustration of some vendors who relied on the Saturday market for their income but the decision to close the market was about protecting people and property.

"The council are just doing it to protect us," he said.

The blustery conditions also caused the closure of the Brooker Highway, after winds downed a light pole over the road at 5pm.

Police also urged caution at Midway Point, with winds driving water over the causeway.

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