Chile’s mining industry is at a crossroads. Mining has led the country towards greater levels of wealth and prosperity and is a large part of the reason why Chile is well on its way to being considered as an advanced economy.
Chile is, by far, the world’s dominant producer of copper ore but this position should not be taken for granted. Rising costs, declining productivity and rising social and regulatory pressure in the areas of community engagement and environmental sustainability are hampering the sector’s profitability and ability to remain globally competitive.
The industry can choose to continue on its current path and address these challenges through short-term solutions that provide incremental improvements. Alternatively, it can identify the opportunities for step change innovation within the changing global landscape in order to forge a new upward trajectory for economic growth for both the industry and the nation.

The Women In Leadership program supports women in the Greater Whitsunday region who have the potential and drive to be workplace and/or community leaders. This program has been designed to help women grow and develop their leadership skills and opportunities especially if they’re interested in a leadership role, being on a committee or board, or wanting to step up in the organisation.

The Women in Leadership program combines face-to-face learning, personalised mentoring and industry networking to facilitate the following opportunities:
• Identify and leverage your individual strengths.
• Build self-awareness and confidence in skills and capabilities.
• Identify leadership skills.
• Develop a network of other local leaders.

The next Women In Leadership Program round will be announced soon.

General purpose artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT, are quickly transforming the way AI systems are built and deployed.

While these technologies are expected to brin benefits in the coming year, their disruptive nature raises questions around privacy and intellectual property rights, liability and accountability, and concerns about the potential to spread disinformation and misinformation.

The Great Southern is Western Australia’s southernmost region, bordered by the Southern Ocean where the coast stretches for approximately 250 kilometres. Spanning over 39,007 square kilometres, the region represents 1.5% of Western Australia’s total land mass and extends inland for 200 kilometres.

Deemed as one of the most liveable regions in WA, the Great Southern is renowned for its unspoilt natural environment including white sand beaches, tall timber forests, wildflowers and a spectacular rugged coastline complete with whales, dolphins and other marine life, the region has an inspiring and diverse tourism offering.

The Great Southern region is known for its primary production, natural and harvested fishing, aquaculture, award winning vineyards, fine food and wine culture, ecotourism and natural attractions.

The City of Albany, the State’s oldest European settlement (settled in 1826) is the region’s administrative, business and financial hub.

Culture and creativity are part of our Tasmanian story – it’s who we are and what we do and why we do it. It touches every facet of our lives.

Tasmanian culture is our most treasured asset, which no other people and no other place can replicate. It is the source of our pride, our regret, our mutual understanding, and our most honest and reliable engine of growth. Our culture is an expression of who we are, what it feels like to be Tasmanian.

Tasmanians express it to each other and tell our 60,000 year-old stories to visitors and to the world. We feel it in our museums, galleries, natural environment and historic places. We hear it and read it and watch it, play with it, wear it, bring it into our homes, taste it, and, most importantly, we share it.

Information and Communication Technology is the blanket term for the products that store, retrieve, manipulate, transmit and receive information electronically in a digital form.

ICT includes hardware, software, wired and wireless networks and telecommunications.

Over 3 billion people now have access to the internet. The rapid adoption and use of technology has provided a ubiquitous platform for everyday life.
But the digital revolution has created many digital divides, between the high-speed broadband connected and the unconnected, the digitally savvy and the digitally ignorant, those who can afford all the latest gadgets and those who can’t and so on.

And the computerisation, robotisation and automation of many traditional business tasks is changing the nature of work and jobs, education, health, government, entertainment and recreation radically.

ICT continues to develop and evolve with nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, social media and robots pushing into more areas of our world.

As the world becomes ever more connected, positive opportunities for new connections, trade, sharing and collaboration increase daily.

But so do the threats, and scammers, hackers, organised crime, and even state sponsored cybercriminals are increasingly active with identity theft, blackmail, denial of service attacks and phishing.

So it becomes increasingly important for all technology issues to be discussed openly and honestly and for CEOs, boards and management teams to really understand all sides of the ICT story.

Robotics, autonomous systems and sensing technologies sit at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution, at the intersection of physical and digital worlds. These technologies underpin self-driving cars, smart cities, autonomous drones, and sensor technology capturing data that will revolutionise and enhance industries.

The fast-growing robotics industry is expected to be worth $23 billion by 2025, with our local robotic industry already generating about $12 billion in revenue a year and employing almost 50,000 people.

Australia and its major industries such as mining and agriculture are primed to be transformed by robotics and autonomous system. The opportunity is in using robots and sensors to capture information about complex environments and to automate tasks that would otherwise be completed by humans in high-risk situations and at a greater cost.

A world-class viticulture industry in the Clare Valley, home to national and international award-winning wineries
The development of a specialised shellfish restoration reef located off Black Point on the Yorke Peninsula. An emerging oyster and aquaculture industry in southern Yorke Peninsula.
Grains, grapes, legumes, livestock, wool and fish are produced for local, national and international markets, with value-adding industries creating a number of complimentary products including food, drinks and garments.
There is an extensive array of fresh and value-added foods grown and produced in the region, including:
• Fine meats (saltbush lamb, Dorper lamb, beef, free-range poultry, rabbits, kangaroo, small goods);
• Olives and olive oil;
• Fruit (particularly stone fruits such as cherries, peaches, nectarines and apricots) and fruit products;
• Condiments;
• Free-range eggs;
• Biodynamic grain products;
• Pastas (including non-GM);
• Carob products;
• Shell fish;
• Seafood including ocean, fresh water and aquaculture;
• Boutique beers; and
• Organic vegetables.

GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) is a state-of-the-art language processing AI model developed by OpenAI. It is capable of generating human-like text and has a wide range of applications, including language translation, language modelling, and generating text for applications such as chatbots. It is one of the largest and most powerful language processing AI models to date, with 175 billion parameters.

Its most common use so far is creating ChatGPT - a highly capable chatbot. To give you a little taste of its most basic ability, we asked GPT-3's chatbot to write its own description as you can see above. It’s a little bit boastful, but completely accurate and arguably very well written.
In less corporate terms, GPT-3 gives a user the ability to give a trained AI a wide range of worded prompts. These can be questions, requests for a piece of writing on a topic of your choosing or a huge number of other worded requests.

With its 175 billion parameters, its hard to narrow down what GPT-3 does. The model is, as you would imagine, restricted to language. It can’t produce video, sound or images like its brother Dall-E 2, but instead has an in-depth understanding of the spoken and written word.

The Goldfields-Esperance region is located in the south-eastern corner of Western Australia and is the largest region in the state with a land area of 771,276 square kilometres.

A variety of established and developing trails helps you, the visitor, connect to our heritage, culture, arts, mining, gem collecting, genealogy, nature and environment through places such as the ghost town of Kanowna, the Great Western Woodlands, Coolgardie' Mother of the Goldfields', and more.

The 965km Golden Quest Discovery Trail or the Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail are just a couple of ways to experience our history.

Of all earth’s continents, only Antarctica gets less precipitation than Australia. Its average annual rainfall of just 470mm is also unevenly distributed. In the Northern Territory, Darwin receives around 1,700mm, while Adelaide in South Australia gets less than one-third of this—some inland towns survive on less than 200mm.

Australia’s limited and unpredictable rainfall is being exacerbated by climate change with the continent one degree warmer than a hundred years ago and receiving significantly less rain. In 2018, every state except for Tasmania and Western Australia received less than average rainfall while persistent high temperatures in Queensland contributed to record rates of evaporation.

From 1996-2010 the Millennium Drought brought long-term water restrictions to the country’s highly populated southeast and southwest. It was a catalyst for change. Driven by the twin challenges of declining water supply and growing demand, Australia has stepped up its efforts to secure its water future.

Despite the continent’s vast size, nearly the entire population lives in cities. These are predicted to grow by an additional 20 million people in the next 30 years, with water consumption in larger cities expected to rise by 73% to more than 2,650 gigalitres.

To meet this demand Australia is looking beyond its traditional rain-fed dams and reservoirs. Instead, it is turning to technology with all the mainland states investing in large desalination plants, each producing up to 674 gigalitres of additional freshwater to cushion city-dwellers against growth and drought.

However, desalination is costly and controversial, using so much energy that its water is nicknamed ‘bottled electricity’; Sydney’s plant costs A$500,000 a day to run—even standing idle. This January it was switched on for the first time since 2012 and is expected to contribute 15% of the city’s drinking water, staving off severe restrictions.

The widespread acceptance that environmental sustainability is a crucial goal of water management is arguably Australia’s most important change in water policy. A growing public awareness, together with investment in infrastructure, innovation, and conservation, has seen Australia praised for improving its water security.

Even so, this year has seen many areas suffering again. Low rainfall and high temperatures in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, mean that Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne are facing water restrictions: low inflows to Sydney’s dams have led to its desalination plant being switched on.

This could be a major test of the plans, projects, and technologies put in place to mitigate the effects of drought; the question on everyone’s lips is ‘has Australia done enough?’

The Hunter is one of NSW’s most popular destinations, located just two hours’ drive north of Sydney. Newcastle, Maitland and Lake Macquarie are the major cities, surrounded by the regional centres, which include Cessnock, Muswellbrook, Port Stephens, Scone, Singleton and Taree.

The Hunter features coastal and valley landscapes, internationally renowned wine production, important natural areas, both urban and rural lifestyles and extensive mining resources. Together with its global companies, these features make the Hunter an attractive place to work, live and play.

The region is also home to a multi-million dollar thoroughbred horse breeding industry, world-class wineries and national parks, and its river estuaries are the largest oyster producers in the state.

The Port of Newcastle is the largest coal export port in the world, with its overall exports valued at almost $18.5 billion in 2016-17.

Williamtown RAAF base sits at the heart of the region’s defence sector and is supported by a hub of important defence and aerospace companies. It is co-located with the Newcastle Airport, currently servicing 1.2 million passengers annually.

The advanced manufacturing sector in the Hunter-based industries continues to develop new products and processes in many traditional industries including medical, energy, food, wine and supply chains using smart technologies.

Australia is building a robust, resilient and globally-competitive defence industry. It exports innovative defence technologies to key global partners and supports an agile and capable Australian Defence Force (ADF).

Some of our defence exports
• More than 70 companies share more than A$3 billion in contracts as part of the global Joint Strike Fighter Program investment. (Source: Australian Government 2023)
• Thales Australia Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles, designed and built in Australia, are used by a number of countries including Fiji, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
• The Nulka Active Missile Decoy protects ships from missiles and has been adopted by several nations. Its concept of a hovering rocket decoy was initiated in Australia by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and developed in partnership with the US Department of Defence and BAE systems. It is currently deployed on over 150 Australian, US and Canadian warships.
• Droneshield, an Australian company that makes innovative AI-based counter drone systems, in July 2023 received a record A$33 million order from a US government agency. It followed a $9.9 million order from another customer among the Five Eyes community.

Geotourism is a sustainable form of tourism based on the geodiversity of our environment and encourages learning about natural and cultural heritage. Australia’s natural and cultural geo-attractions are unique and complement existing tourism markets.

The rich geodiversity of our environment is an opportunity to support sustainable growth as well as adding value to the overall tourist experience. Despite the fact that we have an abundant geoheritage other countries only dream off, this great potential is currently still largely overlooked.

Geotourism is emerging as a new global phenomenon which fosters tourism based upon landscapes.

Its definition has recently been refined as a form of tourism that specifically focuses on the geology and landscapes which shape the character of a region.

Ensuring Australians are secure online is a shared responsibility – everyone has a role to play. This Strategy sets out our plan to protect Australians online.

The world has never been more interconnected; our reliance on the internet for our prosperity and way of life never greater. Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of secure online connectivity. It has also shown Australians’ resilience and resolve to work together for a common goal. That same whole-of-nation partnership between government, businesses and the community must also be applied to ensuring Australia is cyber secure.

Australians are rightfully seizing the opportunities of our digital world. However, as the opportunities have increased, so too have cyber threats. Well-equipped and persistent state-sponsored actors are targeting critical infrastructure and stealing our intellectual property.

Cyber criminals are also doing great harm, in ltrating systems from anywhere in the world, stealing money, identities and data from unsuspecting Australians. They are taking advantage of COVID-19 to target families and businesses, including health and medical research facilities. And they are hiding on the dark web to tra c drugs and other illicit goods, and share abhorrent images of child abuse. Our response must be bold to meet this threat head on.

This Strategy positions us to meet these evolving threats. Our vision is a more secure online world

for Australians, their businesses and the essential services upon which we all depend. We will deliver this vision together, through complementary action by governments, businesses and the community. Through this Strategy the Coalition Government will invest $1.67 billion over ten years in cyber security – the largest ever nancial commitment to cyber security. We will develop new Government capabilities, incentivise industry to protect themselves and their customers, build trust in the digital economy, and support the community to be secure online.

This need for qualified cyber security specialists has been further intensified by the recent effects of COVID-19 which drove Australian businesses to shift their operations to online and their workforces to remote. With increasing cyber threats and a growing amount of sensitive information circulating online, Australia needs to move quickly to close the cyber security skills gap.

This government push towards a more secure internet has created an industry shift where most IT teams now require cyber security knowledge in order to service their business’s technological needs. With this projected industry growth comes the continuously growing need for skilled cyber security professionals, making those who possess these skills and qualifications highly sought-after. The shortage of skilled cyber security specialists also means that professionals with these skillsets can demand a higher salary.

Creative industries are an evolving mix of sectors spanning arts and culture, screen and design. They cover disciplines as diverse as game development and graphic design, fashion and filmmaking, media and music, comedy and craft, and include activities that are both commercially-driven and community-based, experimental and export-intense.

Creative industries are important to our prosperity. They drive new approaches to job creation and industry innovation. As the economy transitions and jobs of the future emerge, creative industries will be increasingly important to the future of the next generation.

Victoria is the national leader in visual and performing arts. Melbourne hosts 62,000 live music concerts each year and Victoria has three times more live music performances than the national average, and the state is home to leading libraries, galleries and museums

Is Australia’s housing crisis self-inflicted?

If so, then we need a series of reforms to reverse it

The best long-term solution to the structural problems of the rental crisis is to build more public and/or affordable housing.

Reform incentives that give more advantages to investors over owner-occupiers.

Reform on “no cause” evictions, where landlords can kick tenants out for no reason and make it within reason.

Make renting more Sustainable! Increase rent assistance or look at rental caps, similar to countries in Europe and some US states, long term tenancy agreements with incentives for all parties to the agreement.

The list goes on and we plan to have some robust conversations within this group that focus on solutions rather than the cause!

In Kindness

Allan 'Big Al' Connolly
Founder - Kommuniti HQ
Managing Director - The Whealth Group
Co-Chair - WA Alliance to End Homelessness,
and Lived Experience of Homelessness Expert
M: +61 411 468 337
W: bigalconnolly.org
E: admin@bigalconnolly.org
LI: linkedin.com/in/bigalconnolly  

Flow batteries were first developed in the 1980s, by now-Emeritus Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos at the University of New South Wales.

“Most of the batteries that we use are enclosed systems,” says Associate Professor Alexey Glushenkov, a chemist and research lead in battery materials at the Australian National University’s Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program.

In the coming decades, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind will increasingly dominate the conventional power grid. Because those sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy, ensuring a reliable grid — one that can deliver power 24/7 — requires some means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later when they’re not. A promising technology for performing that task is the flow battery, an electrochemical device that can store hundreds of megawatt-hours of energy — enough to keep thousands of homes running for many hours on a single charge. Flow batteries have the potential for long lifetimes and low costs in part due to their unusual design. In the everyday batteries used in phones and electric vehicles, the materials that store the electric charge are solid coatings on the electrodes.

A flow battery contains two substances that undergo electrochemical reactions in which electrons are transferred from one to the other. When the battery is being charged, the transfer of electrons forces the two substances into a state that’s “less energetically favourable” as it stores extra energy. (Think of a ball being pushed up to the top of a hill.) When the battery is being discharged, the transfer of electrons shifts the substances into a more energetically favourable state as the stored energy is released. (The ball is set free and allowed to roll down the hill.)

At the core of a flow battery are two large tanks that hold liquid electrolytes, one positive and the other negative. Each electrolyte contains dissolved “active species” — atoms or molecules that will electrochemically react to release or store electrons. During charging, one species is “oxidized” (releases electrons), and the other is “reduced” (gains electrons); during discharging, they swap roles. Pumps are used to circulate the two electrolytes through separate electrodes, each made of a porous material that provides abundant surfaces on which the active species can react. A thin membrane between the adjacent electrodes keeps the two electrolytes from coming into direct contact and possibly reacting, which would release heat and waste energy that could otherwise be used on the grid.

A critical factor in designing flow batteries is the selected chemistry. The two electrolytes can contain different chemicals, but today the most widely used setup has vanadium in different oxidation states on the two sides. That arrangement addresses the two major challenges with flow batteries.

First, vanadium doesn’t degrade. If you put 100 grams of vanadium into your battery and you come back in 100 years, you should be able to recover 100 grams of that vanadium — as long as the battery doesn’t have some sort of a physical leak.

And second, if some of the vanadium in one tank flows through the membrane to the other side, there is no permanent cross-contamination of the electrolytes, only a shift in the oxidation states, which is easily remediated by re-balancing the electrolyte volumes and restoring the oxidation state via a minor charge step. Most of today’s commercial systems include a pipe connecting the two vanadium tanks that automatically transfers a certain amount of electrolyte from one tank to the other when the two get out of balance.

Remote microgrids are perfect for flow batteries of all scales.

They’re not temperature sensitive, like lithium-ion batteries, so they can operate quite comfortably in hot conditions, which is a real benefit. And they’re non-flammable.

Australia has around 18% of the world’s vanadium reserves, mostly in Western Australia – hence Australian Vanadium’s interests. The element is still, mostly, used in steel, but flow batteries are going to change things.