[LINK] From real emergency services training to 'virtual'

[Jan Whitaker]

Insanity gone mad, and that's really saying something. A Canberra 
based online course instead of a hands on disaster management 
training centre. Someone's lost the plot.

Mount Macedon disaster training campus shut down
Mahesh Sharma
Published: May 19, 2014 - 3:00AM

The Abbott government's decision to shutter a 50-year-old Mount 
Macedon-based emergency management training campus is a ''significant 
blow'' to public sector disaster response, according to Labor.

The federal government will, by mid-2015, ''transition'' the 
Australian Emergency Management Institute into a Canberra-based 
virtual institute, in a move flagged in the budget papers, saving 
Australian taxpayers about $900,000.

The 44 employees are being asked to relocate or take a redundancy package.

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said that for emergency services 
workers and efforts, the closure was a significant blow.

There will be a serious loss to the emergency management community 
when the short residential courses are replaced by an online service 
from Canberra, he said.

The institute offers a diploma of emergency management to public 
service members, including bureaucrats, the Country Fire Authority 
and State Emergency Services.

But Justice Minister Michael Keenan said the new modernised 
Canberra-based model would bring skills directly to the client, 
building on the strong foundations of the 50-year old campus. ''We 
anticipate that most courses will continue to be delivered 
face-to-face around Australia,'' Mr Keenan said.

The institute played an active role in implementing the findings of 
the royal commission into the Black Saturday bushfires, said Bendigo 
Labor MP Lisa Chesters.

This story was found at: 
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/mount-macedon-disaster-training-campus-shut-down-20140518-38hyp.html 



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how 
do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
~Margaret Atwood, writer

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