Innovation

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Professor Marion MaddoxThe steady erosion of free, compulsory and secular education in Australia risks more than a century of gains in national integration warns a prominent researcher of religion and politics in this country.

The Federal Government’s recently-announced $4.6 billion funding package for Catholic and Independent schools will worsen “one of the most religiously and economically segregated systems in the western world,” Professor Marion Maddox of Macquarie University will say in a public lecture in Adelaide on Friday this week.

“When colonial governments began spending on education, they conceived a nation-building role for schools. They were a place for kids to learn to live together as one people. We really have lost that idea of education helping a whole community to grow up together.”

Professor Maddox, from the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, will examine the achievements of Australia’s free, compulsory and secular education system in the 2018 Catherine Helen Spence Oration in Adelaide on Friday, October 26. “For reasons that have little to do with religious commitment, and more with politics, we have forgotten the secular values that motivated our system’s founders,” she proposes.

Sam Mostyn with Pia Peterson WEvoke customer Sam Mostyn (left) with company founder Pia Peterson

Australia’s first chauffeur-driven Tesla service, Evoke, has surpassed more than one million kilometres of zero-emission motoring by transporting passengers in its electric vehicles.

In reaching this milestone, the Sydney-based company, founded by Pia Peterson in 2015, has offset more than 325,000 kilograms of carbon emissions and avoided burning 130,000 litres of petrol.

As well as keeping the air cleaner, Evoke’s achievement enables many of its corporate customers to claim emission reductions delivered by the sustainable transport service as Scope 3 carbon offsets.

Regular Evoke passenger Sam Mostyn, who sits on the boards of Virgin Australia, Transurban Group, Mirvac, Citibank Australia, the Climate Council and ClimateWorks Australia, said she was delighted to support Evoke from its early days. “Pia Peterson and her team combine exceptional customer focus with a commitment to zero-emission transport,” she said.

QCamPro founder John Convill: "We are at the start of very strong growth”Global business is booming for an Adelaide-developed smartphone app, QCamPro, that allows subscribers to view and speak through security cameras from their iPhone or Android handsets.

Launched five years ago, QCamPro now counts the US, Germany and China among the countries that have its largest number of customers. More than 17,000 people in 86 countries have downloaded the QCamPro app, which is supported by more than 50 business partners globally. The top five countries in terms of demand are the USA, Australia, Germany, China and Netherlands.

QCamPro founder John Convill launched the QCamPro Monitoring Partner Program in March 2016 at the Mobotix Conference in Miami. The program allows partners to brand the app as their own, let their own customers subscribe to the service to monitor their homes, businesses or equipment.