“New Musicals Australia” is the latest initiative of an Australia working to promote new productions of original Australian musical theater.

Providing creators of new musicals with professional workshop opportunities New Musicals Australia will help their work to be developed and presented. This models the US and UK, allowing writers and composers to have their scripts and songs workshopped and presented to industry peers, industry leaders and audiences.

Kris Stewart, the founding director of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, the world’s largest annual musical theatre event, said “The future of Australian musical theatre is something that is of critical importance to me, and many working in the theatre industry.”

He also presented more than 130 musicals and developed shows like Altar Boyz and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning Next to Normal.

“I think it’s clear that there have been a number of structural gaps and issues in the sector of new music theatre development in Australia, and this is a chance to throw talent and resources at getting more musicals off the ground”, he added.

Stewart was one the Broadway producers and currently serves as Resident Director of the musical Wicked in Australia, as well as festival director for the inaugural Sydney Fringe.

New Musicals Australia will accept submissions year-round with its deadline in August 31. The submissions are read by an evaluation team that consists of NMA’s director, its artistic advisors and members of the Australia Council’s Music Board.

The three key workshop initiatives by New Musicals Australia are the Musical Snapshot, which presents a 20 to 40 minute extract of the musical in concert, alongside other new works, allowing the creative team to receive professional feedback and gauge a general audience response. The Developmental Reading sees a new work rehearsed and performed in concert, and the Workshop Presentation allows a musical to be rehearsed and performed book-down with staging and some production elements. New Musicals Australia also supports a variety of other initiatives targeted at developing new works, establishing networks and providing support for independent writers.

New Musicals Australia is a project of Century Venues with the assistance of the Australian Government though the Australia Council, its arts founding and advisory body.

The first female Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard is attempting to keep her job by calling an early election, she has been in the job only 3 weeks, on August 21. This will give all contenders a five-week campaign.

The battle is drawn on jobs in Australia, climate change, asylum seekers, and record-high public debt. Ms Gillard met with Governor-General Quentin Bryce to request permission to call an election and dissolve the Parliament.

The election Coalition needs a swing of 2.3 percent, or an extra 17 seat, to get back into government just one term after Kevin Rudd ousted John Howard from the top spot. At a press conference Gillard acknowledged she had not been elected and had pledged to allow Australians to choose who they want to serve the country as Prime Minister.

“Today, I honour that pledge,” she said. “This election, I believe presents Australia with a very clear choice, whether we move Australia forward or go back. Moving forward requires convictions, it requires confidence… it requires a willingness to embrace new challenges. It requires a strong set of convictions and a clear set of values… all my adult life I have been driver by a clear set of values. I believe in hard work, I believe in what comes as an individual when you do your best and earn your keep.”

Along with taking the opportunity to kick off her election campaign, Ms Gillard talked about opposition leader Tony Abbott, saying he wants to make Australians “afraid of their future”.

She also said he was in “climate change denial” and his gaze is “fixed in the rear view mirror”.

Mr Abbott was in Brisbane when Ms Gillard called the election and, in a speech to the Liberal-National Party, he said the party is “ready to govern”.

“The people of Queensland won’t be conned by a prime minister who is now running to the polls before she has established her credentials to lead our nation,” Abbott said.

In return to Ms Gillard’s comments, Mr Abbott said the Labour Party are stagnant.

“They waste money and they maladminister programs. Then when it all gets too hard they change the leader. But they don’t change the policies and they don’t change their ways. They change the leader and the problems get worse. The problem is not the leader – the problem is Labour.”

At the beginning of the speech, on “day one of the election campaign”, Mr Abbott told party members, “we are ready to go. An incoming Coalition government would not seek to change the Fair Work Act at least for the three years of the next term of parliament,” Mr Abbott said.

Gillard called the election after grabbing power in a surprise ruling Labor Party coup. She said the government had “lost its way” under her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, and has attempted to steer new courses in key policy areas.

“We would go into our second term with some lessons learnt,” Gillard told reporters at Parliament House. “We would be able to implement and deliver programs differently than we have in the past.”

Polls point to Labor winning a second three-year term, but analysts sees a tight contest against a resurgent conservative opposition Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott.

Both have shifted their parties’ directions but maintain bipartisan support for major foreign policy issues.

While Rudd went to the 2007 election declaring climate change the “greatest moral challenge of our time,” Gillard has yet to announce a new Labor policy on reducing

Australia’s carbon gas emissions, which are among the world’s highest per capita.

The latest Newspoll shows Labor 53 per cent with of the two-party preferred vote against 47 per cent for the Coalition.

In recent weeks Ms Gillard has been clearing the decks, repairing key policy weaknesses that had undermined the government’s standing in the polls and led to the spectacular evaporation of support among Labor MPs and faction leaders for Mr Rudd, forcing his downfall.

Why has Australia escaped the economic crisis? This is the burning question in France at the moment. Economists point to China, which has become the No 1 trading partner of Australia and its demand for commodities but many believe that the fiscal stimulus is the principal reason.

Plantu is a French editorial cartoonist whose work is best known for its frequent appearance in Le Monde. His latest illustration shows singing Australian-flag-waving kangaroos flashing the “V for victory” sign with joeys in their pouches as symbols of retirement savings. ‘Australia escapes the crisis and retirement reform’, says the caption in Plantu’s illustration.

A French economist said, “Australia has without a doubt the prize for excellence in all categories, as much in terms of its debt or deficit”.

This year, Australian national debt will remain below 20 per cent of GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“Australia, the best student of all the industrialized countries”, is one of the most emailed articles on Le Monde’s website.

France is abandoning its traditional scorn for “Anglo-Saxon” methods and turning to the Australian economic “miracle” in the search for solutions. Europe faces its worst debt crisis in decades as the euro plummets to record lows.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to raise France’s retirement age in the second half of his term. His government wants to raise the retirement age to 61 or 62, under reforms discussed well before the current European debt crisis.

“Retiring so young is now untenable given growing life spans”, says President Nicolas Sarkozy, but unions see his planned reforms to France’s over-stretched pension system as yet another blow to Europe’s social model.

“Australia has diversified its economy to guarantee competitiveness”, says the report of the economic mission of the French embassy in Sydney.

“In a post-economic crisis environment, where the debt levels of the majority of industrialized countries are becoming unsustainable, Australia appears like a kind of UFO,” report said.

Australia’s live entertainment industry accumulates an incredible $2 billion a year.

According to a study ‘Size and Scope of the Live Entertainment Industry 2010‘ released in Melbourne by the industry body, Live Performance Australia (LPA), the industry made $1.88 billion and contributed $1.1 billion to the nation’s economy in 2008, making it bigger than the football codes, horse racing and film and video production. The study also found the industry employed 13,800 full-time positions, spanning genres from ballet and dance to classical music, theatre and rock festivals.

After the noticeable lack of figures on the industry, Live Performance Australia commissioned the study. Using ticketing data, Australia council data, and event profiles, the study was able to demonstrate the industry’s overwhelming contribution to the country. The report emphasized not only the industry’s economic benefits, but also other advantages such as an improved lifestyle, diversity, and increased creativity.

Of this figure, over 40 percent of revenue was attributed to non-classical or contemporary music, making it the most significant contributor from the sector.

In a statement by LPA Chief Executive Evelyn Richardson, she said that the study demonstrates the significant contribution the industry makes to the Australian economy, despite limited government investment.

She said the live entertainment industry also generated intangible benefits such as improved social cohesion, lifestyle improvement and diversity that are not reflected in economic metrics in the benchmark study.

“This industry is a sophisticated contributor in terms of financial, employment, and quality of life metrics to the Australian economy,” she said.

“This study provides a snapshot of the live entertainment industry’s economic contribution in terms of gross output, value-add and employment.”

The annual Private Companies survey of one of the largest professional services firms in the world, KPMG, shows that 70% of the private firms in Australia have recovered and appeared positive about the mid year economic outlook, up from two percent in 2009.

KPMG’s head of private enterprise Marco Di Sebastiano said that conservative borrowing practices had enabled businesses to stay resilient.

“Australian private companies have survived the financial crisis because they adopt a more conservative approach to business planning. Generally, they focus on the longer term and stay within the bounds of their core business. This enables private companies to remain resilient through tough times and periods of uncertainty such as is the current economic uncertainty in Europe”, said Di Sebastiano.

Mr Di Sebastiano also said that KPMG has observed an increase in defaults, despite domestic banks continuing to see this market segment as an area for growth. He cautions that those which have not yet secured funding face a challenge as banks remain more selective about which sectors and customers to support.

“Interestingly, the survey indicates that only 25 percent of this sector is looking for bank funding, highlighting their self-sufficiency in difficult times. However, the survey found maintaining and developing banking relationships has been a preoccupation for many”, Di Sebastiano added.

The poll by KPMG was taken in April and May as the Greek debt crisis sparked turmoil on global financial markets.

Two-thirds of respondents were planning to hire staff during the coming year, but the same proportion in the survey saw skills shortages as an impediment in the past year.

About 40 per cent were already using skilled visa applications, compared with 30 per cent in 2009.

Most of the survey’s respondents said growth is high on the agenda with 75 percent ready for business expansion, a marked difference from last year’s finding where 30 percent of survey respondents intended to downsize operations.

Employers were likely to focus on training existing workers rather than hiring new people, in order to deal with a labour shortage, he added.

Ninety per cent of respondents said they were moderately or well prepared to deal with changes in the Australian economy in the coming year.

“Although our survey was conducted in April 2010, in the weeks since then our recovering business environment has again been tested. However, as we found in the 2008 and 2009 surveys, this survey reveals that Australian private companies have the capacity to steer their way through tough times.

“It’s pleasing to see the positive outlook, but my concern is that many businesses may be reading too much into the rebound. Now more than ever they must plan well, with particular focus on funding and staffing, in order to position themselves as the economy recovers,” finished Mr Di Sebastiano.

After his last Australian-based production, The Pacific, Steven Spielberg is expected to return to Australia for another television blockbuster, Terra Nova.

Queensland is one of the frontrunners, as possible location to film Spielberg’s new thirteen-part, $150 million Terra Nova, his science-fiction dinosaur series.

The story centres on the Shannon family who, to escape the apocalypse, travel back in time one-hundred and fifty million years to prehistoric Earth .

Entertainment Weekly claims Life on Mars actor Jason O’Mara has signed to play the Shannon family patriarch.

The drama is also executive produced by agent-turned-producer Aaron Kaplan, Craig Silverstein (Bones) and Kelly Marcel, among others. The story begins in 2149 A.D. when a large group of settlers are preparing to leave the apocalyptic world in which they live to time travel back millions of years. Their goal is to see trees, enjoy a blue sky, eat real food – basically, to start over in this so-called Eden.

Several US websites have claimed filming will begin in Australia this summer, however, Alastair McKinnon, Ausfilm’s head of policy, said it was yet to receive confirmation.

“It could be a week, it could be three months, it could be literally weeks before filming starts, it’s hard to know,” he said.

“Australia is probably one of six or seven potential locations. I think Queensland is the appealing venue at this stage because it has got studio and the tropical location they need. They are looking at Queensland.”

Terra Nova will cost about $4 million an episode and is set to be shot in one go due to the scale of the project, which is said to be “on par with The Pacific in terms of scale” at an estimated cost of around $4 million an episode.

“Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment were very impressed with the depth of our production talent and the experience of our crew when they were filming here, so I think that is part of the reason we are being looked at.” McKinnon added.

He said Australia had lost two major productions recently due to the strength of the Australian dollar, however changes to the Federal Government’s incentive for filmmakers by removing the 70 per cent budget spend requirement – may clinch the Terra Nova deal.

“They will be looking for the best value for money.”

The Asia Pacific’s largest technology industry event called “CeBIT Australia 2010″ was officially opened in Sydney on 24 May by NSW Premier Kristina Keneally, announcing a variety of initial steps to enhance the State’s digital market.

Approximately 35,000 guests from over 70 countries counting the exhibitors from Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and United States joined the CeBIT Australia 2010 opening.

Premier Kristina Keneally stated that telecommunications research and development is led by NSW which also has been the country’s center for digital publishing, film, interactive media and advertising companies.

“Technology and the growing digital economy are transforming industries by driving innovation, boosting productivity, and creating new employment opportunities.”, she said.

During the “CeBIT Australia 2010″ opening a few more announcements were made in relevance to the Information Communication Technology (ICT)industry. It was reported that the Australian government will extend a Digital Economy Strategy for NSW in-hand with the ICT industry. In fact, a $500,000 ‘Digital Sydney’ program was already announced to endorse NSW’s ability to merge the ICT and creative industries. It was also stated that the NSW Government would be working with CeBIT Australia organizer Hannover Fairs and will partner with Germany for a country program to uphold international business and research partnerships.

Furthermore, it is expected that over 400 jobs over the next 3 consecutive years will be created as a result of over 50 companies having participated in the Government’s new Innovation Pathways Program, a program served and launched last December 2009 to assist technology businesses and researchers to commercialize novel technologies.

The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), will conduct the annual digital media awards in Sydney for the next three years, and was chosen by the government as its partner to develop a digital business internship program and full-time positions to assist digital media graduates find full-time employment.

The government will also offer $150,000 in prizes this year to five companies to hasten their growth, help generate jobs, export sales and investment.

Reports of last year revealed that NSW Information Communication Technology exports amounted to about $1.1 billion, representing more than 51 per cent of the national total.

Tourism Central Australia, an agency that promotes Australia to the world, is launching the “Australia Unlimited” campaign.

Simon Crean, the Federal Trade Minister inaugurated the campaign during the Shanghai Expo which is in China, Australia’s largest trading partner.

Ren Kelly, Tourism Central Australia Chairman, believes the Government and TCA have ultimately hit the bull’s eye in promoting Australia to the world. He believes the new advertising campaign will be a champion.

Tthe campaign’s tagline “There’s nothing like Australia” starts with Australians sharing their individual stories about their holidays in Australia to show the world why they should visit.

Andrew McEvoy, a Managing Director of Tourism Australia – a government agency that particularly manages the international and domestic marketing of Australia as a destination of pleasure and business trips, said that the campaign aims to create potent word-of-mouth discussion about traveling to and then exploring Australia.

“For years Australians have seen and heard about Australia’s tourism marketing and have been very passionate about how our country is promoted overseas,” Mr McEvoy said. “Australians are the experts on what is unique and special about their country and we want to share this with potential travelers in a way that will make them want to come and visit our country. In fact our research shows more than 80% of Australians agree that every Australian can help promote our tourism industry.”

Tom Dery, the worldwide chairman of the agency that created the campaign said that the campaign shows the “unlimited potential” of the country. He believes it will “attract immigration, investment, and promote a lot of things that perhaps people overseas aren’t aware we’ve got in Australia.”

Coors may be getting ready to make a bid for Foster’s, Australia’s largest brewer and winemaker.

One member of Canadian founding family of Molson Coors Brewing Co. sees the company become a top global beer producer but won’t say if it is interested in making a bid for Australia’s Foster’s.

“Our appetite as Molson Coors Brewing Co. is to be one of the best and biggest brewing companies in the world and we’re always looking for opportunities to grow,” Geoff Molson told reporters after speaking to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce.
“But I’m not going to comment on what Molson Coors’ plans are for this,” he said.

Molson Coors is seen as a possible bidder for the company, with its five percent stake in Foster’s Group Ltd., which announced that it will split its beer and wine divisions. It could attract bids of up to $10 billion from suitors including SABMiller and Asahi, after a long-awaited decision to split off its struggling wine business. Foster’s controls about half of Australia’s beer market.

Among possible bidders are Diageo, Schweppes, SABMiller’s joint venture with Coca-Cola Amatil, along with Suntory Holdings Ltd. and Sapporo Holdings Ltd. of Japan.
Analysts and fund managers say potential predators have been reluctant to move on Foster’s, despite one of the highest-margin brewing operations in the world, because of the work needed to turn around the wine operations amid a global glut.

“At least this clears the way for potential bidders to look at the company,” said Brian Han, portfolio manager at Constellation Capital Management, which owns Foster’s shares.
Molson Coors Chairman Peter Coors said he would be interested in Fosters, according to press reports.

Still, Molson Coors, which owns a 5 percent stake in Foster’s, would need to team up with a beer giant such as Carlsberg for financial firepower, analysts said.

“Amatil would definitely be interested and the logic of putting together a beer and soft drinks company is inescapable because they are very similar products. It makes a lot more sense than a wine and beer company,” said Tom Elliott, managing director of hedge fund MM&E Capital that takes stakes in merger situations. “But all the big global beer players will have a look at it,” explained Elliott, whose fund owns shares in Foster’s.

Theo Maas, an analyst at Arnhem Investment Management, told the Australian media that he expected SABMiller’s Australian joint venture with Coca-Cola Amatil to emerge as front-runner for the beer unit.

Meanwhile, Geoff Molson said he doesn’t foresee the brewer following the lead of auto parts company Magna International by abandoning its dual share structure.

A bid for Southcorp, the Australian winemaker, by brewer and wine maker Foster’s may result in a round deconsolidation according to some industry watchers.

Analysts predicts that Foster’s will sell some of its wine brands in order to satisfy the competition authorities if it buys Southcorp. The front contender to buy the brands so far is fellow Australian McGuigan Simeon.

“Foster’s will certainly have more brands than they need, and it would certainly make life easier with the ACCC if they flick a few off to someone,” a banking source told Reuters earlier.

It is thought a bid fromFoster’s could also stir interest from other quarters. With Diaego and Constellation already busy assimilating recent acquisitions, Allied Domecq has been named as a possible rival suitor for Southcorp. The UK-based wine and spirits group has looked at acquiring in Australia before when it was beaten in a takeover race for Peter Lehmann Wines.

However, with Foster’salready owning a 19% stake, it may already be too late for rival bids.

Australia is the fifth most competitive economy in the world according to the annual report published by World Competitiveness Yearbook study.

Joining Australia in top 5 are Singapore, which is in 1st spot, Hong Kong in 2nd and USA in 3rd. They are so close, however, that it would be better to define them as the leading “trio”. Switzerland is in 4th spot of the top 5. Australia’s has benefited from strong demand in Asia and this has helped it’s excellent position.

The study on yearbook was based on 328 criteria among 58 leading economies which measured how these nations have created and maintained conditions that heavily favored business and investments. The US has been topping the list for the past 16 years.

This year, Singapore and Hong Kong have overtaken the US economic giant to the top of the list. Although the leading three remain very close, the Switzerland-based IMD business school, publisher of the yearbook, says. “Standings as merely separated by hairline figures.”

Next to the top 5 was Sweden on 6th, Canada on 7th, Taiwan on 8th, Norway on 9th and Malaysia on 10th place. China continued its rise in the survey, reaching 18th and highlighting that it is no longer dependent on foreign markets buying up its cheap exports. It led fellow emerging economies. Ireland is in 21st position, dropping 2 places since last year. The UK is in 22nd position, India in 31st, Brazil in 38th, and Russia in 51st.

Venezuela ranked last for the fifth year in a row, preceded by Ukraine, Romania, Argentina and Croatia.

Debt-laden Greece actually improved in the 2010 ranking, rising six places to 46th.