Changes are afoot in the Australian weather and climate research community: a new joint research centre (CAWCR) has been formed replacing the previous Bureau and CSIRO research activities, and our atmospheric modelling effort is changing to work jointly with the UK Met Office on versions of their modelling systems. ACCESS is the name given to the Australian community model, which shares the atmosphere component with the UK Hadley Centre climate model and Met Office operational NWP systems, but differs in some of the other components. The ACCESS model is planned to replace the Bureau's operational NWP systems in 2009, and to be used in Australian IPCC AR5 contributions. Progress and plans on ACCESS development for weather and climate will be described.