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About the House, your free, colour magazine
 About the House is a free colour feature magazine produced five times a year by the Liaison & Projects Office of the House of Representatives. It covers the varied work of Members of the House, especially Committee investigations.
The magazine is available through the offices of every Member of the House of Representatives, or can be ordered directly through the Liaison & Projects Office (tel: 02 6277 2122, email: liaison.reps@aph.gov.au).
The current About the House magazine is the May 2005 edition (Issue 23).
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In the current edition (May 2005)
Cover story:
Feature articles:
Previous editions
Cover Story - May 2005:
What's eating up our time?
Getting the balance right between work and family is a key challenge facing many Australians. Chris Richardson looks at some of the issues confronting the House of Representatives Family and Human Services Committee as it commences an investigation into work/family balance.
AUSTRALIANS feel their time is increasingly pressured, with their family time particularly pressured. Such results show up in surveys. But economists can easily find evidence for the squeeze on time elsewhere too. For example, spending on food is an increasing share of family budgets. At first glance that seems strange—food is a necessity, not a luxury, and so would be expected to shrink as a share of spending as our incomes grow.
But the classic symptom of a pressured work/life balance is our lack of time. Hence the extra food spending — harassed mums and dads are happy to spend a bit more to buy food that has already been part prepared rather than to start from scratch with fresh ingredients.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Teaching by degrees
The preparation of Australia’s teachers has long attracted the attention of governments around the nation. Following a New South Wales investigation in 2001, a federal inquiry in 2002 and a Victorian parliamentary study that reported last February, the House of Representatives Education and Vocational Training Committee is undertaking its own review. Geoffrey Maslen reports.
IN ONE of his oft–repeated lines, George Bernard Shaw delivered a malicious misrepresentation of the world’s pedagogues: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."
Even a century ago when Shaw made that observation in one of his plays, it was a callous calumny. Three years later, Henry Brooks Adams tried to correct the record by declaring, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Yet it is Shaw’s aphorism rather than Adams’ that still influences the way many people regard teachers, as if teaching was a job anyone could do. The assumption being they weren't very good at doing something else.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Home alone
Parents of children with disabilities are increasingly frustrated at their often lonely and unsupported struggle to raise their families, prompting several federal MPs to speakout in the House of Representatives. PETER COTTON REPORTS.
PAUL NEVILLE describes his meeting late last year with a group of parents of disabled children as a ‘Road to Damascus’ experience which left him in tears and made him determined to champion their cause.
“I’ve never come away from a meeting so disturbed,” says Mr Neville, the Member for Hinkler (Qld). “I cried that night, but now it troubles me that I might create an expectation that I can’t fulfil and that’s why I’m moving cautiously. I want to build this thing, rather than go all out and fail. I’m determined to help these people.”
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Gone to the dogs
When bushfires swept through south–eastern Australia in the summer of 2003, stock and wildlife losses were immense. In the wake of the fires, one animal has thrived and become a major pest in the region, as a House of Representatives committee is finding out. Story: Andrew Dawson
AS IF the bushfires weren’t enough to cope with.
Farmers still recovering from the devastating summer of 2003 now face a different threat which, according to one federal parliamentarian, might have been avoided if action had been taken after the fires.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Try before you buy
The steady increase in Australians undertaking contract and other shorter term work has prompted the House of Representatives Employment Committee to investigate labour hire and independent contracting. With submissions to the inquiry expressing a variety of views on the subject, Dr Richard Hall gives his perspective on the issues.
LABOUR HIRE — known as temporary agency work in most parts of the world — has recently become a focus of increasing attention for governments, policy–makers, academics and commentators.
The reasons are simple: the incidence of agency work as a form of employment has been increasing at a significant rate in Australia and other western economies; the labour hire industry itself has grown to the extent that one global agency giant now claims to be the world’s biggest employer; and there is mounting evidence from workers that conditions of work and employment offered through agencies can often be substandard.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Containing the threat within
A parliamentary review of ASIO’s detention powers is asking how far we should go in protecting ourselves from terrorism. CHRIS UHLMANN reports.
IT’S EASY for Australians to forget that some of our laws were made to protect us from the state. In this cosy nook of the world, most of us don’t lie awake at night worrying about the police kicking in the door. When governments say they need more power to protect us from real threats like terrorism, most view the request as reasonable, even necessary.
But how much power should we hand the state?
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
The adoption maze
A new parliamentary inquiry is investigating overseas adoptions and how to assist Australian parents with the demanding approval process.
SUE PRIEST has spent more than a decade at the helm of the Australians Aiding Children Adoption Agency in Adelaide which has found homes for 1,125 children from overseas since 1993.
“Australian families have been welcoming children from overseas into their homes since the Vietnam War days,” Ms Priest says.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
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