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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 June 2004 edition (Issue 21).
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In the current edition (June 2004)
Cover story:
Feature articles:
Previous editions
Cover Story - June 2004:
The assault on salt
A battle against salinity is being fought across Australia. Winning will need commitment, time and the right science, property owner John Ive has told the House of Representatives Science Committee. Story: Russ Street
More than five and a half million hectares of land in Australia are at risk or already affected by dryland salinity. Its estimated that if the problem continues at its current rate, this could increase to 17 million hectares within 50 years.
Although salt is naturally present in most Australian soils, inappropriate land use practices over the past 200 years have caused the current massive salinity problems, evident in all parts of Australia.
And the problems are formidable. They include declining river quality; the loss of productive land; damage to farm equipment, roads, buildings and other public infrastructure; damage to urban infrastructure; damage to conservation reserves, biodiversity and remnant vegetation; and increased flood risk.
The House of Representatives Science and Innovation Committee is about to deliver its findings from an inquiry into the coordination of the science to combat Australias growing salinity problem.
Specifically, the inquiry, chaired by Gary Nairn (Member for Eden-Monaro, NSW), is investigating the Commonwealth governments role in managing and coordinating the application of the best science in relation to Australias salinity programs.
All Australians have a significant stake in the outcome of the inquiry because if the increasing problem of salinity is not controlled, many experts predict that it will not only affect farmers but will have significant effects in non-agricultural regions and urban areas.
John Ive, who made a submission to the inquiry, has run a family owned property Talaheni in the Yass Valley of New South Wales for the past 24 years.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
A working life
Innovative programs run by the Brotherhood of St Laurence are helping people get work and get their life working, as the House of Representatives Employment Committee found out during a recent visit. Story: Peter Cotton.
Im the only one in my family to actually be employed at the moment, says Yalarna*, a woman in her 20s living at the Collingwood public housing estate in inner-city Melbourne. Mums been on a pension all her life, so its something really different for our family to have someone working.
Yalarnas new job came thanks to one of a series of innovative employment programs developed by the Brotherhood of St Laurence, a Melbourne-based community organisation with the stated aim of working towards an Australia free of poverty. The Brotherhoods efforts, concentrated on Melbournes Atherton Gardens Public Housing Estate in Fitzroy and Collingwood Housing Estate, were outlined to members of the House of Representatives Employment and Workplace Relations Committee when they visited recently as part of their inquiry into increasing participation in paid work.
Of the 2,000 residents of Atherton Gardens, 95 per cent are on income support, with 26 per cent of them single parents, 17 per cent on disability support and 24 per cent on Newstart. The rest are mostly aged pensioners.
Atherton Gardens, like its counterpart in Collingwood, is culturally and ethnically diverse with a population comprising 39 per cent Vietnamese, 11 per cent Chinese, 4 per cent Turkish and 10 per cent from other ethnic groups.
The length of unemployment among estate residents ranges between two and 15 years.
Over the past 18 months, the Brotherhood has helped secure jobs for Yalarna and almost 100 other estate residents.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Plain speaking
After six years in the hot seat, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Neil Andrew, reflects on the challenges and highlights of his job as the Houses referee. Story: Georgie Oakeshott
As Speaker Neil Andrew contemplates hanging up his robes for the last time, he is satisfied hes leaving the parliament a more dignified and civil place. He certainly has no plans to drop dead in the House of Representatives chamber muttering dreadful, dreadful like Australias first Speaker.
Apparently Speaker Holders last words reflected his disgust at the behaviour of his political colleagues. Speaker Andrew says standards have improved since then and todays critics dont know their history.
Many people who are critical of parliament havent looked very closely at Hansard over the past 100 years where there have been some very colourful, sometimes confrontational exchanges, he says. One hundred years ago this nation was the envy of most of the world, 100 years later it still is. It doesnt mean it cant be improved, or refined, but it has changed with the times. Its an evolving parliament and I enjoy talking to Australians about it.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Vocation, vocation
The rising popularity of vocational education has led to innovation and a new set of challenges for our schools, writes Jack Keating as he reviews the latest report from the House of Representatives Education Committee.
One of the earliest studies of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Schools describes a coxswain course that was delivered by a high school in a coastal town in New South Wales. It involved students undertaking 180 hours at sea and led to a Coxswain Certificate of Competence. Such a course would cause nightmares for the wide variety of people that are now involved in VET in Schools across Australia. Duty of care, industrial health and safety, cost, and learning supervision are just some of the issues that would face such a program.
Yet this program is a good example of one of the major features of VET in Schools that has evolved with secondary education over the past decade. VET courses in schools have their origins in a collection of innovations by schools, industry, the VET sector and state education authorities. By the early 1990s all Australian states and territories had adopted common frameworks for their upper secondary certificates. In all cases this meant a single certificate, and in most cases vocational subjects or courses had no or a weak presence. The VET programs that now form VET in Schools across Australia were a series of innovations that interacted with these certificates and eventually became absorbed or accommodated by them, in most cases.
The isolated and small scale vocational innovations that peppered upper secondary education in the early 1990s have now grown into a major educational institution. By 2002, 95% of all secondary schools had VET in Schools courses, and 44% of all students undertaking the senior secondary certificates were doing a VET in Schools course. The innovations also include School-based New Apprenticeships.
It is not surprising therefore that amongst the first observations of VET in Schools in Australia by the House of Representatives Education Committee, in its report Learning to work, is that there is a high degree of diversity across the states and territories. Programs differ in their industries, hours of study, requirements for work placements, incorporation within the school certificates, and relationships with the VET certificates or Training Packages.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
The power of privilege
It is meant to protect free speech in parliament, but its also used to score political points. Gerard Carney looks at whether parliamentary privilege needs a make-over.
Most people think of parliamentary privilege as the immunity members of parliament rely upon when they make accusations against individuals in the course of parliamentary debates. This is, of course, the most controversial manifestation of privilege. Yet parliamentary privilege extends beyond this immunity to include other matters which are regarded as essential to the functioning of parliament. It confers on each house of parliament a range of powers, in particular, the power to control its own proceedings, to regulate its members, and to punish conduct which it judges to be in contempt of the house. Each house is also empowered to conduct inquiries into matters of public importance. This power is of increasing importance in holding the executive accountable to parliament. Nowhere is this more apparent than during the financial estimates hearings conducted by Senate committees which grill senior government officials on the operations of their department.
All of these privileges and powers derive originally from those of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom where they developed through the centuries as the House strove to establish parliamentary supremacy over the Crown and the courts. For instance, the immunity of members for what they say in the course of parliamentary proceedings was finally secured in England by Article 9 of the Bill of Rights in 1689 which prevents any speech, debate or proceedings in parliament from being questioned outside parliament. Until this privilege was confirmed by statute, it was not uncommon for outspoken members of the House of Commons to be charged with offences for speeches disapproved of by the Crown. The establishment of this privilege ensured the capacity of members to scrutinise the activities of the Crown and, hence, assisted the subsequent development of responsible government by which the executive is accountable to the lower house. Professor Enid Campbell once wrote that without this privilege, parliament would merely have evolved into polite but ineffectual debating societies!
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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