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About the House, your free, colour magazine
 About the House is a free colour feature magazine produced up to 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 (telephone: freecall 1800 139 299, email: liaison.reps@aph.gov.au).
The current About the House magazine is the March 2006 edition (Issue 26).
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In the current edition (March 2006)
Cover story:
Feature articles:
Previous editions
Cover Story - March 2006:
Ready, or not
More than 75,000 trainee teachers
undertake supervised classes in
Australian schools each year as part
of their degree courses. A House of
Representatives committee
investigating teacher education has
found the practise teaching round by
far the most contentious issue. Story: Geoffrey Maslen
The noise rolled down the
long school corridor like
thunder. Outside room 28
I could see a crowd of
boisterous, shouting boys.
The pushing and tugging stopped
as they heard my steps. Young
teenage faces turned to watch as I
nervously approached and I could
almost see them thinking, “Here
comes another newey—this should
be fun!”
I arrived at the western suburbs
all-boys technical school after two
weeks at the teachers college. Like
the other 100 tyro teachers at the
college, I had not set foot inside a
school since I had left my own six
years before. Yet, with only the
briefest advice about managing a
class and some of the other tasks
teachers have to undertake, we were
assigned to a range of schools and
told to report on the first day
of term—schools whose students
had learnt to pick a trainee from
20 paces.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Health at a premium
With health care services in greater demand and costs rising, private health
providers are divided on the way forward. Chris Uhlmann reports.
Former NSW Premier Bob Carr
is credited with saying history
is an argument. If the
parliamentary inquiry into
health care is anything to go
by, so is the present and the future.
One point of agreement is that
health costs will continue to rise, but
the key players are sharply divided on
whether the bill is reasonable and
who should pay.
Inquiries into health care are like
cricket games in summer—there
always seems to be one going on
somewhere. The most recent is being
undertaken by the House of
Representatives Health and Ageing
Committee. In March last year the
committee resolved to examine how
the Commonwealth can take a
leading role in “improving the
efficient and effective delivery of
highest-quality health care to all
Australians”.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document (127 kb), or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
To bee or not to bee
A looming crisis in beekeeping is bad news for millions of dollars of Australian agriculture which beekeepers say is riding not on the sheep’s back, but on the honeybee’s wing. Story: Georgie Oakeshott
It’s a million dollar dilemma
which could become a two
billion dollar headache for the
economy. Australia’s biggest
beekeeping business at Blayney
in the central west of NSW is
struggling to fill three million dollars
worth of orders for queen bees
because there is not enough staff to
meet demand.
This lack of skilled labour is not
only frustrating for Blayney
beekeeper, Warren Taylor, but also
threatens the entire beekeeping
industry, with dire consequences for
Australian agriculture, which is
reliant on bees for pollination.
“I was trained at Hawkesbury
Agricultural College; I specialised in
apiculture and went on to build this
large company,” Mr Taylor told the
House of Representatives Agriculture
Committee investigating Australia’s
rural skills, training and research
needs. “Since the Gatton and
Hawkesbury colleges have closed
down their beekeeping courses,nobody is coming out of institutions
capable of assisting in the managerial
type work of our business. I just
hope that this committee can
recognise a small but vital industry
and do something to help reinstate at
least one beekeeping course in
Australia.”
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document (117 kb), or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
When democracy meets politics
Recent proposals for electoral reform combine democratic ideals with political realities, writes political scientist Professor John Warhurst.
Australians are justly proud of our
achievements as a nation in the field of
electoral democracy. David Farrell and
Ian McAllister open their recent definitive
study, The Australian electoral system:
origins, variations and consequences, by saying: “In
the pantheon of representative democracy, Australia
has its name stamped on many of the major
advances in electoral system design as well as steps
towards democratising electoral laws.”
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document (140 kb), or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
A force to be reckoned with
A major military purchase aims to keep Australia's air force ready to meet our future defence challenges. Story: Andrew Dawson
Not to have an adequate air
force in the present state of
the world is to compromise
the foundations of national
freedom and independence.”
Those words, spoken by Winston
Churchill in the lead up to the Second
World War, still have resonance today
as the Australian Defence Force gets
ready for one of its most expensive
military purchases ever.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document (129 kb), or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Australians all
How representative is the House of Representatives? Peter Cotton asks
six of our representatives who have come from diverse backgrounds.
New figures from the
Australian Bureau of
Statistics show that
people who migrated
to Australia from a
non-English speaking country,
plus their children, comprise
almost one third of the Australian
population. However, only 18 of
this group are members of the
150-seat House of Representatives.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document (122 kb), or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
And still they are dying
A rise in the road toll has governments looking for new solutions
to a problem that continues to rob our community of precious lives.
For the first time in five years, Australia’s
road toll has increased, leading to renewed
efforts to stem the carnage on our roads.
The 2005 toll of 1,635 people killed on
Australian roads was 52 more than 2004,
bucking the downward trend that had seen the
overall per capita fatality rate fall from a record 30.4
deaths per 100,000 people in 1970 to 7.7 deaths
per 100,000 in 2004.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document (221 kb), or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
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