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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 September/October 2003 edition (Issue 18).
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In the current edition (September/October 2003)
Cover story:
Feature articles:
Previous editions
Cover Story - September/October 2003:
Creating smart cities
What do we want our cities to be like in 2025? John McKerral looks at the issues confronting a House of Representatives committee as it investigates the options for making our cities more liveable.
The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage has commenced an inquiry into Sustainable Cities 2025. This is an important decision. One might well say a courageous one.
The terms of reference are wide-ranging. The committee will inquire into:
- The environmental and social aspects of sprawling urban development;
- The major determinants of urban settlement patterns and desirable patterns of development for the growth of Australian cities;
- A blueprint for ecologically sustainable patterns of settlement, with particular reference to eco-efficiency and equity in the provision of services and infrastructure;
- Measures to reduce the environmental, social and economic costs of continuing urban expansion; and
- Mechanisms for the Commonwealth to bring about urban development reform and promote ecologically sustainable patterns of settlement.
It is a daunting list.
In late 1998 the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering at the University of Sydney resolved to undertake a study into urban transport, using Sydney as a model. Quickly it became evident that the core question had to be sustainable transport. Before long, it also became evident that it was impossible to look at urban transport without looking very hard at its interaction with urban planning issues, so the title and scope of the project changed to Sustainable Transport in Sustainable Cities. Over 100 contributed technical papers, several intense workshops, expenditure of $4 million (mostly in donated professional time) and three and a half years later, the Warren Centre issued its final report on this project, the largest ever undertaken by the centre in its 20 year history.
During the currency of the project, a vast array of issues were discussed and documented, including the expectations of the community in the areas of both transport and land use management; public health issues such as cancer, obesity and heart disease; how to provide a better bus system; the role of private finance in public infrastructure; inequity in the distribution of cultural and social services in a population of four million people; the issues facing urban freight transporters; urban villages; decentralisation; mixed-land-use zoning; alternative structures for managing government planning and service provision; and various established and emerging technologies.
An inquiry such as the one being conducted by the House of Representatives Environment and Heritage Committee cannot fail to generate submissions on all these issues and many more.
In order to provide a helpful introduction to the inquiry, I would like to comment, in order, on each of the five points in the terms of reference, drawing on my experience with the Warren Centre project. Hopefully I will be able to indicate some of the key issues associated with each point and suggest some fruitful lines for contributors to the inquiry to follow up.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Custody battle
The House of Representatives Family and Community Affairs Committee is conducting a six-month inquiry into child custody arrangements in the event of family separation. The inquiry will look at whether, in the event of separation, there should be a presumption that children will spend equal time with each parent and, if so, in what circumstances such a presumption could be rebutted. The inquiry will also look at child support payments, and grandparents rights of contact. About the House asked Patrick Parkinson to examine some of the issues.
When he announced the establishment of the House of Representatives inquiry in June, the Prime Minister expressed concern that many boys growing up in single parent families lack male role models both at home and in school until their teenage years.
There is reason to be concerned.
My research this year with Bruce Smyth of the Australian Institute of Family Studies on data arising from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics survey found that 36 per cent of Australian children whose parents were not living together had not seen their father in the last 12 months. A further 17 per cent had day-only contact. Only a minority of fathers (48 per cent) had the children to stay overnight. This was a study of more than 1000 separated parents, and of course it includes parents who were never married and had not lived together. Thirty-two per cent of divorced fathers had not had contact with their children in the last 12 months.
Nevertheless, it is in one way curious that the parliament should establish an inquiry into child custody arrangements, for the very concept of child custody no longer exists. Custody is an old-fashioned and outmoded concept. Typically in the past, one parent had custody while the other had access. At common law, custody included virtually all the rights and powers that an adult needed to bring up a child, including the right to make decisions about a childs education and religion. An access parent was still a legal guardian, but that meant little.
The terminology of custody and access was abolished by the Family Law Reform Act 1995. The Family Law Act now provides that whatever happens to the relationship of husband and wife (or de factos), they remain parents. The Act says children have a right of contact, on a regular basis, with both their parents and with other people significant to their care, welfare and development (and that includes grandparents). The Family Court or the Federal Magistrates Court will make orders about the practical issues of residence and contact if people cannot agree between themselves; but in the great majority of cases, both the parents retain parental responsibility.
So it is not the case now in Australia that the courts have got to decide between the mother or the father for custody.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Rain makers or cloud cuckoo?
A stoush over whether the practice of cloud seeding could increase rainfall over parts of Australia has spilled into the parliamentary arena.
Some people call it snake oil; others swear by it and are pumping millions of dollars into research and the practice of it.
It is cloud seeding, and now an Australian company, a federal parliamentarian and the CSIRO are at loggerheads over Australias attitude toward it as part of the House of Representatives Agriculture Committees inquiry into future water supplies.
Cloud seeding is designed to help clouds provide rain or snow. It does this by assisting rain-drop-sized droplets, or ice, to form in suitable clouds through the injection of an agent such as silver iodide crystals or, more recently, hygroscopic salt (a mixture of sodium, magnesium and potassium chlorides). Injection can be via a plane flying through or near the cloud, or from on-ground, gas-fired propulsion (at mountain level).
The parliamentary champion of cloud seeding is John Forrest (Member for Mallee, Vic). In 2002 he visited Texas, where cloud seeding is practised over about a third of the state. He went to the US as a cynic, but came back convinced of the necessity for greater Australian effort in the area. He observed the use of technologies which have never been tested in Australia, which he described in a report to parliament (Harvesting the Skies).
The Texans are convinced, Mr Forrest says. In Texas, their program has been supported by state funding to the tune of $US5.88 million every year for the last five years. They measure the economic outcome for each dollar spent at 700 to one. They have a commitment from their state legislature for half the funding. The rest of it comes from the players, who are the water authorities scattered right across the west of Texas and all the local government divisions or counties, as they call them over there. In some situations, the farming bodies are contributing because they are convinced.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Aviation security
Federal parliaments Public Accounts and Audit Committee is revewing aspects of aviation security in Australia. About the House asked the former head of security for Qantas, Ron Armstrong, to outline some of the impacts of terrorism on Australias and the worlds aviation landscape, and steps being taken to deal with the problem.
2003 marks the centenary of civil aviation. The progression from the rag and stick flying machine of the Wright Brothers traversing the hills of Kitty Hawk in 1903 to the high technology aircraft circling the globe today, exceeds by far any other form of technological advancement.
That progress continues to produce aircraft of advanced design and capability, flying faster and further, with greater passenger and cargo payloads. Civil aviation has become a key feature of international business and the global community.
In fact, the financial infrastructure of the world economy is in danger of serious decline unless the threat of terrorism against civil aviation is eliminated.
How can this be achieved? All facets of aviation security need to be subjected to constant review. There are a combination of international and domestic intitatives tackling this need.
The international context for civil aviation goes back to 1947, when the United Nations (UN) established the Convention on International Civil Aviation, generally known as the Chicago Convention. The Convention which spawned the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a sub-committee of the UN - outlines in its various Annexes standards and recommended practices to be observed or enforced by its signatory states.
In some cases states still own and operate airlines and airports (as was largely the case back in 1947); however many governments throughout the world, including that of Australia, have now shed direct operational accountability for the safety and security of aircraft and airports and adopted the role of regulator. The every-day operational accountability (and cost) for security has been passed on to the new owners of the former state assets, usually multi-national corporations.
To read the entire article, you can open this pdf document, or ask the Liaison & Projects Office for a copy of the magazine.
Big dry for green House
Parliament House is famous for its extensive showpiece gardens. But like in much of the nation, the extended dry weather is presenting challenges.
The weather station on Capital Hill recorded just 334mm of rain for the year to June 2003 (about half the normal amount). Water restrictions are already in place across the nations capital, and set to increase further in the spring.
While this is creating challenges for all Capital Territory households, it is especially so for the keepers of the largest and most high-profile house in the Territory - Parliament House.
Protecting the 23 hectares of famous turf and gardens surrounding the national parliament building is a labour of love for a small team from the Landscape Services section of Parliaments Joint House Department.
The 10 hectares of turf and 13 hectares of gardens, ranging from a native peripheral to formal gardens and internal courtyards, provide an important visual centrepiece to the Canberra landscape. As an asset, the landscaped gardens were valued at $21 million about eight years ago.
The gardens have already felt the effects of the water rations. The expert team of 16 permanent horticulturists and turf managers has an innovative action plan underway which has so far exceeded required water reductions.
For the past 12 months weve saved 19.6 per cent in water, says Landscape Services Manager John Lloyd. The lack of rain has started to impact on the landscape, and were not facing a really good spring or summer.
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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