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From November 2006, three paramedical professions that provide mental health services - eligible or approved psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists - came within the scope of Medicare. The purpose of this article is to place that historic decision in context, first by examining several key secular trends in psychiatry as a profession, and then by presenting some data on the professional groups newly subsidised under Medicare. The trends in psychiatry give the context of that decision and point to the structural forces that are likely to be associated with the provision of mental health services in Australia.

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This article investigates the net costs to employers of training apprentices. The authors give a brief background to Australia's apprenticeship system, review the relevant literature and give an outline of their methodology. Basing their analysis on 59 case studies of employers, the authors, after reporting the main results, move on to a discussion of other issues raised in the case study interviews, for example employers' perceptions of the cost of apprentice training and apprentice wages, in light of their findings. The final section of the paper provides a discussion of the possible implications of the study and offers the authors' conclusions. Show less

The author asserts that the work-family policy debate has been side-tracked into the area of quality of life, workplace stress and the rights of single employees. Edgar believes that the focus needs to return to the broader aspects of the changing nature of family life, the place of work in the new economy, the needs of children and the future of an ageing population. He maintains that a cultural change is necessary, to make work practices and programs flexible enough to allow appropriate parental leave without penalty, and for child-care services and home and community services to be available, funded by business and government. Future policies must find new ways to cater for the diversity of family needs. Show less

This paper examines the retirement intentions of Australian Baby Boomers by occupation. Workers from 14 of 35 occupations expect to retire earlier than the national average of 64.3 years, with 'white collar' workers more likely to be among the early retiring, and 'blue collar' workers among the late. Early-retiring intentions will be reinforced by short gaps between preferred and expected retirement age, relatively high levels of financial security and formal discussion about retirement, yet lower than average levels of desire for transition-to-retirement arrangements; late-retiring intentions will be reinforced by more or less the opposite. Early-retiring occupations are also the largest and have the potential to cost the economy 1.26 million person-years of working life. The findings indicate that policy interventions should be targeted, that interventions should include non-economic inducements and reforms, including efforts to ensure a healthier longer work life, and that Baby Boomer retirement needs to be 'managed' at an institutional level.

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The labour market for nurses appears to be persistently in a state of shortage, as evidenced by regular reports of 'the nursing crisis'. This paper draws on data from two surveys to investigate critical aspects of the working lives of Australian nurses: a survey of Registered Nurses in Western Australia and the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia [HILDA] survey. While nurses face strong employment opportunity, consistent with an occupational shortage, there is evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with aspects of their jobs. Despite strong dissatisfaction with pay, estimated wage equations suggest that, by and large, nurses' pay is in line with that of other women when typical human capital variables are controlled for. Dissatisfaction with non-pay aspects of the job appears to have a stronger influence on overall job satisfaction and on intentions to leave the profession. The age profile and future intentions of the current nurse workforce suggests a continuing, if not worsening, shortage of qualified nurses in Australia.

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The resource sector in northern Western Australia draws its workforce from local purpose-built towns (drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) workers) and metropolitan areas (fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) workers). However, each of these arrangements has a downside. Mining towns are costly to build and maintain. Staff turnover is high. FIFO lifestyles adopted by city-based tradesmen seeking high incomes can lead to social dysfunction. Hence, the question is: is there a viable alternative to these regional and remote areas for local communities to provide workers and ancillary support for the resource sector? For example, most of the inland mines in Western Australia are located near or within Aboriginal communities. Returning to these communities are ex-prisoners who have had the opportunity to gain trade skills while in metropolitan prisons. This article considers whether Aboriginal ex-prisoners might be gainfully employed in the resource sector in the Pilbara and Kimberley regions of Western Australia.

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This article argues the growth in the number of university students working and in their working hours is the result of inadequate government funding and support and that student work commitments are now having a negative impact on class attendance and out-of-class study. This, however, is not simply an educational issue. With over 300,000 university students working, it is important to understand more about their employment experience. This is made possible by citing the results of a 2006 regional survey which examined the nature of student work in terms of industry, size of business, earnings, hours and union membership. In this way, student employment is firmly placed within the context of a deregulated industrial relations system. The article also discusses the problem of student paid employment in the light of the Bradley review of higher education in Australia.

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This article provides an overview on the Australian labour market for 1999, noting good economic and employment growth. Several labour market indicators, supported by statistical tables, are reviewed and compared with 1998 performance. These are output growth as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment growth and the demand for labour, labour productivity, price and wages inflation, and industrial disputation. Some forecasting of the year ahead is made on the basis of these indicators.

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Work time spread across the entire week, rather than the conventional five day working week, has meant that workers are now less able to utilise longer stretches of recreation time especially in gaining access to a full two-day break over a weekend. This paper explores the issues contributing to workers' acquisition of longer recreation time. It seeks to determine the effects of this acquisition on the quality of working and non-working time for the employee through a study of work-life balance in the construction industry. It finds that weekends are more important to achieving work-life balance than shorter days over a six-day week when working long hours. Further, 'personal time' is a key element in achieving satisfactory work-life balance for employees, and this type of 'time' is often forgone in trying to integrate the necessary and desired non-work activities in the shorter time available to workers.

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This paper attempts to put the minimum wage increase into an international context and in particular to focus on the special provisions relating to disabled workers. It is suggested that consideration be given to the inter-relationship between the special provisions and other policies directed at the disabled.

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