Taking a browse through Budget Paper 2 we find:
For the Hospital:
The Government will contribute $5.0 million to the Australian Capital Territory in 2014-15 towards the development of a dedicated service for children within the Emergency Department of the Canberra Hospital. This will help streamline and better coordinate paediatric emergency and inpatient services for around 15,000 [...]

With Parliament House turning 25 tomorrow AAP have pictures of the commemorative coins.
Pretty sure those $5 jobbies won’t pay for the parking.
But the 20c will be worth keeping an eye out for.

To celebrate the house in the hill’s 25th birthday, a video about Parliament House that is exactly as interesting as Parliament House has been released.
They won’t let me embed it, so here’s a link.
Enjoy!

Planet Ark are launching a campaign to get people to use more wood in their homes.
But they’re mashing up our own Parliament House to do so, hence the local interest.
It’s Parliament House as you’ve never seen it. In a striking digital makeover, the external concrete masonry has been replaced by more environmentally-friendly wood panelling.
The creative [...]

Government News brings word that Parliament House is trying to figure out how to be more appealing to the tourists.
Quite possibly an unintended consequence of the Museum of Australian Democracy opening is a pull on the time of the politically minded tourist.
(And the portrait gallery remains the best historical lens available in Canberra.)
Any thoughts?

ACT Fire & Rescue has responded to an automatic fire alarm call to Parliament House this afternoon.
Fire crews arrived to find a fire had ignited within the Great Hall near the front public entrance to the building but had been extinguished by on site security staff.
The fire in a curtin is believed to have been [...]

Defence are giving notice that the RAAF’s retiring C-130H Hercules will be flying down Anzac Parade on Friday as part of their last hurrah:
One C-130H will conduct a flypast of Canberra at 3.20pm, approaching Mt Ainslie from the North/North East before overflying the Australian War Memorial and Anzac Parade at 175 metres altitude.
It will then [...]

The 2013 sitting calendar has just been released but is not yet on the APH website (http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Sitting_Calendar).  I’ll post the link when it comes available.
There are 19 sitting weeks in total (including Senate Estimates and AEs), commencing 5 February 2013.  There will also be an election in there somewhere – the effect of that on [...]

Kim has sent this lovely sunset sky in with this note:
Another sunset
But if you look closely, you’ll spot the Parliament House flag
Got an image of Canberra you want to share with the world? Email it in to images@the-riotact.com .

I fear West Papua is as lost a cause as they get. But if you’re more into the justice of the thing we have word of a rally at Parliament House on 18 September at 11.30am.
The West Papua community in Australia wishes to highlight the nearby and ongoing state violence in Indonesia’s troubled province of [...]

Senator Humphries is very concerned that Parliament House visitor numbers are the lowest in the building’s history:
Under questioning from ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries, the heads of the Department of Parliamentary Services confirmed that the budget available to promote Parliament as a destination to visit and learn from in Canberra was almost non-existent.
“The fact is [...]

Rob has sent in the view from Kingston, which we have to say is rather fetching.
Got an image of Canberra you want to share with the world? Email it to images@the-riotact.com .

The Monthly has a lengthy piece by the entertainer Rhys Muldoon on the demise of Kevin Rudd.
Once you get over the initial surprise at just how close to the inner wheel Muldoon was rotating it’s a pretty good look at how life on the hill works, and worked that fateful night.

Ian H has sent in this marvellous panorama shot taken on Sunday morning of a heliotrope sunrise over Parliament House and Lake Burley Griffin.
Got an image of Canberra you want to share with the world? Email it in to images@the-riotact.com .

Apparently there are protesters marching on Parliament House and burning a flag out the front as a result of what went down yesterday.
Anyone know whats going on?

ED – Socket Gar’eh has sent in these pictures taken from the bus on Commonwealth Avenue with this note:
Hey Johnboy, was on the bus around 2.15pm rounding Parliament House [...]

Back where I originate from, some community minded types have decided to redesign the local clock tower.
Putting aside the rest of the aesthetics of LED screens and what have you, they have proposed to drop a flagpole on the top that looks like a miniature version of the one we have atop Parliament House.
Does this [...]

NineMSN have the peculiar news that the accessory du jour in Parliament House is a retro styled handset for one’s mobile phone to shift the radiation from the vicinity of the brain.
This still doesn’t help most of us men who keep our phones next to our balls, or the vast majority of normal humans who [...]

Does this sum up the Bush Capital? Where else in the world could you look at a Country’s parliament with a skinned fox nailed to a fire-damaged tree in the foreground!?
Picture was taken from the lookout up Red Hill early on a fine morning….

Got an image of Canberra you want to share with the [...]

[ 15 October, 2011; 2:30 pm; ]

With “Occupy Wall Street” spreading as a meme across the world it was only really a matter of time.

Facebook has the home for “Occupy Canberra”.

The occupy movement is a movement which is bringing attention to a corrupt system. You see, The RBA – Reserve Bank of Australia is not any part of the government. It [...]

[ 13 October, 2011; ] The 2011/12 Federal Budget was a severe disappointment to people with dementia, their families and their carers, with no new funding to combat the dementia epidemic and terminating the Dementia Initiative. This means a loss of guaranteed funding for essential programs and support services for people living with dementia.

Alzheimer’s Australia wants the 2012/13 Federal Budget [...]

ACT Policing is warning Canberra commuters of potential delays and disruptions to traffic on Monday, August 22 as a result of a protest rally.
Participants in the ‘Convoy of No Confidence’ protest rally are expected to arrive in Canberra on Sunday, August 21. The formal convoy will commence at 5.30 am on Monday (August 22) morning, [...]

It seems we have been noticed by the nutters from “Just Grounds” which is rather the opposite of the ancient Chinese curse “May you come to the attention of powerful people”.
They have sent forward an emissary Julie Coker-Godson who had this to say in the comments last night:
@johnboy: My name is Julie Coker-Godson and I [...]

[ 14 August, 2011; 11:00 am; ] This Sunday (14 August) at 11am, rallies are being held all over Australia to call for an end to cruel live export of animals to countries where they are subject to horrific treatment. The Canberra rally is out the front of Parliament House.

http://www.animalsaustralia.org/features/live-export-rally.php

This event is being run by Animals Australia and the RSPCA. These organisations [...]

Earlier in the week we were disturbed that the kings of Sydney talkback radio, Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, and Chris Smith, were coming to Canberra to broadcast from the lawns of Parliament House.
We gather that’s for some sort of anti carbon tax rally.
But now the Sydney gay media is noting that there’s going to [...]

2CC has tweeted that the kings of 2GB’s talkback radio are coming to Canberra on 16 August to broadcast from the lawns of Parliament House.
Love them or loathe them it could turn into quite a circus.

Mighty Xinhua have deigned to take an interest in a proletarian uprising at Parliament House.
The Parliament House staff decided to take industrial action to protest against their latest increase in annual pay offer of just 3 percent.
The staff argued the 3 percent increase in payment does not keep pace with inflation at 3.3 percent, nor [...]

I came across this picture while I was looking at the construction of the American eagle at Russell.
I zoomed in to notice something not so familiar.  In front of parliament house, on the lawns, what in the world is that structure!? Could someone please tell me!! All the oldies i’ve asked have no idea, [...]

Member for Fraser Andrew Leigh is offering the valuable chance to intern in his office.
When I was 16, I did two weeks’ work experience for John Langmore, who was then the member for Fraser. It was the first year that the new Parliament House had been opened, and I remember getting hopelessly lost as [...]

[ 24 June, 2011; 12:00 pm; ]

As seen in Civic today.

It seems some wags are holding a memorial service for Kevin Rudd this Friday noon on Federation Mall (aka the Parliamentary Protest area).

Who would do such a thing? What do you think?

Andy has sent in a couple of images from the impressive looking Free Syria demonstration at Parliament House last night.
Got an image of Canberra you want to share with the world? Email it to images@the-riotact.com .

[ 6 July, 2011; 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm. ] Federal Labor MP Andrew Leigh has just blogged that he will be launching Jemma Purdey’s biography of the late founder of the organisation now-known-as Australian Volunteers International, Herb Feith, at Parliament House.

All welcome – details here and below.

The 2011 Herb Feith Memorial Lecture & Book Launch

Herb Feith [...]

A Sydney group of 15 cyclists are heading to our wonderful city in less than three weeks on a mammoth bike ride to raise funds for Lymphoma Australia and help those affected by Lymphoma Cancer.
The three cyclists and their supporters will leave the Sydney Opera House in Sydney on 24 June and hope to [...]