Open House Interviews

The Productivity Commission will investigate the impact of mental health on the Australian economy and identify the ways workplaces can better support people living with mental health conditions. Mental health advocate, Lucy Brogden, says it is about time workplaces recognised mental well being is about 'more than fruit bowls and yoga classes".

A vote this year is now unlikely on controversial changes to the Sex Discrimination Act that would remove the ability of faith-based schools to expel LGBTI students. It means no sudden changes but leaves both sides of the debate uncertain about the future.

A bill aiming to protect LGBTI students, which Christian leaders fear could jeopardise religious freedom, has been put on ice in the Senate today.

Imagine if you had never read or heard the message of the Bible in your own language? That is the reality for Australia’s Indigenous community. Although more than half of Indigenous people are Christians, very few have read or heard the Bible in their ‘heart’ language.

Sometimes by accident, sometimes by design, professional and amateur shutterbugs vie each year for the honour of having their 'perfect storm' - or rainbow, cloud or wave - picked as a feature image on the annual Australian weather calendar.  Meteorologist, Grace Legge, from the Bureau of Meteorology's Extreme Weather Desk, talked to Open House about her favourite weather.

Humanitarian and civil society agencies working in Rakhine State in Myanmar and in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh are deeply concerned about the planed repatriation of refugees back to Myanmar. Rohingya refugees have repeatedly expressed a great deal of fear about going back.

In April 1915, at a little-known beach in Turkey named Gallipoli, two legends were created. The first was the courage of the Australian soldier: the second was the wartime service of the Salvation Army. On Open House Major Brett Gallager, the head of The Salvation Army's Red Shield Defence Services remembered the role of The Salvation Army in conflicts past and present.

The charitable organisation Dignity is making a huge difference in preventing long term homeless for at risk individuals and families. Now 50 inspiring stories are told in a new book.

Has the world changed a lot since WWI? Well, yes and no. Society, culture and technology have all advanced but some of the political issues that drove the world to the Great War are still apparent in global political tensions. Professor Simon Tomey from the University of Sydney took Open House on a whirlwind tour of one hundred years of politics and populism.

Nothing short of principled leadership can now end the debacle that has become the debate over religious freedom rights in Australia, writes Open House host Stephen O'Doherty.