In what would, if we were indeed in an election campaign, be considered a major gaffe, shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey today committed the Coalition to reversing the increase in compulsory superannuation from 9% to 12%, then hastily backflipped. At a doorstop to heap contumely on Wayne Swan’s announcement that the mining tax had only raised [...]

Minister for Tertiary Education and Senate Leader Chris Evans and Attorney-General Roxon have announced their departures from Cabinet at a media conference in Canberra this morning, with Evans indicating he will be resigning from the Senate in coming months and the Attorney-General stating she will retire from politics at the next election. The Prime Minister [...]

Tim Mathieson is keen to encourage men to take responsibility for their health, and he knows that it’s an uphill battle. So he tries to make a prostate examination sound like fun. “We can get a blood test for it, but the digital examination is the only true way to get a correct reading on [...]

by Malcolm Farnsworth It was easily dismissed as silly season puffery but Julia Gillard laid out the ALP’s re-election strategy in her letter to Sunday Telegraph readers last weekend. The strategy has been developed over most of the past year. It’s a story built around Gillard. In the letter, she says people praise her resilience. “I [...]

PRIME MINISTER acting minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES TO COOPERATE WITH GOVERNMENT ON COMPLAINT HANDLING Social Networking Sites have agreed to continue promoting user safety as well as undertaking education and awareness raising about antisocial behaviour online under new guidelines announced by the Prime Minister. The Cooperative Arrangement for [...]

The world gasps dumbstruck in the wake of the Connecticut shootings, but don’t expect it to be a catalyst for profound reform of American gun laws.

Labor caps CO2 but not H2O buybacks  The Labor Government has been telling farmers that they must become more efficient with water and they have by converting free-flow open channels to overhead laterals and pumps. Now the Labor Government tells them they must become more efficient with power. In fact they have put up the [...]

Stephen Conroy has unveiled the first stage of the government’s response to the Convergence Review.

Oh, Dilbert. From Afghan religious extremists to silver-haired Melbourne cyber-hipsters – you know us so well.

The government has reacted to growing pressure for a royal commission into child abuse by the Catholic Church by announcing a federal royal commission into institutional child abuse, with terms of reference to be developed in coming weeks by the Attorney-General and Families Minister Brendan O’Connor working in consultation with the states. The inquiry will [...]