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You could you call it coincidence that the week I'm asked to write on budgets, ours blows out. I call it life. Such is the cyclic nature of our 1.5-incomes-and-two-kids lives that just when we think our savings are safe, a new enrolment fee is due, the kids' jeans are suddenly a size too small and I've run out of nappies.
Retiring Greens leader Bob Brown is not the avuncular teddy-bear politician some paint him as. He and new leader Christine Milne share the same steel and political acumen. The next promising generation of Greens leaders will be nurtured and grow under Milne's leadership. And there are many of them.
Australia is now indelibly associated with Obama's strong messages to China in Canberra. We were used. But our government wanted this, because it will all be popular with the middle ground former Labor voters Gillard is trying to win back from Abbott and the Greens.
Many Australian politicians who should know better give the people and the media exactly what they want: rancorous confrontations and barbed insults. The 'tough' way in which Australian politics is played corrodes civility and potentially erodes our democracy.
Abbott will face a worsening dilemma. If he continues to rage about revoking the carbon tax, he will alienate industry groups that want stability above all. If he goes quiet, he will validate Labor's portrayal of him as a cynical opportunist who stands for nothing but gaining power.
Though Gillard's leadership has started to come under pressure, no one in Labor will want to overthrow her until the carbon pricing laws package is securely in place. This means no challenge before the first half of 2012. Only then, if opinion polls keep trending down, may Gillard be vulnerable.
Australia has this tendency to look for a great and powerful protector, then become slavishly obedient to it ... When we're prepared to sacrifice the human rights of our own citizens in the interests of conducting that alliance, it makes me very angry. –Former diplomat Tony Kevin
Hatred against paedophiles and fantasies of violent retaliation are stoked by gossip around dining room tables. Snowtown portrays the evil that humans are capable of under mundane circumstances, and the devolution of morality when it is nourished by sick ideologies.
The proposal that a match at the MCG could project an Easter message is ludicrous. The Easter message calls for time and prayerful reflection. Even Islamic and Jewish leaders have supported the special status of Good Friday.
At last, an Australian government has presented for public consideration an intelligently conceived framework for a national carbon emissions plan. Has Gillard broken her pre-election 'no carbon tax' promise? Does it matter?
Australians can rejoice in the good year our farmers are having. But farming in southern Australia continues to be a high-risk business. Climate change is inevitably going to make it harder to sustain all kinds of agriculture in inland southern Australia.
13-24 out of 50 results.