from Crikey .....

Wayne versus the lizard people: the secret history of illegitimate power

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

ANDREW FORREST, CLIVE PALMER, WAYNE SWAN

Muslim women will have to remove face veils when having their signatures officially witnessed under the latest laws in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.

State Attorney General Greg Smith said on Monday that officials who fail to check identities will face fines under laws recently approved by the state legislature.

Some say if the Bowraville children had been white their killer would have been brought to justice by now. But 20 years later, after two investigations, two trials, a coronial inquest, a change to the law, two appeals to attorneys-general and a petition to Parliament, no one has been convicted.

One reason for this could be that NSW lags other parts of Australia in how it treats some Aboriginal people in court.

One of Barry O'Farrell's closest advisers has been stood aside without pay today following revelations he kept the Premier in the dark over crucial details of The Star casino sexual harassment allegations.

Premier O'Farrell said he was launching an investigation by the The Director General of the Department of Premier and Cabinet to see if Mr Grimshaw had breached the code of conduct for ministerial staff.

The Premier said Mr Grimshaw then offered to remain stood aside until after the conclusion of the Independent Liquor and Gaming Enquiry into the scandal.

Were we wrong? I have lived through two global conflicts: the west against Russian communism and now the west against political Islam. The latter was caused by western leaders exaggerating a threat from a tiny group of terrorists to win popularity in war. But the former? Surely the cold war was a good war, a Manichean struggle between competing visions of how to order humanity. If not, then it must have been one of the great mistakes of all time, and a horrific waste of resources.

The first thing to understand about terrorism against America is that it is negligible. Horrible as it was, the destruction of the Trade Towers was an outlier, that is, an event that lies way, way outside the main body of terrorist activity.

'There aren't any bombshells,'' Mark Arbib says. ''No one has threatened me. No one has cajoled me. No one knew I was going to resign until I went to the PM.''

Yesterday was a very big day for WikiLeaks. It just released 500 million internal documents stolen from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, allegedly obtained by hacktivist collective Anonymous in December.

from Crikey .....

Surprise! Gillard brings Bob Carr to Canberra

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

BOB CARR, GILLARD CABINET, LABOR LEADERSHIP SPILL, RESHUFFLE, ROBERT MCCLELLAND

Australia's economic success is at risk from a tiny minority of wealthy business people who are using their money and influence to ''poison'' the political and economic debate with arguments that benefit their self-interest but hurt the community, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has said.

In an essay for The Monthly magazine likely to stir controversy, Mr Swan names business people Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer as examples of the self-interested ''0.1 per cent'' against whom he rails.

Julia Gillard this week defeated Kevin Rudd overwhelmingly, but she shows little sign of winning the battle with herself to stop making bad mistakes. The aborted attempt to get Bob Carr into Parliament turned an opportunity into an own goal. Suddenly, everyone involved became a casualty.

Carr was embarrassed by being wooed and then unceremoniously dumped. NSW ALP secretary Sam Dastyari, who thought he'd done the right thing by identifying a high-profile figure to shoehorn into the Parliament and ministry, finds himself back in the box labelled ''faceless men''.

Proposed laws that would empower the Australian Crime Commission to share information with the private sector could lead to people being unfairly sacked from their jobs, according to civil liberties groups.

Under legislation due to be voted on in the Federal Parliament this year, the crime commission would be allowed to pass on information about serious and organised crime to businesses such as banks and superannuation funds. This would include telling them when an employee was suspected of criminal links.

Civil libertarians say the proposals toss away the presumption of innocence and may lead to lives being unfairly destroyed.

Dramatic new evidence to the Leveson inquiry this week is expected to unleash a "bloodbath" of bitter recriminations between police and prosecution officials arguing over failings in a series of investigations into allegations of phone hacking, computer hacking and bribery by journalists.