Labor's ''light on the hill'' is flickering. A fixation with climate change, stultifying spin and condescending paternalism are suffocating its formidable legacy. Workers, once the backbone of the Labor movement, are deserting the party. That's why the announcement of a McKell Institute in Sydney - a new think tank charged with reviving the party's intellectual gravitas - is good news for the Labor Party and the calibre of public debate.

Early this morning, as Australians were lazing in the land of Nod, Pope Benedict XVI was busy blessing Cardinal Pell's new multi-million dollar pilgrim centre in Rome, known as Domus Australia.

And what a grand occasion it was. Not only was Il Papa there, dressed all in white, but the choir from Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral-comprising 13 men and 23 boys-was on hand to sing hymns and prayers.

On our rough head count, there were also three purple-capped Aussie archbishops, one red-capped cardinal, and more than two dozen bishops flown in from Down Under, making it an awesome display of ecclesiastical power.

Secret justice looks set to be a regular feature of British courts and tribunals when the intelligence services want to protect their sources of information.

Civil courts, immigration panels and even coroner's inquests would go into secret session if the Government rules that hearing evidence in public could be a threat to national security.

The proposals, which run counter to a centuries-old British tradition of open justice, were introduced to a sparsely attended House of Commons yesterday by the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke - and met almost no opposition. The planned changes to the British justice system follow lobbying of the Government by the CIA.

Of all the objectionable lies that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has told, the latest load of nonsense about repealing the Clean Energy Future is the most damaging to Australia.

Business enterprise flourishes in an environment of certainty and predictability.The Gillard government has worked hard to provide business with the certainty to invest and innovate in a carbon constrained global economy.

David Cameron has been accused of allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party, as fallout from the resignation of Liam Fox exposed its close links with a US network of lobbyists, climate change deniers and defence hawks.

What a weasel. The self-serving manoeuvrings of Bill Shorten have become excruciating in their transparency.

Shorten, the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, is one of the Labor Right factional powerbrokers who removed his own prime minister, Kevin Rudd. He has become the most ardent cheerleader for the beneficiary of his knife-work, Julia Gillard, even as her poll numbers remain mired in unelectable territory, lower than Rudd's poll numbers when he was deposed.

The Gillard government hoped to turn the asylum-seeker impasse to its advantage but the plan was doomed.

Thursday's cabinet debate on asylum seekers was the first big, long, hard-fought cabinet argument of the Gillard prime ministership. And the most important person in the debate wasn't even in the room.

The entire discussion, broken into two meetings and running close to three hours in all, was held in anticipation of how Tony Abbott would react to any government decision. And the final decision was made on the same basis.

Papua New Guinea is torn between customary rights and economic progress, writes Jo Chandler.

From 200 metres up, the jungles of Papua New Guinea's Western Province look like close-packed heads of broccoli. The canopy is so dense you can't see the trees for the forest.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has taken his campaign of fear and misinformation across the country but his latest stunt is a blood oath to make Australian families, pensioners, workers, industry and business worse off.

Mr Abbott would remove pension increases. That's the pension increase of $338 for singles and $510 for couples that the Gillard Labor government is introducing. He has promised to remove the extra payments that are going to families receiving family tax benefits and he has committed to remove personal tax cuts. And on top of this, Mr Abbott would put a $1300 tax on families and give the money to polluters.

The Prime Minster, Julia Gillard, has taken a personal interest in the plight of a 14-year-old NSW boy arrested on drug charges in Indonesia, speaking to him over the phone yesterday to offer reassurance.

The Prime Minister's office confirmed to smh.com.au that Ms Gillard told the boy the government was doing "everything it could" to get him out of the situation.

Ms Gillard has also spoken daily to Australia's Indonesian ambassador, Greg Moriarty, and yesterday she also spoke to the boy's father, who was at the Denpasar police station with Mr Moriarty.

In a recent debate Congressman Ron Paul claimed the United States military had troops in 130 countries. The St. Petersburg Times looked into whether such an outrage could actually be true and was obliged to report that the number was actually 148 countries. However, if you watch NFL football games, you hear the announcers thank members of the U.S. military for watching from 177 countries. The proud public claim is worse than the scandalous claim or the "investigative" report. What gives?

On a Monday morning in July, a gunshot rang out in the administration section of Milan's San Raffaele hospital. Seconds later, a frightened secretary entered the office of the institution's vice-president, Mario Cal, and found him lying in a pool of blood. Mr Cal clung briefly to life, but the Smith and Wesson revolver had done its job. Before long he died on one of his hospital's own operating tables.

Opposition finance minister Andrew Robb, climate contrarian Ian Plimer and Stolen Generations sceptic Keith Windshuttle have rallied behind Andrew Bolt's freedom of speech in a full-page advertisement published in The Australian today.

The advertisement is the initiative of the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs think tank, which called for donations after Bolt was found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act last Wednesday.

The case concerned a 2009 article in which Bolt claimed that nine fair-skinned Aborigines had played up being black for career advancement.

from Crikey .....

Tanya Plibersek takes the pledge

Charles Richardson writes

The gambling industry is up in arms about the Gillard government's proposed poker machine reforms; of course they are. Clubs NSW is leading the charge; understandable. But what about the Catholic clubs?

You see, there's several registered clubs in NSW that are known as the Catholic clubs. They were started years ago, generally by prominent Catholic businessmen or parents from the local Catholic school, and grew to a point where they took on a life of their own. They are well respected, very successful and, as far as I know, still hold true to their original Catholic ideals.