Tony Abbott's cheap sloganeering and political bungles have discredited the parliament. That will make it hard for his or any other government to solve real fiscal problems, writes Ben Eltham

The first hundred days of a government is a rather arbitrary yardstick, dating originally to Franklin Roosevelt’s turbulent first months as US president during the Great Depression.

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

Treasurer Joe Hockey believes Tuesday's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook will expose once and for all the depth of the damage done to the national balance sheet by the last Labor government.

The Treasurer will deliver the MYEFO statement at lunch time on Tuesday in a televised address to the National Press Club.

Search giant insists lawsuit concerning UK internet users' privacy should be brought in California where it is based.

Google has been called "arrogant and immoral" for arguing that a privacy claim brought by internet users in the UK should not be heard by the British legal system.

Eleven EU member states are pushing ahead with a plan to introduce a tiny tax on financial transactions. Four Europe's five largest economies are among them. Guess which one is missing?

Selling Australian voters to the highest bidder.

It’s not SBY, or East Timor, or terrorist targets: it’s the warrantless snooping on ordinary Australians that can – and does – happen all the time, with very little oversight.

Tony Abbott's first 100 days in power have been marked by confusion and missteps that reveal a government on training wheels, writes Tony Wright.

Readers of this page are well aware of the revelations during the past six months of spying by the National Security Agency (NSA). Edward Snowden, a former employee of an NSA vendor, risked his life and liberty to inform us of a governmental conspiracy to violate our right to privacy, a right guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

Gaffe after scandal after lie - do the Coalition have a sense of decency at all? It's about time we gave up the fantasy that politicians can be 'shamed' into good behaviour, writes Sarah Burnside

In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, hosannas continue to be sung to the former ANC leader and South African president from both the left, for his role in ending the institutional racism of apartheid, and from the right, for ostensibly the same reason. But the right’s embrace of Mandela as an anti-racist hero doesn’t ring true. Is there another reason establishment media and mainstream politicians are as Mandela-crazy as the left?

The Abbott government has thrown the childcare sector into disarray by asking providers to ''do the right thing'' and hand back $62.5 million given to them by the former Labor government for wage increases.

The Assistant Minister for Education, Sussan Ley, said on Tuesday the government would instead use the $300 million allocated for professional training and development for childcare workers.

More than 500 of the world's leading authors, including five Nobel prize winners, have condemned the scale of state surveillance revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden and warned that spy agencies are undermining democracy and must be curbed by a new international charter.