The Gillard government might have been rounding out a year of achievement with the Abbott opposition in retreat, but instead goes into the last week of Parliament facing its greatest crisis.

from Crikey …

Keane: deterrence goal locks us onto a path of cruelty

If fuels were drugs, then coal would be heroin. It is to environmental good health what smack is to personal good health. Industrial civilisation has been addicted to coal for centuries, and it’s killing us.

The vision is of an open processing centre, where asylum seekers live in cabins, are free to come and go as they please during daylight hours, and can speak to the media if and when they choose to do so.

But, two months after the first asylum seekers arrived on this tiny dot in the Pacific, the reality is very different to the expectation - and the build-up of frustration and despair among the 387 detainees is palpable.

How brilliant to see ICAC finally doing its job. All over town, decent people are rubbing their hands with glee. Not in revenge. More from the sense that, at last, the truth may come out about the self-serving ratbaggery that for so long ran this state.

Like captives in a slime-cave we scent nostril-quivering fresh air, and we want some.

A beautiful mosaic pilfered from the Palestinian front during World War I now hangs in Canberra’s Australian War Memorial, shoved awkwardly behind a newly built wall, testament to a growing national embarrassment. The mystery of Australia’s Elgin Marbles.

It was supposed to lay the foundation for a huge Free Trade Agreement, but the East Asia Forum has exposed a rift between ASEAN nations over control of the South China Sea, writes Damien Kingsbury.

Current escalations aside, on November 29, the Palestinian Authority is scheduled to bring on a vote at the United Nations to determine whether it can be recognised as a "non-member observer state".

The day I saw 248 girls suffering genital mutilation

It was Christmas Eve, 2008, and the New South Wales government was ''putting the garbage out''.

''It is hoped that by announcing the decision at that time (on the cusp of the biggest holiday of the year) it will not be afforded any media or other attention,'' says a leaked cabinet in confidence report on the process prepared by Clayton Utz.