The survey shows profitability among small to medium businesses has also improved again over the past three months to take it to its highest level since early last year, however it is still in negative territory.

Christena Singh says the finance and insurance sectors experienced the strongest profitability, while it was weakest in the retail sector.

meanwhile...

The Australian share market has closed higher after a mixed lead on Wall Street.

The All Ordinaries Index rose 13 points at 4,789.

The ASX 200 was also up 12 points to 4,775.

The rise was led by the resources sector, with Fortescue Metals adding 2.3 per cent to $4.40.

An interest rates war has emerged between two of the major banks after the latest rise in official rates.

National Australia Bank (NAB) matched the Reserve Bank's rate rise earlier this week and will increase its standard variable home loan interest rate by 25 basis points to 6.49 per cent per annum.

It comes after Westpac raised its home loan rates by 45 basis points shortly after the RBA's decision on Tuesday.

The NAB announcement came shortly before the end of trade.

Shares in the NAB rallied to close down 12 points to $28.68, while Westpac fell and finished up 19 cents to $24.46.

Gold stocks are down, despite the price of the precious metal hitting new heights.

 and on top of this :

In the evening, Mr Abbott will honour a long-standing commitment to launch Labor stalwart Bob Ellis' new book at the left-wing Sydney bookshop Gleebooks.

The event is all the more remarkable for the fact that Mr Abbott successfully sued the author in 1998 over another book, in which Ellis suggested inaccurately that Mr Abbott had had a relationship with Peter Costello's wife at university.

Earlier this year, Ellis wrote for ABC's Unleashed: "Though he sued me and cost me income and influence and a lot of public dignity (I wrongly alleged he listened to Tanya Costello's views on politics - a shocking thing to do, it seemed in those far-off days, to listen to a woman, for it cost my publishers a million dollars) I find him in person curiously disarming, and I find myself agreeing with him uncomfortably and often.

"The person he most resembles, I've just decided, is Scott Fitzgerald. The classic good looks, big flashing smile, easy Irish eloquence, angelic writing style, self-doubt, Catholic guilt, hot temper, Gatsby-like yearnings for past relationships long gone and luminous in remembrance, fondness for football and self-flagellation and his need for a son, all bespeak a literary genius drawn by Life and lesser pursuits into spiritual shallows and drunken remorse like Scott, poor Scott. We have lost thereby good books he might have written, and gained - what? - a cheery, self-mocking buffoon? Or the Tories' last, best hope of power?"

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Sorry Bob, This is a lot of crap. Tony is a NOT Scott Fitzgerald...  And he might win the next election for the party of the global warming deniers. Thanks so much. See toon at top.

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and beyond this:

Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop says the Coalition's industrial relations policy will include allowing workers to negotiate individual contracts with their employers.

The union movement is already attacking new Opposition leader Tony Abbott on the issue saying he would return to the Workchoices policy.

Ms Bishop says the Coalition will be opposing the Government's move to scrap individual contracts, a key part of the Howard government's Workchoices laws.

"I've always found it to be quite un-Australian for the Government to make it illegal for a boss and their employee to sit down and negotiate an employment contract that suits both their purposes," she said.

"And I hope that we'd be able to a positive policy along those lines."

Mr Abbott has flagged a return to some of the Howard government's proposed industrial reforms.

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We all know what this did to everyone average pay packet.... Stop Abbott and his Bishop before he does any more damage to our sanity... see toon at top.

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And of all sins, Tony will meet the Dalai Lama, mainly to prove "Rudd wrong" and upset Rudd's delicate relation with China... I live in hope Tony Abbott becomes a true Buddhist (understand the meaning of the commitment, rather than pay sarcastic service to the Lama, for political gain in a catholic garb), Buddhist like some of my Jewish friends who cut ties with the zionists... But I believe Rudd can cope with whatever spiritual, in that department.. So... It's the Catholics versus the Jesuits? Boy, I'm confused...

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, has hosed down suggestions of shark culls after the deaths of two people in the space of a week, saying you might not get “the guilty one”.

Abbott, who is a long-term surf club member, told Fairfax Radio culling sharks is a “vexed” question which he “should probably leave to the state governments”.

"There is always the issue of getting the ‘guilty one', so to speak," he told Greg Cary on Brisbane radio station 4BC on Monday.

"All of us know there are some risks when we go into the water, but thank God, over the years we've managed to take measures to reduce the risks, with meshing off many beaches, a tremendous surf lifesaving movement, and of course if you suspect that it’s the wrong time of year or the wrong time of day or the wrong place, well you don’t go into the water,” he said.

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2013/dec/02/shark-deaths-abbott-doubts-whether-the-guilty-one-can-be-found

I don't really know but I would bet that sharks "don't feel guilt"...  The event of the young man being killed by a shark is a very sad tragic story of nature meets humans — but Tony Abbott has to pull it back with religious overtones with a number of platitudes added that are designed to be godly pseudo-philosophical platitudes...