Joe Hockey, Australia’s most hated Treasurer (and that’s just within the Liberal party room), is committed to cracking down on tax avoidance.

So much so that he decided a few weeks ago not to proceed with former Labor government proposals to stop big business claiming legitimate interest deductions against exempt income. It would be too hard to do.

Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull has done little to allay leadership speculation after carefully deflecting questions in a coy appearance on ABC's Q&A.

The one-time leader of the Liberal party, who was tipped to replace Prime Minister Tony Abbott if a leadership spill came to fruition last week, delivered a thinly-veiled criticism of the sacking of Chief Whip Philip Ruddock and refused to say whether he would step up to the plate if the leader's position became vacant.

from PoliticOz ….

Week one (or should that be weak one?) of good government in Australia has gone well hasn’t it? After his near death experience in the party room meeting last Monday when 39 of his own colleagues out of 100 voted for none of the above in a leadership ballot – ah OK, it was a spill motion to declare Abbott’s position as Prime Minister vacant – it has been all up, up and away for the good government that Abbott then promised.

"I wish they'd get rid of those blue ties," Ita Buttrose, the founding editor of Cleo magazine, said while commentating on live television. "They're so stupid."

During the week, image consultant Imogen Lamport recommended: "If he wants to appear different, fresh and modern, a light pink could work.

"Or maybe a deep burgundy – red without the aggression."

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser has launched a scathing attack on Tony Abbott and his Government over its treatment of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and, in particular, its president Gillian Triggs.

According to both The Guardian and The Australian, New South Wales police (the ones currently having a few major differences between Deputy Commissioners) think it is OK to pepper spray protesters.

Veteran MP Philip Ruddock is to stand down as Chief Government Whip in the wake of a leadership spill motion which Tony Abbott described as a near-death experience.

Our national impoverishment, at the hands of poor-quality leaders, knows no bounds.

As the lights go down at the Belvoir Theatre, an elderly man with a wonderful white beard leads other actors in a recalled presentation to a Royal Commission.

In 1874 the Victorian government moved to close an economically successful enterprise at Coranderrk, near Healesville. Nearby farmers protested the land was too valuable for Aboriginal people.