What has the world learned about Australia from Abbott’s keynote address to the World Economic Forum? Alan Austin reports from France.

People ask me all the time why we don’t have a revolution in America, or at least a major wave of reform similar to that of the Progressive Era or the New Deal or the Great Society.

You have one chance to speak to the world’s most powerful people. What do you say?

Picture the scene: A classroom in some little town, a bunch of kids in their middle years of schooling. A special visitor is coming today, the assistant manager of the local bank, to explain how the world economy works.

He speaks in short sentences and anodyne generalities.

Maybe Maurice Newman was dizzy from the schadenfreude of seeing a climate scientist getting stuck in Antarctic sea ice?

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison says he will not tolerate people "sledging" Australian Navy personnel amid allegations asylum seekers were burned after being forced to hold on to parts of a hot boat engine.

In an electoral system, run by and for a corporate oligarchy, deception and demagoguery are essential elements – entertaining the people while working for the wealthy.

Every US President has engaged, in one fashion or another, in ‘play acting’ to secure popular approval, neutralize hostility and distract voters from the reactionary substance of their foreign and domestic policies.

From the normally execrable Cut&Paste in The Australian on Monday 13 January.

‘Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson Tanya Plibersek, [and deputy Labor Party leader] the other day:

Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population, and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. The World Economic Forum has identified economic inequality as a major risk to human progress, impacting social stability within countries and threatening security on a global scale.

A rare public spat between Washington and Israeli in recent days has revealed much about the essential political relationship between the two.

The row began when Israeli minister for military affairs Moshe Ya’alon spoke to local media with vitriolic contempt about America’s top diplomat, John Kerry…

It is not surprising that Australian naval vessels have crossed into Indonesian waters in the course of implementing the Abbott government's Operation Sovereign Borders.

A quick preamble to the song, which was wrtten two years agio on Woody Guthrie's "100th Birthday".  I've been a proud supporter of the campaign to save this park for a few years now.  A petition for it to become a War Memorial Park was submitted in the 1940s.  Last year's Upper House Select Committee into unethical official behavour in the swapping of this "sacred" land for a previously contaminated factory site is yet to, and probably never will, return an assessment of evidence that has mostly already appeared in an Ombudsman's Report

The SA/NT RSL have passed a resolution to support the preservation of this Park, and War Memorial Director Dr Brendan Nelson has given public support.  Given that it's now been rezoned to become a housing estate in the centre of his electorate, the Premier has declined an invitation to an Australia Day barbie next week.

Senior UK military and political figures could end up in the dock as 400 victims denounce 'systemic' use of torture and cruelty.

In candid interview, Julie Bishop expresses scepticism about the peace process, says boycott Israel activists are ‘anti-Semitic’.

Immigration minister Scott Morrison will no longer hold weekly press briefings and will instead only hold conferences on an “as needs basis.”

Only weekly written statements will now be provided on boat arrivals and conferences will be held sporadically when the minister announces them, Morrison told ABC 7:30 in an interview with Leigh Sales on Tuesday evening.

“We'll do them on an as needs basis to detail operational matters that are able to be released and we'll respond to questions there," Morrison said.