Joe Hockey, Liberal Treasurer, announced some important tax changes today to help clear a backlog of measures announced but not yet legislated. Some date back to 2004 (and one to 2001) under the Howard and Costello government. Let’s look at a few of them to see who is conducting class war.

Today, Government frontbencher Christopher Pyne downplayed the seriousness of Indonesia's decision not to accept the group.

Mr Pyne has told Channel 10 boats have been turned back to Indonesia but it will not always work that way.

Federal politicians who lodge ineligible expense claims will be hit in the hip pocket and can be named and shamed in parliament under new guidelines introduced by the government.

The NSW government has bulldozed opposition to more mines, with new rules that put economic benefits – including to the state coffers – above all else.

The gambling industry has emerged from an era of failed reforms with campaigners on the payroll, politicians in its pocket, and four new casinos in the offing …

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death in 2004 with radioactive polonium, his widow Suha said on Wednesday after receiving the results of Swiss forensic tests on her husband's corpse.

"We are revealing a real crime, a political assassination," she said.

The seemingly unending drama of the Australian Labor party’s internal leadership battles is set to be dramatised, with actress Rachel Griffiths signed on to play Julia Gillard.

Federal and state politicians have been receiving invitations to join former world leaders at the World Leadership Alliance "world annual forum" at Clive Palmer’s Palmer Coolum Resort on 7 December – billed as “a major event for Australia and indeed the world”.

Firefighters are overstretched and facing a “desperate” summer, according to New South Wales Rural Fire Service group captains who have lambasted the state government over what they see as cuts to the organisation’s salaried staff.

from john pilger …..

The Brutal Past and Present are Another Country in Secret Australia