JULIA Gillard was involved in the "conspiracy" to topple Kevin Rudd as prime minister days before the coup, according to new claims that contradict her own account.

FORMER federal Liberal leader John Hewson has questioned the perceived "probity of process" surrounding the NSW government's first-stage approval for a new Sydney hotel and casino.

hey bob, is it safe to assume that you’ll raise the following issues with our ‘special friends’ on the UN Security Council?

Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism – 'disposition matrix' – the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim.

The special treatment that state Liberals and Labor were giving James Packer's hotel and VIP casino would deliver NSW back to the dark days of the ALP's part 3A planning laws, the Australian Shareholders' Association has warned.

''What about due process?'' the association's chief executive officer, Vas Kolesnikoff', asked yesterday.

Barbara Ramjan, the woman who accused Tony Abbott of intimidating her physically at Sydney University, is suing the Victorian Liberal Party powerbroker, Michael Kroger, and The Australian newspaper, over comments during the recent fallout from the saga.

As Rhonda is about to be kissed by Ketut, we are in the middle of a fairytale but the watermelons that fall on the bonnet of the car remind us of commercial imperatives.

It's make-believe for profit... Welcome to your mind being manipulated into a malleable commodity. This is not new of course, the churches, the mosques all have used illusions and fruit of some sorts, for centuries, in order to make you believe and make sure you belong to the huddle — or to the mob — or to the hanging party... 

South-East Asia's top diplomat has rejected as ''counterproductive'' Tony Abbott's policy to tow back asylum seeker boats to Indonesia, warning the plan could jeopardise Australia's ties to the neighbourhood.

A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into  the strikes’ targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones’ dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.

from ambit gambit …

Julia Gillard's personal standing among men and women has soared since her attack on Tony Abbott as a sexist but the Coalition would still win an election if it were held now, despite Labor slowly closing the gap.