The NSW Parliament will not discipline or even identify staff members or MPs who used the parliamentary computer system to access websites that contained ''sexually explicit images of young people''.

The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Richard Torbay, and the President of the Legislative Council, Amanda Fazio, have declared the matter closed despite confirmation that nine inappropriate websites were accessed.

In a statement yesterday, they confirmed that advice from the Crown Solicitor was that there was ''no legal obligation to refer the information in the report to the NSW Police Force''.

In all the excitement about Julian Assange, Oprah and Hugh Jackman our foreign minister has been flying under the radar more than somewhat. He has gone rogue and is daily presenting PM Gillard with a problem.

First he became a champion of Julian Assange saying he alone had the right to suspend passports, then dipping into the schools' laptop allocation to send one to Julian in prison. He also gave the US a kicking saying it was its fault all the stuff leaked out and maybe it should be more careful.

"History will be the judge of what has happened in Cancun." These are the last lines of the Bolivian Government's press release yesterday about the outcome of the climate negotiations here in Cancun. The talks ended here today after two weeks of negotiations by a 192 governments. It is a deal that will be remembered by our future generations as one that killed the climate treaty, unless we radically change course.

We need a more coherent and confident sense of ourselves. We don't have to choose between America and China, but America needs to understand that on several issues Australia's national objectives will not coincide with hers. This has been so in the past but over the past 15 to 20 years we have become too compliant, too subservient in the false belief that that would create security for Australia.

from Crikey .....

Doug Cameron joins Labor Left rally to support Julian Assange

Crikey senior journalist Andrew Crook writes:

Home borrowers will be given a one-page fact sheet outlining their monthly mortgage repayments and how they can shop around for a better loan, under new banking reforms unveiled today.

Exit fees, which can run into the thousands, will also be banned from July 1, 2011 and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will be given the power to investigate price collusion among banks.

The federal government has also pledged to spend another $4 billion on residential mortgaged-back securities to help smaller lenders, taking to $20 billion its investment in non-bank players since the onset of the global financial crisis.

I drew the "Starwarts of the Jungle" in 2003 for either a strip cartoon or short animation which I started. Animation is a long long long process. I did not have the right computer programs, so I was making do with iMovie frame by frame, with sound from GarageBand... Then I moved onto Powerpoint with less frames. The characters were of course all the political warts including this one below. I eventually produced a CD with several comments on the iraq war, as "Piece of Peace" in a limited release of 50...

I sold 49 units and kept one for myself...

From 2001 to 2005, before joining this great site, Gus was doing some silly cartoons. For the silly season, or the jolly season for some, Gus will only post toons from the vault... Unfortunately most of these are still relevant today... Gus.

More than 1.1 billion new $100 bills have been put into quarantine while officials search for a solution to a printing problem that has rendered some of the bills unusable, an official familiar with the situation said Monday.

Originally scheduled for a February 2011 release date, the bills were the first run of a high-tech note designed to combat counterfeiting by including a 3-D security ribbon.

The Federal Reserve first acknowledged an issue with the bills in October, but did not specify the scope of the problem.

The latest batch of the several hundred leaked US diplomatic cables concerning Australia, provided by WikiLeaks to the Fairfax company's Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age, provide further extraordinary evidence of Washington's direct involvement in the anti-democratic coup against former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last June.

Former whistleblower and independent MP Andrew Wilkie has issued a scathing attack against the Prime Minister's handling of the WikiLeaks affair.

Mr Wilkie says Julia Gillard is showing contempt for the rule of law by failing to give Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the presumption of innocence.

Mr Assange was arrested by British police on Tuesday in response to a Swedish warrant on alleged sex crimes and faces possible extradition.