Tony Abbott's application for the nation's top job is a mix of elaborately sketched scenes of a glorious economic nirvana, contrasted against the grim reality of a slash and burn approach to government spending and public servants.

It is no different from the customary election stump speech, except that the election is almost two years away.

Abbott delivered a message of hope, reward and opportunity, with scant detail of how to get there.

That doesn't matter to his supporters, because they lapped up the portrayal of Labor as hapless and hopeless.

The government has been urged to explain why Prince Andrew has met four foreign heads of state in the past six months and embarked on two full-scale government trade missions despite stepping down as the UK's special representative for trade.

The Duke of York announced last July that he would relinquish the role following criticism of his association with a convicted child sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, and business connections with dictators including Colonel Gaddafi.

Economic sanctions by the European Union and the United States can only be allowed a limited time period to prevent Iran from attempting to acquire a nuclear arsenal before a military strike must be contemplated, Israeli leaders have declared.

The tough public stance from Tel Aviv comes amid conflicting reports on the readiness of the Israeli military establishment to carry out an attack on Iran.

Tony Abbott's decision to wait until the Parliament had shut down at the end of last year before making it clear that he would block a conscience vote on any gay marriage bill could cost him in the long run.

Rapper and poet Omar Musa refused the Queanbeyan City Council's request for him to be an Australia Day ambassador because he said January 26 represented a date that had increasingly become the focal point of the country's culture wars.

Is American power in decline, relative to the rest of the world? That question is at the center of a provocative study by the U.S. intelligence community exploring what the world might look like in 2030. 

What is it about bankers' pay that makes the hard-pressed majority feel that finance capitalism is a conspiracy against them? Could it be that, more than three years after the credit crunch of 2008, we feel that the unfair rewards in the sector that caused the crisis continue unabated?

Forget Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine – Newt Gingrich wants to colonise the moon.

"By the end of my second term [2020], we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," the Republican US presidential hopeful told a cheering crowd in Cocoa, Florida, a town with links to the space industry.

A whopping budget deficit and cuts to the military do not seem to have dampened Gingrich’s astronomically expensive plans for a lunar colony with 13,000 residents.

from Crikey .....

all's well in an intelligence community overseeing itself

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

ASIO, ROBERT CORNALL, WIKILEAKS

from Crikey .....

Australia Day spirit: kill politicians. 

A Crikey reader sent in this nuanced and charming political message on a shop front in Southport on the Gold Coast. 

According to a CNN exit poll of South Carolina Republican primary voters, Newt Gingrich, a thrice-married Catholic, won twice as much support from evangelical Protestants as Mitt Romney, a Protestant. And among voters for whom religion meant “a great deal,” 46 percent voted for Mr. Gingrich and only 10 percent for Mr. Romney.

Neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott were in any direct danger from Aboriginal protesters yesterday, but those concerned for their security must be appalled that they were allowed to be put in the situation they were in.

It had long been known that the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal embassy would bring a major contingent of people to Canberra, and entirely predictable that some of them would notice comings and goings at The Lobby restaurant and that the presence of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition (or in this case both - a real bonus) would be a magnet for those inclined to shout slogans or abuse, or wanting to wave their fists.