JULIA Gillard is ignoring a request by a cleaning company for her to personally explain how the federal Government’s awards modernisation program will not increase business costs. South Australian family-owned Longford Cleaning, which employs about 70 permanent part-time and casual staff, yesterday told The Australian the changes could result in it losing up to half [...]

HEALTH officials warned yesterday that as many as four million Australians could eventually catch swine flu. Victoria’s acting chief medical officer, Rosemary Lester, said an eventual infection rate of 20 per cent was a “fair estimate”. “Next year, this may well be the predominant (influenza virus),” she said. With 50 confirmed cases so far there [...]

ONE of the most prestigious diplomatic jobs in Australia – foreign policy mandarin in the Prime Minister’s Department – has been vacant for months because no one approached so far is willing to take the post, which involves working closely with Kevin Rudd. Figures

FEDERAL Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has rejected Government assertions that making $40 million in stimulus payments to dead people and Australians living overseas was unavoidable. The Australian Tax Office says the cost of the tax bonus payments made to 16,000 dead people is likely to exceed $14 million while another $25 million has been sent [...]

ENVIRONMETAL activists have shut down a coal digger at an Australian power station that provides eight per cent of the country’s coal-reliant electricity market, to protest against government climate policies. Greenpeace said today’s dawn protest by around 14 activists at the Hazelwood Power Stationin Victoria was the latest part of an ongoing campaign to reduce Australia’s [...]

Something like nearly 300 ml (about 12 inches for metric disadvantage folk) fell on my suburb over the past 24 hours.  Not to be put off I went down to do the banking and had to negotiate some water over the road. I sat for a while and watched other people and their different approaches [...]

When this story broke yesterday I thought it a bit fishy. People are not normally thrown in a cell for stealing a bar mat, even in Thailand. The Thais, particularly those with any sort of power, have a well developed sense of self, are very quick to take offence and will lock westerners up at [...]

In an apparent move to make Mr Howard a fall guy for a tough budget, Mr Swan said the former prime minister had behaved “as if the mining boom was never going to end” in handing out payments across the community. “As a consequence of those unsustainable habits which developed at the top of the [...]

MORE than 25 of the CIA’s war-on-terror prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation during the administration of former President George W.Bush. Citing memoranda made public by the Justice Department, The Los Angeles Times said today that at one point, the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days.  [...]

The federal government will commit to paid parental leave from January 2011 for those earning less that $150,000 a year, federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says.  “We are one of only two countries in the western world that doesn’t have paid parental leave.”  Of those who do pay parental leave, I wonder how many means test it ?   I [...]