Outgoing Defence Force Chief Peter Cosgrove rides my hobbywarhorse, even though he mounts it from the other side: Dead troops my great fear
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The Best Clothes may be no Clothes at all
Next Friday John Howard will hold power not seen in a generation. The Prime Minister tells Peter Hartcher that he intends using it.
The last time that an Australian government had a majority in both houses of Parliament was 24 years ago, a generation in the standard reckoning but lifetimes away by some measures. It was 1981, the year in which IBM put its first PC on the market, the time that the first cases of AIDS were identified, and when Wheel of Fortune made its debut on Australian TV.
• King of the castle [The nation's political landscape is undergoing its greatest change in at least 30 years A new landscape ; NSW independent Peter Andren announced 10 days ago he would move to have Parliament disallow the increase. But when Andren tried to get his proposal drafted, he found the Government was using an arcane parliamentary procedure to prevent the House of Representatives even debating the increase. Labor backed the Government and said nothing MPs' greed stuffs up our letterboxes ; Senate changes will make scandals harder to expose ]
• · The Labor leader, Kim Beazley, has announced a limited reshuffle of the front bench largely bequeathed to him by Mark Latham, declaring it is the team he plans to take to the next election Beazley unveils his election battlers ;
• · · Most workers probably have no idea how their pay and conditions are determined. Workers will be on their knees for fair pay ; Nation's 26 worst hospitals shamed
• · · · Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardliner who will become Iran's president in August, is hailed by the devout poor as a Robin Hood figure who will give them a slice of the Islamic Republic's abundant oil wealth 'Robin Hood' wins hearts of Iran's poor ; Peter Casserly, Australia's last survivor of the Western Front in World War I, died yesterday. Aged 107, he was also believed to be Australia's oldest man Last Western Front warrior dies at 107 ; A series of news reports written after Nagasaki was bombed has just been published for the first time Chronicle of a city's death - Nagasaki dispatches
• · · · · Politicians are never so human as when they're leaving public life. So it was this week. Parliament was awash with emotion, goodwill and goodbyes. And hypocrisy, obviously Behind the fluff, the biting reality; It is hard to imagine much worse for the pedestrians who will take refuge along the shopfronts of George Street after it is converted into a bus mall Fumes, heat but not much light rail
• · · · · · The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority should be stripped of its planning and consent powers because they constitute a conflict of interest, a parliamentary committee has concluded Harbour agency review ; A businessman caught up in an industrial espionage scandal in Brazil has turned up in Sydney Ben Hills investigates The Brazilian connection