Kevin Rudd will become the leader, not because he's made a compelling case but because Julia Gillard cannot hold the confidence of her caucus….

Qantas has signalled that the total job losses over the coming months will be significantly higher than the 500 positions it confirmed yesterday.

The latest redundancies will take the number of jobs Qantas has announced to be axed over the past four years to nearly 5000.

The defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, recently announced that America hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013 as it did in Iraq last year.  Yet at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, the United States continues to hold enemy detainees "for the duration of hostilities."  

Indeed, the "ending" of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to have no consequences for the ending of detention. Because the end of a war is traditionally thought to be the moment when a president's war powers begin to ebb, bringing combat to a close in Afghanistan and Iraq should lead to a reduction in executive power - including the legitimate basis for detaining the enemy.

Hosting thousands of US marines near Darwin could see a rise in sexual assaults and drug use as well as a boost to the black economy, a Greens senator has claimed during a fiery parliamentary hearing.

The information was heard during a Senate estimates hearing, which also revealed that more than $12 million has been spent on a suite of reviews and probes into Defence culture, following last year's ''Skype'' scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

That includes $7 million for the review of historical allegations of abuse within Defence being undertaken by law firm DLA Piper, and a further $500,000 for the Kirkham inquiry into Defence's handling of the Skype incident.

The Hyperbole is a Canberra institution. Not because it's the biggest place to shop in Tuggeranong but because it's the lifeblood of the political day.

The movers, shakers and candlestick makers would be totally and utterly lost if they couldn't overstate their case, like all the time. No one would pay them any attention otherwise.

Quickly both sides of politics were trying to show off the size of their hearts.

The inner workings of a libertarian thinktank working to discredit the established science on climate change have been exposed by a leak of confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising networks.

In fiction, James Bond drew quite judiciously upon his licence to kill, bumping off just 38 adversaries in a dozen Ian Fleming novels. In each case, the individual received his or her just deserts.

The manner in which parts of the media condemn the various investigations into their conduct highlights how they got into trouble in the first place. In the past, some journalists behaved as if they were above the law. Some appear to expect now a higher threshold of leniency or tolerance compared with everyone else. At the very least, they demand a generous sense of proportion that they do not apply when reporting on politicians or others.

Gillard's government seems to be running out of oil, and petrol, and slowing down much the same way as Rudd's 20 months ago, writes Jack Waterford. Chat with Jack from 12.30pm.

She's trying, with difficulty, to persuade people she can win the next election. But she's still bogged down establishing that she won the last one. And in proving that she was entitled, then or now, to have been in the race at all. A legitimacy problem. An authority problem. And, increasingly, a dignity problem.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis has questioned the decision to award a Human Rights Medal to a lawyer who ran a race discrimination case against newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt.