"Now I hope the Prime Minister can steady her ship and offer stable Government."

But on today's Insiders program, Mr Albanese said the resignations are understandable.

"Let's get real. We have had a couple of people step down for family reasons, there is no suggestion that there is any reason other than personal ones and understandable ones," he said.

"We do have changes in politics. We are dealing with human beings."

Look back at how the reshuffle announcement unfolded.

Mr Albanese defended the timing of yesterday's press conference to announce the resignations, saying with the Labor Caucus meeting on Monday it means a new Senate Leader can be voted in then.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-03/albanese-defends-government-after-dramatic-week/4497960?WT.svl=news0

As dinner-party conversation goes, owning Adolf Hitler’s toilet is hardly a bad place to start.

An accidental antiques collector took possession of the dictator’s porcelain privy when he purchased an auto-repair shop in Florence, N.J., almost two decades ago, reports Tablet magazine.

The toilet was originally installed on Hitler’s yacht, the 400-500ft Aviso Grille, which was also the very place where Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz first announced the Führer’s death on May 1, 1945.

“[Hitler] wanted to ride it down the Thames in London and go live in Windsor Palace when he invaded,” the latrine’s owner, Greg Kohfeldt, told Tablet. The ship boasted a crew of 245 and a private room for Eva Braun; it was one of the largest private vessels in the world at the time.

read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/02/hitlers-toilet-resides-in-a-n-j-auto-repair-shop/

Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne has retracted comments he made over the weekend in which he compared the Government with a movie scene about the demise of Adolf Hitler.

Following the resignation of two senior ministers, Mr Pyne declared: "This Government is starting to resemble a scene from Downfall and the Prime Minister is presiding over a divided and dysfunctional Government". 

His comments prompted demands for an apology from Labor frontbencher Mark Dreyfus, who described the remarks as deeply offensive. 

"It is deeply hurtful to Holocaust survivors, it should be deeply offensive to any right-thinking Australian," he said. 

"Certainly anyone who knows anything about Hitler's Third Reich, because that's what he's referring to, would know this is a disgraceful comment to make. 

"I call on him to withdraw it and apologise for it." 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-04/pyne-retracts-27hurtful27-downfall-comments/4499406

AS SOMEONE OLD ENOUGH to remember the last days of the Whitlam government, it’s interesting to compare the hysteria then with the mood the Opposition and compliant media are trying to create now. Whatever the real and imagined problems might have been then, it’s worth pointing out (yet again) that none of those exist now.

I won’t bore readers with statistics and commentary about how well Australia is travelling economically, other than to note that the country has nothing to fear going into the future other than those fears it creates for itself and its own innate conservatism. I’m thinking here of asylum seekers in particular, and the economic woes the neoliberal commentariat likes to imagine because we’re not throwing ourselves quickly and completely enough into the arms of the oligarchs.

And this leads me to the point of this very brief article. As much as many commentators fear the election of an Abbott government and its total subservience to the Murdochs and Rineharts, we should be aware of the obvious corollary. And that is that the conservatives are just as fearful of the election of another Labor or minority government — more particularly of another minority government.

In this eventuality, all the small steps forward taken in the past two years – and those that might be taken in the next seven months – are likely to become entrenched. Carbon pricing/emissions trading, super profits mining taxation, the NBN, the advances against the tobacco industry; even the mini-steps taken against the gambling industry might be lengthened.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/fear-and-loathing-in-canberra/

'I'm not necessarily apologising to Mark Dreyfus, because his is confected outrage designed to get a headline,'' he told Sky News.''But if anybody else has taken offence at that, well of course I retract the statement.''
He then called on Mr Dreyfus, who is Jewish, to apologise for written comments he made in 2011 in which he likened Mr Abbott's campaign against the carbon tax to Nazi propaganda.
But Mr Dreyfus said the comments were ''very different things''.
''I was making a comment about communication strategies, in particular drawing attention to well-known, well-established ... communication strategies sometimes called 'Big Lie' propaganda,'' he told Sky News on Monday afternoon.
Mr Dreyfus also dismissed Mr Pyne's retraction, calling it a "callous non-apology" and adding: "Mr Pyne’s description this morning of my personal response to his remarks as 'confected outrage' is grotesque.''
Three of Mr Dreyfus's German great-grandparents died in the Holocaust. He rcounted in his maiden speech to parliament in 2008 that his grandparents had sent his father and uncle from Germany to Australia in 1939.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/pyne-backs-away-from-nazi-remarks-20130204-2dtww.html#ixzz2JuBnyC3u

see the Dreyfus affair...

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott was forced to withdraw an insulting comment about Speaker Anna Burke today as Parliament returned for the year.

Ms Burke also threatened to toss Mr Abbott's deputy, Julie Bishop, out of the House of Representatives.

There was uproar when Ms Bishop, shadow foreign affairs minister, attempted to ask Cabinet Secretary Mark Dreyfus a question about Australia's position on Israeli settlements even though foreign affairs is not among his responsibilities.

Ms Burke disallowed the question after it was pointed out it should have gone to Trade Minister Craig Emerson, who represents Foreign Minister Bob Carr in the Lower House.

"You're just protecting him," Mr Abbott interjected in Ms Burke's direction. She ordered him to withdraw.

The issue flared again just after Question Time when Ms Bishop stood near the Speaker's chair criticising Ms Burke at a volume she could hear.

Ms Burke, clearly angered, turned to Ms Bishop and said "You leave now or I will throw you out".

Earlier Mr Abbott advised his MPs at a regular meeting to avoid being snide in political debate.
 
But it wasn't just the Opposition that upset the Speaker, with Climate Change Minister Greg Combet accused of shouting at the Opposition during Question Time. 

Mr Combet said he was trying to be heard above the heckling.

read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/tony-abbott-julie-bishop-scolded-by-speaker/story-fncynjr2-1226571038855