Imagine if a royal commission was held into a matter of national shame and, after tens of millions of dollars was spent and a five-volume report produced, the headline indicators of that shame actually went backwards.

Consider the public reaction if, 25 years on, one of the commissioners who produced the report lamented that the situation was now worse than when the report was published, and the federal minister responsible issued a statement applauding progress.

Debates over the call for a royal commission into the banking industry have brought to the fore the real battle in Australian politics – and it’s not about partisan rivalry.

Jose Belo (left) and Commander David Alex (right) (Photo: John Martinkus)

East Timor is mad as hell, and it's our fault

In the response to the rampant fraud in the Australian financial services sector over decades, leading baby-faced Liberal head-kicker & knuckle-dragger Steve “slit your throat anytime” Ciobo, said this week:

Electing a psychopath to public office is tantamount to national hara-kiri, the ritualized act of self-annihilation, self-destruction and suicide. It signals the demise of democratic government and lays the groundwork for a totalitarian regime that is legalistic, militaristic, inflexible, intolerant and inhuman. So why do we keep doing it over and over again?

from Crikey …

For all the talk yesterday of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's state income tax proposal representing a major reform to the federation, it's hard to see it as anything other than a political solution to a political problem.

The Republican-dominated Mississippi state Senate approved a bill on Tuesday allowing churchgoers carry concealed firearms without a permit while also allowing churches to designate and train members to serve as armed security.

from Independent Australia …

It’s all very strange. Ironic, really.

The federal education minister, Simon Birmingham, has criticised an email to a voter reportedly written by Cory Bernardi which linked the Safe Schools program to bondage clubs and adult sex toys …

Disappointed by the government-commissioned review into anti-bullying program Safe Schools, far-right conservative MP George Christensen fell back on one of the oldest tricks in the homophobic playbook: an attempt to conflate homosexuality with paedophilia.