Joe Hockey, Australia’s most hated Treasurer (and that’s just within the Liberal party room), is committed to cracking down on tax avoidance.

So much so that he decided a few weeks ago not to proceed with former Labor government proposals to stop big business claiming legitimate interest deductions against exempt income. It would be too hard to do.

from PoliticOz ….

Week one (or should that be weak one?) of good government in Australia has gone well hasn’t it? After his near death experience in the party room meeting last Monday when 39 of his own colleagues out of 100 voted for none of the above in a leadership ballot – ah OK, it was a spill motion to declare Abbott’s position as Prime Minister vacant – it has been all up, up and away for the good government that Abbott then promised.

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser has launched a scathing attack on Tony Abbott and his Government over its treatment of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and, in particular, its president Gillian Triggs.

According to both The Guardian and The Australian, New South Wales police (the ones currently having a few major differences between Deputy Commissioners) think it is OK to pepper spray protesters.

As the lights go down at the Belvoir Theatre, an elderly man with a wonderful white beard leads other actors in a recalled presentation to a Royal Commission.

In 1874 the Victorian government moved to close an economically successful enterprise at Coranderrk, near Healesville. Nearby farmers protested the land was too valuable for Aboriginal people.

The secretive Trans Pacific Partnership is reportedly close to being finalised, which is bad news for people who don't want to give away their rights and freedoms to multinational corporations, says GetUp!

It is not for nothing that Australia is called the Land Down Under, because the way we run things here ‒ in politics and the media ‒ is always contrary to expectations, done backwards, reversed, or turned upside down and put back on its head.

You just can’t make this stuff up. After today’s spill motion and near death experience, Tony Abbott, Australia’s Prime Minister, said that ‘good government starts today.’ So what have the last 520 days been about Mr Abbott under your ‘leadership’? Bad government? Well yes, but that couldn’t really what the great man meant, could it?

from Crikey ….

from politicoz ….

Tony Abbott is Prime Minister of Australia. For now.  We will know in the hours after 9 am on Monday morning (Australian Eastern Daylight Time) if the spill motion in the Liberal Party room meeting has been successful or not, and, if successful, if Abbott has retained his leadership. I hope he does.

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard is under observation at Royal Prince Philip hospital after overdosing on schadenfreude, the pleasure derived from witnessing someone else’s misfortune.