The Australian Competition Tribunal has overturned a decision by the competition watchdog to block AGL Energy from buying the New South Wales power assets of Macquarie Generation.

The tribunal says it will allow the $1.5 billion deal with some conditions.

More than $5 billion was invested in Australian clean energy last year but the sector has virtually ground to a halt owing to widespread anxiety over the government’s commitment to renewables, according to the industry body.

‘Tony Abbott says he is 'best friend that workers of Australia have ever had'’.

The Federal Government is pressing ahead with its plan to wind back Labor's financial advice laws aimed at protecting investors.

The Coalition has been under pressure over some of the controversial changes it flagged to the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms.

You wouldn't say it a "nice" feeling to see proof of what you've suspecting for nine years, but it does bring a sense of vindication.  Since 2005 I've worried that Adelaide was being turned into a U.S. Navy refurbishment facility.  Late last year the South Australian Governent hired a Nashville based PR firm in order for such a thing to happen.

Just over a week ago Palmer Gibb published on blogsite The Sunlight Foundation of how Adelaide spent (at the end of 2013) over two hundred thousand dollars on hiring PR firm Fletcher Rowley on its behalf.  The comany's brief is explained its mandatory US filings as a "Foreign Agent":

 

Tony Abbott might be our global coal ambassador but it appears he is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Joe Hockey has tried to find another angle to sell his bosses’ Budget. Now he is trying to win the sympathy of tax paying workers by arguing that we workers work for a month to pay the taxes that provide support for the poor, the sick, the disabled, the old, the young.

Australian Labor Party federal parliamentarians Melissa Parke and Anna Burke moved in caucus on Tuesday to end the Party’s support for offshore processing of refugees. The motion said that the party “shall no longer support the transfer of asylum seekers by Australia to Manus Island or Nauru and shall call for the detention centres in those places to be closed down forthwith”. It didn’t go to a formal vote. It was lost on the voices. This means it wasn’t even close.

Tick a box every few years …..

from Mike Carlton ….

'WMD doubts are ludicrous'. Headline, The Australian, July 10, 2003.

Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex (from wikileaks)2014-06-19

Inside Snowden's Germany File

 

By SPIEGEL Staff

An analysis of secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden demonstrates that the NSA is more active in Germany than anywhere else in Europe -- and that data collected here may have helped kill suspected terrorists.

 

Reacting to antagonized Palestinian snowballing protests to her government’s decision on June 5 to reverse a 47-year old bipartisan consensus on describing eastern Jerusalem as “occupied,” Foreign Minister Julie Bishop on June 13 denied any “change in the Australian government’s position.”