Social Services Minister Scott Morrison says wholesale changes to the welfare system are "necessary", but he has signalled they will be introduced slowly and in stages.

from the The Anti-Empire Report

from PoliticOz ….

"By any measure, the threat to Australia is worsening," Abbott said. "The signs are ominous. ASIO currently has over 400 high-priority counter-terrorism investigations. That's more than double the number a year ago." And so on. This may be factually correct, but is it a prime minister's job to engender fear among his people? Isn't that the terrorists' job?

from PoliticOz …..

Australian media is full of suggestions that the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, will ban Hizb ut-Tahrir as part of his national security announcement this Monday.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon says the Federal Government needs to come clean about whether it has decided to scale back the number of new submarines Australia will buy.

If you are freezing your balls off (or your tits off) in some eastern part of the USA now, you're entitled to say "global warming is crap"...

The United States and Turkey have signed a deal to train and equip Syrian opposition forces, officials say.

The NSW Freedom Ride saw student activists tackle racist discrimination against Aboriginal people - a fight that continues today, writes Lachlan Marshall

Australians will "fall of their chairs" when the inter-generational report is released, Treasurer Joe Hockey says, because for all the government's efforts "we still don't get anywhere near being able to reduce spending over the medium-term to the same level that exists today".

In a blunt warning ahead of the release of the report in the coming weeks, Mr Hockey said Australia faced a downward spiral of rising debt levels and ballooning interest repayments that would break the "compact between generations" of Australians.