Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has been accused of inappropriately using a senior economist conducting an independent review of government policy as a "drawcard" for a $3000-a-head budget day fundraising event for the NSW Liberal party.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen has written to Mr Hockey voicing his concerns about the appearance of Professor Ian Harper on a list of speakers at an exclusive event organised by a secretive Liberal Party fundraising body, the North Sydney Forum.

Members of a secretive fund-raising body associated with Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey are being invited to pay $3000 each to be part of an exclusive budget day event attended by his most senior staff and key ministers.

The new line to Rouse Hill, which will also take over the existing Epping to Chatswood line, will run as a shuttle train to Chatswood.

For residents of nearby stations such as Beecroft and Cheltenham, this will mean that they will have to catch three trains to get to the centre of Sydney. At present they can catch one.

Mr Smith told the meeting at the Cheltenham Recreation Club that in time services on the north-west rail link would be extended from Chatswood to the city through another harbour crossing.

''Obviously it will be built after this north-west rail link is complete,'' Mr Smith, the Member for Epping and until recently the attorney-general, said.

I admire Bruce Petty.

He is quite older than I am, yet he has a far superior satirical contemporary expression than I can muster. Bruce Petty's brush or pen or finger is all over the place like an annoying fly we chase with an Aussie salute. But the flight path of the lines is but than random as we soon discover the cutting purpose of the graffiti-like penmanship. 

Over the last 80 years, there has been many medical ways to deal with health, including taking a hunch... As well the western world has been warming up to some of the old remedies from the East — the Chinese. I am lucky, All I need so far is a bit of acetylsalicylic acid twice or so a year to help cure a hangover...

I was going to write a self-inflicted hangover but a hangover is always self-inflicted...

The International Monetary Fund's board this week signed off on a $17 billion bailout for Ukraine, whose economy has been weakened by months of upheaval and a stand-off with Russia.

Ukraine's previous two IMF programs were suspended after the government did not stick to earlier promises, such as raising natural gas prices. This time, the IMF required Kiev to implement 12 reforms before receiving any money.

The following highlights some of the IMF's new requirements:

Energy Sector

The Sunday Telegraph can't come to say that tony "breaks his promise of no new taxes"... So in a slight of hand, the ST displaces the word "break" and places it on voters... As if the voters were the ones about to break something...

It's very cunning, although the Sunday Telegraph had the decency to say TAX, not LEVY...  To some extend, the world Levy would not work in the heading... But then the words "broken promise" in the main copy are placed between quotes as if it was not a broken promise... you bunch of silly voters, out there...

The Abbott government faces another conflict of interest scandal after it was discovered that an adviser to the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Nigel Scullion, held a majority financial stake in a business that operated within the minister's portfolio.

Way past midnight down the road he eloquently staggered

 with eyes half closed, a quarter-smile on a face dementedly haggard.

I asked him where he's going, he answered me "Fuck knows.

Depends on which direction that the cold wind blows."

What a pack of clowns they are. What a bunch of jumped-up nongs they must have been. The Liberal Party back-room apparatchiks now parading before the Independent Commission Against Corruption are revealed, at last, in all their infantile stupidity.

from Politicoz …..

I could be wrong but I believe that religion and economic bastardry have been mixed together in the Commission of Audit report, as well as in the government's response... It feels like all of them combined want to create a new class of poor in this country. To make sure we'll swallow the pill, there is a pitched format in which "everyone is doing a bit of heavy lifting"... Of course the poorest have to do more of their proportional share. Tough titties.... Joe is lying.