"I wish they'd get rid of those blue ties," Ita Buttrose, the founding editor of Cleo magazine, said while commentating on live television. "They're so stupid."

During the week, image consultant Imogen Lamport recommended: "If he wants to appear different, fresh and modern, a light pink could work.

"Or maybe a deep burgundy – red without the aggression."

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.

Veteran MP Philip Ruddock is to stand down as Chief Government Whip in the wake of a leadership spill motion which Tony Abbott described as a near-death experience.

Our national impoverishment, at the hands of poor-quality leaders, knows no bounds.

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 ….