The Australian Labor Party could learn a lot from some of the greatest disasters in military history.

The flames of the eurozone crisis leapt higher yesterday, as fears spread about the state of the Continent's most vulnerable banks.

Joe Hockey has begun the process of explaining that the Coalition cannot, in fact, be all things to all people. But only in the most gentle and generalised of ways.

For those who have puzzled at how Tony Abbott could possibly defend existing payments to the aspirational middle class and cut personal taxes and cut company taxes and abolish the mining tax and abolish the carbon tax and pay for his parental leave scheme and the national disability scheme and possibly a nanny rebate, Hockey's answer was, if you listened carefully, they can't.

When it comes to the Labor leadership, neither Tony Abbott nor his Coalition voters seem to know what they really want

Should Julia Gillard stay or go as Prime Minister? Should she call an early election or attempt to govern for a full term until 2013?

Union leader John Setka is pursuing a defamation case against Opposition Leader Tony Abbott after Abbott spoke of the thuggery and intimidating behaviour of union officials that he called "the John Setkos (sic) of this world". Sky News owner the Australian News Channel is also named as a defendant as it replayed Abbott's comments.

from Crikey .....

Police bribes probe the ticking time-bomb under News Corp

Crikey senior journalist Andrew Crook writes:

Everyone in Britain knows about the News of the World phone hacking scandal, and most people know that at its heart is a collection of documents and computer files assembled by the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Buried by police in 2007, these records have been laboriously dragged to the surface by journalists and lawyers, and they have revealed outrageous illegal behaviour. The Mulcaire files, in other words, have done untold damage to Rupert Murdoch’s organisation.

Norman and Oriane Rousseau were one more couple pushed by a huge, greedy bank to the brink of homelessness. On Sunday, desperate and with nowhere to go, Norman Rousseau shot himself. 

Asylum seekers branded security threats by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation have been involved in a spate of suicide attempts inside the nation's detention network.

Two Tamils given adverse assessments by ASIO have attempted to kill themselves at a detention centre in Melbourne's north in the past month - one of them twice.

A third man stood screaming with an electrical cord clutched in one hand late on Sunday at the same spot where a friend had swung by the neck until he almost died three nights earlier.

There has been a revolution in Australian economy over the last three decades that has seen millions of people move into insecure jobs without any prospect of permanent employment, the ACTU Congress in Sydney has been told.

Former deputy prime minister Brian Howe, in his keynote address this morning to around 1000 ACTU delegates gathered at the Sydney Convention Centre, said the internationalisation of the Australian economy had no doubt improved living standards.

from Crikey .....

As Attorney-General Nicola Roxon prepares to head to the United States to further integrate Australia's role in the War on Terror into the American security apparatus, the powerful Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has knocked back her terms of reference for an inquiry into the further widening of intelligence-gathering laws, including the controversial data retention proposal.

The Australian Labor Party is against the wall... It's time for Labor to fight back.