Looking for a bookshop that was no longer there, I walked instead into a labyrinth designed as a trap. Leaving became an illusion, rather like Alice once she had stepped through the looking glass. Walls of glass curved into concentric circles as one "store" merged into another: Armani Exchange with Dinki Di Pies. Exits led to gauntlets of more "offers" and "exciting options." Seeking a guide, I bought a lousy pair of sunglasses: anything to get out. It was a vision of hell. It was a Westfield mega mall.

from Crikey .....

Wayne "World's Greatest Treasurer" Swan was humble and unusually charitable on The 7PM Project last night when he quipped he'd be happy to lend his shiny new award to Peter Costello "for a little while".

Which is more than you can say for Joe Hockey ...

Check out the company Swan keeps among the winners, Joe retorted: "Slovakian ministers, a Serbian, a Nigerian and a Bulgarian. In 2001 there was a Pakistani finance minister. That is quite an extraordinary one, that one."

One should remember.

The donation of £1m to a charity of the Dowler family's choice and compensation of a reported £2m for the family's distress is being linked by MPs to News Corp's fight to hold on the BSkyB broadcasting goldmine.

Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, has written to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom calling on it to intervene over the question of whether James Murdoch, the BSkyB chairman, is fit to hold the licence.

From Lyndon Schneiders at Unleashed

How many hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars is Tony Abbott prepared to pour down the bottomless pit labelled northern development to keep Barnaby Joyce and Bill Heffernan happy?

...

But Heffernan won't believe it because he was removed as chair of the Land and Water Taskforce when Labor swept to power in 2007 and had the audacity to replace the politician-stacked taskforce with a body with broad scientific, pastoral and agricultural expertise.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to hold direct talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly.

Mr Abbas earlier said he was willing to meet Mr Netanyahu but was determined to push ahead with a bid for UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

The US and Israel oppose the bid and there has been intense diplomacy to avert a crisis over the move.

Peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down a year ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14981633

To get to the federal government's position on the asylum seeker question takes time. This sort of political and policy mess is built on much talking, manoeuvring and internal confusion, and its gestation period is long.

The confusion about values and direction was on display very early in Julia Gillard's time as Prime Minister. On the day she assumed the Labor leadership in June last year, Gillard expressed solidarity with Australians who favoured a hard line. ''I am full of understanding of the perspective of the Australian people that they want strong management of our borders, and I will provide it,'' she said.

Parliamentary privilege is used as the WikiLeaks of sex scandals more than anything else. Under its banner, Craig Thomson was named as the misuser of his union credit card on brothels. Senator Bill Heffernan falsely accused the great High Court judge Michael Kirby of using his Commonwealth car to pick up rent boys. Kirby accepted the ungracious apology and held out his hand in the ''spirit of reconciliation''. Deirdre Grusovin named the late John Marsden as a paederast when it was clear the accuser was more saucy than source, causing Channel Seven to pay lawyers more money than they did in the network's failed Foxtel case.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner delivered an unusually direct plea for action to his counterparts in Europe on Friday, urging leaders to move with more unity to head off a potential new wave of financial crisis on the continent.

But he got a chilly response. There was no accord on new steps to address the debt crisis that started in Greece and has spread to the much bigger economies of Spain and Italy. And many of the European finance ministers who heard from Geithner in a session in Poland on Friday seemed to bristle at him intruding on their affairs.

The two independents who were once thought to be weak props to Julia Gillard's minority government are no longer holding weekly meetings with Tony Abbott, and both have denounced his political conduct.

Tony Windsor has criticised Mr Abbott for exploiting a "redneck" politics that is "damaging our institutions".

Rob Oakeshott has described the Liberal leader's political style as based on "fear and loathing" and said he was encouraging "nutjob" elements.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at law.uiuc.edu

Professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign and author of Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law, Boyle said today: "This week, President Obama has attacked the Palestinian UN membership bid as a 'distraction' and Secretary of State Clinton has claimed the U.S. 'strongly supports' the two-state solution but that the 'way of getting a lasting solution is through direct negotiations between the parties.'