The next election will be austere if the Treasury boss, Martin Parkinson, gets his way.

Dr Parkinson told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia in Canberra last night that Australians should get real and realise they couldn't ''have it all''.

Ageing and rising expectations were likely to put ''enormous pressure'' on budgets, he said. The taxation base was ''weaker than had been imagined in the mid-noughties''.

from Crikey …..

Essential: we trust the leaders-in-waiting more than the leaders

The Coalition's latest asylum seeker plan is inhumane and lacks integrity.

Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison recently stood in front of Australia and proudly presented the Coalition's plan to ''ensure integrity and restore confidence in refugee assessment''. There is not much to be proud about in this policy. The announcement was based on misinformed and misleading information that plays straight into the unfounded public fear of asylum seekers.

Of all the things politicians can do for us, the most gratifying is to cock up something basic so we can all enjoy a satisfying little laugh.

Contrary to the deluge of corporate media lies, the recent massacres in Syria are not being carried out by the Syrian Government, but rather by the fundamentalist Free Syrian Army (FSA), backed by NATO and the Saudis, with the aim of inciting international outrage and thus support for regime change.

British authorities on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. – and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation's top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists.

picture by Gus Leonisky

James Ashby, who worked as a media adviser to the Speaker of the Federal Parliament, Peter Slipper, worked to undermine his boss by giving information to a tabloid journalist and to his political rivals, a court has heard.