Thursday, 27 January 2011

The Prime Minister has switched the Government’s campaign for a flood recovery levy from a fiscal to an economic focus, arguing it is critical to ensuring the recovery effort doesn’t drive inflation and skill shortages, reports Bernard Keane.

Passengers flying economy who make connections from full-service airlines to Jetstar will continue on “selected” flights to get meals and the same free baggage allowance as they took for granted on their non-Jetstar flights.

Most of my peers don’t buy into the pageantry of Australia Day. They might enjoy their day off, get drunk on Aussie beer and wine and eat lamb, pavlova and lamingtons, but they’re uncomfortable with conspicuous nationalism.

The debate over the flood levy is one of those moments that makes you want to cry over the mediocrity of our leaders.

This morning’s backing by CFMEU overlord Bill Oliver of a Supreme Court challenge to block the ALP National Executive’s parachuting of Frank McGuire into John Brumby’s seat of Broadmeadows is almost certain to founder and will instead shine a light on the electorate’s notorious history of branch stacking, party insiders say.

Some important voices are missing in talks on how to fund the national response to the floods, writes Dr Cassandra Goldie, CEO, Australian Council of Social Service.

Far more than men, female politicians have their political identities framed around their family and relationship situation.

Anonymous is supposed to be a “juvenile” “underground hate group”. A look at its operations reveals a complex and thoughtful movement that is unlike traditional real-world activism.

The Australian Prime Minister is too worried about the fiscal balance and the US President is not worried enough.

What do cyclist Lance Armstrong, “content farmer” Demand Media and Google have in common? Read on.

Crikey readers have their say.

To call your novel “illuminated” is a dangerous thing. Five Wounds’ claim holds with it the expectation that it should be something beyond a typical read. And it is, says writer and blogger Lyndon Riggall.

he tennis and cricket were the only programs that mattered last night.

Which bank’s under the Tax Office gun? The Tax Office is looking to bounce back from the Hoges debacle by hitting a certain high-profile Australian financial institution with the full court press in order to get them to pay millions in back taxes. The bank in question is under continual audit and so has been […]

Amid another day and night of widespread protests in Egypt, and rumours of a massacre of protesters in Suez, Western governments’ policy toward the Middle East is tottering and is now one dictator’s plane flight away from collapsing altogether.

Single blokes need all the help they can get, so Crikey subeditor Mick Vaughan decided to create the Singles’ Survival Guide. Vaughan explains all in a ruminative piece encompassing epiphanies and motivations, gardening, home decoration and a badly botched casserole.