Five years after 9/11 – and one week after London intelligence foiled a planned liquid bomb attack on Britain’s airways, while also admitting they were still hunting two dozen terror cells in Britain – is the Federal Government doing enough to protect Australians from organised terrorism? According to the Attorney-General’s department, the Howard Government has […]

The curtain came down last week on one of the most shameful episodes in Australian Public Service history when the Opposition waved the white flag over the Robert Gerard tax fiasco, arguably the biggest and most politically charged episode of tax avoidance in Australian history. The heavyweight Liberal Party donor settled with the ATO without […]

I’ll be out of action for the rest of this week attending a rather grand-sounding Future Summit in Brisbane, featuring all sorts of speakers including Peter Cosgrove, Bob Carr, Kevin Rudd, Mick Keelty, Alexander Downer, Looksmart founder Evan Thornley, Australian of the Year Ian Frazer, ACF president Ian Lowe, ACTU President Sharan Burrow, Axa CEO […]

Alex Mitchell, The Sun-Herald’s State Political Editor, writes: The item by Peter Faris QC, “In defence of the Australian Federal Police” (yesterday, Item 4), is a disgraceful piece of dissembling. He uses legal bluff and bluster to try to convince your anxious readers that the AFP’s conduct in the Bali Nine arrests and convictions is […]

Peter Faris QC writes: It is obviously impossible to calculate exactly how many young people in Australia would have died from heroin overdoses if the 8k of heroin the Bali 9 sought to import reached our streets. In my view, one death would be too many. The Bali 9 were prepared to knowingly risk lives […]

The AWB oil-for-food scandal still dominates The Age’s headlines, the paper’s lead story reporting that the Australian ambassador in Washington has urged a key US Congressional committee not to go ahead with a planned investigation into allegations that AWB had paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Sources have told The Age” that late in 2004, […]

“Socceroos take a fall, Wallabies hit a wall,” says the front page of The Australian, with the news that after an “acceptable defeat” in Montevideo, Australia must find a way to beat Uruguay at Sydney’s Telstra Stadium on Wednesday night and bury the ghosts of past World Cup qualifying failures. While in rugby news, Wallabies […]

While the likes of Andrew Bolt fanned prejudicial feelings against Muslims with this inflammatory column yesterday, the PM and Philip Ruddock were busy trying to hose down a community backlash after Tuesday’s over-the-top effort from our political and police elite. Bolt’s opening paragraph baldly declared the following: “So it wasn’t a political stunt. It isn’t […]

Christian Kerr writes: There was stacks of schadenfreude in Canberra yesterday – not at an official level, of course. Perish the thought! Kerry O’Brien – a known communist, as HG and Roy always remind us – was the main target after he got bolshy with the PM on Monday night. In the end, he acquitted […]

As its tagline declares, The Australian is “keeping the nation informed’ with coverage of the new round of Bali bombings on Saturday night when three suicide bombers detonated vests or bags packed with ball-bearings in restaurants full of families on Kuta Beach and Jimbaran Bay. The attack – which to date has killed 26 and […]

by Crikey reporter Sophie Black It’s not often that Aussies get top billing on the Al Jazeera news bulletin but that’s what happened yesterday when claims by former ASIO officer Michael Roach – that suspected Islamic militants are based in Australia’s two main cities – ran as the top story.Roach retired less than two years […]

The Sydney Morning Herald goes big with Morris Iemma’s changes under the headline “Slash, burn and cast off Carr,” after Iemma announced he will ditch the unpopular vendor tax, cut waste and fix public transport. The removal of the vendor tax, which was to raise $358 million this financial year, was met with delight by […]

Alexander Downer took time off from grand prix practice to express his dismay at Friday’s lenient sentence to Bali bomb mastermind Abu Bakar Bashir, and demand Jakarta appeals against this sentence. Not to be outdone, Kim Beazley has cried “me too” and upped the ante, demanding the government exerts pressure on Jakarta to overturn the […]

Mamdouh Habib’s new mates From the February 2 subscriber email Our Homeland Security correspondent, Hugo Kelly, writes: ‘From Camp X-Ray to Palm Beach’ screams the Daily Tele’s front page splash today. “Freed terror suspect Mamdouh Habib strolls along a pier in one of Sydney’s most exclusive suburbs yesterday, just days after his release from a […]

The child porns raid and arrests across the country has caused a flurry of action and anxiety at the Office of Film and Literature Classification, as Hugo Kelly has told Crikey subscribers in recent days.