Analysis

Several commentators have pointed out that treasurer Joe Hockey's Intergenerational Report is a partisan document designed to bash Labor over the head.

The NSW government’s decision to buy back coal seam gas (CSG) licences in the upper Hunter just before a state election raises more questions than it answers.

Refugees on Nauru have defied government and police attempts to ban protesting, as the United Nations adds to the growing body of evidence that Australia's asylum policy is violating human rights. The Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) said 300 refugees held a peaceful protest on March 11, “just one week after Nauruan police staged mass arrests on the island in a bid to stifle the campaign of non-cooperation being waged by the refugees”.

The stop WestConnex campaign is intensifying heading into the NSW state election. Apart from the proposed electricity sell-off, it has become one of the top issues, damaging both Liberal and Labor. The announcement by Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore of a WestConnex forum at Sydney Town Hall, set for March 16, has ignited campaigners, and will put the unpopular and expensive plan under further scrutiny.

The Literacy for Life Foundation in partnership with the University of New England, hosted a one-day seminar on February 28 to discuss the “Yes I Can” Aboriginal Adult Literacy campaign. This campaign has achieved notable success in raising adult literacy levels in three western NSW communities, using a model originally developed in Cuba. More than 80 people have already graduated in pilot projects in Wilcannia, Bourke and Enngonia.

It is hard to distill what it is like to live in poverty into a few words, because poverty is so huge and complex, particularly for single mothers. On my own, it’s easy to feel powerless to do anything about it and as a woman the injustice of poverty makes me so angry. It makes me angry that in one of the most prosperous countries in the world, we have more than 600,000 children living in poverty. It makes me angry that right now there are women and children living in cars or in unsafe and insecure housing because rents have become impossible to manage.

When Prime Minister Tony Abbott used a March 3 press conference at Parliament House to announce the deployment of 300 more soldiers to Iraq, it was impossible to ignore the political theatre to serve a partisan domestic agenda. If you missed it in the content of his talk, you couldn't miss the no-less-than eight flags propped up behind him as he spoke. A combination of relentless attacks on the living standards of ordinary people and Abbott's incompetence has made his government one of the most unpopular in Australian history.

Former Governor-General Quentin Bryce, who chaired the Special Task force on Domestic and Family Violence, handed the report Not Now, Not Ever: Putting an End to Domestic and Family Violence in Queensland to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on February 28. The task force was established on September 10 last year by the previous LNP government and charged to deliver its findings by February 28. It included several now-former MPs.

In February the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) reduced the cash rate to 2.25%, a rate it then maintained at its March meeting. While there has been a great deal of commentary on this in the mainstream press, especially in the Australian Financial Review, the left press (for lack of a better term) has been stunningly silent.

The various agencies of Australian governments have a capacity to access data generated by individuals that is unprecedented — one of the “benefits” of the communications revolution that we are living through.

The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill 2014, also known as the “data retention” bill, if passed, will be the third installment of sweeping powers granted to Australian intelligence agencies. It will mean that every move you make, every call you take, the government will be watching you. How does data retention impede the role of investigative journalists, political reporters and whistleblowers? 1: METADATA THEFT

In August last year, Prime Minister Tony Abbott thought it would be a good idea to send 1000 Australian soldiers to Ukraine. Their intended purpose was to guard the crash site of the Malaysian Airlines plane that was shot down there killing 38 Australian citizens. The proposal was quietly dropped after military planners advised that, as none of the troops could speak either Ukrainian or Russian, and would not be able to tell the difference between the militias of either country, it was not such a great idea after all.