Former Parramatta Council staff will face corruption hearings amid serious allegations against its former CEO. The Independent Commission Against Corruption NSW (ICAC NSW) has announced four weeks of public hearings into the actions of former CEO Gail Connolly and council employees Angela Jones-Blayney and Roxanne Thornton. ICAC NSW’s media release
Domestic travel has long been a key feature of the Australian summer. Nearly 60 per cent of Australians take a holiday during the peak season, and the coastline alone records more than 600 million visits each year. For public safety agencies, travel and tourism are not secondary considerations. They are
One local government entity submitted its financial statements to the WA auditor-general’s office for review 19 times before it passed muster, according to the latest review of local government reporting released in the past week by the Office of the Auditor-General. The latest report notes that the audit teams have
Australia’s privacy watchdog repeatedly warned that the government’s $6.5 million teen social media ban tech trial overstated how the technology used protected people’s privacy, given it hadn’t been tested or assessed against Australian privacy law. The people behind the trial ignored most of those warnings and continued to include the
The High Court this year will decide on the validity of significant changes to Commonwealth electoral laws passed last year after a deal between the Labor government and the Liberal-Nationals coalition that will crucially limit campaign spending by minor parties and independents. Parties challenging the Commonwealth law had hoped that
Australia is now feeling the effects of a global fuel shock in its own transport and gas markets. Petrol and diesel prices have jumped. The Commonwealth has had to respond. The east coast gas market is tightening again ahead of winter. That is a sensible time to take another look
Are mistargeted government policies a bug or a feature of our policymaking system? You’re familiar with the story: a policy is ostensibly designed to assist one group in the community. But, economists note, the real beneficiaries are another group, because the government has failed to take into account how markets
A week of loudly broadcast Australian Defence Force posturing signals has been rounded off by the weekend signing of an official deal with Japan to deliver at least three mid-sized frigates built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to gradually replace the Royal Australian Navy’s Anzac-class frigates. At the conclusion of a
The NSW Department of Health has admitted to the late payment of key entitlements for salaried emergency doctors at Westmead Hospital, potentially amounting to as much as a quarter of their take-home pay, following intervention by the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation. In a long-running dispute over payment times for allowances that
Australian Public Service Commission lawyers have spent two days at the Administrative Review Tribunal trying to prevent the release of more information related to the sacking of former secretary Mike Pezzullo. The code of conduct inquiry into Pezzullo was released following an 18-month FOI battle between former senator Rex Patrick
Thursday’s announcement of the updated National Defence Strategy (NDS) by Defence Minister Richard Marles was replete with the kind of language you would expect from a man whose job it is to balance the precarious expectations of a population in the grips of a cost-of-living crisis against a belligerent and,
The government’s 2026 national defence strategy consists of two documents — the 98-page strategy and an associated 114-page integrated investment program (IIP). If motherhood statements and jargon were removed in favour of meaningful solutions, both could have been trimmed to about 50 pages. For some reason, defence ministers of all
Former Parramatta Council staff will face corruption hearings amid serious allegations against its former CEO. The Independent Commission Against Corruption NSW (ICAC NSW) has announced four weeks of public hearings into the actions of former CEO Gail Connolly and council employees Angela Jones-Blayney and Roxanne Thornton. ICAC NSW’s media release
Domestic travel has long been a key feature of the Australian summer. Nearly 60 per cent of Australians take a holiday during the peak season, and the coastline alone records more than 600 million visits each year. For public safety agencies, travel and tourism are not secondary considerations. They are
One local government entity submitted its financial statements to the WA auditor-general’s office for review 19 times before it passed muster, according to the latest review of local government reporting released in the past week by the Office of the Auditor-General. The latest report notes that the audit teams have
Australia’s privacy watchdog repeatedly warned that the government’s $6.5 million teen social media ban tech trial overstated how the technology used protected people’s privacy, given it hadn’t been tested or assessed against Australian privacy law. The people behind the trial ignored most of those warnings and continued to include the
The High Court this year will decide on the validity of significant changes to Commonwealth electoral laws passed last year after a deal between the Labor government and the Liberal-Nationals coalition that will crucially limit campaign spending by minor parties and independents. Parties challenging the Commonwealth law had hoped that
Australia is now feeling the effects of a global fuel shock in its own transport and gas markets. Petrol and diesel prices have jumped. The Commonwealth has had to respond. The east coast gas market is tightening again ahead of winter. That is a sensible time to take another look
Are mistargeted government policies a bug or a feature of our policymaking system? You’re familiar with the story: a policy is ostensibly designed to assist one group in the community. But, economists note, the real beneficiaries are another group, because the government has failed to take into account how markets
A week of loudly broadcast Australian Defence Force posturing signals has been rounded off by the weekend signing of an official deal with Japan to deliver at least three mid-sized frigates built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to gradually replace the Royal Australian Navy’s Anzac-class frigates. At the conclusion of a
The NSW Department of Health has admitted to the late payment of key entitlements for salaried emergency doctors at Westmead Hospital, potentially amounting to as much as a quarter of their take-home pay, following intervention by the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation. In a long-running dispute over payment times for allowances that
Australian Public Service Commission lawyers have spent two days at the Administrative Review Tribunal trying to prevent the release of more information related to the sacking of former secretary Mike Pezzullo. The code of conduct inquiry into Pezzullo was released following an 18-month FOI battle between former senator Rex Patrick
Thursday’s announcement of the updated National Defence Strategy (NDS) by Defence Minister Richard Marles was replete with the kind of language you would expect from a man whose job it is to balance the precarious expectations of a population in the grips of a cost-of-living crisis against a belligerent and,
The government’s 2026 national defence strategy consists of two documents — the 98-page strategy and an associated 114-page integrated investment program (IIP). If motherhood statements and jargon were removed in favour of meaningful solutions, both could have been trimmed to about 50 pages. For some reason, defence ministers of all
