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The personal details of world leaders at the last G20 summit were accidentally disclosed by the Australian immigration department, which did not consider it necessary to inform those world leaders of the privacy breach. The Guardian can reveal an employee of the agency inadvertently sent the passport numbers, visa details and other personal identifiers of all world leaders attending the summit to the organisers of the Asian Cup football tournament. The United States president, Barack Obama, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, the Japanese prime...

The idea of a bank deposit tax was raised by Labor in 2013 and was criticised by Tony Abbott at the time. Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has indicated an announcement on the new tax could be made before the budget. The Government is heading for a fight with the banking industry, which has warned it will have to pass the cost back onto customers. Mr Frydenberg is a member of the Government's Expenditure Review Committee but has refused to provide any details

The Federal Government looks set to introduce a tax on bank deposits in the May budget. The idea of a bank deposit tax was raised by Labor in 2013 and was criticised by Tony Abbott at the time. Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has indicated an announcement on the new tax could be made before the budget. The Government is heading for a fight with the banking industry, which has warned it will have to pass the cost back onto customers. Mr Frydenberg is a member of the Government's Expenditure Review Committee but has refused to provide any details.

Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, in Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity and Islam, details the rising tide of secularism that seeks to banish Christianity from European history and the public square. While the situation in Australia appears nowhere near as dire, it is the case here that Christianity is often misrepresented and undermined. This happens especially in subjects such as history and in relation to what American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington terms the “clash of civilisations”. The expectation is that school textbooks present a balanced, objective and impartial view of ideas, beliefs and events. Such...

AS the count continues in the NSW, seats are starting to be decided. With about 5.5 per cent of the overall vote counted, our experts have already called 32 winners. The Coalition is already well in front with 27 seats being called in their favour, including Albury, Baulkham Hills, Ryde and Wagga Wagga for the Liberals and Barwon, Coffs Harbour and Oxley for the Nationals. Our experts have called Charlestown, Liverpool, Maroubra, Summer Hill and Wollongong. Exit polls of voters taken moments after they cast their ballots pointed to the Coalition being re-elected despite a swing to Labor. Opposition Leader...

FREMANTLE, Australia, March 26 (UPI) — An Australian woman was denied bail after she allegedly squirted breast milk on a police officer’s head, arms and clothes. Authorities said Erica Leeder, 26, of Calista, Western Australia, was being searched Tuesday at the Fremantle police station after being arrested on an unspecified warrant. Police said Leeder, who was nude from the waist up during the search, grabbed her own breast and squirted milk onto the forehead, arms and clothes of the female officer conducting the search. Leeder appeared Wednesday in Fremantle Magistrate’s Court on a charge of assaulting a public officer. She...

Ancient Egypt ~ Link with Australia An Article by Paul White - 1996 After 5,000 years Australia's Amazing Hieroglyphs still struggle for recognition ! Egyptian hieroglyphs found in New South Wales: The hieroglyphs tell the tale of early Egyptian explorers, injured and stranded, in ancient Australia. The discovery centres around a most unusual set of rock carvings found in the National Park forest of the Hunter Valley, 100 km north of Sydney. The enigmatic carvings have been part of the local folklore of the area for nearly a century with reports of people who sighted them as far back...

Fuente Magna Rosetta stone of the Americas "Atlantis: the Andes Solution" by J.M.Allen (pub Windrush Press 1998) and basis of the Discovery film "Atlantis in the Andes" by Lisa Hutchison proposes the question "did anyone ever consider that the first reed boats may have crossed from west to east perhaps following the route from the River Plate eastwards across the Atlantic, past the Cape of Good Hope and via the Indian Ocean to enter the Persian Gulf and Red Sea to found the early civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt?" It is obvious that at that time, the author suspected a...

During a recent TV debate on the destruction of antiquities by ISIS, Syrian political analyst Yahya Badr said that the Egyptian people was entitled to claim legal rights in Australia, since inscriptions in ancient hieroglyphics had been found near Sydney, indicating that the grandson of a pharoah had landed there. On the show, which aired on the Turkish TRT TV channel on March 6, 2015, Badr was introduced as owning the patent to mummy technology. Following are excerpts: TV host: Let's discuss the destruction of antiquities. Yahya Badr: This is a crime, because antiquities constitute documentation, which preserves the [legal]...

Support for the Abbott government has jumped to 41 per cent, giving the Coalition real hope for the first time in six months. The latest Newspoll, taken ­exclusively for The Australian at the weekend, shows core support for the government is up three points in the past fortnight and is six points higher than when Tony Abbott faced a spill motion against his leadership six weeks ago. It is the first time the ­Coalition’s primary vote has been above 40 per cent since September and is the equal-highest level since April — before last May’s budget when the vote collapsed....

ALMOST 4000 people turned out in Melbourne yesterday to welcome home Australian defence personnel who had served in Afghanistan during the war on terror. Well-wishers lined St Kilda Rd to cheer on 1400 soldiers, sailors, air force personnel and Australian Federal Police officers who served in the war-torn country under Operation Slipper, which ran from October 2001 until December 2014. More than 34,500 Australian personnel served in the years since the September 11 attacks in 2001 on New York and Washington. Forty-one Diggers were killed in action, 263 were wounded and hundreds more still suffer either physical or psychological injuries.

AUSTRALIA’S overseas intelligence agency, ASIS, has been training Japanese spies in the tradecraft of espionage as Tokyo seeks to establish its first foreign spy service since World War II. ...ASIS has taken a key role in training Japan’s fledgling spies since Tokyo decided to ­establish a foreign intelligence service to gather information on looming regional security challenges, such as those posed by North Korea, the rise of China and the threat of Islamist terror. Japan’s intention to establish a spy service was flagged in a cable published by WikiLeaks... ...Japanese intelligence officers have been posted to Australia as part of...

FORMER Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has died at the age of 84. “It is with deep sadness that we inform you that after a brief illness John Malcolm Fraser died peacefully in the early hours of the morning of 20 March 2015,” Mr Fraser’s office said in a statement this morning. “We appreciate that this will be a shock to all who knew and loved him, but ask that the family be left in peace at this difficult time.”

THIS is the wall of grey which residents of Wolloomooloo and Potts Point now wake up to — that’s if they’ve managed to get to sleep. They say the 27,800 tonne HMAS Canberra has obliterated their views of the harbour, spewed oil fumes into their homes and kept them awake with the groan of engines­ and generators since it arrived to fanfare in November. "It’s just so depressing ... it’s all those things and they’re constant,” said one resident, Catherine Regan. But the Department of Defence has confirmed, not only will the 27.5m-high helicopter landing dock stay indefinitely at the...

Swedish defence giant Saab has accused the government of spreading lies about its submarine building capability. The head of Sweden’s defence purchasing agency, Lena Erixon, has written to her counterpart at the Defence Materiel Organisation in Canberra, Harry Dunstall, to protest about the denigration of Sweden’s submarine industry led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Ms Erixon also revealed that at no stage had Australian officials requested detailed design details from Sweden or included any technical experts in various government delegations to visit the country. Mr Abbott told Parliament that only France, Germany and Japan could build the submarines. “The last...

FOR the Left there is no greater hate figure than Tony Abbott. After all, the Prime Minister is a liberal of the European school and embraces all the policy instincts and beliefs the Left des­pises. What’s more, Abbott effectively toppled Australia’s first female prime minister, the Left’s beloved Julia Gillard, and it is determined to get even. Abbott is a fiscal conservative. He stands for lower taxes. He believes in smaller government and competition. He wants freer trade, freer markets and fewer regulations. He encourages entrepreneurship and innovation, which run counter to the ideals of the collective. He sees a...

THE decision by the Abbott government to sign on for negotiations to join China’s regional bank, foreshadowed by Tony Abbott at the weekend, represents another defeat for Barack Obama’s diplomacy in Asia. ..... Canberra’s move follows similar decisions by Britain, Singapore, India and New Zealand. Make no mistake — all this represents a colossal defeat for the Obama administration’s incompetent, distracted, ham-fisted dip­lomacy in Asia. The Obama administration didn’t want Australia to sign up for the China Bank. The Abbott government rightly feels that it owes Obama nothing. Obama treats allies shabbily and as a result he loses influence with...

Their land was confiscated, their homes burned down and many of their people killed. Now, 150 years later, the indigenous Ngai Tuhoe tribe in New Zealand is getting a new start. The government has apologized for its past atrocities, handed over 170 million New Zealand dollars ($128 million) and agreed the tribe should manage a sprawling, rugged national park it calls home. Last year's settlement is one of dozens the government has signed with Maori tribes in a comprehensive, multi-billion dollar process described in a U.N. report as imperfect but nevertheless "one of the most important examples in the world...

EVERY talking head in the United States has spent the last week prattling on about Hillary Clinton’s emails.Fair enough. The former Secretary of State violated government rules in an apparent effort to keep her correspondence safe from scrutiny. That’s no small matter. But in the meantime, another politician has come from nowhere to dethrone Jeb Bush as the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. His name’s Scott Walker.A few months ago, Walker was an obscure underdog with little more than an outside chance of becoming the nominee. Now he’s being seriously considered for the most important job on the...

CANBERRA, Australia - The Australian government on Wednesday re-listed Ansar al-Islam, Lashkar-e Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad, from Pakistan, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as terrorist organisations, Efe news agency reported. These organisations, which have been listed since 2003, would continue to be listed for another three years, according to a statement from the Australian Attorney-General's Department. Under this measure, it remains a criminal offence to direct the activities of, be a member of, recruit for, train for or receive training from these groups. It would also be a criminal offence to get funds to, from, or for, provide support to,...