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THE federal government will give itself the option of calling a double-dissolution election with legislation cracking down on union corruption.

An increasingly powerful Indon­esia may supplant Australia in the future as the go-to ally for the US in the Asia-Pacific region, the new report on ANZUS says. It calls for the creation of a trilateral security process to milit­ate against potential rifts between Jakarta, Canberra and Washington. The report, by the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says a stronger Indonesia is likely to attract far greater interest from Washington — to the extent that Jakarta would, over time, become­ a competitor with Canberra for US attention. “Under such...

China’s growing naval power and long-range missiles threaten to bring Canberra within range of the People’s Liberation Army as Australia’s geographical isolation no longer protects it. The dramatic warning is contained in a joint analysis of the state of the ANZUS alliance by US and Australian defence specialists with high-level access to key policymakers in Washington and Canberra. The report says there are increasing concerns about China’s behaviour in maritime disputes in the South China Sea and about the possibility of Australia becoming involved if China takes more risks to consolidate its control over large areas of ocean, including the...

Australia has slammed the door shut on any new government-funded investment in renewable energy schemes as Prime Minister Tony Abbott extends his “war on wind power”. In doing so Mr Abbott has sent a clear message to the mendicant green renewable energy sector that there will be no more cheap state-supplied financing for its projects.

Perth, Australia - Up to a third of Perth's drinking water starts life in the Indian Ocean where it is drawn into an intake pump about 400 metres inland. It is pumped another kilometre into the sprawling, open-plan complex at the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant in Binningup, Western Australia (WA). Here, the seawater goes through a complex five-step filtering process that includes 32,872 reverse osmosis membranes and 18,080 ultra-filtration membranes. About 45 percent of the seawater entering the system gets turned into fresh drinking water that can then be piped out north towards Perth, or even as far as Kalgoorlie...

Dr Christopher Lehnert talked about the potential robots held for the agriculture industry at CQ University yesterday. A STEREOTYPICAL farmer might wear overalls and gumboots in 2015. But in not long at all, he could be a state-of-the-art robot. Agricultural robotics research fellow Dr Christopher Lehnert spoke at CQUniversity yesterday about robots being developed to pick fruit and detect weeds. One problem they could solve was harvesting labour shortages. "It's a causal workforce problem. (For farmers) their really high risk is getting a workforce to pick the fruit," Mr Lehnert said. "There's not a worry about job losses. We're just...

In a recent pastoral letter on marriage, Australia’s Catholic bishops reaffirmed Catholic teaching. And one of the bishops has countered a leading same-sex marriage activist who said the pastoral letter should be reported to the Tasmanian government for illegal bias. “The Catholic Church in Tasmania is exercising its right to freedom of opinion, just as opponents to the Church’s views on marriage are also exercising their rights,” Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart said, according to the Catholic Leader newspaper. His comments concern the booklet “Don’t Mess with Marriage,” a pastoral letter the Australian bishops’ conference released May 28. He said...

There are fears Melbourne's gun crime could be spiralling out of control with police data showing a 300 percent rise in firearm offences in the past five years. Mr Iddles said the streets were more dangerous than he had ever seen. "The homicide rate's not up but if you have ice and you have the threat of terrorism, it's more dangerous now on the street as a police officer (than) in all my time of 37 years," he said. Data shows police find an illegal firearm in Victoria every 48 hours. Mr Iddles said Melbourne's northwest suburbs were a particular...

The Northern Territory’s most senior indigenous affairs bureaucrat wore a shirt bearing the controversial Confederate battle flag to a beef breeders dinner — and won best dressed on the night. Eyebrows were raised in some sections at the Central Australian Beef Breeders dinner when Mark Coffey, the Northern Territory manager in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, rocked up in the shirt, bearing a flag which is offensive to many because of its connection to slavery and white supremacist groups. Mr Coffey won best-dressed man at the dinner. He declined to comment when contacted by the NT News. Debate...

Aboriginal language had ice age origins Judy Skatssoon ABC Science Online Wednesday, 13 December 2006 A researcher has suggested that the origin of Aboriginal language can be traced back to a time when Australia and New Guinea were one (Image: Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water) Aboriginal languages may be much older than people think, argues a linguistic anthropologist who says they originated as far back as the end of the last ice age around 13,000 years ago. This challenges existing thinking, which suggests Aboriginal languages developed from a proto-language that spread through Australia 5000 to 6000 years ago....

Prime Minister Tony Abbott's proposal to put F-35 fighter jets on the Navy's two 27,000-tonne troop transport assault ships has been quietly dropped ahead of the government's defence white paper after it was found the ships would require extensive reworking and the project was too costly. Mr Abbott asked defence planners in May last year to examine the possibility of putting up to 12 of the short-take-off and vertical-landing F-35 Bs on to the two ships – the largest in the Navy – which carry helicopters and are likely to be primarily used to transport troops and equipment to war...

AUSTRALIANS leaving for holidays at the weekend will have noticed new signage at airport departure terminals announcing a new force watching us. Even the plastic tape marking queue lines to official counters proclaimed this new instrument of regulation and policing: Border Force. However, few of those travellers would have noticed anything else different, even though this agency is one of the most powerful in the country and one of the most important politically for the Abbott Government. It is another element of its promise to voters to “stop the boats”. The new body essentially combined the frontline functions of Customs...

Australians support the right of a child to have a mother and a father over the rights of homosexuals to get married, opinion poll shows

A RIOT has broken out at the Metropolitan Remand Centre at Ravenhall in Melbourne’s west. The riot comes as a smoking ban was enforced today. Men in balaclavas carrying weapons have taken to yards and firefighters are en route to the high security prison to put out small blazes. Prison staff have been evacuated. It’s understood the nearby Port Phillip Prison has also been put into lockdown. CPSU acting secretary Catherine Davies said riots broke out at the jail after lunch. “There’s a riot going on right now,” she said. “All staff have been evacuated.” Ms Davies said she was...

On the surface, it appeared to be an innocent email offering Liberal MPs the opportunity to refresh stock photos of themselves with the Prime Minister ahead of the six-week winter break. But Peta Credlin's leaked message, sent out on Thursday, has begun whispers that an early election could be in the works. The Chief of Staff's email invited members and senators to update their photographs with the prime minister 'to use in local electorate materials'. Mr Abbott has left open a timeslot on Thursday afternoon for the happy snaps. 'Any MP wanting an updated photograph is welcome to drop around,'...

The debate over why Jews vote the way that they do is an old one, but it’s rarely backed by much data except the estimates of the Jewish vote from the last election. There is, however, one piece of data that currently predicts the Jewish vote. It’s religious attendance. 60 percent of Jews that attend weekly religious services disapprove of Obama. Only 34 percent approve. Among those who don’t attend religious services, approval of Obama stood at 58 percent to 38 percent. There are really two Jewish votes; the religious Jewish vote and the secular Jewish vote. ... When we...

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has paid tribute to HMAS Tobruk, the navy's ageing amphibious supply ship who made her final voyage into Sydney Harbour on Thursday ahead of decommissioning. MR Abbott said after 34 years, Tobruk and her crew had served Australia with distinction, supporting a series of defence operations, most recently disaster relief in Vanuatu. "HMAS Tobruk has fulfilled her mission and a grateful nation says thank-you," he told parliament. Named after the World War II siege in which Australian troops played a heroic part, Tobruk was constructed at the Carrington shipyard in Newcastle and commissioned into the navy...

A well-respected Queensland tourism operator who died in a car crash last month, has been revealed as an American drug smuggler who faked his own death more than 40 years ago to escape US police. Dennis 'Lee' Lafferty was an admired Crocodile cruise operator in Daintree, northern Queensland, deeply mourned by the community after dying in a car accident in May. But US newspaper The Tampa Bay can reveal that Mr Lafferty's real name was in fact Raymond Grady Stansel Jr, an alleged drug smuggler who reportedly died in a scuba diving accident in 1974. 'Our challenge was to make...

THE two chairs of the government’s review into the national curriculum fear our schools are becoming too “kumbaya” and overrun with “progressive, new-age fads” that are hurting our children. Australia is sliding behind a number of countries in education standards including Singapore, South Korea, Finland and Hong Kong — a development which Professor Ken Wiltshire and Doctor Kevin Donnelly’s report blames on the fact students have been handed autonomy in the classroom and that wishy-washy ideals like “child-guided learning” and “collaborative negotiated goal-setting” are overtaking the traditional model of teachers imparting knowledge. ..... Professor Wiltshire said he was dismayed by...

"I'm going to talk about something now that sort of splits the crowd a little bit," Australian comedian Jim Jeffries says. "Gun control." "Don't get excited," he continues, "because the other people have guns!" "Shhhhh." In this hilarious act, Jeffries says he believes in the right of Americans to have gun, but seems skeptical of the argument -- often made by gun rights activists often claim -- that Americans need guns for their own security. "In Australia we had guns, right up until 1996. In 1996 Australia had the biggest massacre on earth. Still hasn't been beaten," Jeffries says. "Now...