The Australian Financial Review Rich List for 2017 features 60 billionaires 鈥 the most ever in its 34-year history. The total wealth of all "rich listers" has reached $233.1 billion, up from $197.3 billion last year.
Highest ranked among the 200 richest people in the country is paper and packaging tycoon Anthony Pratt, with a fortune of $12.6 billion. It looks like all that plastic packaging floating in the world's oceans has reaped at least one plutocrat some positive returns.
Theresa May desperately clung to power yesterday by resorting to a coalition of terror with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
After months of smearing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a so-called 鈥渢errorist sympathiser鈥 for engaging in peace talks with the IRA, she leapt into bed with the notorious loyalist party to avoid the humiliation of seeing her opportunist snap election force her out of No 10.
Ten DUP MPs will allow a government that looks set to be 鈥 in the words she previously used against other parties 鈥 a 鈥渨eak and unstable coalition of chaos.鈥
Australia's lowest-paid workers will get a $22 a week pay rise after the Fair Work Commission lifted the national minimum wage to $694.90 from July 1.
FWC lifted the wage by 3.3% or 59 cents an hour to $18.29 an hour. Inflation for the year to the end of March was 2.1%. Minimum rates in modern awards will also rise by 3.3%.
ACTU secretary Sally McManus said the rise would not make up for penalty rate cuts affecting 700,000 workers.
The decision will affect up to 2.3 million people reliant on minimum rates of pay.
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The normalisation of the war on terror has become the standard refrain from the mainstream media (MSM), which would rather sensationalise and beat up stories of petty crime than investigate corporate crime.
The so called 鈥渞iots鈥, supposedly orchestrated by a Dandenong-based Apex gang in the aftermath of the 2016 Moomba Parade, is a case in point. The media is attempting to whip up fear to promote the major parties 鈥渢ough on crime鈥 approach, but the reality is that crime rates all over the country are falling.
Vigil protests were held on May 25, in Hobart and Melbourne, to mark 100 days of peaceful occupation of the wildlife-rich forests of Tasmania鈥檚 Tarkine. The vigil, organised by the Bob Brown Foundation and Save the Tarkine, urged members of the Legislative Council to reject the Hodgman government's proposed destructive forests legislation and to provide National Park protection for the Tarkine.
Immigration minister Peter Dutton has become so despised by 麻豆传媒 of society that some are questioning if he has a soul or heart.
This could also apply to any Coalition or Labor immigration minister over the past couple of decades.
Watch videos of refugees protests over the past decade and it will not be long before you hear chants such as 鈥淟ock up [insert current immigration minister] throw away the keys, we won鈥檛 stop till we free the refugees鈥 or 鈥淏lood on your hands [insert name]鈥.
We condemn the terror attacks in London and Manchester, but we also need to call out the cynical and dangerous response from those in charge who have one solution 鈥 more of the same.
British Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May and US President Donald Trump are using these tragedies to ramp up Islamophobia, expand police powers, weaken civil liberties and strengthen the 鈥渨ar on terror鈥 鈥 the same policies that have failed to stop individuals from carrying out terror attacks.
As we celebrate the courage and the achievements of Eddie Koiki Mabo we all walk in his determined footsteps in our hope for a brighter future. The Mabo family asked me to paint you a picture of how Australia can offer an example to the world, if we achieve what that passionate man dreamed of, if we do it with reason and common sense, and if we show the care and respect that will create here in the 21st Century a Great Society like none the world has ever seen.
Residents鈥 groups from Sydney's west and inner-west came together in a protest outside NSW Minister for WestConnex Stuart Ayres鈥 electorate office in Penrith on June 5. New tolls are about to be introduced on the M4 motorway as part of the giant tollway and tunnel scam that is WestConnex.
Commuters from western Sydney will be charged $2000 a year in the new M4 tolls, according to a letter from Penrith Valley Community Unions NSW (PVCU) that was delivered to Ayres' office.
Like many Victorian TAFEs, Melbourne鈥檚 Polytechnic is in decline. Trade training facilities sit idle and rusting away, mere ghosts of their former selves. Student activity in the once grand technical campuses is at a record low in Melbourne. Enrolments have dropped by tens of thousands 鈥 an overall decline of 40% 鈥 as courses are cancelled, staff made redundant, libraries shut down.
After promising for months that she鈥檇 never call an early election, Tory Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap general election in April 鈥 fully expecting to be returned with a thumping Conservative majority.
The NSW Department of Planning & Environment admitted on June 7 that it had been inundated with more than 23,000 mostly oppositional submissions to corporate giant Santos鈥 plan for a gas field in the Pilliga region in north-western NSW.
The department has now totalled the figures: more than 18,000 鈥渇orm submissions鈥 were sent in 鈥 meaning that many people took advantage of anti-fracking groups鈥 efforts to broaden the anti-gas campaign, by signing a form and adding their personal view to a statement of concern.