Australian Defence Force personnel play an important role, whether they are contributing to the rebuilding of Iraq, partaking in various United Nations peacekeeping operations or involved in multinational exercises within Australia or overseas. However, it is not just our military men and women who are serving our nation.
Read MoreTwelve thousand people who turned out at a community meeting at Griffith last December and just under 12,000 submissions from right across Australia do not seem to matter much to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
The New South Wales Minister for Primary Industries, Katrina Hodgkinson, has slammed the revised Murray-Darling Basin Plan, saying that it has not given due consideration to any of the issues raised in the New South Wales government's submission, which detailed a sensible and practical way forward.
Read MoreDriving around my electorate of Riverina, the third largest by size in New South Wales and the 14th biggest in Australia, has given me plenty of thinking time in recent months. This is because the mobile telephone coverage is not what it ought to be and certainly not even what it once was.
Read MoreThe coalition has sensible and timely amendments to the Corporations Amendment (Future of Financial Advice) Bill 2011 and the Corporations Amendment (Further Future of Financial Advice Measures) Bill 2011. The shadow Assistant Treasurer and shadow minister for financial services and superannuation, Senator Mathias Cormann, is doing a terrific job on this.
Read More'If rural practice was a patient, I would say that its condition would be critical.' Those were the words of Dr Maxine Percival as she addressed the third annual Rural Doctors Association of Australia parliamentary breakfast on 29 February.
Read MoreThe Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 questions the integrity of the electoral roll. Surely this goes to the essence, the very core, of what we are about here in this parliament and who we represent. This bill could potentially result in electors being put on the electoral roll without their knowledge.
Read MoreToday that flag, that emblem, is very much at half-mast. Today all Melbourne supporters, Australian Football League followers, the sporting world and people right across Australia and Ireland are mourning the passing of Jim Stynes.
Read More'Margaret Whitlam was a great human being and she and Gough were a formidable couple.' That is how the president of the Wagga Wagga branch of country Labor, Glenn Eliott-Rudder, described the late Mrs Whitlam, who died in a Sydney hospital on Saturday morning aged 92 years.
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