The Abbott Government says its proposed metadata retention laws are critical to fighting crime and terrorism. But similar schemes in Europe have been wound back following legal challenges. This week the District Court of The Hague scrapped the Netherlands’ data retention law, finding that it violated fundamental European Union privacy rights. The country’s government-funded privacy...

New data shows that the majority of homeless young people in Australia have come straight out of state care. Welfare organisations say the national survey of 400 homeless young people should be a wake-up call for state governments.

Westpac has won much kudos over recent years for its efforts in attracting and promoting more women into management. It appointed the first woman, Gail Kelly, to the post of CEO - the only one to date to run a Big Four bank in Australia. She has now passed the baton on to a new...

Many disability support pensioners will be shifted to a revamped version of the Newstart allowance if the Government accepts the findings of the McClure inquiry into Australia's costly welfare system. The wide-ranging review has recommended a dramatic streamlining of the overall number of payments available to recipients. But it also stresses that no person moving...

A group of health professionals and environmentalists are calling on NSW Premier Mike Baird to ban new coal mining in the Hunter Valley. The lobby group includes former Australians of the Year Professors Fiona Stanley and Tim Flannery, who say that the health and environmental cost of coal is now too high to justify new...