The issue of an Australian bill of rights has been placed back on the political agenda by a visiting UN expert. Michel Forst is the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders. After two weeks in Australia, he delivered his preliminary report and recommendations to government yesterday. He says federal officials were not happy with...

Successive treasurers have hailed Australia's long run of economic growth as a standout compared to the rest of the world. But if it's so good, how come many of us are feeling worse off? It could be because we're looking at the wrong measure of economic wellbeing. That's the finding of a new report by...

The ACTU is calling for all Australian political parties to support a 'Buy Australian' Act, that would require major government projects and services to use locally manufactured goods, such as steel, iron, clothing and equipment. A similar 'Buy American' provision was used by the US Government in 2009 to stimulate the economy after the GFC...

The federal government believes there's wide-scale rorting going on in the family day care sector, as a report in The Australian alleges taxpayers have lost more than $1 billion in the past two years through systemic rorting. Family day care is more difficult to regulate than centre-based care, because children are minded in private homes...

While the federal government says South Australia's reliance on renewable energy threatens the stability of its power supply, energy experts say the state's power outage was most likely caused by a transmission fault due to storm damage. One thing both sides seem to agree on is the need for a coordinated national renewable energy policy...