The news that Australia's university dropout rate is worsening and that around one in three students fails to compete their studies within six years has raised relatively few eyebrows in higher education circles. Perhaps that calm is warranted.
Centrelink's contentious automated debt recovery program was given a minor facelift on Monday.
Barring any last-minute presidential pardon of Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden – a most unlikely occurrence – Barack Obama has issued his last executive order.
One of the main differences between Labor and the Coalition in the 2013 federal election was how to build a National Broadband Network.
Any uncertainty regarding how far Donald Trump is prepared to go in pushing back against China's strategic and economic ambitions was swiftlydispelled in Washington this week.
Public scrutiny allows free-riding politicians to be caught. What of public servants, whose expenses face almost no scrutiny?
What's not to like about a facility using Australian-patented technology to convert non-recyclable plastic into "road-ready" diesel and petrol with barely registrable noise and odour levels, and with negligible emissions of harmful chemicals?
Public concern over plans to replace the Curtin shops with a six-storey edifice is the latest canary in the coalmine, defenders of the Griffin Legacy are arguing.
East Timor's plea to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 to mediate in its dispute with Australia over claims to oil and gas reserves in the Timor Gap has paid its first dividend. It's a significant one, too.
Sussan Ley can thank prime ministerial timidity – and the requirement for natural justice – for standing aside as the Minister for Health pending an investigation of taxpayer-funded trips to the Gold Coast rather than being sacked outright.
Canberra's first citizen and his colleagues have had a lot of homework to catch up on over the Christmas break.
On Thursday, the ACT government released a list of top 10 slogans, one of which is set to adorn Canberra residents' blue and white number plates in coming months and years.
It's been a notable Christmas/New Year for Christian Porter, and not in an auspicious sense. Centrelink's automated welfare debt retrieval system has mistakenly sent bills of up to $24,000 to welfare recipients.
Australia’s military and diplomatic relationship with Indonesia is on tenterhooks again, though the whys and wherefores of this latest hiccup are less obvious than previous contretemps.
The buying-in of skills and services by federal, state and territory government departments has little in common with capital city real-estate prices save one feature – their growth appears limitless.
Just as the course of true love seldom runs smooth, Canberra's quest to become the "world's coolest city" has hit a number of potholes in the past 12 months.
Tony Abbott's New Year resolutions for 2017 remain a matter of conjecture, but conduct befitting a government backbencher seems not to have been among them.
Malcolm Turnbull recently expressed concern about asylum seekers' welfare. That's not enough.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr faced a tough 2016 but now it's time for the new ACT government to deliver for Canberra.
The South Coast exerts a powerful gravitational pull on Canberrans in the warmer summer months, underlined by their heavy presence on beaches north and south of Batemans Bay. They're also over-represented in water rescues.
The normally polite and restrained world of international diplomacy has been anything but over the past week.
Almost from the day the Gallagher government proposed it March 2013, the City to the Lake development has been subject to constant tinkering.
When Barnaby Joyce announced in 2014 that the Coalition wanted to move four agriculture research agencies from Canberra to regional Australia, voters were assured the move would boost reginal employment and facilitate better stakeholder access to the agencies.
Why did 228 businesses, the vast majority of which were categorised as small to medium in size, go to the wall between July and September this year?
In many towns and cities of Australia, memories of Christmas are often of scorching hot summer days, a strong north-westerly blowing, and families gathered round the dining table tucking into a hot roast turkey followed by plum pudding and custard.
The Turnbull government's habit of running policy ideas up the flagpole and then back down again at the first whiff of grapeshot is familiar to all.
Cynicism, discontent, frustration and a sense of disempowerment, it’s fair to say, have always existed at the margins of democracy, ebbing and flowing according to socio-political and economic events. However, disillusionment and disappointment with our political systems is now increasingly the province of the majority rather than the feckless few.
The assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey at roughly the same time that 12 Germans were murdered in a Berlin truck attack has accentuated the air of inevitability now surrounding Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in the West.
Wayne Swan, Chris Bowen and Joe Hockey could be forgiven for having a quiet, solitary moment of empathy for their successor this week.
The advantages are obvious: they'll be quieter, have a longer range, and won't require crew.