It is past time for the world to to devote sustained diplomatic resources to finding a solution to the problem of North Korea.

The report is the latest in a series that has shown widespread wage fraud - targeting vulnerable employees, including foreign students and recent immigrants - in the nation's $170 billion-a-year franchise sector.

It's encouraging to see such a co-ordinated clarion call to lawmakers to put aside politics and broker a bipartisan approach to energy policy.

Homelessness is most successfully tackled when people are first given a safe place to live, and then working on underlying causes.

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The Coalition has betrayed a distinct lack of imagination by persistently attacking vulnerable people.

There is a role for passion and strong language in politics – when it's primarily about public policy. Politics is not a blood sport; it's about the battle of ideas and measures to improve opportunities for the community.

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It is with mixed feelings that we observe the outbreak of unfettered verbal hostilities in our national Parliament.

The political world is convulsing with complexity, but Cory Bernardi's resignation from the Liberal Party is a simple case of ego.

For far too long serious complaints about health care have been hidden from the public, putting people at risk of unsafe practitioners who continue to ply their trade.

The Catholic Church stands damned for the sheer number of paedophiles in its ranks, monstrous criminals it has finally admitted were in many instances protected by the church hierarchy.

Public sector options are minimal at best, forcing most people to either accept whatever the private sector decides they must pay, or avoid this aspect of their health until it becomes an emergency.

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Community safety, rightly a perennial and widespread concern, is a particularly potent topic in Victoria at the moment.

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Malcolm Turnbull should not have put himself in a position of being beholden to Mr Trump.

There are many loopholes and opportunities to disguise payments, and there is a ridiculously long lag between making a donation and it being publicly declared, if at all.

At a time of dwindling public trust in the political system, both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten deserve to be applauded this week for delivering a genuine contest of ideas.

The world can seem darker than it really is. It is likely to keep improving - because most real power and change come from the bottom up, not from high political office.

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It is more than disappointing that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop are cravenly endorsing such a stupid, unfounded policy as the US ban on citizens of seven countries.

The food industry is using highly sophisticated lobbying tactics to influence government, pushing to weaken or change public policy in its favour.

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Later this week, the Australian Football League women's competition commences, and it's about damn time.