• COMMENT

Two instances in the past week have shown freedom of expression in Australia is under direct threat from the draconian actions of government.

The idea that the genders are equal is, historically, an anomaly. We must teach the next generation to cherish that idea, in the hope that one day they can make it a reality.

The rights of the child have been appropriately updated without compromising the rights of the donor.

Australia should strive for an unimpeachable standard in support of human rights if it wants to to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The battle over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is a disingenuous distraction engineered by a frustrated and ideologically blinkered minority in the Coalition.

Students should be able to have confidence that the counsel they receive at school is in their best interest.

Many substantial issues face our MPs. Instead they so often merely betray public trust

• COMMENT

Australia has a challenge to find the voices of reason inside the White House.

• COMMENT

It is clear the Closing the Gap process has stalled.

The degree of the penalty rates had become not only out of step with modern life, but financially unsustainable. And unjust - Australia has three-quarters of a million unemployed citizens, and a lot these people are being denied work because of penalty rates.

Negotiations - rather than a traffic blockade - will win the best compensation deal for Melbourne's taxi licence owners.

In balancing benefits and risks, we believe that community safety must have paramount priority.

We believe the dangerous black market would be all but destroyed by decriminalising substances and regulating their production and sale.

After Israeli spies using counterfeit Australian passports were discovered to have assassinated a Hamas figure in Dubai in 2010, then foreign minister Stephen Smith rightly condemned the forgery as "not the action of a friend". A Mossad agent in Canberra was subsequently expelled and the entire saga marked a low point in relations between Israel and Australia.

• COMMENT

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's team is, if you will, playing base politics with baseload electricity.

There is simply no truth to the Coalition mantra that it is the political force wedded to small government and that Labor is the permanent party of big government.

Until now, support for the NDIS has been largely bipartisan, and it would be a shame were the Turnbull government to break with this position.

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.