Parents taking a child to school for the first time will not know it, but they are entering a battleground. The war being fought here amid the desks and books and blackboards is not physical but intellectual and professional – over the best way to teach reading.
When is a water catchment not a water catchment? The answer, to judge by this week's news, is: when it sits on a coal mine.
Revelations that inexperienced truck drivers are being let loose on our roads after "grubby short courses" offering inadequate training makes for disturbing reading. The "potential for loss of life and serious injury is very real", according to the peak body for driver trainers, the Australian Drivers Association.
No wonder voters are cynical about politicians, government and the way the system operates.
Senator Derryn Hinch will have struck a nerve in the electorate with his continuing campaign in Parliament for convicted paedophiles to be publicly named.
Hillary Clinton's new book on her loss of the 2016 election is part confessional, part jeremiad. It is a necessarily partisan view that will rightly prompt debate about the weaknesses in Clinton's campaign that allowed a demonstrably unqualified man to become the president of the United States.
A Senate committee of inquiry has prudently recommended banning a type of flammable cladding used in countless Australian buildings.
Malcolm Turnbull has not turned the corner. Indeed, it looks quite possible we are not even at the corner yet.
Our system and our politics are failing a very large group of moderate and centrist voters.
The phoney war on same-sex marriage is over, and the real contest starts now.
This government has lost the ability to manage the industry in a way which can ensure the security of future power supplies.
The Prime Minister's decision to reward the cronyism of contacts is a needless destruction of the very trust he so very much needs.
In the end, the West Australian Liberal Party could not quite bring itself to promote WAxit. That was sensible.
As most prepare to vote on the issue which our politicians seem unable to resolve themselves, it is right to ask how a "yes" vote would impact on family life.
The arguments against moving the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta are many and growing.
The Herald is lending its support to raising funds for cancer research and to support cancer sufferers, survivors and their families.
It seems that nothing the West can do will persuade North Korea's leaders to reverse direction. Its latest missile test, which breached Japanese airspace, is yet another provocation, yet another needling of the United States, yet another step towards possible conflict.
The United States Weather Service, normally not an agency prone to colourful language, issued an extraordinary statement on Sunday regarding hurricane Harvey, saying, "This event is unprecedented and all impacts are unknown beyond anything experienced". It is now predicted the storm could eventually drop over 150 centimetres of rain in some areas, more than any other in the region's history.
If the leader can't lead, who will show his followers the way? That awkward question has gripped the Coalition, and more particularly the Liberal Party, on too many issues since Malcolm Turnbull took over from Tony Abbott and then failed to triumph at the 2016 election.
After all the children and their teachers have left for the day, thousands of cleaners around the state get to work in vacant classrooms emptying bins, vacuuming carpets and bleaching toilets. For the first time in more than two decades, the state government is changing the way these hard-working cleaners are paid.
Australian voters will be looking askance at the remarkable effect an appearance before the High Court can have on our politicians. Where some have no qualms about being less than candid when the audience is only the voting public, in front of the judges of the highest court in the land they – or their legal representatives – raise their standards quite quickly.
By chumming up to President Duterte publicly, the head of ASIS appears to risk both negating the government's justified stance against Mr Duterte's domestic policies, and complicating the campaign against Islamist terrorism.
When Liberal politicians start talking up a major infrastructure project, which is not a new road, we should all take notice.
Afghanistan remains essentially unchanged: lawless, tribal, not a state in any useful sense.
History itself is written mostly by those who win the battles – but not always. And tension between different versions of the past fosters differences in the present.
The issue is not whether the internal combustion engine is set for extinction, but how fast and how well the transition to electricity happens.
The exorbitant price of property in Sydney has many ramifications for young and old. Perhaps more notably for the young.
Parliament rose on Thursday and won't sit again for two weeks. What a relief! Let us hope our politicians' performance improves when they return.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme, or NDIS, has itself been labouring under something of a disability of its own: lack of money.
What a surprise – another traffic jam.
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