• EDITORIAL

The pressure on state schools is being exacerbated by a decline in the proportion of families opting for private schools.

• EDITORIAL

The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull claims his decision to defer this week's scheduled sitting of the House of Representatives is motivated solely by wanting the give the Senate, which is sitting as planned, the space to focus on the marriage equality legislation.

• EDITORIAL

The number of visits to Amazon's Australian website spiked by 500 per cent to almost one million on Friday in anticipation of the world's biggest retailer's much-heralded local launch of its full offering.

• EDITORIAL

This will come to be seen as one of the most shameful sagas in Australian political history.

It is reasonable to be sceptical about the airport rail link; this feels more like here we go again, than here we go at last.

The US and China are now circling each other warily, and Australia must steer a course between the two.

• EDITORIAL

Mr Mugabe is gone. Good riddance. But the machinery of his reign remains in ill-gotten power.

Australian politics is going through a truly tawdry period, and many disillusioned voters are wishing, as it were, a mighty pox on both houses.

It reflects a growing, grass-roots distrust of what are seen as elites running a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

The report is, above all, a terrible indictment of the treatment and plight of Indigenous Australians.

• EDITORIAL

Very valuable people are being insultingly undervalued.

This week's result should be equally concerning for the Liberals and Labor.

Continued peaceful progress here and around the globe depends on communities having faith the system is fair. It clearly is not.

Attempts to conflate marriage equality with parental rights and freedom of religion and expression are dishonest.

Lack of adequate expertise and staff numbers are considered by experts as the core causes of widespread neglect and mistreatment.

The situation is surreal, but it will be readily solved by the institutions that have served this nation so well for so long.

We can all make a meaningful modern stand against abuse.

• COMMENT

The measures seem fair and reasonable and can, should there be unforeseen consequences, be adjusted.

In the past three decades, the freeing-up of international trade has increased annual household incomes in Australia by $8500. One in five Australian jobs is now trade related.