Healthy COAG Money

This weekends COAG meeting has ended with an extra $15 billion in extra money for the states. 
Some of the detail are:

An extra $1.1 billion for healthcare training
And extra $750 million for hospital emergency departments
$400 million for social housing and homelessness
And increase of $22.4 billion in health funding for the next five years compared to the [...]

The Sunday Top Five – Music

To lighten the mood (again) at the blogocrats, here is this weeks top five list. Now what do I call them: records, CD’s, albums? And what do we call them now that you can just download a full thingamejig?
Anyway – what is your top five list of music? This can cover all types of music, [...]

Amused to Debt

Now I am not a financial expert at all, and so the values here may be inaccurate, but they are the best that I can find and I think highlight what a huge problem debt is to Australia.
The total household debt in Australia is currently about $650 billion or over $32,000 per person. In 1992, [...]

Misleading headline – this is now a anti-good-news thread.

The headline in this article is very misleading.
The headline tries to imply something that Rudd did not do. In the article Rudd says that they have no plans to cut GST – which is different than saying that they rule it out.
Poor reporting, if you ask me.

Fair Work, or Back to the Future?

The Deputy Prime Minister has tabled the government “Fair Work Australia” legislation in parliament.
The legislation continues to provide a differentiation of employment security, depending on the size of the employer. If the employer has less than 15 employees, workers need to remain employed for a year to seek obtain protection from unfair dismissal. Currently an [...]

Never Mind The Frolykz, here’s Weekend Wonderland!!

Good morning everyone and welcome to Weekend Wonderland.
It’s been a pretty rough week, what with the situation in Mumbai and the weather in Queensland, amongst other things.
As joni has alluded to, I think we could all do with some cheering up! So for a change, how about we keep this weekend’s thread politics – free?

Guanta-no-more II

At the risk of opening up another discussion with only a few commentors, I want to start a new thread about Guantanamo and the current administration.
Reading an article in the IHT (link here) I was struck by a simple thought. 

How has the current administrations policies of “enhanced interrogation” and the removal of basic human rights [...]

Give me some good news.

This is an open thread ONLY for good news. So if you have any good news stories that you want to share… tell them here. Any bad news or negative posts will be deleted with extreme prejudice.
joni

Terrorists Hit Mumbai

Terrorists have hit the popular tourist destination of Mumbai, with reports of multiple explosions and gunshots being heard across the city.
So far 80 people have been killed and 250 injured in seven attacks in the city.
Flames and a massive plume of smoke engulfed Mumbai’s five-star Taj Mahal hotel, following an encounter between police and gunmen [...]

Knowingly spreading HIV

This subject is one which I find so completely abhorrent, and yet I feel it necessary for it to be aired.
What kind of person, knowing that they are HIV positive, delberately and systematically goes about trying to infect as many others as possible with the virus.
Personally I have known a number of friends who have [...]