This November, the Victorian people will go to the polls in what is likely to be another close election, following the Coalition parties’ narrow victory in 2010. In 2010, the Coalition won an amazing 13 seats, snatching a very narrow majority of just two in the 88-seat lower house, the Legislative Assembly. Victorian Labor leader…
The tragic case of baby Gammy, conceived using genetic material from an Australian couple but gestated by a poor Thai woman, then abandoned when it was discovered that he had Down Syndrome, highlights all that is wrong with current surrogacy law in Australia. Surrogacy is the medical process by which a woman carries an IVF…
The use of a surface-to-air missile to shoot down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet in eastern Ukraine is an international crime, which will test the willingness of the United Nations, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the European Union to bring the perpetrators to justice. Telecommunications intercepts by the Ukrainian government, together with missile-tracking…
The announcement by Indonesia’s electoral commission that Joko Widodo, the popular governor of Jakarta, was decisively elected President of Indonesia for the next five years, marks the beginning of a new era in Indonesian politics. Joko Widodo Politically, the history of Indonesia since independence can be broken into three periods. The first was the Sukarno era, which lasted from 1945, when Indonesia declared independence from the Netherlands, until 1967, when President Sukarno was overthrown. In this period, the nationalist President made a name for himself as an anti-Western, anti-colonialist leader, who was one of the global leaders of the so-called…
