The Nation

25 February, 2015. 15:04 ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact MORE THAN half the recipients of the disability support and unemployment pensions could be targeted for voluntary euthanasia from next June. A landmark report into the country’s ballooning $150 billion annual welfare burden, released today, says the cost to the nation is becoming unmanageable unless people are put back to work or removed from...

25 February, 2015. 12:05 CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact   NORTH BETOOTA man, Rick Comino, says that he is a man of many vices, but poker machines are not one of them. "It's just so sad that they fill the pubs full of these things knowing that some idiot is going to put his whole pay check through them" "I used to play...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact MCDONALD'S AUSTRALIA will begin to trial green packaging at selected restaurants in an attempt to prevent it being seen on the side of highways. The first McDonalds' to receive the new wrappers and bags will be on the Hume Highway - a move that comes after intense lobbying from Goulburn Mulwaree Council. The Council spends over $1m a...

21 February, 2015. 15:30 ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact PRIME MINISTER Tony Abbott has come under fire from his National Party colleagues for choosing to wear a fedora to a Lightning Ridge property this afternoon. Coalition backbenchers have suggested that the PM is "out-of-touch" with rural affairs - outlined by his choice to don the inappropriate hat. It's been a horror couple...

20 February, 2015. 15:05 ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact QUEENSLANDERS HAVE made it clear that they want somebody competent to lead the state through Tropical Cyclone Marcia. In a poll commissioned by The Northern Miner, 9 out of 10 people in the area want either Campbell Newman or Sir Peter Cosgrove to have executive powers during the storm. Respondents also showed a lack of confidence in...

19 February, 2015. 11:30 CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact Residents of Australia's largest city and the surrounding, less important, regional areas - are today in a state of shock, after being exposed to a cultural shift that many are not ready for. Feelings of xenophobia and anti-Asian sentiment have once again replaced acceptance and tolerance as Australians panic over what looks...

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | CONTACT A SMALL TOWN junior rugby league club in western NSW has outlawed an "anti-social" hairstyle after police established a link between the haircut and repeated violence at matches. At 7:45 pm (AEST) last night, a brawl broke out during a friendly training match between North and South Cowra - which police allege was instigated by a 44-year-old...

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact Devastating revelations in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley this week have seen one man questioning both his self-confidence and self-worth among the people he believed to be his friends. Hamish Bloom, a 27-year old from the city's northern suburbs, has spent the last eight years believing that his easily dispensable position as a nightclub photographer was one that...

17 February, 2015. 15:00 ALEXUS CORBETT | Travel writer| Contact Bali. The Australian holiday hotspot looks to experience a serious slump in tourism this Easter. Indonesia's imminent executions of Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran - two low level pawns in a Trans-Asian drug trafficking operation - has prompted a huge outcry in all forms of news media and politics. However it is in social...

17 February, 2015. 11:45 ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact THREE BOTTOM-DRAWER universities will secretly begin offering degrees geared towards an unhappy life in the hospitality industry disguised as "soft qualifications in humanities". The move was prompted by the large number of Arts graduates that find themselves realistically unemployable at the end of their degree. The University of Notre Dame, Australian Catholic University and the University...