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The Treasurer Wayne Swan admits his office commissioned Treasury to analyse the costs of three specific opposition policies. The opposition says the modelling is unfair and that the Government's used the public service in an inappropriate manner. But governments of both persuasions have used Treasury to cost opposition policies.
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As asylum seekers sent to Nauru continue their hunger strike, Australia's human rights commissioner has described their indefinite detention as "an egregious breach of international human rights law". The Immigration Department says the asylum seekers are being provided with the "best possible care".
Topics: human, federal-government, refugees, nauru, australia
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As the United States votes, China's leaders are also preparing to make a big political choice. The Communist Party's central committee meets Thursday to select new leaders, as well as the members of the commission which controls the armed forces.
Topics: china
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Political commentators regard Ohio as arguably the most critical state in the presidential election. A high youth vote swung it for president Obama at the last election. The high turnout of religious Republicans in Ohio delivered it to George W. Bush in 2004. The presidential candidates and their running mates have visited the state 130 times during the campaign and voting booths have just closed.
Topics: united-states
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Two former campaign staffers know better than most how the key team members working for each of the presidential candidates are feeling as the numbers come in today. Bill Whalen was a speechwriter for the Republican Bush-Quayle re-election team in 1992 and is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. And joining us in San Diego is Samuel Popkin, who was a consultant to Democrat president Clinton's re-election campaign and to the Al Gore campaign in 2000 and is now Professor of Political Science at the University of California San Diego.
Topics: united-states
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US campaign directors - and the media - like to paint every election as the most important yet for the future of the most powerful country in the world. This one comes as the United States is slowly emerging from its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and also facing a challenge to its authority on the global stage. So how much difference will it make if there is a change of leadership in the White House?
Topics: united-states
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In the United States, voting has now officially closed in several eastern states, including tightly contested battlegrounds like Virginia and Florida. But the turnout has been surprisingly high and while Virginia was due to close, there are still queues of people waiting to vote. With voting continuing in states like Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Montana and California the overall result is still at least a few hours away from being known. In Chicago, the Obama campaign is saying they don't trust early exit polls showing a tight race. Aides say president Barack Obama is calm and excited. But they're nervous about the prospect of president Obama being re-elected without winning the overall popular vote.
Topics: united-states
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From Romney campaign headquarters in Boston, Ben Knight says the candidate is seeking to project an air of confidence, and there's a relaxed mood at the venue. He says campaign figures are encouraged by early results from Virginia, but not so early results from the critical state of Ohio.
Topics: united-states
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A British MP has been suspended from the parliamentary Conservative party for flying out to Australia to be part of a celebrity reality TV show. Tory MP Nadine Dorries has been spotted in Queensland preparing to be a contestant in a jungle camp.
Topics: parliament, television, england
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Queensland is the latest conservative-led state to flag major changes to its vocational education system. The State Government says it's looking at ways to renew the system and address skills shortages. But education unions say the potential changes are a step back.
Topics: vocational, budget, states-and-territories, qld
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The traditional geopolitical rival of America, the Kremlin will be looking towards the US election to see with whom they will be dealing for the next four years. However, when it comes to how Russia sees itself in the world, it may not make much of a difference.
Topics: russian-federation
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The US president Barack Obama has joked that as the election campaign has gone on he's become less and less relevant and more of a 'prop' as he put it. Now the people will have their say as to whether he packs his bags and leaves the White House or he gets four more years.
Topics: united-states
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With the Asia Europe summit in Laos at an end, the Prime Minister says she spent much of her time talking to leaders about their economies and how they're struggling with recession. Julia Gillard says the meeting of about 50 nations has been effective in endorsing the G20 agenda and agreeing to resist protectionism despite the Eurozone crisis and the Asian slowdown. The Prime Minister now heads to the Bali Democracy forum, which the Indonesian president has asked her to co-chair.
Topics: gillard-julia, foreign-affairs, vietnam
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The president of the Australian Human Rights Commission wants all states and territories to investigate how many children are in their adult prison system. The call comes after the controversy in Victoria over a 16-year-old Aboriginal boy who was held in a maximum security unit of an adult prison for four months.
Topics: prisons-and-punishment, youth, aboriginal, vic
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Both the Democrat and Republican campaigns are going to great lengths to get everyone's vote, to the point of picking them up from their homes and taking them to the polling stations. The latest opinion polls still show a neck and neck race - so turnout will be absolutely crucial.
Topics: united-states
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Economists say the latest house price data from the Bureau of Statistics show the property market is stabilising. Investors had a lot to distract them today and, as a result, the share market was relatively quiet. The Australian dollar though did rise markedly higher - it's now trading comfortably above 104 US cents.
Topics: stockmarket, business-economics-and-finance, currency, australia
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The Reserve Bank has left the official cash rate unchanged at 3.25 per cent. Some of Australia's leading economists have gone on the public record criticising the bank's decision. Macquarie Bank, for example, argues the RBA needs to start preparing the economy for life after the mining boom. The bank though says previous rate cuts are still working their way through the economy and the international macroeconomic environment has stabilised.
Topics: business-economics-and-finance, banking, markets, regulation, australia
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After five days of uncertainty, workers at auto-components maker Autodom have started going back to work, thanks to a deal struck between Holden and Ford. It's understood that the car makers together provided more than $6 million to get Autodom factories in South Australia and Victoria operating again.
Topics: automotive, sa, vic
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The NSW Government has a new plan to stop future, embarrassing billion dollar budget errors: get the man who found the errors to help. Last week, NSW's auditor-general found errors worth $1 billion in the books, meaning the budget is actually in surplus rather than a deficit.
Topics: states-and-territories, federal---state-issues, nsw
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There's now an avalanche of revelations in Britain about child sexual abuse. The UK prime minister David Cameron has just announced an independent investigation into alleged abuse in connection with Welsh care homes in the 70s. It's alleged to have involved an unnamed senior Tory from the Thatcher era, and other paedophiles.
Topics: child-abuse, united-kingdom
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With the polls so tight, both campaigns are putting enormous effort into simply getting their supporters out of the house to vote. The Obama campaign set the benchmark in 2008, and they're doing it again. There's a massive network of volunteers doing everything from cold-calling potential voters, to putting on barbecues at polling booths.
Topics: united-states
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The livestock industry has gone on the front foot to defend the live export trade. Live animal exporters maintain that the brutal slaughter of thousands of sheep in Karachi was an isolated and unprecendented event, but opponents of the trade say it's more evidence that live exports should be banned.
Topics: livestock-welfare, livestock, australia
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The Prime Minister Julia Gillard is at the Asia Europe Summit in the Laotiane capital Vientiane. Alongside plenary sessions Julia Gillard has been squeezing in as many bilateral meetings as possible. Tonight she sits down with the British foreign secretary, William Hague.
Topics: defence-and-national-security, burma, australia
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NSW Labor MP and former Treasurer and Roads Minister Eric Roozendaal is accused of fibbing to the ICAC inquiry into whether the bargain car he bought was a financial benefit from the Obeid family and whether as a minister he provided benefits in return.
Topics: corruption, alp, nsw
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The US president Barack Obama has wrapped up his campaign for a second term in the White House. He's finished his election blitz with a late night rally in Iowa. The president's Republican challenger Mitt Romney has also been campaigning close to midnight in New Hampshire where he launched his election bid almost 18 months ago.
Topics: united-states
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