News in Australia

• Spendaholics: how Defence splashes $26 billion a year
  

  Island getaways, Chesterfields, oil paintings, the odd submarine ... Linton Besser blows the lid on how Defence - floundering and directionless - spends $26 billion a year.

• Defence blows millions in budget rort
  

  MILLIONS of dollars are being paid unnecessarily to contractors by the Defence Department to empty its coffers and ensure its budget allocation for the next year is as big as possible.

• Brand Australia lines up to say g'day to another Bingle bungle
  

  In a throwback to the 1980s and Paul Hogan's tourism ads, the government is considering the line ''Say G'Day to the Lucky Country'' as part of its campaign to sell Australia to the world.

• Troops had been in trouble before
  

  More than a dozen Australian commandos from a company involved in a bungled raid in which six Afghan civilians were killed were charged just weeks earlier for stealing alcohol.

• Actors who are great foils
  

  And the Oscar for supporting man goes to (slight pause as I fumble with the envelope): Greg Combet, for his role as ''Mr Fix-it'' in The Great Insulation Debacle, directed by Peter Garrett and produced by GFC Productions.

• He sacked them for pleading for water
  

  Backpackers are victims of rogue operators in the fruitpicking industry, writes Rick Feneley.

• How did our daughter die? Parents demand some answers
  

  Jurgen Pera woke with a bad feeling on December 11. His 24-year-old daughter, Jessica, had said she would phone at 9am the previous day, but still there was no call from Australia.

• Island paradise regained
  

  A luxury resort run by an American surfer may be an unlikely saviour of the idyllic life on Sumba, writes Tom Allard.

• Change with a few rough edges
  

  Canberra is at ease with SBY, but the military seems unreformed, writes Hamish McDonald.

• Spirits cannot rest so far from home
  

  Bureaucracy and indifference make for slow going in repatriating Aboriginal remains from overseas institutions, writes Tim Elliott.

• Mentally ill forced to wait a month to appeal
  

  Seriously ill psychiatric patients committed to institutions against their will have to wait up to four weeks for a hearing into their detention, from later this year.

• Greens back on the brink of power
  

  Tasmania faces a return to a hung Parliament next weekend and the Gen Xers leading the political parties are playing it as safe as they can, writes Andrew Darby.

• Broadband is in Fielding's hands
  

  The fate of the Rudd government's $43 billion national broadband strategy rests with the Family First senator Steve Fielding, who will spend the weekend deciding whether to support legislation aimed at forcing Telstra to sell its assets to the new high-speed network.

• Flirting with minority rule as protest vote strengthens
  

  Tasmanians are again grappling with the prospect of minority government, the third since 1980 involving the Greens party.

• Climate HQ flunks green star test
  

  The federal government's Department of Climate Change may be at the cutting edge of environmental policy development but it is well behind when it comes to its own effect on the environment.