Gay students, teachers and hospital staff should be granted the same legal protections as aged care recipients were afforded by the Gillard government, age discrimination commissioner Susan Ryan says.

The big Republican gains in the November elections strengthened and enlarged the anti-abortion forces in the House and the Senate. But it’s the GOP victories in the statehouses and governor’s mansions that are priming the ground for another round of legal restrictions on abortion.

Stay-at-home mums and dads will secure a five-year freeze on their university loans under a breakthrough deal to deliver higher education reforms.

The largest annual youth survey in Australia has revealed that a successful career is the top priority for young people but many believe they will not meet that goal. Nearly 14,000 young people aged 15 to 19 responded to the youth survey by service organisation Mission Australia.

We appeal to you as women survivors of violence, including women who experienced violence in the sex industry, to immediately withdraw Grand Theft Auto V from sale. We note you are promoting this game in your latest catalogue. Grand Theft Auto V features graphic violence against women. This misogynistic game reduces women largely to strippers and prostitutes. Players of the new Grand Theft Auto 5 murder these women for entertainment.

A NSW government ad using the term “piss up” has drawn complaints from viewers, but the advertising watchdog has dismissed the objections, finding the term was used colloquially. The outdoor ad, which is slated to run again in December, features an image of a man sitting in a jail cell with the text, “Out for a piss-up? Stop before it gets ugly”. It is the latest advertisement to cop criticism for the use of offensive language.

Thailand's parliament has voted to ban commercial surrogacy after outrage erupted over the largely unregulated industry following allegations an Australian couple abandoned a baby with Down’s syndrome.

The number of people arrested for possessing drugs in NSW has doubled over the past six years, with NSW leading a national trend towards increased law enforcement directed at individual drug users.

A Gympie mother at the centre of an explosive online debate concerning the delivery of religious instruction in state schools has welcomed the discussion.

Children as young as three are being hospitalised for harming themselves, according to a groundbreaking report on youth suicide and self harm in Australia.

The poly movement is just one part of wider changes in attitudes about relationships, especially a growing public interest in what sociologists are calling "consensual non-monogamy," or "CNM." A much more dramatic shift, of course, has been the rapid public acceptance of gay relationships.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott heads into the final sitting week of the parliamentary year on Monday with his government struggling to explain unpopular policies and his premiership facing its keenest test since he won the 2013 election in a landslide.

Labor’s Victorian election win was a modest affair, coming down a handful of gains in Melbourne’s south-eastern “sandbelt” and the success of Labor incumbents in defending their seats in the face of adverse redistributions.

The formal alliance between the Liberal and National parties in Victoria could be dumped after a disastrous performance by the Coalition in the regions.

Christians, whose fate will be broached by Pope Francis on his visit to Turkey, have been rooted in the wider Middle East since their faith was born in ancient Palestine two millennia ago. A minority in all the countries they inhabit in the troubled region, they have been hounded, even killed, by Islamists in recent years.

A Christian group says the people who attacked and killed a young couple in Pakistan should be brought to justice. The British Pakistani Christian Association has launched a petition in support of the couple who were killed earlier this month. Shahzad Masih and Shama Bibi were attacked with sharp implements, stripped naked and burned alive in a brick kiln.

This week marked the International Day For the Elimination of Violence Against Women. If any voices should be heard at this time, it is those of survivors. Here are two, addressing the physical, mental, emotional, and financial costs of the harm done to them by male abusers.

Alanah Pearce, a gaming journalist from Australia, has been tracking down young people who send her abuse online, and showing the evidence to their mothers. "It was just a way to try to reach a resolution, to productively teach young boys it's not okay to be sexist to women, even if they're on the internet."

Religion is a particular target of the ‘reshaping’, with a 40 per cent staff loss compared to 10 per cent in other RN program areas. At the time of writing, the only program to remain in its current form is Andrew West's Religion and Ethics Report, though it will suffer from the 70 per cent cut to resources for religious programs.

A female-to-male transsexual who received international fame and adulation as the world’s first “pregnant man” in 2008 has been arrested on charges of stalking the woman she fought to divorce in 2013. “Thomas Beatie,” 40, who was born Tracy LaGondino, was charged with felony stalking in Phoenix last week after her ex-“wife,” Nancy Beatie, discovered a GPS tracking device hidden on her car.