Insights

Gold Coast developer Sunland has lost its bid to claim $14 million in damages from the Australian businessmen Matt Joyce and Angus Reed in a stinging legal decision.

In corporate leadership terms, the move from Opposition Leader to prime minister that Tony Abbott is poised to make is more like an internal promotion than an external appointment.

Melbourne's tallest suburban skyscraper is again proposed for Box Hill, with the owners of a prominent site lodging new plans to build a 34-level tower. Four years ago a 39-level apartment and hotel complex for the site was rejected.

Property heavyweight Kevin Hunt has applied to demolish part of a tavern in a heritage-listed building in St Kilda Road and extend the pub's premises, patron numbers and trading hours.

Land values have soared 60 per cent in Fishermans Bend since the suburb's rezoning, a shift that has prompted a rush to short-term leases, agents Knight Frank say.

We're up to part seven of how to run a self-managed super fund for newbies. I assume that by now you have set realistic expectations, are aware of your own limitations, have involved other dependants and are smart enough not to get seduced by the dark side.

The sharemarket gained ground this week, after a late fightback on Friday afternoon, as data showed economic activity had increased by slightly more than expected this year.

Directors doing some selling continued to dominate proceedings, with the scorecard registering $5.6 million to $103 million in favour of sellers.

A plan to deliver cheaper diesel to coalmines has ended up in the courts, writes Gareth Hutchens.

The distress caused to the community of East Gippsland, unfortunately, is not unfamiliar, writes Georgia Wilkins.

FREDERICK ANTHONY "TONY" OWEN GAZE, OAM, DFC, TWO BARS FIGHTER AND GLIDER PILOT, RACING CAR DRIVER 3-2-1920 - 29-7-2013

Everyone knows there's more to national success than gross domestic product and cold economic numbers. But deeper measures of Australia's collective wellbeing have been largely overlooked during the election campaign.

"You will never look better than you do right now." It was Broadway and West 106th Street in Manhattan, the summer of 1978, right after I graduated from college. As if the older gentleman who volunteered that comment snapped a photograph, I remember exactly what I was wearing: a sea-green leotard, an eggshell wraparound skirt, high-heeled cream sandals. Though he'd effectively passed a death sentence - it was all downhill from there - in that moment I felt beautiful.

Sumatra is the only place on earth where orang-utans, tigers, elephants and rhinoceros are found together. But it may not be so for much longer. Now, only remnant populations of each survive as their habitat is cleared for yet more plantations, and by illegal loggers.

Towards the end of The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger's enduringly popular novel about coming of age in an adult world of sell-outs and fakes, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, dreams of moving to a remote cabin. "I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything phony when they visited me," he says.

It's been a long, madcap, and dysfunctional election campaign for Kevin Rudd, and in its closing days and hours, it has boiled down to this: "If you have any doubts, don't vote for Abbott."