MAIN NEWS FROM AUSTRALIA as displayed by “The Daily Telegraph”

1) SHARK BAIT – Our man's escape from 3 meter monster
Al McGlashan, a Daily Telegraph fishing columnist, was in the ocean 40 Km southeast of Port Stephens with his team to release a marlin after having tagged him. He jumped overbord to photograph the 2.5 meter striped marlin being set free, when all of a sudden, a huge mako shark appeared, brushed him aside and bite the marlin in correspondance of its tail.
So the photos he came away with were more amazing he would ever imagine.
“I suddenly felt a swirl of water around me, and I thought it was the marlin but then out of nowhere this huge mako came blasting up from behind me and below. It was about 3 m long and came up vertically at amazing speed. One second there was nothing then this huge shark flies up, just opened its jaws and attacked the marlin. It then started munching down towards its tail, biting down and shaking its whole body to rip flesh off and doing the same again and again.”
McGlashan called it “the most amazing scene I have witnessed in over 30 years on the water”.
Makos are one of the world's fastest swimmers and have fatally attacked humans but maulings are rare.
Check the video HERE:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8209899/fisherman-films-3m-sharks-attack-on-marlin

2) COALITION FORCES A NEW CRISIS ON GILLARD
The Government is facing a potential political crisis not seen in 35 years by seeking to kill a Coalition Bill passed in the Senate that would cut a 317 million AUD hole in the budget. The bill promoted by indipendents in the Senate is striving at extending the youth allowance to cover 30.000 more rural students.
“If the Government loses support of the rural indipendents and the fight on this Bill, it would create a crisis not seen since 1975 and have implications for the management of the national economy” said constitutional expert George Williams.
If enough Mps in the House of Rapresentatives decide the Bill was constitutional, parliament would be in “uncharted waters”.
The Government clearly panicked and seeked the intervention of the Governor general Quentin Bryce to prevent the Bill even getting to the Lower House. However, this attempt failed, as it was not a money bill.
Greens leader Bob Brown said: “In effect here you can see an opposition trajectory towards taking over the role of the Treasury benches when they are not in Government and they did not negotiate to be in it.”
Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister of Australia.

3) BROADBAND GO-AHEAD
Telstra and the company building the national broadband network have reached a deal pivotal to the rollout of the 36 billion AUD project. The telco giant has agreed to allow NBN Co to use its property to install high tech optical fibres that will eventually replace Telstra's copper wires.

4) 480 MILLION AUD EXTRA TO PROTECT BORDERS
The cost of Labor's border protection policy has blown out by 480 million AUD as a stretched Immigration Department struggles to cope with a record 6000 detainees.
Taxpayers are forking out tens of millions of dollars in extra staff and to bolster patrol boat operations in northern waters, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Customs has also been forced to employ an extra 37 full-time staff to cope with the influx of asylum seekers who are mainly from the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Another 190 million AUD will be spent on building two new detention centres.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the Government will now spend more than 760 million AUD on people arriving illegally in Australia in 2010-11, compared with less than $100 million annually when the Howard Government left office in 2007.

5) LOCAL HEALTH FUNDS MORE EASILY CONCEDED
Millions of dollars will be poured into community-based health programs for the first time allowing local health organisations to bypass buraucracy and design their own programs.
The major reform to the funding of community health will be a key element of the revised health package of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Previously these community health groups had to apply for money under existing rigid programs.
The new funding model would allow them to apply directly for money and then choose how to spend it. A community with a high smoking rate might want to design a no-smoking campaign, while another region struggling with a high number of diabetics might want to target locals with a healthy eating style campaign.