What the commentators think:

Phillip Coorey, Sydney Morning Herald 15/6: Recalling that in 2005 Family First’s Senator Steve Fielding voted to abolish compulsory univerity student union fees and thus began the gradual asphyxiation of social and sporting services on campuses across the land. It was as arbitrary as that.
Three years into the job and Fielding now holds a balance of power role in the Senate. For the past three years, what Family First stood for was largely masked by the Coalition's Senate control. Now its views, along with those of Nick Xenophon and the Greens, really do matter and deserve closer scrutiny.
Lenore Taylor, The Australian 15/8: Using $400 million to buy back large properties in Queensland and northern NSW, complete with their water entitlements, is a good idea. Right now it's a particularly good idea because many of those properties, unlike most other places along the Murray-Darling river system, actually have water in storage. That means the Government would be buying real water that can be returned to the rivers rather than hypothetical water rights that won't result in real water until it rains again.
It would have been an even better idea if action had been taken when it was first raised a few months ago. Because according to a rough calculation by Stephen Beare, former chief economist with ABARE who is now with Concept Economics, a massive 120 gigalites or so of water have probably evaporated from the shallow storages on the properties proposed for government acquisition since then.
But now, Kevin Rudd tells us, he is accelerating the buyback. Hopefully that means that by the time he buys the properties, there'll still be some water left
Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor, The Australian 15/8: On Monday, Family First senator Steve Fielding was discussing the Rudd Government's proposed FuelWatch scheme. He believed there was a lot of motorist anger and frustration because of widely fluctuating prices … He thinks.levelling the fluctuations would help ease the anger, but still feared prices would not really be lower under FuelWatch because of its effect on independent petrol stations.
On Wednesday, after South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon said he would oppose FuelWatch in the Senate in its present form and Fielding joined him, the Australian Greens and the Coalition to stop it in its tracks, Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen observed: "The Government wants to see an end to the days when you drive past a petrol station in the morning and see a certain price and drive past in the afternoon and see a price 10c or 15c a litre higher." - Almost word for word, it was Fielding's summation of what was angering motorists most.
Xenophon put his finger on the Government's problem of balancing perception and reality when he said: "I just don't think it's going to do what it's meant to do." This is at the heart of some of the Government's biggest challenges: how to manage the gap between expectation, perception and reality, and how to avoid simply pandering to illogical and misplaced public fears instead of pursuing reform and defending good policy.
Michelle Grattan, Political Editor, The Age 15/8: In the end, the fate of FuelWatch doesn't matter a toss ….The ultimate threat, if a Senate is too recalcitrant, is a double dissolution. It is not a course that Rudd is likely to be taking. The Northern Territory last Saturday provided a salutary lesson against early elections, and Western Australia might deliver the same message to Labor on September 6. The Government will more probably simply learn to live with a sometimes fractious Senate — and maybe to live without FuelWatch.
The Australian: Lenore Taylor, national correspondent 9/08: Here’s an idea. How about a new website called PollieWatch? A panel of independent and non-partisan experts would post on the site every example of politicians claiming or implying they can do things they are obviously unable to do. Every inflated promise. Every broken vow. Every misleading claim. In a separate section the site would list politicians blaming their opponents for things that are also quite obviously outside their power, sheeting home responsibility where responsibility could not possibly lie.
The Australian: Dennis Shanahan, Political editor 12/8: Brendan Nelson's rating as Opposition Leader is at its worst since he was elected last December. Voter satisfaction with Dr Nelson's performance has slumped although the Coalition's support has remained steady. After two weeks of leadership difficulties over the Coalition's emissions trading scheme policy and Liberal MPs calling for Peter Costello to take over the leadership, Dr Nelson has recorded his highest dissatisfaction rating and lowest for satisfaction. The latest Newspoll figures will increase pressure on Dr Nelson's leadership, because he is losing ground at a time the Rudd Government is facing challenges on the economy.
Phillip Adams. The Australian 13/8: The face of old Alexander Isayevitch Solzhenitsyn, seen in the photographs taken before his death at 89, is the face of a Russian saint. The exact same beard, painted in powerful strokes, the identical desolate eyes. The mad intensity. And the zealotry that had him courageously confront power - the horrors of Stalin and his gulags - yet become a supporter of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic.
But when Nikita Khrushchev denounced his former patron, the truth, the horror, could no longer be denied. But as the terrible stories were revealed (by Solzhenitsyn) in book after book, with Solzhenitsyn winning the Nobel Prize and the second prize of exile in the US, no one had any excuse to romanticise Stalinism..
Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/
The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
The Age http://www.theage.com.au/