BRISBANE: Former Queensland Labor and independent Senator Mal Colston was alive in Brisbane at 7.35pm last night after a long bout with cancer. He was 62. Funeral arrangements have not yet been made.

SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister John Howard has defended his decision to tour the Paralympians Village at Homebush in a wheelchair. "The Australian people expect me to come here and watch every event of the Paralympics, just like I did for the main Games, and I won't let them down," Mr Howard said in a statement read to media by a sign language expert.

CANBERRA: Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith has backed the decision by Patricks Stevedores to sack a worker who used a work canteen phone against company rules to ring a hospital to check how his ninety-year-old, rapidly failing, cancer-ridden mother was getting on.

ADELAIDE: Nothing much to report from here. Again.

HOBART: Treasurer Peter Costello has told a packed business lunch here on the GST that he hardly went to the OIympics and has never, ever, had to pay pack a misused Telecard.