It is paying £280m to buy the Royal Mail pension plan's 40% stake in Highcross, £70m for an investment in VIA Outlets which has bought sites in several cities including Prague and Amsterdam, and £30m to Value Retail to fund extensions at Bicester Village and Kildare Village outlet centres.
A few days before that, homelessness services were given a funding extension of two years, at a cost of $230m to the government.
The treasurer Joe Hockey has hinted the government might be prepared to shift ground on its insistence that a crucial $150m research funding extension hinges on the passage of contentious legislation to deregulate university fees.
About 1,700 highly skilled jobs were in placed in jeopardy this year when the education minister, Christopher Pyne, warned crossbenchers the government would withhold a $150m NCRIS funding extension if the Senate did not pass the broader higher education package.
American policymakers "are facing the unthinkable prospect of shutting down the government as they squabble over the inconsequential accomplishment of a 10-week funding extension", Mexico's The News wrote in an editorial.
Mexico "Instead they [U.S. officials] … squabble over the inconsequential accomplishment of a 10-week funding extension.
Those agencies are currently running on a short-term funding extension that ends on Friday night.
A privately funded extension, the Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation, eventually reached Bellefonte, 24 mile upstream.
The letter, which asked for a funding extension, touted the testimony as "progress" towards the Charles Koch Foundation's project.
