zemmour

French far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour has launched his presidential campaign in front of thousands of cheering supporters at a Paris event marred by fighting during his speech.

Zemmour, a 63-year-old author and veteran television commentator, announced on Tuesday that he would run in next April’s election, joining the field of challengers seeking to unseat centrist President Emmanuel Macron.

He held his first event at an exhibition centre in a suburb of Paris where thousands cheered every mention of reducing immigration and booed every reference to Macron loudly.

“The stakes are huge: if I win it will be the start of winning back the most beautiful country in the world,” Zemmour told the crowd.

nothing

Go home, 46th Parliament. You're drunk.

Like the office bore at a Christmas party, the Australian Parliament spent its last fortnight bellowing on about itself, achieving nothing of note and generating eye-rolls from all and sundry.

Is this a problem? After all, the Prime Minister has made it clear that he prefers "can-do capitalism" over "don't-do governments". 

Perhaps a parliament that doesn't have a legislative response to climate change, that dodges the people's clamour for integrity measures, that commissions a damning review of the way it treats women, hears it, then shrugs and keeps doing it anyway, is the speed he's looking for.

war...

The management of the war memorial's controversial plans to drastically reshape the national institution will be put under a microscope over the coming year.

The Auditor-General Grant Hehir has proposed it look into the Australian War Memorial's processes and planning behind the $500 million project among its list of potential performance audits for the 2021-22 period.

pauline

Pauline Hanson cited UK COVID-19 death statistics at a recent 'freedom rally'. But her use of the data is misleading

CoronaCheck is RMIT ABC Fact Check's weekly email newsletter dedicated to fighting the misinformation infodemic surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.

You can read the latest edition below, and subscribe to have the next newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

why...

It's been a year of bad behaviour and short-lived policies — so, why aren't more people predicting a Coalition election loss?

Political journalists are often accused — sometimes quite correctly — of being too obsessed with how the political game is played, rather than with what the political system is delivering.

And we are accused of spending too much time on "race calling" — reporting on policies purely in terms of how they might affect the political prospects of the major parties.

There is an argument to be made that those rules have been upended this year, as has so much in an era of pandemic, but not because journalists have necessarily mended their ways.

oil...

After Congress lifted a ban on crude exports in late 2015, oil and gas production in the Permian Basin soared while domestic consumption remained flat—leading to a massive build-out of pipelines and other infrastructure that culminated in the U.S. “flooding global markets” with fossil fuels at the expense of humanity, in general, and vulnerable Gulf Coast communities already overburdened by pollution, in particular.

fryed

The ambush of Bridget Archer is the latest incident of poor behaviour from Josh Frydenberg and he’s now admitted that the ambush was preplanned with Scott Morrison.

dead

Russiagate, that fraudulent fable wherein Russian President Vladimir Putin personally subverted American democracy, Russian intelligence pilfered the Democratic Party’s email, and Donald Trump acted at the Kremlin’s behest, is at last dead.

No, nothing sudden. It has been a slow, painful death of the sort this destructive beast richly deserved. But its demise is now definitive — in the courts and on paper. We await the better historians to see this properly into the record.

porter

Christian Porter bemoans the fact that there are few “constants” left in the political landscape and he and his supporters blame the media for his downfall (“Porter’s exit could save seat for Libs”, December 2). One of the constants used to be that ministers held themselves responsible for keeping to the highest ethical standards and would swiftly resign at the smallest deviation. Unfortunately without a powerful federal integrity commission, it’s been left to the media to hold a mirror up to the systemic failings of integrity in this government. The solution to the problem of “trial by media” is this government’s to implement – a federal integrity body with teeth. 

Elisabeth Goodsall, Wahroonga

laws

As parliament wrapped its final sitting week of the year on Thursday, three key pieces of legislation were left looming over the lead-up to the federal election in early 2022.

Long-awaited proposals for a federal anti-corruption commission and religious discrimination laws dominated debate, but neither came to a vote. Meanwhile, the government’s contentious voter identification proposal – only recently heralded as essential by the Coalition – failed to get up, after Mr Morrison was met with ferocious opposition from Labor and the crossbench.

hunt

One will depart from Parliament a deeply disappointed man, dragged down by scandal, with hopes for a brilliant career dashed by an allegation surfacing from his youth.

The other will leave with a solid record of performance, despite some criticism and ambition for higher things unfulfilled.

Christian Porter, 51, on Wednesday announced he will not run again for his Western Australian seat of Pearce. It was a surprise to no one.

Health Minister Greg Hunt, 56, is also set to quit at next year’s poll, with his announcement due on Thursday.

Both had previously said they were recontesting their seats.

palmer

It was 12 years ago on Wednesday that Tony Abbott knifed Malcolm Turnbull to become leader of the Opposition and start breaking Australian politics.

It remains broken.

Mr Abbott and his accomplices so poisoned the well that neither of our major parties can propose rational, efficient climate policy.

In private, off-the-record, there are plenty of Labor and Liberal Party members who know what would best be done for Australia to pull its weight on climate change, to our own and the world’s advantage. But both sides are hamstrung by Abbott’s legacy of “Total Opposition”.

question

According to the weekly satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, President Macron recently called Boris Johnson “a clown” and a “proud knucklehead”.

“I think we are in pantomime season, aren’t we, and there is a French election coming. It is a pretty unhelpful word. Of course, the prime minister is not a clown, he is the elected prime minister of this country with a very big mandate, leading this country through a pandemic,” Science Minister George Freeman told Sky News.

patch...

If a deal isn’t struck before midnight on Friday, those payments will force Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to impose another set of “emergency” spending measures -- on top of those that have been in place since October -- before the government’s ability to pay its bills is finally exhausted on or about December 15.

If that were to occur, which is admittedly unlikely, it would be catastrophic for the US, and chaotic for the rest of the world.

In 2009, Andrew Weldon did the cartoon above… At the time, the Liberal (CONservative) Party of Australia was searching for a new leader. Labor was somewhat cruising along, despite constant attacks by the MSM, the Mudochian media especially… Throwing mud at Labor is the Murdoch media specialty. Kevin Rudd had dethroned John Howard in 2007. The mud from the Mudochian media eventually led to the replacement of Kev by Julia, 27th prime minister of Australia, from 2010 to 2013… but this is another story… Kevin was his own enemy always looking for a “shitstorm”...