While people with voices capable of making a difference have regressed to year 8, real life continued across the nation today. Honest.
It just might have been difficult to tell as headlines seemed obsessed with finding out who wrote nasty things about someone else. Oh no, hang on, it was more serious than that because it allegedly was a former Premier and a sitting minister of parliament texting each other about the current Prime Minister.
So, not exactly year 8 stuff but not that far removed either. It was all revealed at the PM's National Press Club address yesterday. You can watch the moment here or wait for the person responsible to out themselves, as Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has suggested (though, on the quiet, it could be a long wait).
Meanwhile the nation's aged care system lurches from crisis to, well, non-crisis, according to the federal MP responsible.
"The sector is performing extremely well despite the difficulties of the Omicron wave," Senator Richard Colbeck told a parliamentary COVID committee on Wednesday.
The very same parliamentary committee was told that since the start of the Omicron wave there have been 566 virus-related deaths in aged care.
Only today one facility in Ballarat, in rolling lockdown since early January, had its restrictions tightened further with "window visits" now banned for the foreseeable future.
It is understood more than one-third of residents have since tested positive to the virus, along with several of the facility's staff. Booster shots apparently will be "made available to eligible residents in February".
A current SAS member told the Federal Court in Sydney he watched Ben Roberts-Smith shoot dead an Afghan man in 2009 as the war veteran's defamation trail resumed today.
Mr Roberts-Smith, one of a handful of Australian recipients of the Victoria Cross since 1970, flatly denies the claims, suggesting they stem from envious associates spiteful that he was awarded the VC.
On an entirely level, let's lift the mood with this - an Aussie Winter Olympics tale with more than a hint of Cool Runnings about it: "feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme. Get on up, it's bobsled time!"
THE NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW:
- Unemployment below 3% is possible for the first time in 50 years
- Political donations flow for far-right anti-Covid party
- What's with all the spiders at the moment?
- The Canadian truckie protest that inspired a similar movement in Australia
- We've got to spend to save our communities
- Tributes flow for music's Glenn Wheatley
- She saw snow for the first time three months ago, now for the Winter Olympics
- One man, his robot and a bold bid to save the Great Barrier Reef
