Community Strong Australia chose to announce its existence to the world with an image showing two women, teal MPs Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall, isolated on the vast expanse of the Parliament House forecourt, while something exciting seemed to be happening in the distance.

Since last weekend's terror attack at Bondi Beach, gun law reform has returned to centre stage in state and federal politics, with changes likely to include limiting the number and type of weapons individuals can own, reviewing licensing rules, sharing criminal intelligence before approvals, and restricting firearm licences to Australian citizens.

The federal opposition reached a new level of dysfunction last week, with the departure of wannabe-leader and vintage gas guzzler enthusiast Andrew Hastie from the shadow cabinet to the backbench, where he can join Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in creating as much trouble for Sussan Ley as they wish, without fear of censure.

The writing has been on the wall for some time, but now it's in bold, red and underlined. Labor are climate criminals. The new federal government sealed the deal with their approval last week of Woodside's disastrous North West Shelf Extension, until 2070, if humanity makes it until then.

Labor is on track to a thumping majority, with Peter Dutton's Coalition cut to shreds, following an Australian election conducted under the shadow of collapsing democracy in the United States.

Electoral reform legislation to cap political donations passed the Senate last week, with many crossbenchers expressing their fury at the process and the major parties claiming the moral high ground as they joined forces.

Richmond MP Justine Elliot has announced that the Albanese government is building Australia’s future and strengthening Medicare, with $573.3 million to deliver more choice, lower costs and better health care for women, including on the North Coast.

With the Australian federal parliament in recess, and in the wake of an American election won with a campaign of lies amplified by social media, a Senate committee spent a day last week publicly discussing the Albanese government's (probably doomed) bill to combat misinformation and disinformation.

Senator Fatima Payman's abrupt departure from the Labor Party after crossing the floor over the issue of Palestinian statehood was a very public demonstration of the tensions between party cohesion and individual conscience in the Australian political system.

For a guy who looks like a Bond villain and has only one, deeply divisive policy, Peter Dutton has been riding high in certain opinion polls lately. Does the collective wisdom that he is unelectable need to be revisited?