Week @ The Knees February 6 to February 13, 2017 ... Nightclub sex acts in the defamatorium ... The Clooneys twin-up ... Doctors' wives and the reward of making life hell for your husband ... Native Title impasse thwarts Adani mine ... Brandis' flourish on marriage inequality ... Royal Commission findings on Geelong Grammar ... Amber Harrison turns waves into dumpers ... Where are all the refugee terror attacks in the US?
THE Lilli Chel defamation case grinds on in the NSW Supreme Court. The former Kings Cross nightclub operator is suing Fairfax for a Sun-Herald article that portrayed her as someone "who engages in disgraceful conduct by allowing onstage sex at her nightclub".
A cringe-worthy video was played to the court showing a live sex performance involving a stripper and a dildo.
Tom Blackburn SC for Fairfax went through the video in detail:
"What we saw there is the audience member removing a dildo from a young lady with his teeth?
Chel: I think it was a lollipop ... from here it looks like a lollipop.
Blackburn: Where did he remove it from?
Chel: Obviously it's from her vagina.
Blackburn: Do you say that's not onstage sex?
Chel: Everyone knows onstage sex is a penis and a vagina.
There was also some discussion about whether The Rouge club was "classy" or not.
Blackburn: Do you see you've got $5 vodka, champagne, $5 wet pussies - is that consistent with a classy, upmarket establishment?
Chel: It's the name of a drink that's in thousands of premises. You can go into any classy establishment and ask for a wet pussy, just like you can ask for a long slow screw against the wall."
Chel added that the newspaper article "ruined my life".
The trial before Justice Robert Beech-Jones continues.
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The Clooneys: a bump on the way
A US TV chat show host, Julie Chen, has announced that Amal and George Clooney are expecting twins - due in June.
According to The Independent, Amal, a London based human rights barrister, was spotted with the "hint of a bump".
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Justice Paul Brereton of the NSW Supremes awarded Magdalena Lodin $750,000 from the estate of her deceased former husband.
The Lodins were divorced two decades ago with Magdalena threatening to make her doctor husband's "wretched life not worth living". The $5 million estate had been left to their daughter Rebecca. Brereton said:
"There is something unbecoming about an arrangement under which the plaintiff is left in circumstances of considerable need ... while the daughter whom she raised inherits in excess of $5 million."
He added that it was not an easy case and judicial minds may differ on it.
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As far as we can make of it, it seems attorney general George Brandis ignored requests to amend the Native Title Act with the result that the Adani coal mine in Queensland is now on hold.
This is a result of the full Federal Court's McGlade decision, which found that the native title registrar does not have the authority to put indigenous land use agreements into effect unless signed by all title claimants who are "named applicants".
The Carmichael mine has fallen foul of the finding, along with possibly 120 other indigenous land use agreements.
While the Coalition is in a panic about the court's decision and scrambling to introduce amending legislation, others throughout Australia are happy that the country's biggest and nastiest coal project is, once again, on hold.
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Meanwhile, on Monday (Feb 13) Brandis announced this was the very day he would have introduced a same sex marriage bill, following a yes vote at the plebiscite that didn't happen.
A ReachTel poll shows that just about 62 percent of people in seven sampled Liberal held seats across the country want Coalition MPs to have a conscience vote on marriage equality.
The electorates polled were Chisholm, Corangamite, La Trobe, Murray, Gilmore and Page.
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The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard that that because of the enormous backlog of abuse claims the Vatican is taking up to three years to hand down findings on alleged paedophile perpetrators.
Under church law, claims of child sexual abuse that meet a certain requirement have to be examined by the Vatican's "disciplinary" body, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.
Meanwhile, the Royal Commission's report on case study 32 has been released. This follows the response from Geelong Grammar School to allegations of child sex abuse.
Thirteen former students told the commission they were abused by staff at the school, which was attended by Prince Charles and Alexander Downer. Even when offences were reported to the school no action had been taken and the perpetrators remained on the staff.
The commission said that the principal at the time, John Lewis, should have ensured the allegations were investigated and the school council notified.
Both Lewis and his successor, Nicholas Sampson, now headmaster at Cranbrook School, allowed one of the offenders, John Fitzroy Clive Harvey, to remain at the school, before retiring.
The commission was also critical of Geelong Grammar's current formal system that is supposed to deal with child sexual abuse.
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Worner and Seven lawyer McWilliam: clinging to the wreckage
The Amber Harrison saga continues to take on fresh shape and form.
Amber, the former lover of Channel 7 boss Tim Worner, has reported Seven West Media to ASIC and the ASX, claiming that the company's statement on the findings into the CEO's alleged misconduct misled the market.
She also complained to the Australian Human Rights Commission about her treatment at the hands of the company. Unfortunately, in a preliminary finding, the commission dismissed the complaint.
On Monday (Feb. 13) Seven West Media obtained a Supreme Court interim injunction stopping Amber from releasing secret and embarrassing documents. Quite the thing for a media company that enjoys publishing other people's secrets.
Harrison has lawyered-up and intends to challenge the injunction. Everyone just loves watching a fat and ugly corporate beast crush troublemakers.
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Last week the Financial Times reported findings by the Cato Institute to the effect that only three refugees have committed fatal terrorist attacks on US soil since 1975. All three were Cubans, admitted before the Refugee Act of 1980 tightened things up.
The data shows that in the last four decades the chance of dying in a terrorist attack by a refugee, of any religion, was one in 3.65 billion in any given year.
After the president's immigration order was put on hold by a judge, Donald Trump Tweeted:
Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2017