(Image: AAP/Bianca De Marchi/Private Media)

Failing grade As we mercifully draw near to the end of the year, The Daily Telegraph is taking advantage of the wind-down to churn out some retrospective content. And, hey, who doesn’t? The Tele has graded the federal cabinet, and that its assessments are a touch more generous than ours would be probably won’t surprise anyone. But the standout is its take on the prime minister — it’s given him an A. It’s not just that this would indicate it wasn’t looking at the same prime minister as the rest of us, but that it’s viewing a different reality altogether:

Yep, it thinks the handling of the Brittany Higgins scandal was “neutralised” or turned into a “net positive”. Apart from describing the horrifying response to a horrifying situation with vague management buzzwords, we note it provides no example of how this has happened. So according to who has this issue been — *sigh* — “neutralised”? Certainly not Higgins, who puts it better than we could:

Cashing in In a “taking out the rubbish” hall of fame moment, Attorney-General Michaelia Cash has “announced” two appointments to the Fair Work Commission. On a Saturday afternoon, a week before Christmas. In keeping with the government’s long-term approach to the commission, both have employer backgrounds, and one is the former CEO of WorkPac, which readers may recognise as the labour-hire company with an underpayment claim on account of misclassifying its workers as casuals.

But you wouldn’t know it from Cash’s website or social media which, at the time of writing, are silent on the appointments. In fact, as far as we can tell, you’d have to be a subscriber to Workplace Express — a publication for industrial relations specialists — to have any idea it happened at all.

Fox catcher A ruling in a defamation case against Fox News could be good news for the ABC. Fox News has taken its concerns about Sarah Ferguson’s reports for Four Corners — examining the network’s role in the January 6 attack on the Washington Capitol — to the Australian Communications and Media Authority after the ABC rejected its initial complaints.

Fox attempted to stop a defamation action from Dominion Voting Systems against the network from going forward. The judge was scathing:

The complaint supports the reasonable inference that Fox either (i) knew its statements about Dominion’s role in election fraud were false or (ii) had a high degree of awareness that the statements were false. For example, Fox possessed countervailing evidence of election fraud from the Department of Justice, election experts, and Dominion at the time it had been making its statements. The fact that, despite this evidence, Fox continued to publish its allegations against Dominion suggests Fox knew the allegations were probably false.

The comments in the 56-page judgment (the actual defamation action hearing is set down for 2022) may help the ABC defend the latest attack from Fox News and the Murdoch empire in Australia.

Dominion’s US$1.6 billion defamation lawsuit alleges that in the aftermath of the election, in which Fox News was the first TV outlet to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, the network sought to “win back viewers” by “connecting Dominion with the false election fraud narrative”. Dominion has a second action, filed last November against Fox Corp, seeking to establish that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch bore responsibility for what was said on Fox.

Fair thee well Finally, long-time Crikey readers might be interested in watching the live stream of Christian’s Kerr’s funeral, which commences at 11am Adelaide time tomorrow. As this package of highlights put together by Crikey founder Stephen Mayne shows, Kerr had a massive impact as Crikey’s political lead during our first eight years. May he rest in peace.

Bye for now And that’s it for Tips this year. To the extent that anything in 2021 can be described as such, it’s been a real pleasure hacking through the infuriating, amusing and absurd events of a year generously stocked with all three. Thanks to you all, and please keep those tips coming in 2022.