How exciting was it last night when the news came through that Russian warships were steaming towards Australia!

Clearly our Prime Minister's hardline approach to making hollow threats had awoken a sleeping giant, right? What hell hath this shirtfronting wrought!

Social media exploded with Red Scare terrors worthy of the Cold War, and as recently as this afternoon a certain other news outlet was still declaring that "A convoy of heavily armed Russian war ships, including at least one high powered missile cruiser, are cruising international waters to Australia's north, Defence has confirmed."

But before you start rushing for the fallout shelters ahead of Red Dawn Down Under, it's worth pointing out a couple of teensy-tiny things.

One is that the "convoy of heavily armed Russian war ships" is actually a destroyer, a cruiser, a supply ship and a tug: armed, yes, but not exactly an invasion fleet.

Secondly, the reason they're going past is twofold: the cruiser and destroyer are doing live-fire drills in the South China Sea, and the other two ships were berthed in Jakarta as part of the Indonesian Defence Expo. Indonesia, you might recall, is to our north.

Thirdly, they're transiting through international waters and Australia's defence forces were alerted of their passage and have been monitoring 'em. It's not like they've just appeared over the horizon.

Now, the fact that they're coming this way is, without a doubt, a bit of a muscle-flex ahead of the G20. If you want to remind Australia, China, Japan and India that Russia can send warships all over the planet, then the South China Sea is a pretty solid place to conduct your drills.

Of course, maybe this is just a feint so we don't notice those Russian submarines slipping unseen into Sydney Harbour even as you read this. Anyone got Alec Baldwin's number? We may need his advice…

(Direct) Action Man!

Maybe it's the loss of Gough that's made him feel like getting his statesman on, but ex-PM Paul Keating has called shenannigans on Direct Action in the wake of the new emissions trading deal that China and the US nutted out this week.

Speaking on Lateline Keating was in excoriating form: "It shows what a complete nonsense policy the government has," he said. "This idea that, you know, we get rid of the carbon tax. The carbon tax was there to price pollution. When you stop pricing pollution, you start gifting money to polluters. You know, you're on the wrong tram."

Oh come now Paul, this is the party of the Westconnex and the East West Link: you lost them at "tram".

However, the government is still certain that climate change isn't something that needs discussing at the G20, since they should only be talking about important things that require international cooperation.

"We cannot allow ourselves to go off the focus, to walk away from the focus, on delivering outcomes that help to deliver jobs and economic growth," your treasurer Diamond Joe Hockey insisted - because as we all know there's no point protecting human life on the planet unless it contributes to growth, right?

 

Death of a Party

Some loves just burn too brightly to last.

Brad and Jen. Liz and Richard. That guy off The Bachelor and the girl what was also off The Bachelor. And it appears, the political love affair between Clive Palmer and Jacqui Lambie.

No-one could have predicted that a party set up by a mining billionaire in order to troll the Coalition might have turned out to be a less than perfectly-oiled machine, but the last few weeks have been especially tricky for the Palmer United Party.

First there were Lambie's frequent public screeds about the dangers of sharia law, or at least the version of sharia law that exists exclusively in Lambie's head and the comment threads of conspiracy websites.

Palmer was less than flattering about his senator's tirades, being overheard describing her as "not very bright".

In order to clarify that Palmer totally wasn't dissing her, Lambie sent our a response via her chief of staff Rob Messenger, claiming that "he said the same thing to me about Dio [Wang, WA PUP senator]", and implying that she was in the toilet with Clive. Which, if true, is weird.

Actually, is even weirder if it's not. Why would anyone make up stories boasting about being in a toilet with Clive Palmer? Surely that is the very stuff of nightmares.

Once you've imagined it, you can't un-imagine it

Anyway, then came Lambie's brave stance against anti-Australian fabric and her "ban the burqa" thing from last month, which again drew ire from the leader of her party.

However, the breaking point appears to be the lack of support for Lambie's call for the military to turn their backs on government representatives during Remembrance Day ceremonies in protest at the below-inflation pay deal the government has offered (and which, for the record, PUP are also opposing. On this subject, Palmer and Lambie are in furious agreement).

Livid that the rest of the party didn't jump at the chance to turn a solemn ceremony into a media circus, Lambie laid things out on the ABC last night.

"I won't lie to the Australian people and I'm not going to sit here and make my PUP senators or Clive Palmer look good when I'm not feeling that way about them, I won't do that… If that means I've got to go it alone under the PUP flag then so be it, I'll just run it alone."

Palmer, for his part, called Lambie a drama queen, suggested that she challenge for leadership if she's so gosh-darn annoyed with things, and then tweeted "All parties should unite over the ADF issue. Increase their salaries & entitlements. Together we can be strong. Lets show some love! #love"

Oh, and he also sacked Lambie's chief of staff, the aforementioned Rob Messenger. There was that.

Shooting the Messenger

Palmer announced the decision today with a statement including the choice statement "Everything Senator Lambie says is really coming from her chief of staff. Senator Lambie is simply Rob Messenger's mouthpiece."

Now, let's just pause here and reflect on how similar this sounds to the accusations thrown at the departing Glenn Druery, former cheif of staff for Motoring Enthusiast Party senator Ricky Muir when party founder Keith Littler gave him the chop.

You know, it's just possible that perhaps some of our microparties are not perhaps enlisting the best and brightest parliamentarians our nation has to offer.

Anyway, that Palmer statement: "Last night our executive met and we have agreed to expel Rob Messenger from the party on the grounds of making false and misleading statement about our senators."

While Palmer can expel Messenger from the party it's not actually clear if he can fire him from Lambie's office. But if there's one thing that we can be certain about it's that this difference in opinion will be settled through calm, rational, respectful discussion behind closed doors, and not in explosive declarations to the media. Probably.

The cocktail hour: Well, it's still Movember, of course…

And let's bring our week of celebration for the rich cultures of the G20 to a close with Twin Twin and the song that took them all the way to the last place in this year's Eurovision!

'Moustache' garnered a total to two points and raises more questions than it answers. What's with the shorts? Why are they miming guitars for a song that's basically just keyboards? AND WHY IS IT A SONG ABOUT MOUSTACHES?

Hopefully François Hollande will address all these points this weekend. See you on Sunday, friends, and à la vôtre!

 

The top five stories of the day on smh.com.au:
1. Fiesta fiasco: Sydney University cancels Mexican party theme
2. Moama shooting victims named as Jamie Edwards and Joelene Joyce
3. Westpac CEO Gail Kelly's seven lessons for life and business
4. Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts speechless over Jagger the 11-year-old drummer
5. Tony Abbott says jobs and growth, not climate, top of the G20 agenda