We are treated like mugs. By our journalists, by our politicians, by our law enforcement bodies, by our ex-PMs - we are poorly served and they don't care. Our job is to cop it. At least, that's what they expect.

This week on The Breakdown we examine the gutlessness of a 'journalist', how a single bad decision destroyed a premier, the overreach of ICAC, and how three of our ex-PMs are crapping on the country from a great height.

We deserve better.

War on women - blokes can do anything

Sportswoman of the Year

Jessica Rowe and Pauline Hanson

Jessica Rowe deletes Pauline Hanson podcast

Berejiklian resigns

Summary of Berejiklian-ICAC

ICAC Section 11

Submarines

Turnbull craps on Australia

Rudd craps on Australia

Keating craps on Australia

China craps on Australia (we expect that)

(Doctored image from Pauline Hanson.)

In the past week, Victoria Police has beaten the pulp out of Australians with batons, used capsicum spray and shot at our fellow citizens with rubber bullets - in broad daylight while the media cheered. Until, of course, the police turned on the media. Today on the Breakdown, what the freedom protests say about our media, our politicians and us.

Protest reactions

Lee Carnie makes the case for peaceful protests on the Drum

Police shoot rubber bullets at protestors

Photographer assaulted by police

Man assaulted by police

Indigenous man leg swept in Sydney

Daily Telegraph report of the incident

Officer charged

Christian Porter/Sarah Hanson-Young

Christian Porter's blind trust avoids 'conflicts of interest' (subscriber).

It took a while for Christian Porter to do the right thing, but it wasn't morality that made him resign, it was economics. He would rather take a million from a stranger than pay his own legal bill. Porter is a leaner, not a lifter. And Paul Keating escaped from the crypt this week to help Kristina Keneally. According to Keating, she's a migrant success story. Is she, Paul? Is the really?

Troy Bramston's epic takedown of Keneally

'Good intentions are not enough': Paul Keating backs Keneally as the MP Fowler needs

Vietnamese-Australian lawyer Tu Le slams Labor's Kristina Keneally

Kristina Keneally buys a Scotland Island hideaway for $1.8 million

Joel Fitzgibbon bids farewell with some landmines

There's a roadmap out of lockdown but it's a highway to hell and vaccination won't help you. Your travel may still be limited in Australia, your movement will be tracked and your rights will be curtailed. This is not what Australia is meant to be. Our freedom is not meant to be negotiable. At least, it wasn't until COVID. And according to NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, it could be like this for three or four more years, so 2020 and 2021 were just the warmups.

Reporter backflips after Seven slaps him down

'Devastating': Queensland man's border blow after Sydney trip to save sister's life

Sky News reporter Andrew Clennell hounds Gladys Berejiklian over Sydney lockdown

Aussie man suffers heart attack after cops arrest him for not wearing a mask while exercising OUTSIDE

A UN do-gooder has Zoomed into Australia to kill off the Australian coal industry. But in doing so, he has to ignore hundreds of years of economics, the reality of the global market and why Australian coal is good for the environment. If the UN was serious about climate change, they'd be badgering China. Good luck there. The Chinese are playing a tough game and they're running rings around the hapless west. It's there world (we're just living in it).

Links

UN gives 10-year deadline to shut down coalmining.

China 'tells US envoy John Kerry it will follow its own climate road map'.

Communist China Tells Climate Czar Kerry No Cooperation on Climate Change Unless US Shuts Up About Human Rights.

It takes a special breed of idiot to make a poophole country like Afghanistan worse. Shuffle forward, Joe Biden. But he wasn't alone. He was supported by a crack team of imbeciles and woke dummies in the hierarchy of the US military, more concerned with gender than the agenda. Which raises the question: what's the US military for when it can't even beat mountain dwellers with well-lubed goats? And when was the last time the US actually won a war?

For countries like Australia, which rely on the US, this is a frightening wake-up call. Which China is watching closely.

On the plus side, it seems the state governments have finally figured we may have to learn to live with COVID - especially when the reality is that 92 per cent of COVID deaths in Australia have been in the over-70s but 88 per cent of infections have been in the under-70s.

Trump was an orange clown who had no idea what he was doing. But now we can relax. Take it easy. The experts are back in charge. Diplomacy is back. There's no way they'd do something so catastrophically, monumentally dunder-headed as ceding a strategically important country like Afghanistan to the goat-rogering child-murderers of the Taliban. That's crazy talk!

And we meet the man whose taking it in from COVID and showing public service pays.

On The Daily Breakdown - the Week that Went: The Taliban is about to take over Afghanistan. Who could have seen that coming? Oh yeah, everyone. And will the US really be giving them foreign aid? Sure, why not?

And Joe Biden says Hunter is the smartest person he knows (that's probably true), but did you hear of Hunter's ingenious money-making scheme foiled by the Russians?

And The Breakdown takes you behind the scenes of the media - it's a lesson in how the media works, and why the left will - inevitably and unfortunately - win.

Sky News was taken off YouTube last week and you've probably heard a lot about it from media outlets - and former PMs - dancing on Sky's grave. But there is a lot more to the story: it goes to the heart of free speech, your ability to express ideas and, alarmingly, why the media can't be trusted to defend this essential freedom. This is a story that needs to be shared.

As eastern Australia goes into week four or five (does it matter, any more?) of a two-week lockdown to flatten the curve, the only way out is the vaccine. Finally, we have light at the end of the tunnel. But what have we signed up for? A leaked agreement from Pfizer shows what government are prepared to sign away to make sure you can get the jab. Anthony Albanese gets serious about winning the next election, and the ABC's budget bulldust.