The Weekly with Charlie Pickering

- Season 7

(2021)

The Weekly is back for 2021, telling you what you need to know about Labor pains, unsteady Eddie and how your commute has changed. Charlie is joined by comedians Zoe Coombs Marr and Nina Oyama.

Topics: Victorian Department of Health confirmed a hotel quarantine worker tested positive to COVID-19; At the age of 43, Tom Brady became the oldest American football player to win the Super Bowl after steering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs to win his seventh Super Bowl; Two men broke into the Airport West Sexyland store using a pole and stole a life-sized sex doll that goes by the name of "Kitty" which retails for up to $4500.

Topics: South Australia closed its borders to Victoria due to hotel quarantine worker testing positive to COVID-19; Texas lawyer Rod Ponton appeared before a judge as a cat, after being unable to change a video filter while using Zoom, and declared "I'm not a cat" during a hearing in Presidio county, south-west Texas; Food regulators classed fruit juice as less healthy than diet cola under new guidelines confirming Australian health star ratings on food packaging will focus more on sugar content.

Topics: Facebook banned publishers and Australian users from sharing and viewing news content on its website in response to the proposed news media code that makes Facebook pay for news content; Debris from a United Airlines plane fell onto the ground during an emergency landing after one of its engines burst into flames and suffered engine failure; Scottish singer Nathan Evans sings sea shanties on TikTok which go viral (with Natalie Tran).

Topics: Opposition Leader Zak Kirkup conceded defeat to Premier Mark McGowan in WA's election two weeks before polling day; New South Wales government sent the Queensland government a $30 million tax invoice for Queensland residents who quarantined in Sydney, which the Deputy Premier Steven Miles happily ripped up in front of news cameras at a media conference; South Australian Liberal MP Nicolle Flint announced she will quit politics and not contest her seat of Boothby and spoke openly about being stalked, harassed and her electoral office was egged and vandalised ...

Topics: The Canberra Times reported that Chief of Defence Force Angus Campbell told female trainee officers to avoid the "four As" - Alcohol, Out After midnight, Alone and Attractive to ward off sexual predators, but Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said the focus should be on changing the behaviour of men rather than women; Italy says its decision to block 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine destined for Australia was "not a hostile act" but was needed in its country as cases of infection and deaths increased due to failure of the company producing ...

Topics: Scott Morrison announced 800,000 half priced flight tickets to Australia's popular domestic tourist locations to support the tourism and aviation industries during the COVID-19 pandemic; Australians may need to wait longer for their COVID-19 vaccination as the federal government's vaccine rollout could extend beyond its October 2021 target; ABC electoral analyst Antony Green called the WA State election for Labor just 42 minutes after counting began with just 0.7 per cent of the vote counted and Green said the McGowan Government had won a second term in power.

Topics: ASIO removed at least a dozen spies who were accused of trying to infiltrate the Australian government that included spying on current and former politicians, foreign embassy staff and the police; More than 18,000 people were evacuated from their homes in New South Wales as heavy rains and major flooding continued to inundate the state, causing some areas to resemble "inland seas"; The Week in TV: Married At First Sight recap (with Nick Maxwell).

Topics: The grounding of Ever Given, a container cargo ship which blocked The Suez Canal for six days; Scott Morrison appeared on A Current Affair to claim he did not know about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins and other sexual misconducts in Parliament House; Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming was forced to personally and publicly apologise to two women whom he trolled and harassed on Facebook; The Week in TV: Antiques Roadshow (with Nath Valvo).

Topics: Australia's vaccine rollout was delayed with Australia ranked 90th out of 100 countries where around three percent of Australia's population was vaccinated compared to sixty percent in the UK, but Scott Morrison blamed the slow rollout on supply shortage; The Week in TV: Studio 10 (with Nick Maxwell); Ninety million sterile fruit flies were released from a low-flying fixed wing aeroplane across 11 outbreak areas in metropolitan Adelaide across a 10-week period to combat ongoing fruit fly outbreaks in the metropolitan area; A Royal expert named Princess Anne as...

Topics: The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is no longer available to people aged under fifty but they may choose to take the vaccine after consulting a doctor; Scott Morrison responded to the National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces a year after it was left sitting on his desk and said "we agreed wholly in part or in principle" to supporting the fifty-five recommendations in the sexual harassment report.

Topics: Sydney dance troupe 101 Doll Squadron, whose performance at the launch of the new $2 billion navy ship HMAS Supply in Woolloomooloo was panned as inappropriate while the troupe performed in front of stony-faced dignitaries at the launch; US President Joe Biden announced he will withdraw all remaining US troops in Afghanistan by September 2021; Almost two thirds of Japan's citizen's said in a survey that the Tokyo Olympics should be cancelled or postponed.

Topics: Scott Morrison and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an in-principle agreement on the Australia-UK Free trade agreement but negotiators will spend the next six months finalising the text; Dozens of stranded Australians in India say they are frustrated about the Morrison government's strict caps on returning travellers that prevent them from coming home, with stranded Australians forking out thousands of dollars on flights trying to come home from India say they were ripped off by airlines refusing to hand back their money, and others were stuck in a ...

Topics: 200 million people vaccinated that doubled and surpassed its initial goal of 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in 100 days, and fifty-three percent approval rating; The Federal Court ordered Clive Palmer to pay $1.5 million in damages to heavy metal band Twisted Sister for copyright infringement over his political rendition of the metal track We're Not Gonna Take It, and in addition to the $1.5 million in damages.

Topics: The Morrison Government revealed a $1.7 billion Budget pledge to reduce childcare costs and Labor said it was a "missed opportunity" to help more families and the government's policy excluded too many families, particularly many with just one child in care; The ABC filed its defence with the Federal Court against Christian Porter but it has not yet been made public, but Porter's lawyers have applied to keep the ABC's defence against his defamation case confidential, pending a hearing into whether parts of the defence should be struck out; Rockhampton's premier...

Topics: The Morrison Government stressed that projections of Australia's borders reopening in mid-2022 are only "assumptions" and "not policy" as tourism and business groups criticised the mid-2022 border reopening, claiming Australia will be "left behind" as a "lost kingdom"; Former outback grazier Dexter Kruger becomes Australia's oldest man at age 111 years and 124 days and attributes his long lifespan to eating chicken brains and living a simple life.

The Weekly team is back to wrap up the year in style and if 2021 felt a bit like 2020, let Charlie and a cavalcade of guest stars lead you through a riotous game of spot the difference. Now with added earthquake.