THE global revulsion of the Paris terrorist atrocities seemed, in a heartbeat, to eclipse the issues of the preceding week as the disgusting reality of the unspeakable horror of scores of innocent people, people like us,  being capriciously killed, at a concert and restaurants, sunk in.

As France slammed its borders closed in a state of emergency and imposed curfews — the nation’s first since the 1940s – French President Francois Hollande promised the perpetrators no mercy. Amid the all-too-familiar chorus of world leaders’ dismay and support, from Berlin, PM Malcolm Turnbull condemned the terrorist attacks as an assault on all humanity and declared Australia’s solidarity with the French people.

BY comparison, the week’s benign, half-million-dollar Royal visit seems but a faint memory of no moment. It rained and rained as HRHs Charles and Camilla spent the day doing the ceremonial Remembrance Day rounds in republican, soggy Canberra.

A loyal gaggle of about 150 monarchists stoically withstood the rain to experience a moment with the royal couple at the AWM. The duchess accepted bouquets from kids then legged it back to the dry, black Beemer. To his credit, the prince lingered a little longer.

Mind you, he needs the love after a perfectly timed, ratbag poll from the Australian Republican Movement told the prospective King Charles that 51 per cent of his antipodean subjects would prefer an Australian head of state when he succeeds his dear, old mum.

CHIEF Minister Andrew Barr isn’t giving up on Commonwealth Park as the Floriade venue, despite the prospect of next year being the last there.

The National Capital Authority doesn’t like its postcard public park being treated as a “construction site” for eight or nine months, says CEO Malcolm Snow. Nor is he happy about the two or three mature trees dying each year as a result of heavy vehicle damage.

The NCA wants a smaller area locked up long-term for direct plantings, with more mobile planter boxes.

But Andrew says negotiations were continuing to find a “viable footprint” in Commonwealth Park beyond 2016, admitting there was “no easy alternate site”.

“None provide the totality of experience and proximity, transport, accessibility and the like that Commonwealth Park does, so it has been pleasing to hear a reassurance from the National Capital Authority that it is not their intention to boot Floriade out of Commonwealth Park,” he says.

DISTINGUISHED backbencher Tony Abbott cycled back into the headlines when a female Canberra driver took honking umbrage at the early morning peloton he was part of was in her way. The former PM promptly called for the assistance of a nearby AFP (protection?) officer who, it appears, gave her a good talking to.

AND Abbott’s former deputy, the current Liberal Deputy Leader Julie Bishop, ended the Parliamentary week trying to convince us that there was nothing unusual about her chief of staff attending a September meeting in Queanbeyan of Turnbull plotters on the eve of the leadership spill.

Murray Hansen was there on a reconnaissance mission and not working to oust Abbott, she says as Liberal Senator Eric Abetz suggested accounts of her actions in the lead-up to the spill may not have been entirely accurate.

AND in the week Canberra is named the nation’s most dog-friendly city, the foster owner of three dogs cruelly poisoned by a suspected baiting in Kambah, in which two of them died miserable deaths, gave us the quote of the week: “I hope the cops find that scumbag”. And likewise, the gendarmes.

Regular columnist Robert Macklin is on leave