MOST of the big news this past week arrived from overseas, and none more troubling than the “Super Tuesday” results in the American presidential election that showered votes on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

The New York billionaire’s domination of the state primaries has thrown his party into a panic, and rightly so. If he becomes their nominee the Republican brand will be excoriated for a decade.

Little wonder party heavyweights such as Mitt Romney are waging war against him as “a phony and a fraud”. Some say his nomination would ensure the election of the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton, but as all punters know, you can never guarantee the result of a two-horse race.

DELICIOUS synchronicity that just as Cardinal George Pell in Rome came under the spotlight of the Royal Commission into child abuse by Catholic priests and others, “Spotlight” won best picture at the Oscars. The movie is a scarifying account of a group of reporters on “The Boston Globe” who exposed rampant priestly paedophilia in that city.

The Pell interrogation focused on a similar scandal in his home town of Ballarat where, it seems, everyone knew of the criminal acts of his fellow priests except George himself.

INCIDENTALLY, those Academy Awards delivered a bonanza of six statuettes for Australia’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”. Once that would have sparked cheering from the rooftops; these days our movie talents are so well recognised it’s all a bit ho-hum.

PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill gave a sad speech to the Press Club bemoaning the Manus Island detention centre wished on him by former PM Kevin Rudd in the dying days of Labor in 2013. More than 900 refugees are now in their third year at the centre with little prospect of resettlement abroad. Indeed, one of the first to be resettled in Lae found the fear, loneliness and poverty so awful he pleaded to be returned to the “limbo” of Manus.

LOCAL shenanigans forced their way into the news with the former Oxford Boxing Blue Tony Abbott aiming a roundhouse right at his prime ministerial successor Malcolm Turnbull on the supposed delay in building our new submarines.

It missed.

While Abbott said he was “flabbergasted” by the White Paper revelation, Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson insisted nothing had changed since Tony’s day. Turnbull responded with a leak inquiry. As Julia Gillard might say: “Plus ca change…”

GOOD to see local kangaroo cull opponent Marcus Fillinger putting his own more humane methods to the test with Sydney’s University of Technology. Fillinger has pioneered fertility control using darts to inject “chemical condoms” into the female ‘roo population.

ACT Government ecologist Claire Wimpenny complains that the darts might cause “quite substantial tissue damage”. Perhaps so Claire, but not quite as much as a bullet to the brain. Anyway, we await UT’s test results with interest.

FINALLY, more good news from abroad with figures just in that Canberra attracted a record number of international visitors last year – 195,118 headed our way. Most came from China but even the distant US recorded a thumping increase of 35 per cent on 2014. All most welcome, but if Trump wins the presidency that could become an exodus.

In boats!

robert@robertmacklin.com