The Prime Minister will spend Christmas doing ''very ordinary things'' with her family at home in Adelaide, she told the broadcaster John Laws last week.

''[We] watch DVDs together, have family meals, read books, you know all of that kind of stuff. Just very normal, quiet, at-home activities,'' she said.

As most Australians contemplate a traditional Christmas of over-indulgence and recuperation, we should spare a thought for one of our less fortunate compatriots. He lives in exile under house arrest, awaiting one last hopeful court appeal. He faces a perilous future should that appeal fail.

But Mark Feldstein, professor of media at the University of Maryland, sees a worrying trend of espionage prosecutions since President Obama took office.

"To everyone's surprise, the Obama administration has escalated the war against whistleblowers and the attacks on information that journalists and the public were depending on to get evidence of wrongdoing by powerful institutions and individuals," Prof Feldstein says.

'Vindictive and malicious'

A LABOR MP has declared the troops are "sick of the soap opera" between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd and urged their supporters to pull their heads in over the Christmas break.

The Prime Minister's supporters said yesterday she had been through "the gates of hell" this year and had no plans to quit before the next election, reported the Herald Sun.

But Labor MPs maintain the ABK faction - Anyone But Kevin - is preparing Plan C if the Prime Minister's leadership happens to falter: Bill Shorten.

And so it's time again for our gala ceremony to announce the Australian Whinger of the Year. I got more than 400 emails from readers last week, most agreeing with my short list of Tony Abbott, the retailer Gerry Harvey, those meddlesome priests George Pell and Fred Nile, and the moaning, mining magnates Twiggy Forrest and Gina Rinehart.

New South Wales Environment Minister Robyn Parker is moving to amend laws which will allow Forests NSW to harm the endangered population of the yellow-bellied glider on the state's far south.

The documents show Ms Parker is planning changes to the Threatened Species Conservation Act which "authorises harm to the endangered population of the yellow-bellied glider of the Bago Plateau".

Opposition environment spokesman Luke Foley says it is disgraceful.

"Robyn Parker said logging protects koalas, she is now moving to allow logging of habitat of endangered yellow-bellied glider," Mr Foley said.

The Herald's sister newspaper, The Age, last night fought off a bid by police to seize computer hard drives, following a search of journalists' files at its Melbourne premises.

Gary Gray brandished a parliamentary gold pass at his press conference yesterday and declared it would soon be a ''museum piece''.

THE fallout from Julia Gillard's ministerial reshuffle has worsened, with the Minister for Manufacturing, Kim Carr, labelling as ''absolute bullshit'' anonymous accusations that he was demoted because of poor performance and attacking colleagues who lacked the ''guts'' to put the assertions to his face.

His angry retaliation came as the Minister for Resources, Martin Ferguson, pointedly refused to directly back the Prime Minister.

Asked whether he had shifted his support from Ms Gillard to Kevin Rudd, Mr Ferguson said: ''I'm loyal to the Labor Party.''

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, something is rotten in the state of Capitol Hill. A majority of Congress is just about to put the finishing touches on an amendment to the military budget authorization legislation that will finish off some critical American rights under our Constitution.

A former top lawyer for Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers insists he told the mogul's son there was evidence of widespread phone hacking more than three years before a scandal over the practice erupted.

Tom Crone questioned claims made by James Murdoch - chairman of News International, the British arm of his father's media empire - that he had not been fully informed about an email indicating that hacking was rife.

For many months, News International insisted the illegal accessing of the mobile phone voice messages of celebrities and crime victims was confined to reporter Clive Goodman who, along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, was jailed in 2007.

You may have missed it, but the Labor Party made history last week by passing a policy to support, for the first time, the offshore processing of asylum seekers.

But for card-carrying Labor supporters in particular, and fair-minded Australians in general, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

The federal Labor MP Craig Thomson took a $24,000 taxpayer-funded overseas study trip to Europe and the US; and then plagiarised much of his report to the Australian government and Parliament - presenting speeches by overseas officials and outdated Wikipedia articles as his own work.

Stevedoring company POAGS and the Maritime Union of Australia have agreed to suspend all industrial action after an intervention by new Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten.

POAGS had locked out around 120 workers at its Bunbury and Fremantle operations after the union took industrial action.

But both parties have agreed to return to the negotiating table after Mr Shorten intervened on his first day in the job.

A Fair Work Australia-appointed mediator will now oversee the negotiations.

The Maritime Union is demanding an 18 per cent wage increase and improved safety conditions for workers.