Your noon Briefing

Welcome to your noon roundup of what’s making news and how the day has played out so far.

Hello readers. Here is your noon digest of what’s making news today plus a light read for lunchtime.

Labor Member for Susan Lamb in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Wednesday, December 6, 2017. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas) NO ARCHIVING

Lamb ‘must go’

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says Bill Shorten must “do the right thing” and ask Queensland Labor MP Susan Lamb to resign over dual citizenship. Senator Cormann’s comments come after the resignation of Shorten factional ally David Feeney yesterday, prompting a by-election in the inner northern Melbourne seat of Batman. “We know that Bill Shorten still has other members of his team who are dual citizens,” Senator Cormann told Sky News. “He’s had to be dragged kicking and screaming to doing the right thing here. As time goes by what people can see is that Bill Shorten is getting more shifty as well as getting more socialist, and when it comes to David Feeney he knew last year that David Feeney was a dual citizen.”

“I mean Susan Lamb according to her own lawyer is a British citizen as well as an Australian citizen and so she clearly is in breach of the constitutional requirements to be a federal member of parliament and she should also resign, but Bill Shorten is either too weak or is up to another one of his shifty games.”

Mathias Cormann

-

Alan Jones has slammed Luke Foley/

Jones flags Foley

Radio broadcaster Alan Jones has accused NSW Labor leader Luke Foley of “the most divisive’’ act possible for pledging to fly the Aboriginal flag side-by side the Australian flag permanently on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Jones condemned Mr Foley for the promise, saying the state Opposition leader has signed his own death warrant.

“That is the most divisive thing I’ve heard from a political leader of any kind. I’m sorry you’ve lost the electorate and you’ve lost me.”

Alan Jones

-

Hospital staff rushing a patient off to theatre in urgency Emergency ward. Picture: istock

Unhealthy insurance

The problem with private health insurance is that it’s not particularly private and doesn’t entail much insurance, writes Adam Creighton. It was good of Bill Shorten to allude to problems in health policy this week. However unfair he thinks the outcomes are, they can’t be sheeted home to anything vaguely resembling a genuine private health insurance market. The government shovels about $6.5 billion a year at the sector via premium rebates, which make the sort of subsidies the old car industry used to get look miserly. Then, Soviet-style, the federal health minister must approve premium increases, which can only occur at scheduled times each year.

-

Ji Seong-ho, a North Korean defector, holds up his crutches after his introduction by President Trump during the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Trump’s secret NK weapon

The sight of North Korean defector Ji Seong-ho hoisting a pair of homemade crutches above his head during extended applause will be one of the enduring images of the 2018 State of the Union address. The 35-year-old managed to escape the dictatorship in 2006, President Donald Trump explained, even though he’d lost a leg and a hand stealing coal from a train as a teenager. Since then he has worked as an activist helping others escape and directing pro-democracy radio broadcasts into North Korea. That won him the attention of the Oslo Freedom Forum — a human-rights group.

-

FILE - In this 1980 file photo, actor Robert Wagner appears with actress Natalie Wood. Los Angeles sheriff's homicide detectives are taking another look at Wood's 1981 drowning death based on new information, officials announced Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. A yacht captain said on national TV Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, that he lied to investigators about Natalie Wood's mysterious death 30 years ago and blames the actress' husband at the time, Wagner, for her drowning in the ocean off Southern California. (AP Photo, File)

‘Person of interest’

Nearly four decades after his wife drowned, investigators are now calling 87-year-old actor Robert Wagner a “person of interest” in the death of Natalie Wood. Since 1981, mystery and speculation have swirled around the death of the actress who had been nominated for three Academy Awards and appeared in West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause. She was on a yacht with Wagner, actor Christopher Walken and the boat captain on Thanksgiving weekend of 1981. After a night of drinking, her body was found floating in the water off California’s Catalina Island. She was 43.

-

Australian Alex de Minaur (left) poses for a photograph with Alexander Zverev of Germany during the Davis Cup draw in Brisbane, Thursday, February 1, 2018. The Davis Cup World Group First Round tie between Australia and Germany will take place on hardcourt at Pat Rafter Arena from February 2 to 4. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt) NO ARCHIVING, EDITORIAL USE ONLY

Davis Cup debut

Handed a gold jacket to commemorate his inclusion in Australia’s Davis Cup squad by Rod Laver last week, Alex de Minaur is just over an hour away from debuting. The Sydneysider will become the 109th Australian to play Davis Cup when he tackles German spearhead Alexander Zverev in the tie beginning at midday in Brisbane. Keep up with all the action in our Davis Cup live blog.

-

Entertainer Janet Jackson, covers her breast after her outfit came undone during the half time performance with Justin Timberlake at Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston,Texas, in this 01/02/2004 file photo.

The light read: Was ‘Nipplegate’ planned?

Justin Timberlake put the XXX into Super Bowl XXXVIII by ripping off part of Janet Jackson’s dress and revealing her right breast for half-a-second to a global television audience of 140 million, writes Will Swanton. Now they’re bringing Timberlake back … he’d lyrically suggest them other boys don’t know how to act … and his return for Super Bowl LII has sparked the sort of nationwide retrospection otherwise reserved for the question of who might’ve killed JFK.

-

Comment of the day

“I liked a comment by Abbott ... about a Shorten-led Government he said: ‘With Bill in office, you’ll get social policy dictated by the Greens, and economic policy dictated by the unions.’”

Tony, in response to ‘Bill Shorten faces ALP factions showdown’. And don’t miss the cream of what you had to say this week in the Readers’ Comments column.