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A lot of people are alarmed at the rate at which prime ministers get changed these days. Personally, I’d be happy to have a new PM every week so long as none of them torture any innocent people in isolated offshore prison camps, writes Carlo Sands.

I had considered the racist abuse hurled at Labor Senator Sam Dastyari to be a deliberate publicity stunt by a group of neo-Nazis, enabled by a climate of rising bigotry and white nationalism, on the grounds that they deliberately sought out the senator, filmed their racist abuse and posted it on Facebook.

That was before Pauline Hanson explained otherwise. The senator, campaigning in Queensland, pointed out that Dastyari was just using abuse he faced in a pub on November 8 to sell his book.

Regular readers of һƷ̽�� Weekly will sometimes admit their favourite part of the paper is Carlo’s Corner, the semi-regular satirical column by comic writer and performer Carlo Sands.

In a paper filled with heavy and even gloomy topics, people appreciate the chance to laugh — especially at the seemingly all-powerful forces who presume to be our betters yet cause so much pain.

“No joke can change the world, or really anything at all,” Sands says, ahead of his stand up show Inspired? at the Sydney Fringe Comedy Festival.

As part of the Sydney Comedy Festival now under way, writers of satirical website The (un)Australian have put together of political satire and sketches for May 3 — which also happens to be Budget night.

Tony Abbott received a much-deserved roasting on the opening night of the Sydney Fringe Comedy festival on September 1. Unfortunately no actual fire was involved, but the prime minister — played disturbingly well by Jonas Holt (whose Abbott impersonation has featured on Weekend Sunrise and the At Home With Tones webseries) — was subjected to an amusing grilling.