loon pond

In which the reptiles keep helping out Pauline, the Australian Daily Zionist News goes about its business, and the Caterist is the new Aboriginal voice ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 21:52:26 +0000

The pond was startled to see not one note from a correspondent yesterday, and struggled with the intermittent archive today, but hey nonny no, when the going gets tough for herpetology students, the tough get going.

The pond did wonder if the elephant in the room of the Nepal valley tragedy would make an appearance in the lizard Oz's Monday regulars.

That elephant did make an appearance in The Graudian, making some basic points in Sunil Acharya's Nepal-Tibet flood: this is the cost of not acting in the face of the climate crisis

...The Nepal Himalaya is changing rapidly. Glaciers are retreating, while warming is altering the conditions in which glaciers, permafrost and mountain slopes remain stable. The climate in which these hazards occur is changing, and continued warming will make an already difficult risk landscape harder to manage. That is why the global response cannot stop at adaptation.
The first task must be to stop making the crisis worse. The countries that benefited most from decades of fossil fuel-driven growth have a particular responsibility to cut emissions rapidly. They also have far greater resources to do so.

But the reptiles are as devoted to climate science denialism as One Nation is ...and so the reptile coverage transferred all hope to an impotent god, ‘Only God can save us, maybe no one can’: Nepal’s death toll rises as hopes fade. (While the links were still working for the pond, who knows if they'll keep on working).

In fine reptile form, Amanda Hodge's coverage made not one mention of a key contribution to the disaster.

Subsidiary coverage in the form of Fears for Townsville woman on ‘lifetime’ trip as search for 42 Australians continues also studiously avoided any hint of any possible causes.

The pond read the rolling allegedly "Live" reptile coverage so others didn't have to embark on a futile search. Nary a mention ...

Instead the more than One Nation curious lizard Oz continued to pump up the volume for Gina's pampered pet, with Geoff leading the way...

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: One Nation back on top as PM declares war on ‘divisive’ politics

One Nation surges past Labor as Anthony Albanese vows to defeat ‘dishonest’ populists
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has reclaimed its mantle as Australia’s most popular party, as Anthony Albanese sounds the alarm on ‘dangerous’ right-wing politics.
By Geoff Chambers

The closest Chambers came to noting One Nation's devotion to climate science denialism, coal and gas came via the "coal" in coalition ...

In his usual way, the indefatigable Geoff backed up with a second shot ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Home truths on a nation divided by house price changes
As Anthony Albanese defends his property tax crackdown, Newspoll reveals the scale of generational division over whether house prices should increase, stay the same or fall.

Wisely Geoff avoided any mention of the reptiles devotion to coal, and instead blamed it all on Labor ...

That's enough to catch the drift ...

Simpleton Simon also went about the business of helping One Nation ...

Labor’s fiscal furphies have turned into campaign of industrial-scale deception
You don’t get to escape the reality of a productivity and inflation crisis by howling back at the truth-tellers.
By Simon Benston

The pond only noted simplistic Simon as a chance to point out the extreme visual tedium involved in these propaganda exercises ...

That exact lead snap was also recycled from a piece by the canny Cranston ...

Just for the record that erroneous part of the lizard Oz jihad could be found here ...

Labor’s hidden super tax to hit $372bn worth of assets despite promises to carve out retirees
A hidden tax buried in Labor’s capital gains rules has exposed $372bn in superannuation assets to higher levies, with one of Australia’s biggest funds demanding an urgent rethink.
By Matthew Cranston

The mediocrity, the lack of imagination, the incessant repetition might work for the hive mind ...

... but not for the pond, though the promotion of Pauline has been a boon to cartoonists of the immortal Rowe kind ...

Meanwhile, The Australian Daily Zionist News went about its business, even as reports of settler violence in the West Bank continued to surge, not to mention a successful Israeli bombing of Gaza which managed to take out a three year old child.

Benji attempted to limit the violence to "a handful of rioters" but the government of Israel is complicit in the ethnic cleansing campaign.

Extreme Zionist Major Mitchell was away from the golf course to do his usual business ...

Soft Labor fails the key test on combating extremism
The federal government’s reaction to Israel’s decision to not prosecute soldiers over an Australian aid worker’s death has exposed a break from decades of Labor foreign policy tradition.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

The Major offered crocodile tears and the notion it was all a terrible mistake ...

Another familiar name turned up ...

Why Richard Flanagan is in denial on the true sources of Jew hate
Writers overreach. I have done it myself and no doubt will again. But there is overreach, and then there is Richard Flanagan.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor

Nick explained to Flanagan that it was all a Soviet plot.

Enough already.

Flanagan is worth a listen, or if missed, worth a transcript read - Nick with his reductionism and wandering in ancient times to avoid the present not so much ...

The new McCarthyism: Gaza and Australia – Richard Flanagan

It's a long read, but this amused the pond, what with it relating to herpetological studies ... ...

...Australians were, last time I looked, still allowed to say stupid and offensive things if they are within the law. We wouldn’t have the Murdoch press if it were otherwise. Tony Abbott, for example, has said more than his fair share of stupid and offensive things from far loftier platforms than an obscure website, including when as prime minister he said of the Sri Lankan government’s murderous behaviour at the time of the Sri Lankan civil war, ‘‘We accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen.”...Difficult things like rape, torture and massacring tens of thousands of civilians. Yet last year our ex-prime minister published a history of Australia with Harper Collins. I hear no calls for Tony Abbott’s book to be pulped, and nor would I call for such a thing, nor the gutting of a major publisher.

The pond can only stomach so much lizard Oz Daily Zionist News in one day ...

Rather than promote these reptiles - they're in the intermittent archive for masochists - the pond decided to turn to Haaretz again for a geography lesson on the art of ethnic cleansing ...

What Is E1? The West Bank Area Behind Israel's Most Explosive Settlement Plan

It's touching how there are still some who hope for a Palestinian state, and even imagine one exists, but that bird flew its coop long ago. Instead there's been insidious creep ...

And credit where credit is due, Benji himself has been at the heart of moves to kill off any notion of a Palestinian state:

Flanagan didn't mention apartheid in his talk, but it's there for all to see in the notion of one highway for me, and the low road for thee ...

And after all that, the pond was just left with the flood water whispering Caterist and any hope that he'd devote attention to the causes of the Nepal flood were quickly dashed ...

Instead his outing began with an indecent appropriation of Aboriginal art, an uncredited, offensive and wretched offering ...

The pond was so enraged by the Caterist, and by the notion that with the Voice quenched, the Caterist was the right sort of voice, that it reduced the humbug to screen caps ...

There was just a final gobbet, and then the ugly business was done ...

That allowed the pond to do a catch up with the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe ...

And speaking of lakes ...

Strictly for masochists, and at an hour's length, best viewed on an appropriate device while sitting on the toilet ...

In which Polonius bores your socks/stockings off, but One Nation, Zoe and the lizard Oz editorialist save the day ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 07:21:00 +0000

After yesterday's excess of reptiles, the pond was looking forward to a quiet meditative Sunday, and who better to dull the senses and induce a sense of a wondrous reptile lotos land?

Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we reptiles toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm!"
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? (The full thingie here)

But Polonius is all for toiling and perpetual moan ...

The header: How Hanson’s plan to oust ALP could backfire; One Nation has a preference problem. And it’s one that could hand another election victory to Labor.

The caption for the hair-dyed ranga: One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. Picture: Getty Images

Suddenly the pond was awake again and wildly excited.

The pond was delighted that the party that had no truck with 'leets and the establishment and the likes of investment bankers decided to give all that nonsense away, and go the full establishment hog. A bit like the end of Animal Farm.

Of course this home of dinkum Oz workers and battlers, oi, oi, loves investment bankers ...

One Nation’s new NSW leader Mike Newman is an investment banker who wants to ‘get rid of wokery’

The son of famous Moorice?

So the apple doesn't fall far from the tree ...

But wait, there's more ...

Referencing Hanson’s calls for Australia to be a “monoculture”, Newman said Japan and Korea were “monoculture[s]”.

“[They’re] absolutely super successful nations who pride themselves on that thing. If I ever thought that One Nation was racist or any of these sorts of things, why would I join it? I mean, it’s … almost hypocritical of me to do so.”

He said Hanson’s inability to remember the name of the Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in a News24 documentary was “an on-the-spot sort of moment”.

“She knows who Prime Minister Takaichi is,” he said.

Asked what the party’s plan was to foster social cohesion, Newman said: “We’re going to get rid of wokery, right?”

Wokery, right on!!

Oh there were grand plans to nuke the country even if there's actually no need to save the planet, what with Malcolm Roberts having clearly shown that climate science is a mere religious cult ... 'Unelected swill': One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts calls for Australia to leave UN

From his very first speech in the Senate he was on the money ...

...Roberts said his own passion for politics and policy had been “unleashed” during the “grassroots uprising of the Australian people” against the reviled and dishonest carbon dioxide tax.

He then questioned the consensus that global temperatures have been rising as a consequence of industrialisation.

He said that, from the 1930s to the 1970s, during the period of the greatest industrialisation in human history, atmospheric temperatures actually “cooled”.

“Another inconvenient fact, temperatures statistically have not been warming since 1995,” he said.

“Temperatures are now cooler than 130 years ago and this is the reverse of what we’re blatantly told by the Bureau of Meteorology that has manipulated cooling trends into false warming trends.”

He said Australians could not rely on information from Australian government bodies and institutions.

“I have used freedom-of-information requests, correspondence and reports from the heads of the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the UN [and] universities to show there is no data proving human use of hydro-carbon fuels effects climate. None,” he said.

“Yet the core climate claim is that carbon dioxide from our human activity will one day, some day, catastrophically warm our planet.”

Hello Nepal. Malcolm sends his best glacier-melting wishes.

And this seemed unnecessary what with there being no need to combat the climate hoax:

One Nation's nuclear plans for NSW to become more like Texas and Florida

...Mr Newman, who will contest the Labor-held seat of Cessnock in the Hunter Valley, said he would like to see less business regulation and a greater investment in non-renewable forms of energy.

"In California, which runs a very heavy net zero, very left-wing kind of style of government, since COVID they've lost 1.2 million people who've fled to other states," he said.

"Now they're all in Texas because of cheap energy and low taxes.

"We want to get cheap energy, just like Florida and Texas, back into New South Wales to help make businesses more competitive."

Mr Newman described the plan to close the Eraring coal-fired power station as "economic suicide" and said coal and nuclear should be part of the state's future energy mix.

He said he would be happy to host both a nuclear power plant and nuclear waste dump in the Hunter, subject to public consultation.

"The Labor government run the three-eyed fish narrative, which is the low-resolution politics we should expect," Mr Newman said.

"I've worked very closely with the entire nuclear supply chain. I know how well and effectively it is all managed."

Texas? Cue The New Republic with good news.

The Very Trumpy State That Leads the Country in Renewable Energy

This red state may be as MAGA as they come, but its Republicans leaders, voters, and businesses have no interest in the president’s war on renewable energy.

Maybe investment bankers aren't into the right sort of green anymore ...

Anyway, can't we become more like RFK's America?

Think of the evolutionary benefits ...

Sheesh, in all that excitement, the pond clean forgot about Polonius and his fears. Back to the drudgery ...as Polonius seems to yearn for the glory days of the DLP, what with their well-informed members and supporters just loving themselves some fundamentalist tykery ...

Since the end of World War II, the two most successful minor parties have been the avowedly anti-communist Democratic Labor Party and the avowedly far-left Greens. And now, entering from the right, is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party.
As Hanson made clear in the News24 documentary The Fight for the Right, presented by Chris Kenny, she has two political aims. First, for One Nation to achieve government. Second, for the Anthony Albanese-led Labor Party to lose office. The question is whether a high One Nation vote is consistent with a Labor defeat. And the answer resides in preferences.
Importantly, The Fight for the Right was fair and balanced. Kenny gave time to, and asked challenging questions of, Hanson along with the leaders of the Coalition. Namely, Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan.
The One Nation leader received the most airtime since she is creating more news than any other political figure right now.
The latest Newspoll has Labor with a primary vote of 29 per cent, One Nation also on 29 per cent, with the Coalition on 18 per cent and the Greens on 14 per cent.
There is still considerable time to the next federal election and political circumstances can change before then. The initial task for the Coalition is to get ahead of One Nation on primary votes. Moreover, no one knows how the teals and other independents will go. Likewise with any micro parties that choose to run candidates.
The DLP, which broke away from/was expelled by the ALP in the mid-1950s, had well-informed members and supporters.
Most DLP voters had traditionally voted ALP, but after the Labor Split they directed their preferences to the Coalition ahead of Labor. DLP preferences kept Labor out of office until December 1972 and played a crucial role in the Coalition’s victories in 1955, 1961 and 1969.
Greens shift
The Greens emerged in the 90s as a separate party with an environmental agenda under the leadership of Bob Brown – it has since moved further to the left.
It’s fair to say that Labor is more hostile to the Greens than to the Coalition. But Greens voters are far more hostile to the Coalition than Labor. Like the DLP, the Greens have well-informed members and supporters.
It is estimated that around 90 per cent of DLP first preferences went to the Coalition before the party went out of existence in the mid-70s. Psephologist Antony Green has estimated, using Australian Electoral Commission figures, that 88 per cent of Greens preferences went to Labor in 2025. Whereas only 75 per cent of One Nation preferences went to the Coalition.
That’s a significant, and perhaps result-determining, figure.
In The Fight for the Right, Kenny put it to Hanson that she “must be worried that by splitting the right-of-centre vote” One Nation might help Labor stay in power in Victoria. The reference was to the Victorian state election to be held on November 28.
Hanson rejected the claim. She said “if you want to get rid of Labor, then you vote One Nation No. 1 and then you put Libs No. 2”. Well, that’s fine in theory. But not if, say, 25 per cent of One Nation voters in Victoria preference Labor over the Coalition. That might return the incompetent Labor government in Victoria. So far One Nation voters have not shown the preference discipline of the DLP or Greens voters.

Sorry, that's a terribly long gobbet without any visual distractions, and eventually the reptiles broke, but only so they could feature a genuine dullard ... One Nation MP David Farley MP during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Oh dear another distraction ...

'David, shut up': Farley poised to quit One Nation ...

Another rat in the ranks?

News Corp the most reliable booster of Gina's pet?

Who'd have thunk it, but it might help explain Polonius's paranoid prattling, because it seems that One Nation voters are as discerning as DLP voters, what with Gina's pet being terribly clever, except she's apparently not...(don't ask the pond to follow all the twists in this mouse tail):

In The Australian last Tuesday, Anthony Galloway reported that the left-wing GetUp organisation – which likes to be called “progressive” – will spend at least $600,000 on campaigning against One Nation in five Labor-held seats in Melbourne. It is likely to be as successful as its failed attempt to defeat One Nation in the Farrer by-election last May.
The polls indicate that the One Nation vote surged between early December last year and early February this year. This period takes in the Bondi Beach massacre of December 14. The evidence suggests that there has been a strong reaction to the terrorist attack aimed at the Australian Jewish community as part of Australian society in general.
Moreover many Australians, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, are angry at the disruption caused by constant protest marches against Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. The marches have disrupted life for many without any consequence at home or abroad. One Nation, so far, is the principal political beneficiary of the radical Islam-radical left unity ticket. And then there is the cost of living.
Hanson did not come to politics with a high level of education but she is clever, with an ability to cut through in a way that is intellectually unfashionable but popular. Asked by Kenny if she was intolerant of any group, Hanson responded, without equivocation, that she was “really intolerant of radical Islam”. Hanson added that she did not like the suppression of women and more besides.
Hanson is stubborn and declined to reconsider or withdraw her 1996 ill-informed statement that “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians”. She has yet to articulate a coherent economic policy. And then there is the lack of party discipline.
Few Australians would have heard of David Farley before he was the successful One Nation candidate in the Farrer by-election. This week he declared he was making the party worthy of government and explicitly disagreed with his leader on immigration. It’s not a good sign with respect to party unity.
There is talent in One Nation’s ranks – including Barnaby Joyce MP and the party’s director James Ashby. But it does not present as fit for government. Unlike the Coalition with experienced and talented politicians such as Taylor and Canavan in leadership roles. However, One Nation could possibly attain minority government status. Or it could ensure Labor’s continuation in office if its preferences leak substantially to Labor.
The DLP and the Greens managed to keep their preferred parties in office by disciplined preference flows while winning seats in the Senate. One Nation will win Senate seats and probably attain some victories in the House of Representatives at the next federal election. But it’s also capable of returning a Labor government for a third term.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Barners, Tamworth's ineradicable, undying, eternal shame presents as talent?

And Polonius has kind words for the beefy boofhead and the Canavan caravan?

Here's the thing. The reptiles have, with their incessant attacks and relentless promotion of far right policies, and their many invocations of Pauline, done wonders for the promotion, enabling and facilitation of One Nation, the furriner bashing party of Murdochian dreams.

Desperate times in WA and elsewhere. No wonder Polonius is having an anxiety attack, and so is the pond ...

Now to another reptile sent by the pond to the intermittent archive ...

A good man isn’t hard to find – they’re everywhere

The rush to demonise all boys and men in the wake of scandals at the Sydney Swans and Scots College isn’t only insulting, it’s corrosive.

By Gemma Tognini

Columnist

The pond realises sending grating Gemma to the archive cornfield is wrong.

After all, it's a heart-warming tale and the pond simply couldn't move past the amazing artwork (appallingly not credited to a living reptile), which heralded the start of the show ...

But the pond had to stay firm, or otherwise the pond might have begun to brood about domestic violence statistics ..

Domestic violence is a serious problem which impacts many NSW families. In 2021-22 an estimated 1.5 per cent of Australian women aged 18 years and over experienced violence by an intimate partner in the past 12 months. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women (27%), and 1 in 8 men (12%) in Australia experienced violence by an intimate partner or family member since the age of 15 years.

... not to mention gender-based violence in Australia ...

But it's okay, garrulous Gemma can walk the streets safe at night, and a single anecdote will always triumph over data ...

And so to the new reptile favourite ...

The header: Green scheme has a billion-dollar secret; The true cost of Australia’s energy transition from parliamentary oversight is being shrouded.

Could there ever be a reptile story about renewable energy without a snap of dastardly windmills, of the kind designed to send Don Quixote and the beefy boofhead into a panic? Of course not: Wind turbines at Granville Harbour on Tasmania's west coast. Picture: Philip Young

It seems that this is only Zoe's second recorded outing for the reptiles - correspondents will recall her first masterpiece, The green energy transition: soaring bills, dead eagles.

Guess what that featured as an opening image? You didn't have to guess, did you? Those damned things that haunt Don Quixote and the beefy boofhead and mad king Donald too:

The pond would have liked to feature all of it, what with Zoe making a fair fist of becoming the reptile replacement for the Bjørn-again one...

Suffice to say that in her new outing, Zoe remains as gloomy as ever.

The wall of secrecy surrounding the cost of the federal government’s flagship renewables subsidy scheme may finally be about to crack.
The Australian National Audit Office has officially listed the Capacity Investment Scheme as part of its work program for 2026-27. As one of the least transparent federal subsidy schemes devised, the CIS is long overdue for an audit.
The government has faced sustained scrutiny over its decision not to reveal the cost of the scheme, which will commit taxpayers to paying unknown billions to wind, solar and battery developers under 20-year revenue underwriting agreements.
Until now, the Energy Minister has used the “commercial-in-confidence” claim as a get-out-of-jail-free card to continue evading every inconvenient question about how much taxpayers will have to pay.
Energy ministers running similar programs in other countries have shown far more transparency. Britain, for instance, regularly publishes the strike price of its agreements with developers, as well as the estimated annual budget impact of its Contracts for Difference scheme. In Australia, the public is told neither.
The length of CIS contracts makes the secrecy much worse. Once signed, these deals will be very difficult for a future government to unwind if they fail to deliver value for money. Of course, that’s all part of the plan.
Last year, Chris Bowen made very clear what his task was for this term of government: “I want this transition to be so locked in that a change of government can’t stop it.” If this transition is such a good idea, then why must its price tag be kept secret?
The lengths the government has gone to in avoiding transparency should be ringing alarm bells for taxpayers everywhere. Instead of being run through a government department – as is standard practice for subsidy programs of this magnitude – the CIS is being run through a private company: AusEnergy Services Limited.
ASL does not front Senate estimates. In other words, the body responsible for assessing and recommending billion-dollar CIS projects for ministerial approval is not directly accountable to parliament. Nor is ASL subject to Freedom of Information requests in the way government departments are.
And any attempt to request documents the department receives from ASL can be effortlessly knocked back with claims of confidentiality.
Appointing a private company to administer a tender process worth billions of dollars is so unusual that perhaps the only other example of this occurring is the NSW Government’s Long-Term Energy Service Agreements scheme, which is also run by ASL.
But at least in NSW the outsourcing of the LTESA scheme came with a statutory framework and regulatory oversight. The federal government opted for neither in its design of the CIS.
This highly unusual arrangement not only forces taxpayers to sign contracts blindfolded, it also erodes public trust in the ministers who lead our country. Suppose a minister were accused of approving underwriting for an uneconomic project that benefited his friends. How could he prove his innocence? Under the current design, there is no accountability mechanism that would let him.
If ministers want to maintain the trust of the public and ensure they cannot be accused of favouritism or corruption, they must embrace transparency and robust oversight – not use private companies and commercial-in-confidence claims to shield their decisions from scrutiny.
But beyond the matter of governance, an important question remains. Even the CSIRO, which insisted for years that wind and solar were the cheapest forms of new energy, has conceded the transition to renewables will increase the cost of our energy system. Is the Australian public willing to bear that cost? The answer appears to be no.
Polling commissioned by Affordable Energy Australia found more than half of Australians would not pay a single extra dollar to achieve net zero, and almost three-quarters wouldn’t pay more than $50 a year. Among communities bearing the brunt of the energy transition, willingness to pay is even lower. Another poll commissioned by Affordable Energy Australia found two-thirds of Gippsland would not pay a single extra dollar to make the transition move faster and four in five wouldn’t pay more than $50 a year.
These results suggest that once the true scale of the CIS is revealed, very few taxpayers will be in favour of such costly contracts being signed on their behalf.
Australians may support the idea of the energy transition in theory but they do not support the reality: ever-growing bills, secretive subsidies and the destruction of prime agricultural land and pristine rainforests. Consumers want cheap and reliable power first and foremost, not ideological targets.
Our government would do well to heed the words of German Energy Minister Katherina Reiche, who wrote earlier this year: “One fact has been suppressed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.”
Zoe Hilton is a spokeswoman for the Affordable Energy Australia campaign.

You're welcome Nepalese people.

We'll do our very best to shrink your glaciers and produce disasters, because think of the unhappy alternatives for long-suffering folk down under.

That said, the pond was most disappointed that Zoe didn't go the nuke option this time ... and it has to be said that there's a certain repetitiousness to her offerings.

Here was the way she wrapped up her first outing, and it sounded just like her second bleat, with a faux bit of alleged data setting the Zoe pace, and the use of "rent-seekers", suggesting she's learned her reptile lexicon well ...

...Destroying the environment to save it is nonsensical. At 1 per cent of global emissions, Australia does not have any control over our own climate. What we do have control over is the direct impacts we have on our environment at the local level.

We need a rethink of our approach to environmental policy. For every industrial project, there is a trade-off between its economic benefits and the effects it has on the environment.

Wind farms are not providing the predicted net economic benefits to Australia. In fact, they are often a net cost to society as they cannot survive without ever-growing subsidies. On top of that, many are destroying the environment they were meant to preserve. Yet the federal government still plans to more than double the amount of wind capacity in the eastern grid by 2050.

It is clearer than ever that governments’ renewables targets cannot help secure cheap energy for Australia, nor will they preserve our unique natural heritage.

Australian families and businesses deserve better. It is time Australia’s leaders stop pretending the current paradigm is working. They must prioritise affordable, reliable energy so our energy system serves the needs of all Australians – not just the rent-seekers profiting off the public purse.

And with that the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist to help Zoe out ...

There you go, Zoe, you need to drag in a Prof, but for that you'll have to be up on your Quadrant reading, with Gazza ranting away in No Laughing Matter ... (the pond guarantees correspondents will love the portrait of Jimbo, showing the reptiles how they really should be using AI):

You see Zoe? You needed to slip in a kind word about coal, and wonder why we ever abandoned the dinkum, clean, virginal, mainstay Oz variety.

Nepalese people, you're welcome ...

And as the pond gave the lizard Oz editorialist one shot, how about another, what with rampant Zionism all the go in this weekend's Oz.

Showing off the lizard Oz editorialist was a way for the pond to avoid covering all the other stuff in the rag ...

With that done, there was just time to do a little migrant bashing, proving that the lizard Oz editorialist right on top of this particular reptile jihad could more than match Pauline at this game...

Does that mean we can ban foreign citizens like the Murdochs, plundering the hive mind with their US owned companies? Or are they so skilled at plundering that they should always be welcome?

The pond suspects that you could count on two hands the number of people who read the lizard Oz editorialist, but herpetology students should remember it's at the heart of the darkness...

And now with Xmas just around the corner - Spring is sprunging - how go things in the disunited States?

Splendid stuff, time for the usual updates ...

What a relief not to hear it pronounced "Moskowww". And fun fact, "Coat of many colours" was Dolly's favourite child ...

A bigly weekend number: Nepal, Zionism, climate change, the Ughmann, the bromancer, Lord Haw Haws and more ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:13:31 +0000

Wonder of wonders, it took a borrowed piece from The Nepal Times to at least note the bleeding obvious in the lizard Oz...

No one could have predicted this disaster but we knew it was bound to happen
Nothing about this disaster was natural – not the location of hydropower plants on trans-Himalayan rivers, not the highways and settlements built on rivers, not the corruption and greed, not the poor governance.
Sonia Awale

Reading that sub heading, a member of the hive mind might have thought that yet again climate change was a non-starter. Other issues mentioned, with climate change carefully excluded.

But the reptiles couldn't exclude it from the borrowed text:

...This was not a ‘natural’ disaster. Nothing about it was natural – not the glacier melting due to greenhouse gas build-up due to fossil fuel burning, not the location of expensive hydropower plants on trans-Himalayan rivers, not designing highways to follow rivers, not the settlements that have grown around them, not the corruption and greed, not the poor governance.

Say what? Greenhouse gas build-up due to fossil fuel burning!!

And again ...

...Early warning will be of no help if homes are located right next to rivers flowing down from the world’s youngest and most seismically-active mountain range, now feeling the full impact of the climate crisis.

There's a climate crisis? There is: The full impact of the climate crisis!!

And again ...

A culture of fatalism can explain the lack of interest in preparedness for disaster that we know will happen, and with greater frequency in future. But that is no excuse. Even if previous governments ignored this, Nepal’s new administration with its technocrats and PhDs must take measures to address seismic and climate co-hazards.
Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” This disaster also offers the chance for Prime Minister Balendra Shah and his government to demonstrate a proactive approach in search, rescue, rehabilitation and a preparedness strategy for the future.

Give up the addiction to coal? Prepare for the hazards of climate change?!!

Make what use of it you can, because it's unlikely you're going to read that sort of stuff in the lizard Oz anytime soon.

Not once did yesterday's reptile rolling coverage dare to mention "climate" or "science" or "climate change"...

And this morning's coverage studiously avoided mentioning any possible cause ....

WAITING GAME
Water, then torture: families’ haunting vigil after Nepal flood
Nepal’s glacial tsunami disaster has left 38 Australians missing, with authorities warning the death toll could make it Australia’s worst foreign tragedy since the 2002 Bali bombings.
By Amanda Hodge

Just below that was a personal interest story, but neither the updated version, nor the earlier archived version dared to mention climate change:

SURVIVAL
Ecstasy amid the agony as Australian hiker makes contact; search continues for those missing in Nepal floods
An Australian woman caught in Nepal’s deadly flooding has made contact with her family and confirmed she is alive. The news comes as others anxiously await news of their loved ones.
By Mohammad Alfares and Elizabeth Pike

Sonia Wales' Nepal Times story remained up early in the morning, but it will soon be swept away, with the rag made safe once again for its Ughmanns and Borgs and Lloydies of the Amazon ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles continued their work for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

INQUIRER
Anti-Israel agenda bolstered when crucial questions remain unasked
‘Opportunity lost’ as antisemitism inquiry avoids questioning key anti-Israel figures
The antisemitism royal commission has wrapped its hearings without calling a single hate preacher or anti-Israel protester to give evidence.

By Stephen Rice

Here's a crucial question that remains unanswered.

Why were people in Israel shocked by the sight of a donkey tortured by being dragged to its death behind an ATV, when the routine of ethnic cleansing goes on daily in the West Bank and Gaza? Israelis Only See the Victim When It's a Donkey

There was another EXCLUSIVE reptile contribution:

EXCLUSIVE
Labor ‘not equipped’ for anti-Israel protests, MP told Bondi rabbi Yehoram Ulman
The Bondi massacre’s worst-affected Jewish congregation has told the antisemitism royal commission a federal MP privately admitted the Albanese government was ill-equipped to handle post-October 7 protests.
By James Dowling

Over on the extreme far right the dog botherer chipped in ...

When being a Jewish kid means living behind high-security fences
If any other community had to guard its children this way it would be seen as a crisis.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

Um, there's something of a crisis going down in Gaza and the West Bank ... if the pond might quote Haaretz again, 'Israel Is Sending Armed Militias in Gaza to Commit War Crimes – and I Have to Protect Them'

The mission the soldiers were asked to carry out was unusual from the very first moment, even before things escalated and weapons were drawn. It was called a "coordinated activity" in the Khan Yunis area. The coordinators were Israeli soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip and members of an armed Palestinian militia opposed to Hamas.
But the word "coordination" is misleading in this context. The soldiers had no idea what they were walking into. Only in retrospect did they realize they were witnessing an arbitration mechanism following a dispute within one of the militias operating in Gaza.
"One of the clan members with us had apparently accidentally shot another gunman's wife," an IDF combat soldier familiar with the incident told Haaretz. "Before our eyes, right there, the price was set, and the other man simply shot him in the legs. Everyone around accepted it as if it were a legitimate verdict. We stood there in complete shock."

Do go on ...

And so on, and the pond isn't here to enable facilitate or enable Zionism in the lizard Oz, and blames the BBC, which has of late been cranking up its coverage of the ethnic cleansing, which inevitably turns up on the ABC's news channels...

That latest story is an AV report, here.

Enough already, and the pond looked deeper, and stumbled across yet another sample of Ughmann climate science denialism.

The header: From migration to energy, signs One Nation rise is having a material effect on Labor policies; History repeats for Chris Bowen, whose data centre mandate has collapsed.

The caption for a typical snap of glum, evil, threatening despots, or so the Ughmann sees them: PM Anthony Albanese dumped Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s renewable data centre rule after Queensland revolt. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire

As well as spending a bigly amount of time bashing furriners, the Ughmann was wildly excited and triumphant about the prospects of the Queensland and NT governments supporting big tech and data centres and to hell with sustainability ...

First up the furriner bashing, which harks back to the happy days when everybody was fitting out Juliar for a chaff bag ...

As High Court defeats go, it was a pretty spectacular fail. In 2011 the Gillard government was desperately trying to stem the flow of asylum-seeker boats that exploded after Labor dismantled the Howard-era Pacific Solution border-protection system.
To dress this self-inflicted wound, Chris Bowen, then immigration minister, crafted a cunning plan dubbed the Malaysian Solution. This envisaged transferring up to 800 people who arrived by boat to Malaysia while accepting 4000 recognised refugees from that nation for resettlement here. It borrowed the central logic of the Howard scheme: people arriving irregularly by boat would be denied processing and settlement in Australia.

The reptiles backed this up with an amorphous snap, Julia Gillard announced the Malaysian Solution in 2011, a deal in which Australia would send 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia in return for 4000 bona fide refugees.

The pond took the trouble to do an image search, and whaddya kno, that very same snap was deployed by the NY Times way back in June 2009...

Not to worry, sloppy labelling is the least of the reptile thought crimes ...

When a court challenge slapped a restraining order on the minister’s plan, the matter was dispatched to the High Court. Bowen oozed his trademark confidence in banking the win before the case was heard.
“The (Immigration) Act is clear that a third country can be declared, and that the minister can declare that third country, and we have followed the act to the letter,” he said. Bowen’s declaration went down 6-1 and the court permanently restrained the government from transferring the asylum-seekers to Malaysia.
In the smoking ruin of defeat, Bowen called the judgment “profoundly disappointing” and suggested the court had indulged in judicial activism. “What the High Court has decided today is not what was previously considered as understood and accepted law,” Bowen said.

How desperate did this get? The reptiles had to resort to an aged 'toon ...Nicholson cartoon

The pond guesses that the reptiles must dwell in a long lost golden age of Labor bashing because it looks pretty grim these days for the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

Recall that this was a Band-Aid political fix on the artery Labor punctured when it abolished the Pacific Solution. That deliberately harsh regime had become a totemic target for the party in the lead-up to the 2007 election. In the eyes of true believers, it was not just bad policy – it was evil. Abolishing it was an act of performative morality.
In 2008 Chris Evans, Labor’s immigration minister at the time, basked in the glow of adoration that radiated from the serried ranks of the righteous in a speech to the Refugee Council.
“Abolishing the Pacific Solution … was one of the first things the Rudd Labor government did on taking office,” Evans said. “It was also one of my greatest pleasures in politics. Neither humane nor fair, the Pacific Solution was also ineffective and wasteful.”
Labor never grasped that a tough border regime was what gave government the licence to run a large migration program without provoking a public backlash. Australians would accept mass migration so long as they believed the borders were controlled and the program orderly. Nor did Labor understand that many recent migrants, who had waited their turn and come through the front door, had little sympathy for those they regarded as queue jumpers.
Governing is not a morality play. Policies should be judged by what they do, not by how virtuous they make their authors feel. Sometimes the national interest demands choices that offend the prevailing elite orthodoxy. Borders define nations and Australia cannot fix the world.

There came another snap ...Asylum seekers arrive at Christmas Island, 2012.

Funny (peculiar), CNN back in June 2014 identified an uncropped version of a very similar snap as showing Suspected asylum seekers arrive on Christmas Island, after being intercepted by the Australian Navy, on August 3, 2013. Scott Fisher/Getty Images

Whatever, asylum seekers look pretty much the same to the reptiles at the lizard Oz, deviants seeking to destroy the hive mind way of life ...

The realisation that it had made a monumental mistake dawned slowly but, when it did, Labor bungee-jumped off the moral high ground. In politics, principle is usually roadkill when it collides with survival.
As it raced towards electoral oblivion in 2013, Labor dumped Julia Gillard as leader, rebooted Kevin Rudd to save the furniture, and set about systematically replacing every brick in the Pacific Solution wall. The offshore processing regime pioneered in the Howard era is the system that is in place today and it now enjoys bipartisan support.

After that bout of triumphalist wandering down past times, the Ughmann turned to the present and the need to use coal, gas and nukes, to make the world safe for tech bros, data centres and AI:

All of this flooded back when Bowen declared at the National Press Club in early August that the federal government would decree that all new data centres run on a mix of wind, solar, batteries and a touch of back-up gas. That mix would be set in stone.
“If a data centre is proposed to only use gas, it will not meet the minimum national standards and it won’t be allowed to register, and it will not be able to proceed,” Bowen said.
Once again, performative morality was dictating policy. In the creed to which Bowen pledges obeisance there are virtuous sources of energy and sinful ones. What matters most is not cost, utility or dispatchability but ideological purity. But there are now some infidels in the state and territory pews.

Cue a snap of the beast looking his usual, comical self... Energy Minister Chris Bowen appearing at the National Press Club. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

This is a difficult sell for the reptiles ...

... but the Ughmann was more than up for the job ...

Queensland and the Northern Territory, which are awash with gas, dared to dissent from the Bowen doctrine, so he threatened to use a big stick to beat the apostates into submission. He would legislate the energy mix for data centres.
“The Constitution is pretty clear about any conflict between commonwealth legislation and state legislation, and which legislation prevails,” Bowen said.
Here Bowen was betting that, if push came to shove, the High Court would back him in. The language he used on the clarity of the law was an eerie echo from the past and experience has not mellowed his hubris. Once again he was banking a win before the race began.
The federal government can ride roughshod over the NT, but Queensland is a tougher constitutional nut to crack. Then there is the tricky politics of picking a fight with a state historically hostile to edicts from Canberra and usually pretty adept at mobilising a maroon tide of discontent.
So, the Queensland Premier went into this week’s national cabinet geared up for a fight with the federal government. David Crisafulli was pitching his own framework for data centre approval: compulsory local consultation, rules over water use, and no wind and solar mandates. His hand was strengthened by Queensland’s unusually tight grip on its electricity system, with the state owning the major transmission and distribution networks and much of its generating capacity.

Let's hear it for a pollie who can't look beyond his short term navel ... Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were at odds over data centre energy policy. Picture: Adam Head

Make way for the supine pollies and reptiles helping out the tech bros ...

What happened next is now mired in extraordinary confusion. Queensland and the NT emerged from National Cabinet declaring victory. Crisafulli’s team called the deal “the Queensland exemption” and multiple media outlets reported that Queensland would be allowed to power data centres with gas or coal. The agreement on national standards did not specify what energy sources data centres would be required to use.
In the post-cabinet press conference price trumped generation sources on Anthony Albanese’s checklist: “I certainly understand that different states have different issues, but we know that the priority is keeping our energy costs low,” Albanese said.
Crisafulli said Queensland was happy to sign on to a national framework that ensured communities had a say in projects and didn’t dictate energy sources.
“We believe that we can control our data sovereignty, protect the rights of local communities, and enable that energy mix to bring those data centres on,” he said.
The Northern Territory also claimed victory, believing it was free to build data hubs running off the gas that is about to flow from the massive Beetaloo Basin project. Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro says the Basin could power Australia for the next 200 years and left the cabinet meeting declaring it “will be online within days”.
But, as this column was going to press on Friday, Bowen emphatically declared there was no exemption at all.

Time for a snap of the key villain ... Anthony Albanese wants to keep the AI boom going without the growing pains. Picture: John Feder

Stuff the environment? Relax, it's just "growing pains" ...

“We will, as we indicated, legislate binding national standards for data centres across the country without exception, which will require 100% renewables backed by firming, which can be gas,” he told Renew Economy.
Bowen said Queensland and the Territory could make a case for a different energy mix but the Australian Energy Regulator would decide whether it was cheaper than renewables. “It is not a carveout, not an exemption, not an ability to use fossil fuels without the express permission of the Commonwealth.”
So who won National Cabinet? At deadline Queensland and Canberra appeared to have fundamentally different understandings of what they had agreed. Perhaps Bowen’s threatened constitutional showdown is back on after all. Watch this space. If Bowen wins it will be another spectacular act of economic self harm.
Because artificial intelligence is forcing a change of political focus worldwide. This is a novel and unsettling technology. There is a ghost in this mind machine and it haunts us all. Depending on your preferred expert it represents an extraordinary opportunity, an existential threat or both. Whichever it proves to be, we are now in an information arms race moving at light speed. Australia must be in that race because experience tells us AI will be developed for good and ill, and what can be built somewhere will eventually threaten everywhere.

It wouldn't be a lizard Oz story without the presence of the Canavan "coal matters" caravan ... Nationals Leader Matt Canavan says the “ridiculous idea of net zero” needs to be scrapped. It would be one of many initiatives from the party aimed at lifting economic performance and boosting productivity. “We have a job to convince people in the next couple of years that we have a plan to restore confidence in our economy,” he said. Mr Canavan told Sky News Australia the Nationals have “got a plan to lower taxes to make sure inflation doesn’t erode your budget every year”. “We have got a plan to use all our energy resources and scrap this ridiculous idea of net zero. “We have a great nation, and I want to offer hope to people.”

Sheesh, he's still talking to Sky Noise down under? There never was a re-brand?

Happy days ... everybody needs a data centre ...

And so to a final poignant cry ...

This race runs on abundant energy, turning electrons into intelligence at industrial scale. Other nations racing to build AI are not burdened by guilt over energy sources. They are reaching for every electron they can get.
In the US, planned gas-fired capacity tied directly to data centres has soared to 189 gigawatts, roughly 2½ times the installed capacity of Australia’s entire eastern electricity market. Microsoft has signed a 20-year deal to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island and Meta is locking up nuclear power of its own. China builds more wind and solar than any other nation but almost 70 per cent of the electricity consumed by its data centres comes from coal and it is testing a truck-mounted nuclear reactor. That’s in addition to the 150 large-scale reactors it intends to build.
This is what an energy arms race looks like. The US is reaching for gas and resurrecting nuclear reactors; China is using coal, gas, nuclear, wind and solar. Nobody serious is entering this contest powered by wind, solar and batteries alone.
Nationals leader Matt Canavan said it was high time Australian governments realised the real cost of net zero would be how much industry we can hold and attract.
“If we are spending billions bailing out aluminium smelters because electricity is too expensive, why would it be different for data centres?” Canavan said.
“And if data centres are what they are cracked up to be, then net zero goes from fantasy to impossibility.”
This column has said many times that the world is not doing net zero because there is a chasm between what nations say in climate communiques and what they do. Last year global fossil-fuel consumption hit another record and carbon emissions rose again. I don’t celebrate that. It’s just an inconvenient truth.
Australia has abundant coal, gas, wind and solar and around a third of the world’s uranium. To deliberately rule most of that out and attempt to run AI as a three-legged race is not a plan for victory. It is unilateral disarmament. In that race, we lose.

Lucky Nepalese. The Ughmann is doing his very best to make sure you can go on losing bigly ...but it just might be a tough sell ...

John Birmingham in his quaintly named Substack, Alien Sideboob, pretty much said everything that will likely be said about the coming lizard Oz response under the header The Reckoning. Inter alia ...

...Ruth Gamble, a climate historian and director of La Trobe Asia, who has studied Tibet and Himalayan rivers for more than a decade, made it into the ABC’s reporting this morning. She’s in Kathmandu right now and was set to go through the border pass that was just destroyed. Gamble can cite instances of titanic floods and massive landslides going back millennia, but says they are more common now.
“Everyone can see, even non-scientists can see, that there’s melting glaciers and melting ice and there’s less snow and more rain and the rain’s coming down faster all across the mountains. The conditions and the type of precipitation that’s falling in the mountains are all changing so fast that denying that it’s climate change takes a willful act to ignore all of the evidence.”
So, she got the memo, but by close of business another memo will have arrived on desks in Houston and London and on the highest floors of those towers in Sydney and Melbourne, where Australia’s own multibillion-dollar fossil fuel companies plot their infernal schemes. That memo does not change. It orders that doubt be manufactured, that The Method be deployed again, a bastard cousin of the scientific method that the tobacco industry deployed for decades to deny, to evade, to create uncertainty in order to keep selling a product the industry already knew killed people.
Of course, they’ll be cursing it in private, the damnable bad luck of having so many wealthy white tourists die screaming in such shareable video. That sucks for them because we would have all forgotten this by Monday if the thousand killed had been poor, and brown, and local to the mountain that killed them. We think of death as the great leveller, but the dead have never been equal. Grief and remembrance enjoy much better production values when the deceased look like the commissioning editor.
One last thing. I’ll put good folding money on the table right now and tell you that someone will put a microphone in front of Albanese or someone like him, in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, to ask “Was this a result of climate change?”
And whoever is asked will respond, with a peevish frown and censorial tone, “Now is not the time to talk about that sort of thing.” Quite right too. Twenty years ago was the time to talk about this shit, and people did. We’ve known this was coming for decades. We know what the companies and their captive governments knew, and we understand that they pressed on, regardless. That mountain did not thaw and fall because these things just happen sometimes. It fell because projections were filed, understood, and set aside in favour of quarterly returns.
It fell because the reckoning is here.

As usual, the pond had to send snappy Tom to the archive ...

Rhetoric v reality check: Albo’s reform talk falls flat at BCA
Anthony Albanese has now addressed the Business Council of Australia five times, yet business leaders say Australia still cannot tax or regulate its way to prosperity.
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist

The pond only needs the economic advice of Dame Groan ... a teaser trailer sampling should be more than enough to see if a visit to the intermittent archive was required ...

There's a lot more, but the pond needed some light relaxation, and the bromancer came along to deliver the goods ... he was on his usual rampage, and the pond always has to make room for him, especially as he opened with a dash of Shelley ...

Strange, and never mind the layout, the pond knows that poem in a different context.

Hey ho, hey nonny no, on we go ...

...It’s worth pausing to marvel at this monstrosity of Australian public policy, which continues the fabulous, hallucinatory dysfunction that animates defence policy, which has left Australia more completely dependent on the US for security than at any time since World War II.
The Australian navy surface fleet has never been older, nor weaker, than in this time, which, as the government often proclaims, presents the most dangerous strategic circumstances since 1945. Our surface combatants are seven remaining Anzac-class frigates, small, elderly, barely armed; and three air warfare destroyers. Only the AWDs have the remotest claim to being modern warships.
Way back in the 2009 defence white paper, which should have been entered for the Miles Franklin best work of fiction prize, we decided to replace the Anzacs pretty damn fast. Moving at lightning speed, by 2016 we had a project: to build nine new frigates to replace the eight Anzacs, at a total cost of $30bn. At the navy’s urging, we decided on specialist anti-submarine warfare frigates.

There's a real awkwardness to the bromancer's pitch.

For decades he and the reptiles at large have been extolling the benefits of the US alliance, the glories of Pine Gap, the comfort and security offered, and then along came mad king Donald, showing where his heart truly lies ...

Is there a further irony?

The Hunter-class frigate progam was announced by Malware back in June 2018, with the able support of Marise Payne, Minister for Defence, and "Poodle" Pyne, Minister for Defence Industry, and now we're stuck with the boondoggle, at a time when drone warfare has revolutionised battlefields on sea and land ... As the Hunter has progressed, not in the physical world but on paper and in digital imagination, it has gobbled up a lot of money, about $8bn so far. Picture: BAE

The important thing is to forget this ancient history ... and moan about what the Liberal government produced without attaching any blame to actual Liberals, or even the reptiles themselves...

The navy and Defence acquisition machinery were told to choose a mature design already in service and to make minimal modifications. Instead, it chose the British BAE Type 26 frigate. Far from being a mature design, the Type 26, even today, eight years later, is not yet in service in the British navy.
That’s right, the government was told the Type 26 was a mature design and it’s not in service eight years later. If that’s a mature design, I am my grandfather’s uncle.
Then, having been told to make minimal changes, Defence and the navy added so much new stuff that it went from 8800 tonnes to 10,500 tonnes, as my colleague Cameron Stewart revealed. Yet it still has the Type 26 propulsion system. As analyst Marcus Hellyer observes, you can’t increase the weight by a quarter without losing significant range and speed. Naturally, the Albanese government decided to abandon navy support and supply ships that would give our surface combatants greater range.
As the Hunter has progressed, not in the physical world but on paper and in digital imagination, it has gobbled up a lot of money, about $8bn so far. By 2021 the estimated cost had blown out to $45bn. In 2023 the Australian National Audit Office produced a report so scathing, so frankly unbelievable in the bad process and wishful thinking it exposed, it was a kind of bureaucracy nightmare porn. Yes, Prime Minister on a heroin trip. It should have been titled 5000 Shades of Grey.

How happy and proud the reptiles were way back when ...

Grand days, and now, petty, parochial poseurs and grandstanders are all the go ... South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas takes a selfie with the crowd assembled for the Hunter-class frigate keel laying ceremony at Osborne Naval Shipyard. Picture: James Elsby

The bromancer maintained his rage ...

This led the government to consider killing the Hunters, which of course it should have done. Instead it cut the order from nine to six. But it has contracted for only three (hopefully the madness ends there). These three are now budgeted at a staggering $27bn, $9bn each, making them among the most expensive ships, with least bang for buck, in human history.
The first is scheduled to be delivered in 2032, which means it might go into service in 2034. If you think that $27bn figure will hold, you want to check who’s drugging your coffee. So a mature design in 2018, for a mere frigate, is going to cost nearly $30bn to deliver just three, 20 years later. It’s a good thing this was an urgent project. I’d hate to see Defence taking their time.
The Hunter is a weird ship for our navy. It has only 32 vertical launch system cells with which to defend itself or inflict damage on any other surface ship. Modern warships of its size tend to have 96 to 112 VLS cells, though big destroyers can have many more. Former chief of the navy, Vice-Admiral David Shackleton, commented: “The Hunters aren’t powerful enough ships for what the navy needs.”
In time, but not yet, unmanned ships, acting as VLS trucks, will become more important. Even our AWDs, which would be described as frigates, not destroyers, anywhere but Australia, have only 48 vertical cells. The Hunter’s defenders claim the VLS number doesn’t matter because you don’t hunt subs with vertical cells. True enough. If Australia had a surface fleet of 40 vessels, a few specialising in anti-submarine warfare might be worthwhile.
But in what possible military context could the Hunter actually be used to hunt and destroy a Chinese nuclear submarine?

At this point the reptiles discovered there had been a brand change ... The Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan condemns Australia’s $27 billion plan for three new frigates, warning the vessels are becoming excessively expensive, heavy and potentially ineffective. “This is a ridiculous project, $27 billion for three frigates; these are the most expensive frigates in the history of the world,” Mr Sheridan told News24 host James Macpherson. “They are now ridiculous ships. “We’re going to get a slow, fat frigate.”

It's a disaster ...

As Michael Shoebridge of Strategic Analysis Australia points out, we’re asked to believe two contradictory propositions. Proposition one: nuclear-powered submarines are the apex predator of the seas, undetectable, unchallengeable. Proposition two: the Hunter frigate, chugging along underpowered and underarmed, can find and destroy any adversary submarine.
The most effective anti-submarine warfare is conducted by other submarines. To have any chance at all a surface ship has to know in advance roughly where the sub it’s going after is located. Genuine anti-submarine combat is very complex, joint, nearly theatre-wide, involving attack submarines, convoy escorts, dedicated aircraft, helicopters, all in large numbers, and vast intelligence resources.
There’s no way the Australian Defence Force, much less the navy, has the mass to provide that context to make dedicated specialist ASW surface ships credible or a good use of resources. We could have built three more AWDs, or indeed bigger ships, at a fraction of the Hunter costs and had them in the water by now. The heavy, ponderous Hunters will move more slowly than the nuclear subs they hunt. When trying to be quiet they will use electric propulsion, making them even slower. If they can detect a state-of-the-art sub, probably that sub can detect them.
There’s only one context in which the Hunters make any sense. If a Hunter were deployed as a niche part of a big US operation, with the Americans providing all the protection, it might be a useful addition, at the margin, to US capability.

And after that mention of the US alliance, and helping out the US, there came a snap of a stray destroyer ...Air Warfare Destroyer HMAS Sydney.

... and the bromancer almost came to the nub of his problem...

No one supports the US alliance more than me.

Cue a little comedy, showing exactly how the the US is an amazing fighting machine, sending those mad Mullahs packing on an almost daily basis, with so much winning... Trump’s Record of Deluded War Boasts Comes Back to Bite Him

The actual graphic didn't make it into the archive, so here's the winning...

And so on, and suddenly the bromancer is all for independence, maybe look after ourselves rather than rely on mad king Donald...

But the real design principle of the ADF is a secret hiding in plain sight, which ought occasionally to be named. The whole ADF is designed not for defence of Australia, nor dominance in our waters, or even really to add strategic weight to US-led deterrence. It’s designed so we can bid to be small but exquisite niche participants in US operations, thereby earning alliance credit.
Thus we produce insanely expensive platforms in tiny numbers with no independent strategic weight.
If we designed the ADF genuinely to have autonomous strategic weight, we’d have a chance of looking after ourselves if necessary and, paradoxically, we’d be more useful allies to the Americans.
The Albanese government, like previous governments, only pretends to focus on defence of Australia. Nonetheless, it has made one good recent decision – to buy 11 Japanese Mogami-class frigates, much smaller than the Hunters, and vastly cheaper, but also with 32 VLS cells, lots of other weapons and a bigger range; and to get at least the first three built in Japan with absolutely minimal design change.
The Albanese government won’t fund defence properly. It fraudulently pretends it can add nuclear submarines to an already woefully inadequate defence budget, which has not moved as a percentage of GDP, and not hollow out the ADF. In that context, imagine what you could do with a spare $27bn.
As Shelley might have said: Look on my works, ye feeble, and despair.

Or you could look on the reptiles' tragic devotion to the alleged US alliance - even after all that the bromancer couldn't renounce it - and have a laugh along with Canadians ... Feuding Ally Plans Street Name Mocking TACO Trump

Not a Natalie Avenue?

Just a thought. Elbows up Canada ...

Finally, the Lord Haw Haws are still at it...

In which the pond does its duty and covers Killer Creighton and Our Henry, but succumbs to climate heresy and the need for a little mad King comedy ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:49:57 +0000

Retreating, collapsing glaciers?

Could that have anything to do with the disaster?

Could climate change and global warming be involved?

Surely not. The pond has faithfully learned the lessons of the lizard Oz team. The Great Barrier Reef is in top notch shape, and so is the weather everywhere.

Sure it gets a little hot at times, but back in 1908 it was very hot, and there was a flood. QED. Climate science is a religious cult.

As for the world's climate, is there really such a thing?

Trust the Beeb to offer up heresy ...

Collapsed glacier likely caused devastating Nepal-Tibet floods, scientists say

Even worse, the pond came across this further down, and began to wonder if the science found in the lizard Oz resembled the science of Ken Ham's young earth creationism...

And so on, and what a relief to turn to Cameron's 'top of the digital page, ma' coverage of the disaster ...

Fresh flood warning for Himalayas as search continues for 34 missing Australians
Nepal’s disaster authority has issued a new alert for the Himalayan border region, as the death toll from Wednesday’s catastrophic glacial flood climbs to 389, and 34 Australians remain unaccounted for.
By Cameron Stewart and Elise Williams

... and find this as the sole mention of climate ...

Experts warned that rescue efforts could be hampered by the threat of a second flood in the region. Qianggong Zhang, head of climate and environmental risks at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, said: “With a blockage still lodged upstream on the Nepal-China border river, authorities warn a second flood may occur.”

And it was the same for the earlier version saved to the intermittent archive.

How about the story immediately below that one, another Cameron effort, written as an evocative colour piece, far from the site of the catastrophe?

INSIDE STORY
Seconds to flee: From Himalayan trek to a tsunami of terror
A global tragedy unfolded faster than anyone could run or think. Dams, power plants and bridges were swept aside in moments.
By Cameron Stewart

Here Cameron excelled himself. Not a single mention of "climate" or "change" or any of that folderol, just a brief mention in an accompanying graphic that "a collapsing glacier may have caused the flooding"... (not in the archived version, but hinting at a climate heresy that will likely remain a mystery to the hive mind) ...

The pond will wait patiently for the lizard Oz explanation that this disaster had absolutely nothing to do with climate change, and in the meantime looked to the infallible Pope for a comment ...

The pond then looked over on the extreme far right and found the usual jihad in play ...

Blaming Aboriginal culture for harm to kids lazy and wrong
Departmental administrative failures, unreturned phone calls, and systemic barriers are preventing willing Indigenous grandparents from caring for kin.
By Megan Davis
Contributor

The pond personally saved that offering to the intermittent archive so it could get on with Killer Creighton's contribution, but what a disappointment it was.

The header: Struggling workers watch their money sustain super rort;With forced savings robbing workers of purchasing power, giving Australians the choice to take 3 per cent as wages is a no-brainer.

The caption for the tired artwork wheeled out by the reptiles again: Senators Pauline Hanson and Andrew Bragg have reignited national debate over Australia’s 12 per cent compulsory superannuation rate. Pictures: News Corp/iStock. Artwork: Debbie Schipp

The pond's disappointment and sense of déjà vu began with the recycled illustration.

The pond thought it had seen it before, and did a visual search, and discovered it had been used in at least one dog botherer story ...

The pond hates to use AI - just a little power and five drops of water used up in a question and the next thing you know glaciers are collapsing in Nepal - but it's everywhere ...

If even AI, dopey most of the time, feels tired and bored and suffused with ennui, imagine how the pond feels.

And that sadly was the only illustration the reptiles deployed in what turned out to be a standard IPA-driven attempt to destroy superannuation.

The pond stood back, the offering being on a par with Killer's Covid fear and panic about masks and vaccines ...

Whatever their personal differences, Pauline Hanson and Andrew Bragg have two admirable things in common: a willingness to speak their minds and the confidence to question one of the great sacred cows of Australian politics – compulsory superannuation.
It’s really no surprise they’ve been attacked. More than $160bn in wages and salaries is siphoned into super accounts every year, generating roughly $34bn in annual system-wide fees. In short, it’s the biggest racket in the country.
Those fees, equivalent to about half the defence budget or the entirety of Victoria’s health spending, may not be counted as taxes, but they might as well be. They sustain a vast bureaucracy that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Most of the $3 trillion in APRA-regulated funds is actively managed when much of it should be sitting in ultra-cheap indexed options, which are conveniently buried in the fine print.
Now, more than ever, the case for reform is overwhelming. Workers are being forced to save too much during the years when they most need that money – to buy a home, raise a family and enjoy life while they are still young enough to do so. The so-called working man’s paradise has increasingly become an economic purgatory, where purchasing power is steadily eroded by higher taxes, inflation and forced saving. Amid the biggest fall in living standards in a generation, the least we could do is give people the option to save a little less now.
Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry – the last truly exceptional and independently minded economist to hold that office – concluded in his 2009 tax review for the Rudd government that the compulsory saving rate should remain at 9 per cent. “This strikes an appropriate balance for most individuals between their consumption opportunities during their working life and compulsory saving for retirement,” he wrote.
That judgment has been vindicated in spades, yet it has been ignored by both major parties, too lazy or too beholden to vested interests to resist the inexorable rise to a ridiculous 12 per cent.
The government itself knows the rate is excessive. In its 2020 Retirement Income Review, Treasury found that when retirees die, most leave behind the majority of the wealth they had at retirement. Members who died had left about 90 per cent of the balance they held at retirement. In other words, retirees tend to live off the income from their assets, not the assets themselves.
Treasury also projected that aggregate death benefits would rise from around one dollar in every five paid out by the super system in 2019 to around one in every three by 2059. That is an absurd outcome. It suggests Australians could enjoy a better quality of life when they are young without materially sacrificing their incomes later in life.
Henry also made a devastating point about the public finances. The system, he said, is a “net cost to government even over the long term”, puncturing the common claim that forced saving somehow saves taxpayers money. As he put it, the loss of income tax revenue from the various concessions would not be fully offset by higher super tax collections or lower Age Pension costs. Put plainly, all other taxes are higher than they need to be because of this system.
There is also a serious governance problem. Big super funds now control almost 40 per cent of the Australian sharemarket, creating an unelected parallel government that votes on company direction according to environmental and social fashions the vast majority of members are unlikely to care much about. As Bragg asked in his National Press Club speech, why tolerate all this complexity when “there is no public finance benefit and minimal personal benefit”? Even “minimal” may be generous.
None of this will be easy to change. Compulsory super is one of the few policies that unites the two most powerful vested interests in the country: the union movement and the finance sector.
But if there were ever a time to push for reform, it is now. People rightly feel poorer. Yet the Prime Minister has been boasting that super could become a “national asset that can be used more appropriately”, while the Treasurer said in 2023 that he hoped to maximise its potential through “greater investment in our national priorities”.
And what exactly does that mean? Five per cent of your retirement savings tipped into Snowy 2.0 or Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop? Of course, allowing workers to withdraw their super balances in full would be unwise. The resulting wall of cash, eagerly leveraged by the banks, would wash into the housing market and drive prices even higher.
But workers should at least be allowed to opt to receive three percentage points of their gross income as wages instead of having it funnelled into super. That would be entirely their choice. It would harm no one else. It is their money, their employer would not care, and it would not cost the budget a cent. If anything, the reverse is true. Australia is the only developed country with a means-tested pension sitting alongside a massive compulsory, privately managed, defined-contribution savings scheme. Rather than congratulating ourselves on how clever that makes us, we might pause to ask why.
Hanson and Bragg deserve credit for reigniting a debate that should have been raging for years. It’s is more than can be said for the dozens of seatwarmers in the upper house. Senators, with their long terms and broad state constituencies, are meant to speak plainly and challenge orthodoxies, not merely parrot party lines. That is what we pay them for. And there is no bigger issue on which to do it than super.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

What else did you expect from Killer of the IPA? Full Pauline, full Bragg, full on destroy super, and all will be well in IPA land, and the sooner we can reduce the country to the sort of impoverished poverty rife in the United States, which keeps grey nomads chained to work into their eighties, all the better for the IPA's sponsors.

And now to a moment the pond regrets:

Alas, that means even fewer reasons to resort to the other rags.

With that farewell done, the pond turned to Our Henry's outing with a deepening sense of regret.

There surely must be better ways to waste time early on a Friday morning, with the stench of real disaster infesting the nostrils...

The header: The ‘implied freedom’ is a recipe for violence; Parliaments are obviously imperfect but that is no excuse for courts to take over their role – and make a mess of it.

The caption for the snap designed to terrify the hive mind: Weekly demonstrations adjacent to St Mary’s Cathedral and the Great Synagogue have raised concerns over worshipper intimidation. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

The pond had wanted to cut straight to the chase with Our Henry, never mind any of the other reptiles competing for attention, but then discovered that the hole in bucket man had wasted a five minute read on legalisms worthy of Dame Slap, and all for the purpose of repressing dissent and protests about the current genocide going down in Gaza and the West Bank.

Has the old codger lost his ancient Thucydides-inspired mojo?

There's the odd flicker here and there, but his contributions to the Australian Daily Zionist News suggest an increasing persecution complex, with layers of paranoia ...

For almost three years, Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher has watched the same scene unfold, week after week, outside St Mary’s Cathedral. Anti-Israel protesters gather in Hyde Park blasting incendiary slogans, some blatantly antisemitic, “through highly amplified megaphones, often pointed directly at the cathedral doors during Sunday liturgies”.
Worshippers, the Archbishop told the Samuel Griffith Society last Saturday, have felt sufficiently intimidated to take other routes or attend services elsewhere.
Fisher’s point is not that political protest should disappear from our streets. It is that a protest that may seem tolerable viewed on a single Sunday assumes a very different character when demonising slogans are incessantly repeated in the park adjacent to the Great Synagogue. And what may be acceptable in times of civic peace can destroy civic peace itself in the wake of a murderous antisemitic attack.
The NSW government has twice tried to meet that danger. In March last year it restored to police the power to move protesters on near places of worship; in October, Lees v State of New South Wales struck that legislation down. After Bondi it acted again, and acted decisively; in April, in Jarrett v State of New South Wales, the Court of Appeal struck down that legislation too.
In doing so, the court exposed a fundamental defect in the “implied freedom of political communication”. Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997), the doctrine’s authoritative restatement, confined the freedom to political communication “necessary for the effective operation” of representative government.
But the formula contains an ambiguity. If the emphasis is placed on “necessary”, it establishes a constitutional minimum: the political communication without which representative government cannot function. If it is instead put on “effective operation”, as the courts have tended to do, the inquiry changes. The question is no longer whether representative government survives, but whether it works as well as it could.
Once courts ask that question, they require some ideal of representative government against which legislative provisions can be assessed. Thirty years of litigation have not resolved the conundrums that poses. Indeed, things have gotten to the point that Steward J has called the doctrine “very wrong” and “just not sustainable”. Yet amid the doctrinal rubble, the implied freedom’s purported reach has continued to grow.

There was just one other snap for the outing, and the caption suggested an AI summary had been employed to expose the paranoia in Our Henry's thinking... Commentary argues the High Court’s implied freedom doctrine undermines parliament’s ability to maintain public order during emergencies. Picture: AAP

Say what? parliament’s ability to maintain public order during emergencies.

Pure Trumpism, that call for public order and the cleansing of the streets ...

Jarrett crystallises that growth’s consequences. The legislation under appeal was enacted barely a week after 15 people were murdered at Bondi. It allowed the police commissioner, with ministerial concurrence, temporarily to prevent public assemblies: 14 days at a time, 90 days at most, and only after the terrorism legislation had first been enlivened.
The court invalidated the scheme. Representative government, it held, “entails acceptance of the potential for disharmony, incivility and disruption that is part and parcel of democratic intercourse”. The state’s contrary argument – that in the aftermath of terrorism, when divisions have escalated into violence, a community may require a measure of civic calm – was dismissed as involving “a particular conception of civic life” at odds with the Constitution.
But what makes the court’s conception any less “particular”? Nothing in historical experience, democratic theory or the Australian Constitution says that representative government requires tolerating the virulent conflict the court embraced.

The pond did pause to note Our Henry's attempts to invoke his grand days, when a heavily thumbed book of quotes was always beside his parchment, as he laboriously copied out sage insights by hand with quill and ink ...

That the court’s approach is arbitrary is unsurprising – and so is the chaos into which the doctrine has descended. The quest for a Platonic ideal of “representative government” against which to measure legislation is intellectually absurd. No such ideal exists.

And Plato wasn't the end of it, but it took a couple of pars to get to the next one ...

Rather, representative government is exactly what philosophers describe as an “essentially contested concept”, whose proper form is a matter of legitimate political disagreement. Yet in Jarrett, parliament’s conception was treated as a political preference while the court’s was elevated into a constitutional truth.
Having thus conjured up its preferred version of what representative government entails, the court then turned to the emergency context. It accepted that the legislature “perceived that community tensions were running high”, and that assemblies might place the community at risk – but held that a terrorist attack “does not make it any more constitutionally permissible” to impose those restrictions.

The next reference was feeble. Might not Our Henry have noted that it's mainly later historians who reference "statis" as a condition, or so the word's wiki suggests ...

However, since antiquity, political thought has recognised the danger the Greeks termed stasis: political antagonism gradually hardening into hatred and hatred then escalating into violence. Democracies cannot be required to await the crisis; they need powers to meet emergencies by law, bounded in advance and strictly limited in time. This scheme easily met those criteria, yet it was knocked back. The court went even further. Quelling political communication “in the interests of protecting another part of the community from a sense of unease or threat (not associated with any proximate physical threat)” is not, it held, a legitimate purpose.

The old rogue really does want the cops out in the streets for a laura norder campaign of the first water:

But murderous violence, such as that at Bondi, does not erupt out of the ether. It breeds wherever a small community is repeatedly demonised and cast outside the moral restraints that prevent disagreement descending into barbarism. That is why, as Fisher insists, the “cumulative effect” matters: repeated protests can impose an “unreasonable burden on the lives and freedoms of others”.
By its nature, that harm is neither proximate nor necessarily physical. Yet on Jarrett it cannot itself justify restricting political communication until the blood, or its immediate threat, runs on the sand and the streets. And because the court held that the vice “lies in the purpose for which the power has been conferred”, rather than in the means by which that purpose was pursued, no amount of redrafting can allow the state to fulfil its utmost duty: to allow all citizens, including Jews, to live, work and pray in peace.
All that is worse than an error; it prevents democratic institutions from performing functions the Constitution entrusts to them.

At last there came a reference to Aristotle...

Freedom, security, social cohesion and equal civic participation cannot be reconciled by formula. Balancing them requires what Aristotle called phronesis: practical judgment, the characteristic virtue of the statesman because it must accommodate competing goods and values as circumstances change. Making those ever-shifting judgments is, in a system of representative government, exactly the task of democratic legislatures.

The pond was inspired to rush off to the word's wiki, and sheesh, Socrates was the first cab off the rank ...

As for Our Henry's thesis?

Nah, not really, give the pond the High Court most days of the week, and the final gobbet did nothing to sway the pond from the notion that demonstrating about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank is a useful enterprise ...

Their responsibility is not to enthrone one freedom above all others; it is, as Fisher argues, to order common life so that all citizens can enjoy the “goods and freedoms necessary to flourish together in community”.
Legislatures can get that balance wrong – but they are accountable to voters and can correct mistakes in the light of social change and practical experience.
By arrogating that role to themselves, courts undermine the institutional division of labour on which representative government rests. Even worse, they expose the community to dangers it should not be forced to bear.
It would, however, be a mistake to blame the NSW courts. The mess is the inexorable result of a doctrine that lacks any limiting principle. The Constitution empowers courts to protect its specification of representative government; it gives them no authority to engage in a quixotic search for democratic utopia, much less to turn the Constitution into a suicide pact. A High Court that ignores that distinction can only destroy the freedom it exists to defend.

The reptiles even went as far as providing a link to the old codger's paranoid cultivation of a sense of crisis ...but not, of course, any sense of crisis involving Gaza and the West Bank, or the ongoing bombing of countries bordering on Israel:

Henry Ergas’s “The implied freedom of political communication and the present crisis” is available at https://www.ruleoflaw.org.au/programs-lecture-2026-ergas-implied-freedom.

After all that, the pond felt the need for a little light relief, and it came via the lizard Oz's stablemate, the WSJ ...

Opinion Unruly Republic
JD Vance Is the GOP’s Obama
He and the former president have much in common. And both disdain Republicans.

And so on, and desperate, richly comic times, and there goes JD ...

...Mr. Vance likes to tout his youth (“don’t hate me”), but he was old enough to follow the news in the 2010s as Mr. Obama attempted to turn U.S. policy away from Israel and draw Iran into the community of peaceable nations. Mr. Obama, too, liked to contrast his practical and interest-based approach to that of his ideology-driven predecessors.

With few exceptions, though, Mr. Obama limited his scoldings to members and administrations of the other party. At the core of Mr. Vance’s message is the repudiation of views allegedly held by both parties, especially his own. In Brewer, Maine, this week, the vice president described that bipartisan “consensus” again, though the caricature has a conspicuously Republican shape to it. What places like Brewer “really needed, they told us”—no prizes for guessing who “they” were—“was just to juice the short-term profits of a few big corporations, that we needed to open that border and prioritize foreign workers over our own citizens. They would cheer on the corporate raiders as they slashed headcount and shifted all those businesses either to foreign countries or brought in illegal aliens to employ.”

Leave the policy argument, if you can call it that, to one side. The lines reveal a man so contemptuous of views different from his own that he can’t be bothered to understand them. Now ponder a future GOP headed by such a person. Mr. Obama at least respected the party he led.

Now there's a country rich in internal wars, splitters, schisms and schismaics.

Mad king Donald is also a reliable daily source of rich comedy.

There's the renaming of the lake, which suggests that the demented mango Mussolini has regressed to childhood, and the level of a primary school bully ...

And there was this ...

White House Roasted After Embarrassing Canada Fail

Luckily the CBC could help out with that one.

Elbows up Canada ...

In which the pond offers plenty of links for dedicated herpetologists, but proposes this is another dud reptile Thursday ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 21:26:06 +0000

After a flirtation with the dangerously "woke" deceased songbird - so much talk of loving the world and doing good and gay rights and black lives matter - the reptiles had another chance to take a walk on the wild side with the death of Tim Curry.

What with a hint of the gay, the trans and the exotic, the reptiles could have shown they knew how to do Jim Sharman's walk.

Instead they dropped poor old Tim way down the page, with a piece borrowed from The Times:

OBITUARY
Rocky Horror’s Tim Curry dies aged 80
Tim Curry played the transvestite Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show with an erotic villainy that inspired cult fandom.
By The Times

It seems a bit of cross dressing is good enough for your average dinkum footballer, but might be too much for the hive mind.

Sheesh, and the pond had wanted to boast it had been to the Grand Old Opry and not just at the wretched new theatre but at the Ryman Auditorium, heart of Nashville. You can take the pond out of Tamworth, but you can't take the Tamworth out of ...

Instead, for a lead, the reptiles went with the Nepal flash flood and a gif of disaster porn...

But no need to cross the paywall for that story, it can be found elsewhere, even if "Briton" takes the place of "Aussies" ....

After that, the reptiles reverted to their usual wretched standard form of a propaganda sheet, boasting of their triumph in inducing an attack on dangerous furriners ...

EXCLUSIVE
Labor to unveil migration crackdown targeting students, visitor visas
Amid pressure from One Nation, the Albanese government is finalising sweeping changes focusing on international students, visitor visas and onshore applications.
By Geoff Chambers and Noah Yim

The pond has to be indefatigable in labelling Geoff as indefatigable, but that's because he seems to have a first mortgage on double barrelled appearances at the top of the digital news, ma ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Can Labor pull off its 'tough on immigration' act?
When Labor’s final migration package is released next month, expect more of a feather duster than the big stick One Nation and the Coalition have advocated.

It's posed as a question, but Geoff and his shottie have already determined the answer ...

...As The Australian revealed this week, the Australian Border Force is finally pursuing unmanned drones to keep watch over the country’s vast ocean approaches.
Yet while monitoring illegal fishers and people-smugglers is vital, the Albanese government must impose greater authority over the country’s visa rules, have the courage to remove illegal overstayers taking advantage of Australia’s generosity and stop the rorting that has dominated sections of the traditionally lucrative international student market.

The Australian Zionist Daily News was also busy ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Job not done’: Bondi families lead royal commission cry
Bondi bereaved, Holocaust survivors call for extended antisemitism inquiry
Holocaust survivors, Bondi victims’ families and former prime ministers have joined calls to demand the inquiry be expanded, concerned by its failure to call vital witnesses.
By James Dowling and Elizabeth Pike

Even as the Royal Commission announced the last public hearings and the date for the delivery of findings, discreetly after the anniversary of the massacre, the reptiles were still bleating for more.

This handily sets them up for an extended bout of rage and pique in December when the findings and recommendations were announced.

Over on the extreme far right there was more ...

What kind of country will my grandson inherit?
As the royal commission ends, Australia too faces a moment of decision.
By Yehoram Ulman
Contributor

Petulant Peta also joined in the wailing.

The pond usually tries to avoid the petulant one, and this guaranteed it ...

Bondi’s dead deserved a forensic inquiry
Not only is this royal commission one of the shortest in history but the elephant in the room, radical Islam, barely had a look-in.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

Division, hate and fear and loathing, it's the staple diet for the monoculture hive mind ... and it was enough to make the pond personally entomb the petulance in the intermittent archive.

As usual, as a form of balance, at this point the pond usually turns to Haaretz to wonder what sort of country the residents of Gaza and the West Bank - and Israel generally for that matter - might inherit...

Netanyahu Guards Pointing Assault Rifles at Beachgoers Shows How He Sees Israeli Civilians

And again ...

A Moderate Arab Leader Spoke of A Palestinian State. Israeli Politicians Didn't Listen to a Word

Sheesh, what a depressing read that one was.

If you went beyond that screen cap, you copped this ...

At his party's convention on Saturday, Abbas spoke of the need for collegial cooperation among the Arab parties. Notably, he talked about joining the coalition and the government – as in taking ministerial portfolios, something Arab parties have traditionally declined to do.
He then uttered the supposedly fireball words: "The Palestinian State exists and is standing; all the world recognizes it except the U.S. and Israel. God willing, they will recognize it. This is the kind of peace," he said, waving his finger at the audience with gravitas, "that will guarantee the end of the conflict, the end of the occupation, and achieve reconciliation and peace between the Palestinian people and the Israeli people."
The horror. Under his leadership, the United Arab List has more than lived up to the model of the perfect Arab citizen that Zionist Israelis say they long for. His party has embraced political integration. He considered crossing lines from the opposition to join Netanyahu's coalition long before Benny Gantz put out embarrassing ads about breaking through the pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs (to be fair, Gantz did cross those lines for a unity coalition in 2020 and got burned).
Mansour Abbas led the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli coalition in 2021, putting the occupation on a back burner. He withstood endless debate and much criticism in the Arab political community for breaking taboos; he also earned a core voter base worth about five seats and gave voice to the consistent majority among Arabs who want an Arab party to join coalitions.
Most recently, he broke with the Islamic roots of the party and wooed a mainstream Jewish lawmaker from the heartland of centrist Israel – Yoav Segalovitz, a former senior police official – to consider joining his list of candidates. In other words, Abbas is a leader.
The pragmatic, accommodationist yet confident personality of an Arab political leader sends shivers through the ruling fanatical right wing. They really need Arab politicians to be radical Palestinian nationalists whom they can accuse of being ISIS or Nukhba, to prop up their flaccid polls with fear. Instead, Abbas insists on looking like a cross between Santa Claus and a teddy bear. Like nearly all Palestinian citizens of Israel, Abbas also has an impeccable record of having nothing to do with terror.
No matter – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rhetorical firing squad went to town on him for daring to mention peace, reconciliation and a Palestinian state. This is not unlike Netanyahu's 2011 fit against then-U.S. president Barack Obama for the crime of stating that a two-state solution would be based on the 1967 borders (the Green Line) – a great big duh.
Not even a nation
Netanyahu's current tirade included tired slogans that a Palestinian state would be controlled by Iran, or that it would be a "terror state," in the words of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Minister of Annexation (my designation) Bezalel Smotrich tried to bully the opposition parties into disavowing Abbas and declaring their support for his plan to build up E1 once and for all. That's the strip of land outside Jerusalem cutting off the West Bank from north to south, seen as a death knell for a Palestinian state. Pretty much everyone ignored him.
This anti-Palestinian-state screed followed on the heels of last week's statements by David Yosef, Israel's Chief Sephardi Rabbi, that the Palestinian "rabble" is not even a nation and never will be.
But Netanyahu's primary target was not actually Abbas; it was his greatest opposition challenger at present, Gadi Eisenkot. "The price of a left-wing coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood has once again been exposed," said Netanyahu. "These are the partners of Eisenkot ... who boycott Likud voters but welcome supporters of [Arab party leader Ahmad] Tibi." Netanyahu has been doing this for months, hoping to rally anti-Arab hatred to drive voters toward the far right and prevent such a dastardly coalition.
Here is where things got exciting: Eisenkot seized the moment. He boldly called Netanyahu's bluff and said yes! You're right, you incompetent, criminal, boomer loser. I see all partners for a better Israel as my political partners; I see all citizens as equals and embrace an optimistic future of cooperation instead of corruption. Your leadership brought disaster.
Palestinian statehood alongside Israel will release Palestinians from decades of misery, while liberating our children and grandchildren from the curse of being occupiers and improving Jewish-Arab relations here in Israel. I support that future of peace and reconciliation that Abbas, my future partner, courageously embraces.
I, Dahlia, also have a bridge to sell you. What Eisenkot actually said could not have been more disappointing for anyone still hoping for a leader. He simply parroted the line Netanyahu has been saying at least since 2015: "There will be no Palestinian state."

No wonder the pond prefers to do the walk with Tim ...

As for the rest of the extreme far right in the lizard Oz, it was equally depressing ...

Jack the Insider decided to take a snort in the nostrils ...

The Swans scandal strips bare our nation’s cocaine addiction
Australia’s huge appetite for cocaine exists in a chicken and egg paradox.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

But how are footballers going to enjoy a little cross dressing and stripper times without a snort?

Throw in another contribution to a standard reptile jihad ...

Protecting Indigenous kids can’t always be the government’s job
Some Indigenous leaders are making it harder for child protection workers to do their jobs.
By Patrick Parkinson
Contributor

And that was about it ...

The pond has assembled the links - personally arranged a number of them - and dedicated herpetologists must arrange time for some private study.

No chance to celebrate comedy items, though there were plenty to be found ...

White House Called Out for Embarrassing U.S. Map Mistake (*intermittent archive link)

Elbows up Canada ...the pond has dealt with loons for decades, and now it's your unfortunate turn.

No chance to wonder about AI and the fate of the planet, no chance to celebrate the workings of the NT and Queensland governments, as the infallible Pope and more generally, Wuerker did ...

The pond apologises for its lack of interest in the lizard Oz offerings this day, but did do a deeper dive into the lizard Oz editorialist's offering.

It's no recompense, some might construe it as a bloody insult, but the pond was reminded yet again that Thursdays have always been the bleakest day in the reptile calendar...

The lizard Oz editorialist continued the current reptile jihad, and pretty much summed up all the pond had ignored above...

They really are busy setting up the final report and its recommendations for a slagging, and endless Xmas hysteria.

The lizard Oz editorialist also continued a much loved jihad, attacking the government on matters economic ...

Sure, it's framed as a "challenge" but in the land of the jihadists, this government has been a failure, is a failure, and will continue to be a failure, except in the matter of gambling reforms, where they have done just what the football mob and the Murdoch tabloids wanted them to do.

Finally, there was a rousing call to arms, even as the pond had noted, courtesy of Haaretz, the way the current government treats civilians ...

Once again Wilcox entered this dangerous territory ...

The pond guesses that at this point she doesn't have much to lose, even as she reminds the pond that her departure will produce a loss.

Here's hoping she finds a new home and fresh enthusiasm for the many tasks still at hand, including the need to wander into dangerous territory ...

Depressing times, depressing days, how the pond hates Thursdays ...

It's way past time for a bit of ancient kink.

Poor Jim Sharman, not only did he get dudded on a share of the profits, it also overshadowed all his other achievements ... (one of the pond's favourite moments in life was when it secured a painting Jim had been eyeing off).

Shed tears with the bromancer, or shed tears at reading "Ned"? It's a teary sort of reptile day ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 21:56:37 +0000

On its road trip across the United States, the pond fully intended to get to Dollywood, and drove up the road to the main entrance, only to discover it was closed.

It was a bitter disappointment, and the pond's only Dolly anecdote. The pond did make it to Gracelands, and took away the lesson that you can never have enough TV sets ...

It's a measure of Dolly's place that for a nanosecond the lizard Oz abandoned its sundry
top of the digital "news" jihads to go all in on Dolly ...

Agreed, it was a lot of borrowed plumage, from the likes of The Times and AFP, but at least they had a go...

No need to bother with the reptile coverage, there were tributes all over the place, and outside paywalls...

Just below all that however, the Australian Daily Zionist News went about its usual business ...

EXCLUSIVE
Top brass issue plea to extend Bondi royal commission
Antisemitism royal commission a ‘lost opportunity’ without an extension: security chiefs
Thirty of Australia’s most eminent national security leaders, including former governor-general David Hurley, say the inquiry could be a ‘lost opportunity’ unless urgently extended.

By James Dowling

The reptiles want it to go on forever, an endless treasure trove of daily Zionist news.

For news of a fanatical religious zealot at work you had to head off to Haaretz...

Down below that the lizard Oz added other jihads to the day's offerings...

Eek, is that the poodle?

The indefatigable Geoff was at it again ...

EXCLUSIVE
PM, Treasurer face internal unrest, as business chiefs slam mediocrity
The Business Council of Australia has warned Anthony Albanese that Australia’s ‘mediocre’ global competitiveness ranking must be urgently reversed as Labor MPs voice internal budget concerns.
By Geoff Chambers and Sarah Ison

In the full header, the reptiles made clearer their targets ...

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers face internal unrest, as business chiefs slam mediocrity

Could it be that the reptiles manage to label so many stories as EXCLUSIVE because nobody else can be fagged to join their assorted crusades?

As usual Geoff wielded a double barrelled shottie and chambered another shell ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Business leaders flirt with Labor after being dumped by conservatives
Union leaders don’t blanket Coalition governments with compliments when the conservatives are in power. They go for the jugular. So why is the Business Council love-bombing Labor?

The pond felt the urgent need for a bit of relieving business humour ...

Go sandgropers.

Just as tiresome as the chambering Chambers was Dame Slap, raging over on the extreme far right ...

The merit myth: Labor’s public service hiring policy is a joke
The Albanese government is making a mockery of the merit principle within the Australian Public Service.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

The obvious irony is the entirely meritless Dame Slap rabbiting on about merit, but the only thing to note here was the way that the reptiles traduced a fine Brit sitcom, as if trading off on that made Dame Slap less of a prat ...

The day the humourless Dame Slap manages to match Yes Minister will be the day she resigns from the lizard Oz.

She's in the intermittent archive, personally placed there by the pond for any stray masochist, though perhaps they should try the Percy Grainger solution and get a nice bit of birch for their daily flagellation fix ...

It's difficult to imagine anyone being more tiresome and more humourless than Dame Slap, but Linda somehow manages it ...

My search for justice in the Higgins saga is at a tipping point
I will enter mediation with the government ready to resolve the case on fair terms. If that’s not possible, I look forward to going to court.
By Linda Reynolds
Contributor

For the love of the long absent lord, just go away.

Still making it all about "me, me, me", as if she's the one that was raped.

It was with particular relish that the pond personally stored her in the intermittent archive.

Fortunately, as he often does, the bromancer turned up to save the pond's day.

(Would he adopt the new argot of referring to Lake Ontario as Lake America?)

The header: Will Donald Trump walk the talk on Iranian sanctions? The US President bombed Tehran while letting it sell oil abroad – now he is betting the toughest sanctions ever imposed can force open the Strait of Hormuz.

The caption for the snap of the gesticulating mango monster: US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday (AEST). Picture: AFP

The pond has taken particular pleasure in the way that the bromancer of late has seen the scales fall from his eyes, his hopes dashed by his Faux Noise kissing cousins' preferred authoritarian leader ...

Can Donald Trump possibly do to the Iranian regime – namely compel it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz unconditionally – by economic sanctions what he has signally failed to do by military strike?
First, it’s the right tactic for the US. A maximum economic boycott, sanction and blockade of Iran should have preceded military action. For most of the time the US was bombing Iran, it actually allowed Iran to continue exporting its oil, apparently out of a desire to minimise disruption to global energy markets.
Now, Trump says, he will impose the toughest economic conditions on Iran ever seen.
The critical question is whether Washington can get Iran’s most important trade partners – China, Turkey, Russia and the Gulf states themselves – to enforce the US sanctions regime.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared: “Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States. An economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.”

To help out the hive mind, the reptiles introduced a graphic so that the readership wouldn't replicate the ignorance of Americans in vox pops when asked a geography question ...

The bromancer kept trying to talk up the notion that the mad King had hit on the right tactic, and - even more risibly - that Bessent had left a shred of personal credibility:

It’s noteworthy that the White House got Bessent to make the announcement. He and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are the two cabinet secretaries with the greatest personal credibility. Though passing all the Trump loyalty tests, the two rarely speak in the hyperbole-charged MAGA Trump dialect of often hallucinatory exaggeration and wish fulfilment.

Is that the same loon who joined mad King Donald in doing battle with the bond markets, perhaps even sending in the military?

...Bessent’s bond market intervention is a signal that “Washington is increasingly uncomfortable with soaring long-term borrowing costs,” said Axel Rudolph, the chief technical analyst at the investing and trading platform IG.
Bessent’s attempts to battle the financial markets are ironic, as he worked alongside Soros when he beat the Bank of England and forced the pound to crash out of the European exchange rate mechanism in 1992.
That drama, which became known as Black Wednesday, showed how hard it is for a government to defend a currency when investors believe it is overvalued.
But despite that experience, Bessent took part in a joint operation with Japan to prop up the yen earlier this month – seemingly to prevent Tokyo selling US bonds to fund yen purchases.
“The irony of the guy working for Soros and Druckenmiller who broke the Bank of England back in 1992 pretending that you can do FX intervention alone, and lastingly defend a currency, is just amazing,” Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute and an expert on the Japanese economy, told the Financial Times earlier this month.

But the penny had to drop and it did so quickly, with a "nonetheless" billy goat butt ...

Nonetheless, the plain truth is the Trump administration, for all its bellicose bluster, has a very feeble record of enforcing so-called secondary sanctions; that is, sanctions against third nations that trade with the primary subject of the sanction itself, in this case Iran.
Although Trump likes to wield economic instruments of state power, this circumstance exposes his own distinctive weaknesses. Sanctions that are meant to cripple a nation should be a very rare policy effort. They work much better if they are multilateral rather than unilateral.
An earlier president, a George W. Bush, say, would have brought a formidable posse of allies with him in the Iran operation. Trump instead insults and alienates allies, often imposes absurd tariffs on their economies, and then is surprised that they are slow to respond to his calls for support.
Trump’s general proposition, that the US has done the lion’s share of security work and allies such as the European NATO members and Australia, are, if not free-riders, certainly not pulling their weight, is true. His demand that US allies do more on defence is thoroughly justified. Australia is among those doing very little, notwithstanding the AUKUS agreement.
And it was certainly a mistake for some European allies to prevent the US even using its own military bases in Europe to conduct the initial campaign against Iran. Even the Albanese government, no profile in courage by any standard, nonetheless in contrast to most of the Europeans gave in-principle support to the initial US operation.

Insults allies? Oh come now, surely not ...

Sorry, at this point the reptiles actually dropped in another geography lesson, with little pop ups, though the pond could only be bothered with one example ...

The bromancer wended on down his gloomy path ...

Still, it’s an absolute failure of Trump’s to persuade allied opinion, much less international opinion generally, either to support the military campaign or now to support the sanctions campaign.
Trump has discredited many of these economic instruments through his promiscuous, chaotic and endlessly changing deployment of them. The Wall Street Journal is surely right to label the tariff slugfest Trump has initiated with Canada, for example, as “the dumbest trade war in history”.
Because Trump never abides by a trade deal for more than a few months, and is always wanting to reopen any deal, engage in new threats, impose new tariffs, international actors, allies and adversaries, have grown very wary of putting any faith at all in any trade arrangement, even a sanctions arrangement, that Trump proposes.
Moreover, Trump’s wildly gyrating rhetoric on Iran, his near constant alternating announcements of peace at hand or the biggest military offensive since World War II – neither of which has ever eventuated – has destroyed Washington’s credibility on Iran across the board.

At this point the reptiles introduced an image which was perhaps a metaphor for mad king Donald, as well as for the lizard Oz and the bromancer, raging at clouds... Project not found

The pond has every confidence it would have been as tedious as the previous two geography lessons ...

Adversaries are not intimidated, allies are not inspired.
Even more important, it’s clear that Trump, for the moment at least, cannot coerce Beijing to do, or refrain from doing, anything. Trump imagined a brutal US-China trade war, which he thought he would quickly win because the US is a bigger market for China than China is for the US.
Instead, Beijing achieved “escalation dominance” by cutting off supply of rare earths and critical minerals that, with astute strategic planning, it had developed a near global monopoly in. Many of the weapons Trump has used against Iran depend on Chinese critical minerals. Since the critical minerals episode, Trump has ceased making any threats against China at all.
All the way through the Ukraine conflict and the Iran conflict, Beijing has flouted any US sanctions and provided critical trade, money and technology to both Iran and Russia.
Far from subjecting China to secondary sanctions, Trump has not even made this a significant issue in the bilateral US-China relationship. Similarly, Trump is once more courting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Kim too flouts all American sanctions without adverse consequence.
For all that, the Iranian economy is certainly a desperate mess. It may be that at some point Tehran seeks an accommodation, even if the US-led sanctions are not watertight. But the Iranian government is now more hardline and determined than before Trump began his military operation.
It still looks likely this messy impasse has a long way to run.

Relax bromancer, there are new wars to be fought, and what a triumph they are.

How long since anyone mentioned the Epstein files, as opposed to trying to work out the one night Melania stayed over in the White House in the last year?

A friend sent this clipping from Zuck's ravaging of minds:

At this point the pond should note the presence of the swishing Switzer, another reptile the pond personally consigned to the intermittent archive.

After Tampa: How Australia became the model for border protection
What all the critics underestimated was how important deterrence of unauthorised maritime arrivals would become to the integrity of Australia’s immigration settlement.
By Tom Switzer
Contributor

The pond had no time for his nonsense, because he failed to explain how the integrity of the Australian system managed to allow in the likes of the floodwater-whispering Caterist and Switzer ...

The pond also knows what he's trying to do ... reassure punters drawn towards Gina's pet, but how can a ponderous, pompous drongo inclined to drivel match the immortal Rowe and Golding?

And so to the bonus.

Instead of the swishing Switzer, the pond turned to the man most likely to fulfil the pond's ambitions for its correspondents ... to make them so bored and so appalled that they resolved never to read another reptile emanating from the lizard Oz...

The header: Too punitive, too weak: our free speech dilemma; Section 18C is a bad law that has many defenders. But defending a bad law only guarantees social dissent.

The caption for the two snaps: Pauline Hanson and Mehreen Faruqi.

"Ned" arrived late to this reptile jihad, as he often does, and then spent a bigly five minutes bloviating on the right of reptiles to insult minorities and deploy the race card with impunity, Bolter style:

Free speech in Australia is trapped in a damaging legal bind – it is both too punitive and too weak, locked in a maze that damages our society, with politicians, parliaments and judges apparently unable to settle on urgently needed improvement mechanisms.
Pauline Hanson is moving towards centre stage. She seeks leave to appeal to the High Court, having been found by the Federal Court to be in breach of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and if the case proceeds the High Court will rule for the first time on this provision. It follows years of fruitless political dispute about section 18C.
Consider the disreputable condition of the country on free speech. Hanson’s comment that Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi should pack her bags and “piss off back to Pakistan”, while impolite, is deemed to be illegal in Australia; while pro-Palestinian demonstrations demanding the elimination of Israel “From the river to the sea” along with calls to “Globalise the intifada” – encouraging the murders of Jews – are permitted and apparently beyond the reach of our laws. A good and decent society is broken under such inconsistency and hypocrisy.
How we got here is a complex story. How we escape is equally complex but must begin with recognition of our dilemma.

What a fatuous attempt at both siderism, what a typical Australian Daily Zionist News ploy.

At the heart of "Ned's" blather? The usual images designed to terrify the hive mind: A Pro-Palestine demonstration marches through Melbourne’s CBD. Picture: David Crosling

"Ned" kept up an incessant whining and moaning, in a bid to outdo Linda:

Section 18C is a bad law that has many defenders. But defending a bad law only guarantees social dissent. Sadly, it is an article of faith for the Labor Party. The law proscribes race-based speech likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate”, with its critics saying the bar is set far too low. Former Liberal attorney-general George Brandis branded the provision a “grotesque limitation” on free speech and invoked George Orwell to say it was a device to channel how people thought. The Abbott government arrived in 2013 determined to reform the provision. It had plenty of intellectual support.
Former NSW Supreme Court chief justice Jim Spigelman said: “The freedom to offend is an integral component of freedom of speech. There is no right not to be offended. I am not aware of any international human rights instrument, or national anti-discrimination statute in another liberal democracy, that extends to conduct that is merely offensive.” He said “offend” and “insult” impinged on free speech in a way “humiliate” and “intimidate” did not. Former human rights commissioner Sev Ozdowski said a threshold at “offend” was too low and contributed to distrust.
But Labor was unmoved and crushed Tony Abbott’s reform. It branded the proposals a surrender to racism and racists. Labor made the debate about racism, not free speech – a winning play. The Abbott government, hindered by its political ineptitude, had no chance. As prime minister Abbott beat a retreat, with public opinion, the ethnic lobby and many Liberals forming a tidal wave of opposition.
Claims by right-wing ideologues that Abbott had “chickened out” were nonsense. Abbott lost in the parliament and with the public, and nothing has changed to this day. There is no way the parliament will reform section 18C. Any effort by the Liberal Party or Abbott to reignite the issue these days would be blind folly.

As if defending the onion muncher wasn't bad enough, the reptiles flung in a couple of wild cards ... Former Attorney General Senator George Brandis; Retired NSW Supreme Court chief justice Jim Spigelman

How desperate is it? "Ned" has to defend that tired old racist trope about furriners needing to pack their bags and piss off back home, the sort of lowbrow humour and vicious personal insult you might find in a pathetic blog when talking about the likes of the swishing US Switzer and the quarry-whispering Pom Caterist:

But events have given Hanson a fresh opportunity. After Queen Elizabeth died, Faruqi, in a classic insight into the Greens, said: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples.” An angry Hanson responded: “Your attitude appals and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan.”
Having lost two cases in the Federal Court, Hanson said she was going to the High Court to protect free speech. Abbott was supportive. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke was true to form: he played the race card: “If the Liberal Party thinks there should be more racist things they’re allowed to say, tell us what they are.”
But constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey criticised the Federal Court and has raised doubts about the constitutional validity of section 18C, saying the treaty on which it relies, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, does not seem to include the low-level conduct that 18C outlaws. The treaty deals with far more serious offences. Constitutional lawyer Louise Clegg said in The Spectator last month she believed the High Court would invalidate section 18C.
A victory for Hanson would be a remarkable event, securing the victory the Coalition had long unsuccessfully sought. Hanson would become a political heroine. It would be a devastating blow for Labor – being exposed for running repeated campaigns attacking the critics for promoting racism only to finish up humiliated by relying for decades on a provision found to be unconstitutional.

And of course the reptiles would be right on board, because how sweet it would be to add new layers of racism and bigotry to their unrelenting campaigns about furriners, Islamics and the like.

Catholic fundamentalist bigots of the onion munching, mother England worshipping kind would have a field day ... Liberal Party Federal President Tony Abbott

"Ned" decided to echo the Nazi card ...

Of course, none of this may happen – yet the stakes are high, legally and politically. Meanwhile, at the Samuel Griffth Society conference last week, Federal Court judge Ian Jackman said the nation’s current crisis over social cohesion and antisemitism should provoke an “intellectual stocktaking” and a revision of the High Court’s 30-year-old implied freedom of political communications.
Jackman argued that contemporary judges, notably the NSW Court of Appeal, influenced by the “implied freedom” judgment, were stopping parliaments, notably the Minns government in NSW, from enacting laws to better protect the Jewish community and the wider public. He stated the obvious: that Australia is now “a severely fractured and divided society” far different from the Australia of 30 years ago when the High Court handed down this judgment.
“It would not have occurred to Australians in the 1990s that other Australians would abuse their freedom of political communication to publicly intimidate and vilify Jews,” Jackman said. “The idea that that might have taken place on the campus of the University of Sydney for weeks on end was simply unthinkable. Back then, we associated that behaviour with Nazi thugs in the Germany of the 1930s. There are many, probably the vast majority, who regard it as their democratic duty to stand against this hatred and wickedness and, if they can, to stop it.”

Actually muh lud, if the pond might be so bold, back in the 1930s, a reptile hero thought that Adolf was the really great man of the century, doing great things ...

Still no news of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, a kind of modern times Kristallnacht?

To bring the pond down, the reptiles flung in a snap of the beefy boofhead, though seeing how despondent and bemused he looked did restore spirits a little ... Angus Taylor during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

To cap it all off, "Ned" had the cheek to talk about damaging the best interests of "our society", while scribbling for a rag that's part of a foreign-owned empire that has done its very best to debase public discourse, not least by mounting relentless jihads on anyone who has the temerity to disagree with them...

Yet efforts by the NSW parliament to limit public assembly for a temporary period in the aftermath of a terrorist attack were denied by the court, which said preserving social cohesion in this matter was not a constitutionally legitimate purpose. The reality today, nine months after the Bondi massacre, is that the NSW government and parliament are not able to apply the curbs and limits they want on demonstrators who openly promote antisemitism and advocate violence against Israel and Jews.
Jackman delivered two strong messages. First, that this change in Australia’s life should drive the High Court into a “prompt reconsideration of the proper limits to our general freedom of political communication”; and second, that the appropriate branch of government to determine those limits is the parliament, not the judiciary. He said some people might admire the “dogmatism” of the High Court but the parliament had “wider and deeper sources” of information in terms of gauging and acting on the risks to the public. These included advice from the executive, the police and multiple viewpoints.
After 30 years it is unrealistic to expect the High Court to abandon its “implied freedom” doctrine but Jackman has made a convincing case for a revision to this doctrine and for the judiciary to recognise the balance between freedom and protection is essentially a political decision, best made by parliaments, not judges. Until that is accepted, misplaced and outdated views of freedom will damage the better interests of our society.

Actually, it's perfectly easy to point out things in a polite way, as shown by the immortal Rowe ...

What a reference to the pond's favourite painting, seen many a time on many trips to the NGV ...

Sadly the reptiles downplayed the fuss, apparently on the basis that there's no point in exercising freedom of speech unless that freedumb conforms to the usual reptile jihads about the endless sufferings of big business.

See if you can spot a grim-faced "Ned" in the crowd ...he's old enough and grey enough ...

And now a little quavering, wavering Dolly, worthy of a lived Tamworth experience ...

A late arvo post dedicated to Liberal party cultists ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Here's the problem.

Not a major problem, more molehill than mountain, but it's been torturing the pond.

The pond realises that the other place (aka the Nine rags) are a disgrace, what with their letting Wilcox go, but they've been running some very titillating material.

There's no way that the pond can so a segue from its lizard Oz herpetology studies to the material - the reptiles of Oz insist on filling the pond to the brim with their rantings and ravings.

And yet for context it's important to see what they omit from their jihads.

The only solution was a late arvo post, a very rare occurrence in the pond of late.

Some of the intrigue arises from the Nine rags' ongoing coverage of the ICAC saga.

If you stick to the lizard Oz, you'd be completely unaware of it happening.

And yet what a nest of vampires has been exposed to sunlight, what rats in the ranks are being uncovered ...

‘Untrustworthy, lying’: ICAC witness Chris Spence unloads on key Reformer

The rag boasts that it has "Sydney’s best coverage of the ICAC inquiry", but that wouldn't be hard, because rather like the government's feeble attempt at regulating betting advertising, it's been ghosted by the reptiles of the lizard Oz.

Even more intriguing for the pond has been the co-joining of two of the pond's favourite topics, a religious cult, and the beefy boofhead, not to mention the onion muncher and the Nazis.

The Nine rags have feasted on it ...

Angus Taylor organised taxpayer grants for Brethren charity backing Pollie Pedal (*intermittent archive link)

The beefy boofhead loves himself the religious zealots ...but no wonder he wanted to brush aside a discussion of the church.

As an institution, it's inclined to the barking mad ...

Who are the Brethren and what do they believe in?

Here's how to downsize a world of bigotry, prejudice and pain ...

...the group has traditional gender norms that dictate the roles of women and what jobs they can take. The moral behaviour expected of members is very high. And how they police their boundaries can be stricter and more punitive than other Christian groups.
Those who leave the Brethren have a very difficult and painful experience because they are essentially shunned, cut off from their families.

In a way worthy of a theologian, Bernard Doherty offered an alternative label for the cult ...

...I don’t consider the term “cult” to be helpful as a way of understanding the group. The Brethren could be classified, from a sociological perspective, as an “introversionist sect”, though essentially they are just another conservative, evangelical Protestant denomination.

Say what? “introversionist sect”?

Fancy words for a cult.

Nah, the pond is good with "cult", but does appreciate that attempt to water down the cult into just another brand of Protestantism ...

The pond supposes it's just like saying that the Inquisition was essentially just another conservative Catholic activity...

The beefy boofhead loves himself some cult ...

“We’re being supported by the Rapid Relief Team, and they are an extraordinary group of people,” Taylor said. “Rapid Relief supports state emergency services, state rural fire service organisations across this country, and they do an extraordinary job. And I’m very proud to have been served by them, and I saw them starting up in my own electorate after the Yass fires back in 2013.
Exclusive Brethren secretly paid far-right activists to perform stunts disrupting the federal election
“They have been there every time when there has been a flood, when there has been a fire. We saw Lily Hooper, the very tragic death of a girl in my electorate in the Nattai National Park [south-west of Sydney] just last week, they were out there.
“RRT was out there, supporting our emergency service organisations. That is an extraordinary organisation, and I am very sure many Labor members have been supported by that same organisation because of the great work they [the RRT] do.”
Records kept by the federal government show the Rapid Relief Team won dozens of government grants across the country, worth $680,000 between 2020 and 2023 under a program in which the local MP selected the recipients and invited them to apply.
In Taylor’s seat of Hume, the Brethren charity won its first grant, for $22,000 – the maximum available – to buy a coolroom trailer in 2021 to “facilitate the safe distribution of food to the community”. Two years later, the charity in Hume received another $11,000 for a coffee trailer to “support emergency services and the community”.
In its latest financial statement, the Rapid Relief Team reported a surplus of $263,105, and a retained surplus of $4.6 million.

Nice work if you can get it.

That reminds the pond of its Marxist friends, who somehow managed to acquire very tasty Sydney properties ...free the workers, and free the rental market.

The beefy boofhead's friends rallied to the cult ...

There is no suggestion that Taylor knew of or supported the Brethren payments to far-right figures. But after this masthead revealed these details of the Brethren campaign, Byron Fay, executive director of political funding group Climate 200, referred the church to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission for investigation.
During a parliamentary hearing on Friday into electoral matters, Liberal MPs and Nationals leader Matt Canavan sympathised with the Brethren’s view that the questions they were being asked about the group’s role in the election were examples of religious discrimination.
Later, Coalition MPs published a dissenting response, accusing the Labor-helmed committee of running a “witch-hunt against people of faith and people who just happen to have the temerity to oppose Labor’s agenda”.

And that brings the pond to the Nazi splash.

How could the pond resist that sort of offering?

Brethren feed Angus Taylor, Tony Abbott days after Nazi revelations
Michael Bachelard (*intermittent archive link)

Talk about juicy ...

He fell off his bike on the first day?

Do go on ...and the pond will accept repetitions in the recitation ...

The pond misses so much stuff by sticking to the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

This was so rich the pond couldn't resist diving into the pool for a final splash, rather like Scrooge McDuck taking a swim amongst all the coins and the folding stuff ...

...Almost all their activities are directed towards helping their own members, not the public.
The church’s spokesman, Lloyd Grimshaw, on Friday denied before a parliamentary committee the church had anything to do with commissioning or paying for the far-right stunts, or election campaign canvassing in general.
Calling it “bizarre” that he was required to answer questions on the matter, he said the thousands-strong, co-ordinated effort at polling booths by Brethren members was simply a volunteering exercise by individual parishioners.
Climate 200 disagreed in its letter to the charities commission. “The synchronised scale, geographic uniformity, and organisational backing suggest institutional co-ordination rather than purely independent, individual volunteering,” Fay wrote in his complaint.
The chair of the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters, Labor MP Jerome Laxale, who is leading the grilling of the church over its election involvement, told this masthead that Grimshaw’s evidence before the committee “leaves me with more questions than answers”.
Grimshaw told the committee he represented a small charity called Plymouth Brethren Christian Church Limited, not the church fellowship itself. Laxale said this “puts huge limits around the church’s denials”.
“Hiding behind a narrow definition does not circumvent the requirement for all witnesses to answer questions truthfully,” Laxale said. “The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter, and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament.”
However, after the hearing, the Coalition doubled down on its support for the controversial church. A group of seven MPs, including Nationals leader Matt Canavan, three shadow ministers and senators from five states issued a joint statement describing the inquiry into the Brethren’s activities as a “hyperpartisan witch hunt” by Labor.
The three-page statement described the inquiry as “persecution”, “madness” and a “disgraceful fiasco” and it called for Laxale to be sacked as committee chair.
“Labor’s attacks smack of religious discrimination and are an assault on the basic democratic rights of all Australians,” Canavan wrote.
NSW senator Jess Collins said: “We’re another step closer to Albanese’s communist utopia, where religious freedom is not tolerated.”

Religious freedumb? Two cheers for cults!

The pond expects a devotion to cults from the onion muncher, but the rest of the rabble shows just how much the Liberal party has been infested by barking mad far right religious fundamentalists ...

The Nine rags included that press release in full, and the pond decided it was a real winner.

Each page had the full logo and list of names, but the pond settled for just the verbiage after the first two pages ...

All the pond needs now is for the Liberal party to mount a passionate defence of Scientology, and neo-Nazis, who after all, are leery of commie swine utopia, and just want the religious freedom to follow their beliefs ...

On and on they went, pleading for the freedumb to be in a cult ...

It's a cult ... and it's fair and right to call it so, in a way that's downright fair dinkum ...

Ex-Brethrens on breaking free
More than 50,000 people belong to a global religious sect that has restrictions around television, eating with outsiders and attending university. Some who’ve left the church say they still carry the trauma of what they experienced there.

That poorly formatted yarn told a couple of stories.

This is part of one victim of the cult ...

Homosexuality, she said, was a largely “unspoken” subject that was occasionally discussed “in a horrified whisper”.

“It’s considered one of the worst sins that a person can commit,” she (Tam) said.

It's a cult, and fear and repression are its stock in trade ...

For Tam, however, a future in such an environment was not something she could countenance.

Her departure from her family home was carefully planned. To avoid an emotional goodbye with their parents, Tam and her two brothers secretly packed their things.

“We planned it so … they wouldn’t see, because we knew that it would be very upsetting for all of us,” she said.

“We left early one morning, we sort of snuck out together.”

And that's what the Liberal party is trying to defend.

And speaking of cults...

In which there's a stunning trifecta ... the bromancer, Lord Downer, and Dame Groan ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 21:45:31 +0000

Huzzah, today the reptiles turned to a new twist on a venerable, ancient jihad ... super ... with a super time for all guaranteed...and at least for a moment it was top of the digital news "ma"...

The pond was deeply moved, especially by the golden broken egg in the accompanying artwork, though no reptile stepped forward to claim a credit for the artwork ...

It felt cruel to consign the canny Cranston to the intermittent archive, but whatever ...

EXCLUSIVE
Revealed: Labor’s stealth ‘super tax’ to cost retirees
Labor’s hidden super tax to hit $372bn worth of assets despite promises to carve out retirees
A hidden tax buried in Labor’s capital gains rules has exposed $372bn in superannuation assets to higher levies, with one of Australia’s biggest funds demanding an urgent rethink.
By Matthew Cranston

The crapulent Cranston has been in top form of late, but an excess of his reptilian contributions left the pond feeling overwhelmed, especially with the superabundance of reptiles that turned up this day.

Just for starters, there was the bromancer, Lord Downer and Dame Groan doing the rounds, and that's to exclude the war on Victoria, the war on the ABC, and the latest doings of the Australian Daily Zionist News.

So many jihads, so little time, and yet the pond had no choice - when it comes to the crunch, the bromancer is the pond's favourite.

The header: Donald Trump turns Rocket Man Kim Jong-un into wars’ big winner; The President’s latest crazy move empowers North Korea and damages the US alliance system in Asia.

The caption for the splendid artwork, resembling a Rorschach inkblot test, credited to Debbie: Kim Jong-un has leveraged North Korea’s military assistance to Russia to gain high-tech defence technology and diplomatic backing. Pictures: AFP. Artwork: Debbie Schipp

Is it wrong for the pond to enjoy the bromancer's recent howls of pain?

North Korea, under Kim Jong-un, the world’s most odious dictator, is the real winner of the Russia-Ukraine war. Now Donald Trump seems to be trying to make sure they are the real winners of the Iran war as well.
This can be the only result of Trump’s grotesque decision to curry favour with the Pyongyang dictator by curtailing US-South Korean military exercises, then publicly begging for a summit with Kim later this year.
This is very bad for Australia.
No country has advanced its strategic interests through the Ukraine war more than North Korea. The hermit kingdom of 27 million people remains an impoverished place. But as Trump said, it possesses nuclear weapons. Trump specified 57 nuclear weapons. Either that’s a random Trump remark or he pointlessly released highly classified information.
Trump observed you’ve got to take Pyongyang seriously because of its nukes. As analysts point out, this is a compelling argument for Iran, and every nation worried about security, to get nuclear weapons.
Kim is easily underestimated because he looks so clownish. But while North Korean dynastic politics is distinctively Game of Thrones in style – Kim killed his uncle and half-brother because they constituted possible dynastic rivals – Kim is in his way quite shrewd.
North Korea has been dependent on China. When international sanctions were at their strongest, only Beijing’s willingness to flout the sanctions kept Pyongyang going.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, Kim Jong Un farewelling Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s departure from Pyongyang International Airport. Picture: AFP

The bromancer carried on with his Ginsbergian howl of despair ...

Until a few years ago, Washington was nonetheless able to sway international opinion sufficiently that the UN would authorise quite tough sanctions against Pyongyang because of its nuclear program. Moscow routinely supported such sanctions. Beijing rarely vetoed them because it didn’t like to be isolated in international opinion, though of course Beijing never enforced sanctions.
Kim shrewdly used the Ukraine war to secure a new relationship with Moscow. He took big risks. He sold Russia huge quantities of artillery shells and rockets (and made a lot of money). More radically, he sent thousands of North Korean soldiers to fight for Russia against Ukraine.
Western intelligence doesn’t know exactly how many North Koreans this involves. Some estimates say more than 18,000. Huge numbers of North Koreans were killed or wounded but Kim got everything he wanted. He had reciprocal visits with Vladimir Putin and in 2024 concluded a new defence alliance with Russia.
Russia is now giving North Korea very hi-tech military assistance. Pyongyang’s missiles are now far more accurate than before. It has greater capacity to attack assets in space. Pyongyang has had intercontinental ballistic missiles for some time but has had trouble making them fully effective nuclear delivery vehicles. Moscow is suspected of helping with that and with nuclear submarine technology. Ukraine is the world leader in drone warfare, but Russia is not far behind. North Korean troops are learning all those skills and acquiring that technology. All this significantly erodes the qualitative edge South Korea’s conventional military has traditionally enjoyed over the north.

Just in case the hive mind couldn't pick it, Vlad the sociopathic invader was (R) ...Vladimir Putin (R) and Xi Jinping review a military honour guard during an official welcoming ceremony in Beijing. Picture: AFP

The besieged bromancer found no relief from Faux Noise's favourite mad king ...

Beijing under Xi Jinping itself has an intense alliance with Putin’s Russia. Nonetheless, it probably doesn’t like Kim freelancing. But its response has been to offer Kim more goodies and greater diplomatic recognition. Kim had equal billing with Putin as the foreign guests of honour at Beijing’s grand military parade last September (Victoria’s former premier, Daniel Andrews, was a lesser visitor). Kim can play Beijing off against Moscow and may soon be able to do this to some extent with Washington.
Beijing and Moscow now always support Pyongyang at the UN.
In 2018 Trump tried to woo Kim into a historic deal to give up nuclear weapons. In one of his many frankly ridiculous statements, Trump announced at a joint summit with Kim in Singapore that the nuclear threat from North Korea was now finished and Pyongyang would denuclearise. This was always preposterous rubbish. There has never been any chance Pyongyang would denuclearise. The last chance the West had was in 1994 when Bill Clinton was on the brink of taking military action to destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear program. That’s not possible now.
Mike Green of the US Studies Centre dealt with North Korea a lot when he was Asia director at the National Security Council under George W. Bush. He was called in by Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to give advice to the Trump administration after the 2018 Trump-Kim summit.
He concluded Trump himself never thought he could get Kim to give up nukes but was motivated when he discovered that North and South Korea didn’t have a peace treaty but only an armistice, so they were still technically at war.
If Trump could convert armistice to treaty he might get the Nobel Peace Prize. “This is all really driven by a vanity project by Trump,” Green tells me.

Then came a snap of the man who helped trigger the bro, US Studies Centre chief executive Mike Green. Picture: Jane Dempster / The Australian

And so to the moment astute correspondents have been waiting for ... the billy goat butt moment ...

It’s a vanity project with huge costs. Trump recently cut the military exercises in half to suck up to Kim. He did something similar in 2018 at the suggestion, unbelievably, of Putin. This humiliates South Korea, lessens the military effectiveness of South Korea, undercuts the reliability of the US, diminishes deterrence and seemingly validates the critique of folks such as Paul Keating and Hugh White who think the US no longer has any serious purpose in Asia.
But the good news is: it’s just Trump. The tilt towards Pyongyang and away from Seoul has no support in the US congress or anywhere in the US system. Trump’s bizarre view of the world sees alliances as liabilities, democratic allies as low-rate gardeners or maintenance men to screw everything out of financially. Whereas dictators of nuclear-armed nations are Las Vegas casino owners he can do real business with.

And here it came ...

That’s not to say Trump hasn’t done some good things.

What they were, what they are, is left unnoted by the bromancer.

Perhaps it's the splendid restoration job on Washington, still ongoing, perhaps it's unleashing tariff wars around the globe in a bid to replicate the days of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and generate the next world depression, perhaps it's his assembling of a pack of clown minions unrivalled by any previous US government, or perhaps it's his desire to become best friends with authoritarians and dictators around the world. Perhaps it was sending Sean Duffy on a road trip.

Then came a classic bro clunker:

But the rest of his term, after he loses congress in November, will likely be full of nutty vanity projects. This latest crazy move empowers North Korea and damages the US alliance system in Asia. That’s intensely harmful to Australia’s national interests.
But the North Koreans, and everyone else, knows that Trump will be gone in five minutes and can’t deliver much. US alliances will likely endure. Polls show South Koreans don’t trust Trump but greatly value the US alliance. Australians share this view and, in this respect, are authentic Asians.

We're authentic Asians now?

We're all Spartacus?

Talk about tone deaf stupidity, but once again the bromancer delivers ...

At this point the pond thought it might do a detour and help out the bromancer.

The WSJ's editorial board recently offered a summary of mad king Donald's most splendid war, even better than his Iranian adventure ...

The Dumbest Trade War Revisited
Triump’s (sic) decision to escalate a tariff brawl with Canada makes no economic or political sense.

And so to an anguished Lord Downer:

The header: Why mounting public debt poses a greater threat than global war; My greatest worry is not war but the escalation of debt by governments around the world.

The caption for the snap of a man doing a raven impersonation: Treasurer Jim Chalmers addresses the media during a joint press conference in the Blue Room at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Is it wrong for the pond to sup on Lord Downer's tears and fears?

My greatest worry isn’t whether Donald Trump’s resolve in the war against Iran will fade. It isn’t that the Russian army will suddenly overwhelm the heroic Ukrainians. Although I do worry about those things. My greatest worry is the escalation of debt by governments around the world.
In our case the federal government debt has passed the $1 trillion benchmark. If you had been part of the Howard government, as I was, it was agony to watch. After all, by the time we were evicted from office in late 2007, we had paid off all government debt.
By global standards, Australian debt isn’t alarming. Federal government debt is only 34 per cent of GDP. Mind you, if you add state government debt as well, which amounts to about $650bn, then total government debt in Australia is a more concerning 55 per cent of GDP.
In the US, debt is more than 124 per cent of GDP; in France, 121 per cent; in Britain, about 100 per cent. Even in more fiscally responsible Germany it has blown out to 65 per cent.
What is alarming is that in none of these countries, including our own, is there much concern about the explosion of public sector debt. Yet that debt has to be financed. Governments have to borrow by issuing bonds. Somebody has to buy those bonds. In Australia’s case, an estimated 52 per cent of Australian government bonds are held by foreign investors. The rest are held by Australian institutions, including the Reserve Bank.

His Lordship rather undercut the sense of fear he was trying to instil by slipping in that line early in the piece ...By global standards, Australian debt isn’t alarming.

Recognising the slip, he did his best to recover and crank up the fear, but then the reptiles slipped in a snap that generated real fear and horror in the pond, distant memories of politicians who had done much to increase the inequality divide ... John Howard and Peter Costello listen to Alexander Downer during Question Time inside Parliament House, August 2006. Picture: AAP Image

The pond was immediately triggered, and wandered down memory lane with Richard Denniss's Peter Costello's five most 'profligate' decisions as treasurer cost the budget $56bn a year ...

The pond would have liked to stick around for the other three, but time was pressing and they're at the link, as Lord Downer craved the pond's attention ...

For the Australian government to borrow, its bonds have to be attractive to foreign investors. Investors are going to take into consideration the risk of investing in Australia, which is low.
The Australian government is highly unlikely to default on its borrowings. But investors will also take into account the size of government debt, which translates as the supply of bonds going on to the market, as well as Australia’s inflation rate, which is relatively high, and the exchange rate risk, which is also quite high. These and other factors determine the interest rate on the bonds. It’s the interest rate on those bonds that tells you something about what the markets think of the government to which they’re lending.
In Australia’s case, the benchmark 10-year government bond yield is about 5 per cent. That is the interest rate the Australian government has to pay on its borrowings. The US rate is lower at 4.4 per cent, the British 4.6 per cent and Germany a mere 3.3 per cent. So there is a problem. Australia needs to set the interest rate at a higher rate than comparable countries.
Indeed, what is noteworthy is that during the past four years, the interest rate on Australian government bonds has risen from 3.5 per cent in August 2022 to 5 per cent today. In other words, lenders want a higher return now because of concerns about growing government debt, the weakness of the Australian dollar and persistent inflation in Australia.
The Australian government is spending more than $40bn a year just on servicing its debt. Add to that about $25bn a year being paid by the state and territory governments, and in total Australian governments are spending $68bn a year just financing their debt.
That is more than the federal government spends on defence, more than it spends on education, and is about 64 per cent of federal spending on health.
In the case of Britain, its government spends almost twice as much on servicing debt as it spends on defence.

And so to the real dogs in this catfight ... Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump listen during a cabinet meeting at the White House, July 2018. Picture Leah Millis / Reuters

Lord Downer was full of bitter personal memories and bereft of solutions:

During President Trump’s first term, he asked Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA at the time, what he thought was the greatest problem the US faced. Pompeo said he thought it was growing government debt. President Trump’s response was: “Voters don’t care about government debt.”
That’s perfectly true in the short term, but if debt continues to grow then the crisis can be catastrophic for ordinary people. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Back in 2010, I was working in southeastern Europe, and I saw the impact of the Greek financial crisis that year. So huge were the Greek government’s debts that the markets wouldn’t lend them money to finance those debts any longer. As a result, the Greek government had to go begging to the EU and the International Monetary Fund for a bailout.
They provided the bailout but on strict conditions. Not surprisingly, they demanded massive cuts to government expenditure as well as increases in taxation. Greece’s GDP fell by 25 per cent between 2008 and 2016. Public sector employees had their remuneration cut by about 30 per cent and pensions were reduced by about the same amount. Private sector wages declined by 20 per cent. That was the price Greece paid for overspending over many years.
Governments do have an alternative to borrowing on international and domestic markets. They can print money. The trouble with that is they increase the amount of money chasing the same number of goods and services available in the economy. That is inflationary.
There’s no easy solution. The higher the level of government debt, the higher the interest rates needed to persuade investors to lend. The higher the interest rate, the higher the percentage of government expenditure has to be devoted to servicing that debt. High interest rates slow economic growth. The alternative is to print money and weather the storm of inflation, which also reduces living standards.

There came a reminder of the treatment the Germans had dished out to the Greeks, Former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou looks on at the Greek parliament during a vote on austerity measures, June 2011. Picture: Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP Photo

Lord Downer put on his most solemn face ...

We have an impending crisis. Just about every government is accumulating huge quantities of debt and demanding that investors lend to them to finance those debts. Recently, the US government has implicitly demonstrated its concern about the financing of its debt. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the US government would spend $4bn buying back US government debt. That is the equivalent of printing money. He’s doing that to try to push down the interest rates on US government borrowing. It’s just a detail, but it points to a long-term problem.
The moral of this story is that all governments, including our own, need to stop spending more than they earn. The populist passion for expanding welfare entitlements and diverting resources into building windmills is slowly strangling our economies. And if debt continues to grow, we could confront a global financial crisis.
As Ernest Hemingway famously said when asked how he went bankrupt: “Two ways: gradually, then suddenly.”

Talk to the hand, or perhaps talk to mad King Donald, Faux Noise's favourite economist ...

It being Tuesday, the pond simply had to make room for Dame Groan, favourite cult for herpetology cultists ...

The header: Why it’s your money vs the nation in the fight over super; Despite criticism of its weak policy credentials, One Nation is leading key areas of the country’s policy debate.

The caption for the incredible artwork, featuring playing cards and a grim looking beast, all thanks to the astonishing Debbie: ‘Treasurer Jim Chalmers is using superannuation to attack One Nation politically by incorrectly asserting that Pauline Hanson wants to scrap it,’ writes Judith Sloan. Artwork: Debbie Schipp

The pond is pleased to report that Dame Groan has gone One Nation ...

There is a certain irony to the fact One Nation is leading the policy debate on several topics given the widespread criticism of the party for its weak policy credentials. Think here of immigration, tobacco excise and now superannuation. While the details may be missing, there is no doubt Pauline Hanson is contributing to the discussion on these three topics.

Think?

The pond had some difficulty associating that word with Gina's pet ...

... but please, hear Dame Groan out as she joined the lizard Oz war on the super front ...

Let me focus here on superannuation. Hanson makes a strong point simply by stating that superannuation belongs to the policyholders, not the government.
It’s a feature of the system the Labor Party doesn’t always fully embrace. For example, Anthony Albanese recently remarked: “There is a real potential to see these funds as a national asset that can be used more appropriately and get better returns as well, not just for individuals and for retirees but for the nation.” The clear implication is super accounts don’t belong only to policyholders.
Jim Chalmers also has talked about directing superannuation investments to national priority areas, including affordable housing and the energy transition. Former Victorian premier Jacinta Allan even urged the superannuation funds to invest in “funding hospitals, schools and other critical infrastructure”.

Could it be a One Nation piece without a snap of the bottle-died ranga? Pauline Hanson speaks to the media at Parliament House. Picture: Getty Images

Inspired, Dame Groan began to brood ...

The key questions that now emerge are: Who really owns superannuation and what purposes can it be used for?
Contrary to the party’s mythology, Labor did not invent superannuation. It existed well before the decision to make it compulsory for all employees from 1992. This followed a high-level deal between the federal government and the ACTU to reduce the unions’ current pay claim. Before that superannuation had been largely confined to executives, public servants and academics. It’s estimated that about 30 per cent of the workforce was covered by super before the introduction of compulsory universal superannuation.
The rules and taxation applying to superannuation have been adjusted several times. The stipulated rate of contribution has increased from 3 per cent to 12 per cent. While Labor has always favoured the union-controlled industry super funds, the management of the current $4.5 trillion pool of funds is divided between these funds, retail funds and self-management arrangements.
While self-interested players describe Australia’s system of compulsory superannuation as the envy of the world, there are some fundamental weaknesses that have never been addressed.
Most particularly, the proportion of older people claiming the Age Pension remains high, albeit with proportionately more claiming only a part pension. Adding in the tax concessions that apply to superannuation contributions and earnings, the net savings associated with the superannuation system are not as high as many would assume.
And for those on low incomes, compulsory superannuation is just a form of taxation because their entitlement to the full Age Pension is knocked off, at least for a while, because of means-testing.

At this moment, the reptiles stepped in, determined to help, albeit at a PREMIUM ...

PREMIUM
How much super do I need to retire?
Become a member to access our premium video content

Sorry, reptiles, the pond must watch its pennies, and even it's ha'pennies...as Dame Groan got gloomier and gloomier:

The deal is to forgo 12 per cent of your wage and get paid a partial Age Pension when you finally retire, possibly without owning a house. The broader point is that the system assumes most older folk own a home and a super lump sum is a welcome top-up to ensure a comfortable retirement. This assumption is looking less realistic across time. Does it really make sense for people to forgo 12 per cent of their incomes during their working lives while being unable to buy a home?
The case for the figure of 12 per cent was never justified based on providing adequate retirement incomes. This was made clear in the 2010 Henry tax review. A maximum rate of 9 per cent was recommended in that report.
The higher figure of 12 per cent – indeed 15 per cent was even mooted – suited the industry super funds, which are always intent on maximising the inward flow of funds. Recent changes, such as same payday super and compulsory super for juniors, are in the same category.
This is where the debate comes in: should policyholders be able to withdraw money from their own accounts to pay for important expenses such as buying a home or avoiding mortgage default?
There are some provisions for early withdrawals, but there are tight restrictions associated with any requests. The Australian Taxation Office handles some requests, but these are limited to serious illness and covering the cost of vital treatment. Requests based on financial hardship can be made to the super funds, but the sums are limited and proof of continuous receipt of government benefits is required. These withdrawals are subject to tax.
There is also a specific scheme that allows people to use superannuation as a vehicle to save for a home deposit. But the government’s 5 per cent deposit scheme has become the dominant policy intervention used by first-home buyers, eclipsing any potential popularity of using super.
In most instances, the funds held in super accounts are tied up until policyholders reach preservation age, which is currently 60 for those born after July 1, 1964. This suits the funds and the various firms that make a living from the system, but whether it really is in the best interests of every policyholder is debatable.

Where is all this heading? An opportunity to brag? Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg speaks to the media at Parliament House. Picture: Getty Images

And that was a bridge too far ...

This problem has become more acute with the lack of growth in real wages. When real wages were rising along with increases in the superannuation contribution rate, workers could feel happy that the present and the future were being accommodated.
But for the past five years real wages have been going backwards, and this warm inner glow has faded for many hard-pressed workers and their families. The implicit social compact, in which compulsory superannuation is an ingredient, has started to fray. One policy option is to consider freeing up the use of three percentage points of the superannuation contribution based on the proposition that 9 per cent can’t be touched but there should be some flexibility on the use by policyholders of the contribution above that figure. There is no doubt that this would play well with many voters.

What a canny move, what a cunning way to degut the purpose of having super on which to retire, with Dame Groan not able to make the final leap ...

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg has amped up the debate, declaring the system of compulsory super is “one of the biggest policy failures since Federation”. According to him, “the whole system is broken”.

Talk about going too far and producing a billy goat butt from the groaner:

This is a big call and flies in the face of survey data that shows reasonably strong support for superannuation, along with a high degree of ignorance of its working.

So dumb punters are happy to support their misery, and only Dame Groan truly understands how it works, which is why she values Gina's pet, because she's a tremendous discussion starter ...

In the meantime, the federal Treasurer is using superannuation to attack One Nation politically by incorrectly asserting that Hanson wants to scrap it. The reality is that it’s timely to discuss the real purpose of super and its key weaknesses, including the danger of governments directing the investment of people’s super accounts.

For some reason, the notion that Hanson was an excellent debate starter reminded the pond of Dana Frank in the Graudian dissing the both siderist NY Times, Why does the New York Times keep calling the left 'divisive'?

The real purpose of this debate starter?

Blow the whole thing up without the tedium and pain of devising a substitute.

Early and easy access can lead to all sorts of grifts, and entirely destroy the point of the super system ... cf the Graudian ...

And instead of the usual immortal Rowe, when the pond visited X (the only time it ever goes to that cesspit), this turned up ...

Over at the Nine rags there was still a sign of life, though it made the pond feel a tad sick ...

Elbows up Canada ...

In which the pond surveys the dismal Monday reptile scene, with only a Canuck-devoted Caterist in full peacock mode ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 21:28:05 +0000

If the lizard Oz started off this day with a single property scare story, the pond knew it would have to reference Samantha Maiden's piece:

The Coalition reckons rents could increase by 30 per cent, but NAB and Ray White insist they are not | Samantha Maiden
The Coalition’s rent scare campaign has collapsed after the very companies it cited said they never made the predictions being attributed to them, writes Samantha Maiden.

Take it away Sam:

In the delightful children’s book The Boy Who Cried Alien, a notorious fibber named Larry the Liar tries to warn his town that a spaceship has crash-landed.
Nobody believes him, although there is a happy ending of sorts when aliens roam the town and he opens up the School of Fabulous Fibbing.
The basic idea is that dishonesty destroys your trust and reputation and people will not believe you when the real danger arrives.
Something of a similar nature is unfolding in the increasingly deranged debate over the impact of negative gearing and capital gains tax on rising rents.
The Albanese government reckons that Treasury says the impact is $2 a week and nobody believes them.
The Coalition reckons rents could increase by 30 per cent and nobody with any brains believes that either.
They could of course. Theoretically they could go up 500 per cent. Pick a figure. It’s possible.
But is it likely?
When even the truth-tellers – the National Australia Bank and Ray White – insist they are not saying that at all, it’s a big roll of the dice for the Liberal Party to assert otherwise.
First, the National Australia Bank clarified this week that it was not predicting 30 per cent rent increases at all.
Instead, it was a hypothetical prediction of how much rents would need to rise to make it attractive for new investors, if property prices didn’t fall at all.
A kind of fantasy footaball for property investors, if you will.
Then, Ray White entered the chat with a similar prediction.
But once again, it was not a forecast of how much rents will actually rise but a hypothetical scenario about what needs to happen to deliver the same profits to new investors if property prices did not fall at all.
“We don’t do forecasts for rents,’’ the property group said.
“Ray White is not forecasting a 30 per cent rise in rents.
“In reality, we expect the adjustment to come through a combination of higher rents and softer prices.”
Got it? It seems the Liberal Party missed the memo.
Over in question time, Liberal MP Melissa McIntosh was still talking 30 per cent rent hikes.
“My question is to the Minister for Housing,’’ she said.
“Today, Australia’s biggest rental property manager, Ray White, said rents could surge by 30 per cent as a result of Labor’s toxic taxes. Is the minister damn proud of making millions of Australians pay higher rents?”
For the government, it was a case of come in spinner, given that Ray White itself had clarified it was not saying this at all.
“Really appreciate this question from the member opposite,’’ Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said.
“I’m really worried for the honourable member opposite who has asked me this question for the sheer number of mistruths she was able to pack into one question.
“Let’s go through it one by one. The first is that she has knowingly misquoted me in her question.”
What’s curious about the entire hullabaloo is that there are plenty of good and solid reasons to probe and criticise the Albanese government.
There’s no need to resort to fact-free scaremongering...

Uh huh, and indeed, but who provided all the evidence for the fact-free fear mongering?

Here Ms Maiden let every single ball go through to the keeper, though as Bangladesh just showed, that doesn't always work.

For that information you had to turn to Tory in the Weekly Beast last Friday ...

Brace yourself, The Australian warned on Tuesday, citing a note from the National Australia Bank to its clients: “Rents are projected to soar by as much as 30% over the next two years to compensate many landlords for the loss of property tax concessions” in the budget, its story said.
Hold on, NAB said. That was “one possible scenario” and “not a forecast”.
And on Wednesday, again in The Australian: the real estate agency Ray White “has affirmed that Jim Chalmers’ budget could lead to a 30 per cent spike in costs for tenants”.
Whoa, Ray White said. That wasn’t a forecast. More like a “modelling scenario”.
“We don’t do forecasts for rents,’’ a Ray White spokesperson told news.com.au. “Ray White is not forecasting a 30 per cent rise in rents.”
Not to be denied, on Thursday the Oz ran a further story quoting the real estate agency as saying: “The Australian has accurately represented Ray White’s analysis.”

In proper lizard Oz fashion, Tory provided a link to within the Graudian for further rebuttal ...

Critics of Labor’s tax changes claim rents could climb by up to 30%. Here’s why they probably won’t

But that's not the real point. The compelling thing is that even a fellow Murdochian couldn't stand the naked scare mongering and claptrap carry on involved in the latest lizard Oz jihad ... which brings the pond back to today.

Heck, they were at it again.

Come on down Major Mitchell, taking the hive mind back to the days when the hunt for Order of Lenin medals were about to begin ...

COMMENTARY by CHRIS MITCHELL
Economic fibs: Chalmers is using first-home buyers and renters as a smokescreen
Left-wing economists and media have spent decades misrepresenting the Hawke-Keating negative gearing backflip, while rents surge and first home buyers face negative equity.

Feel the vibe of Hawkie and the French clock lover living rent free in the hive mind:

There's a lot more ancient history to hand by following the archive link, but after that extended plunge into ancient history, the Major turned to the present, and sho 'nuff ...

...This newspaper on August 18 splashed with economics correspondent Matthew Cranston warning the National Australian Bank believed rents could rise 30 per cent as landlords losing tax benefits sought to recoup their losses.
The nation’s biggest residential rental agency, Ray White, concurred in the following day’s page one lead.
“Ray White, which manages 250,000 rental properties nationally … released analysis showing new investors stripped of property tax concessions … would have to raise rents by about 30 per cent.”
Chalmers and Minister for Housing Clare O’Neil criticised the reporting of the Ray White and NAB analyses on Wednesday, sticking with the budget forecast of rents up $2 a week.
They were apparently unaware The Daily Telegraph on August 15 had already published details of Sydney suburbs where rents had risen $100 a week since May.
On Thursday, the AFR reported residential property development giant Stockland had seen new home sales inquiries fall for three months. It expected no recovery until interest rates fell.
Chalmers is using first-home buyers and renters as a smokescreen. All he really wants is more revenue as the government heads to cumulative deficits he forecasts will hit $1.2 trillion by 2030.

Très drôle, and now pardon the pond if it stays in reptile survey mode ...

Near the top of the digital "news" page early on the Monday came the usual Australian Daily Zionist News outing ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘High Court’s challenge to foil the antisemites’: leading judge
Ian Jackman has urged the High Court to revisit its ‘dogmatic’ stance on free speech, warning antisemites are exploiting past rulings to vilify Australian Jews.
By Elizabeth Pike

Devoted herpetologists will recall Dame Slap moaning that there wasn't enough free speech and urging the High Court to offer more.

Permission to speak? Hanson’s fight is ours
Pauline Hanson takes free speech fight to the High Court
Her battle with Mehreen Faruqi has forced Pauline Hanson to ask the High Court to be heard, and they should listen on principle alone.

Sock it to 'em Dame Slap:

...The High Court’s invention of an implied freedom of political communication and further inventions of entirely subjective tests that apparently determine when the implied freedom applies, make the whole area harder to decipher than the Voynich Manuscript. At least the Voynich Manuscript has some pictures. This uncertainty means we, the people, have no real clue as to what we can and cannot say – until a High Court cryptographer tells us so.

This is untenable. Hanson supporters may not be reading Federal Court and High Court judgments, but their instinct to distrust the tendencies of a small group of elites to think they know better than the rest of us is entirely rational.

It would be a travesty and a sign of cowardice, or perhaps hubris, if the High Court refuses to hear Hanson’s appeal.

It is high time the nation’s most senior court took a long and considered look at the mess they have created and the uncertainly they have foisted on Australians.

Now it seems that there's way too much free speech, way too much freedumb ...

Rule of Law Institute vice-president Chris Merrit said the address was a “careful analysis” after fellow speakers at the conference raised concerns about the “adverse consequences” of implied constitutional freedom.
“Freedom of speech is important but no right is absolute,” Mr Merritt said.

Go tell that to Dame Slap and her whining about the perils of being Pauline.

Moral? Trust the reptiles to get you coming, and then get you going ...

Right at the top of the digital edition came the usual reptile defence hysteria, though strangely the bromancer was MIA and the reptiles gave Cameron the job of panic merchant

EXCLUSIVE
Fat frigates: doubts over speed, range and endurance
Australia’s $27bn Hunter-class frigates have ballooned to 10,500 tonnes, raising expert fears the warships lack the speed and range needed for the Indo-Pacific.
By Cameron Stewart

Somebody should have sent Cam a pack of drones to help him out ...

For some reason the pond was reminded of Wilcox ...

Perhaps that was only because the reptiles were wildly excited by her leaving the Nine rags ... and in true Daily Australian Zionist News fashion, they made it all about one cartoon ...

Anyone who draws attention to the deplorable ways of the current government of Israel is an antisemite, at least in the hive mind ... but maybe she was just jack of it all, in the way that each day the pond feels like taking a hammer to its screens.

As part of this day's survey, the pond should note that simpleton Simon was out and about ...

Canberra has been left holding the bag for states’ profligacy
Anthony Albanese has passed two milestones in the last fortnight – one might be considered an accomplishment, though not so much the other.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

And so on, and on the one hand the pond thinks it has a duty to correspondents, and on the other hand, simplistic Simon was too tedious a read, so the archive could handle his both siderism.

The bouffant one was also out and about, though in the usual Shanners way, he could only manage a two minute spurt which the pond personally had to save to the intermittent archive, as no one else had cared enough ...

Billion-dollar Band-Aids no solution to job-threatening Labor policies
Labor is beginning to become aware of the dire outlook for rural Australia, but there’s no sign yet of a fundamental change.
By Dennis Shanahan

What a reliable reptile he is.

Someone has to roll up the sleeves each day and scribble about job-threatening policies, and Shanners is always there ...but what's that line about "due to drought"?

Is the silly old reptile hinting that maybe climate change might be hovering into view?

And so to the reason for staging a survey.

That archive-directed teaser trailers left plenty of room for the Caterist doing an "elbows up Australia" routine ...

Please allow the immortal Rowe to set the scene...

Now on with the Caterist ...

The header: Albanese is learning all the wrong lessons from Carney’s Canada; Carney is correcting the imbalance in the housing market. Albanese, on the other hand, is frozen in the headlights.

The caption for the snap of the two grinners: Anthony Albanese with Mark Carney at Vatican City.

The quarry whispering Caterist spent a bigly five minutes using Canucks as a club for Albo's mob, but steady Canucks, the flood waters expert also spends some time clubbing Canucks, just as King Donald mounts an economic war...

If Jim Chalmers’ goal was to provoke a housing slump and simultaneously increase the cost of renting, his 2026 budget will go down as a rip-roaring success.
Since neither of these objectives featured in his speech on budget night, however, we are drawn to the alarming conclusion that the government has abandoned the discipline of policy formation and is simply making it up as it bumbles along.
This is particularly risky in the housing market, since history shows that sudden shocks in the property sector frequently trigger recessions. An International Monetary Fund study of 122 recessions found that the housing market was the epicentre of a quarter of them. In most cases, the shocks were caused by non-market forces – that is, government intervention.
You don’t have to be Milton Friedman to conclude that we’d be in a happier place now if the Albanese administration had decided it would do nothing other than remove red tape and lower and simplify taxes.
Instead, it has thrown a succession of interventions at the market – the Housing Accord, the 1.2 million new homes target, the expanded 5 per cent deposit guarantee, and now changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax – in the hope that something will stick. Some hit the accelerator (cheaper deposits), some slam on the brake (cuts to the CGT discount) and some are simply hot air (the new homes target). Buyers, sellers, investors and developers have responded by sitting on their hands.
It is a different story in Canada, which emerged from the Covid pandemic with remarkably similar problems: surging immigration and a housing shortage.

Get ready Jimbo, there are lessons to be learned ... Treasurer Jim Chalmers during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond rarely has a twinge at his absence, but the pond suddenly had a deep regret that Lord Downer hadn't become a regular Monday scribbler for the lizard Oz, and so was MIA this day.

Instead the pond was left with a caricaturing Caterist, truly beyond caricature as a whining Pom...

Canada also has a centre-left government, albeit led by a Prime Minister with considerably more real-world experience than either his predecessor – the hapless Justin Trudeau – or his Australian counterpart, whom he visited in Canberra in March. Who knows what they discussed behind closed doors, but the official communique gives us a flavour of the discussions: “Leaders acknowledged the Ngunnawal people as Traditional Custodians of the lands … Leaders recognised the shared values underpinning the close partnership … parliamentary democracy, multiculturalism …”
Multiculturalism ranks alongside five-pin bowling, poutine and Justin Bieber as one of Canada’s least helpful contributions to the world. It was adopted in Canada around the time Coca-Cola launched its “I’d like to teach the world to sing” campaign, with a similar spirit of earnest but incurious optimism. Over the course of half a century, the saccharine sentimentality of multiculturalism hardened into the doctrine of diversity among the fruitcake theorists on the progressive left and in Labor’s policy platform.
“We recognise Australia’s diversity is our greatest strength,” it reads. Labor will “seek to develop policies and make decisions informed by an envelope-based understanding of the needs of different Australians”.
Did the authors of this document even try to contemplate the downside of diversity and attempt to measure the trade-offs? Almost certainly not. As Thomas Sowell observed: “It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.” The diversity imperative is distorting Labor’s thinking on immigration just as the White Australia policy did in the 1960s, and for essentially the same reason. Theoretical arguments about the ethnic composition of Australia have clouded practical decisions about the quantity and quality of our migration intake.
Linking the housing shortage to the unprecedented number of migrants admitted since Covid has become taboo among the Labor intelligentsia. In April, junior Treasury minister Andrew Leigh wrote this in the Australian Financial Review: blaming migrants for a housing shortage was “a populist manoeuvre”. On housing, he wrote that “migrants aren’t the culprits”, “In fact, they’re often part of the solution.”
Carney, a former central bank governor who studied alongside Angus Taylor at Oxford, takes a different view. His strategy, released in 2024, stipulates that immigration needed to be matched to Canada’s “capacity to build new homes” and that the objective was to “balance housing supply with housing demand”. Canada reduced planned permanent migration from the previous trajectory of 500,000 a year to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027, while also introducing targets for temporary migration for the first time. The previous target of 673,650 new temporary residents in 2025 was roughly halved to 385,000 in 2026 and 370,000 in 2027, as were student arrivals, which were cut to 155,000 in 2026, down from 305,000.
The changes to the housing market have been startling. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported in July that slow population growth was weakening housing demand. Vacancy rates were rising in a number of cities and rent growth was slowing.

Yep, it's just a one time Pom black sheep bashing furriners for ruining the country ... Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has addressed the Australian Parliament with a focus on trade and security.

Could "melongate"get another run? Of course it could ...

The heat had been taken out of the property market, and prices were beginning to drop in some cities, though not as sharply or as erratically as in Australia. It is too early to tell whether Carney’s incentives to build new housing stock in close co-operation with provincial governments will work. Yet by slamming on the brakes for temporary migration and prioritising migrants with useful skills, Carney is correcting the imbalance between supply and demand in the housing market.
Albanese, on the other hand, is frozen in the headlights, without a coherent housing policy and an immigration policy that remains in flux. Reports at the weekend suggest Albanese has been spooked by predictions that cutting immigration will push the country into recession. He’s also nervous about taking on the commercial vested interests of the university sector by capping overseas student numbers and removing the links between student visas and permanent migration.
Neither can we gloss over the PM’s vanity as a constraint on rational housing and migration policy. The suspicion that Albanese has succumbed to a particularly strong form of hubris – an occupational hazard political leaders should guard against – has been confirmed over the last fortnight with “Melon-gate”. The entire executive government, including its most fervent feminists, has been absorbed in attempting to impose a benign interpretation on the PM’s lewd hand gestures.
Albanese’s strongest objection to linking housing policy to immigration may be that Taylor called for it first and that Albanese’s authority will be further diminished by tacitly admitting it is a sensible idea.
Either way, housing and immigration are shaping up to be perhaps the biggest test of leadership and character in Albanese’s prime ministership. Correcting course requires the courage to confront vested interests both inside and outside his own party, and correct the mistakes made in Jim Chalmers’ May budget.
It will require taking a firm position based on economic principles and inner conviction, the kind of leadership we last saw in a Labor government under Hawke and Keating.
It’s a leadership style that has been conspicuously absent in this government. Yet the experience in Canada suggests it has not entirely been extinguished, even on the left.

Sheesh, not Hawke and Keating again.

First the Major and then the Caterist, and how that pair continue to live rent free in the hive mind as a reminder of a golden age that never was, and more to the point, as a golden age way of bashing the current Labor mob, though the pond distinctly remembers that at the time the pair were the ruination of the country, or so the reptiles said ...

... but then getting them coming and getting them going is the art and the point of the game.

And now as a trade war erupts between mad king Donald and the Canucks, the lizard Oz editorialist thought this might just be the solution, a trade war with biffo ....

So it's the right strategy, because the military campaign was such a stunning success?

As a follow up, the pond turned to the WSJ, mentioned in despatches by the lizard Oz editorialist ...

The pond has a deep admiration for anyone who can take the TACO bone spurs warrior seriously ...

Full steam ahead, and what could possibly go wrong?

And with that, the pond simply had to note this note about Golding...

Too painfully true to be funny? And just as the Nine rags abandon the one thing they have going for them? Their cartoonists ...

Another sample of Golding's wares ...

And now, as the Australian Daily Zionist News has been mentioned a few times, this ...

In which the pond digs deep, to find only a bit of Bita and a splash of Dame Snap ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Imagine the pond's despair.

Prattling Polonius has always been a reliable opener for the pond's Sunday meditation, but this weekend he went full Australian Daily Zionist News contributor, with tedious historical angle designed to send readers into a state of somnambulism ...

From 1967 to today: How the left abandoned Israel and fed Australia’s antisemitism crisis
Antisemitism in Australia did not begin on October 7. It is the culmination of a half-century shift that saw the left turn on the Jewish state.
By Gerard Henderson

The pond baulked, resisted opening the mouth to take the bit ...

About the only use the pond could find for it was as a springboard, a segue to Haaretz ... and Adla Alnazer's offering Australia, Don't Be Surprised. Israel Does This to Palestinians All the Time (*intermittent archive link)

Oh that's tasty, way more interesting than Polonius.

The pond will have another chunk, but not before reassuring Adla that the lizard Oz does it all the time ...shielding Israel from accountability:

But with Polonius banished, along with all the other reptiles whom the pond winnowed out yesterday, like chaff in the wind, what was left provided slim pickings...

Oh sure there was a culture war issue that briefly landed on the top of the page later on the Saturday, a bit of Bita ...

It must be hugely important, it was top of the digital "news" ma, up there with Our Henry's contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News (for those that missed it Our Henry was in the archive and so was "Ned's" contribution. So much fodder for the Zionist News on the weekend).

The splash featured a pompous git posed in classic arms crossed style ... and so did the yarn ...

The header: University students struggle to write after schools ditched cursive for screens;Reliance on digital devices and typing means many university students can’t write handwritten essays and notes, a former curriculum chief says.

The caption for the snap of the preening, posing git: Former vice-chancellor and chairman of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Steven Schwartz. Picture: Britta Campion

Before enduring some four minutes of Bita blathering, the pond should declare an interest.

The pond hates doing anything using handwriting.

Many years ago, a friend of the family gave the pond a cheap-as-chips portable typewriter, and the pond never looked back.

The pond did a self-taught crash course in touch typing, using a standard primer as a guide, and while never up to stenographer or transcriber standard, still managed a decent wpm rate (with only a modest error rate, mainly produced by the keys deciding to stick together. Damn you ancient keyboard).

Unless you happen to be an intense sort of Chinese calligrapher, devoted to the art of Hanzi, or some English nerd compelled by fonts, there's nothing useful or noble about affecting to think running writing or cursive is better than producing English that can be read.

BT, aka "before typing", the pond's handwriting looked like the proverbial tale of a drunk spider crawling through an inkwell ...

The pond isn't the only one.

Back in the day, a number of King Chuck's letters and annotations came to the attention of the press and were so notorious that they attracted a "spider" appellation.

Charles to send MORE spider letters: Supreme Court ruling to release 27 memos to ministers 'won't stop the prince writing more'
Attorney General made a final attempt to block release of Charles' letters
High Court wanted release but Government appealed to Supreme Court
Known as 'black spider' memos because of royal's scrawled handwriting (Daily Snail link)

Marvel at the scribbled annotations:

Wow, who knew the pond would have an affinity with King Chuck? Those annotations are the royal bee's knees...

With that off the pond's chest, it was time to get down with it ...

University students are struggling to write essays or take notes by hand because schools stopped teaching cursive writing during a 15-year failed focus on digital devices, a former curriculum chief has warned.
Calling for a ban on laptops and iPads in primary school, Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz said screens were “certainly damaging for children’’.
“It’s affecting their behaviour, their ability to interact with one another, to understand how people react to them,” he told The Australian.
Emeritus Professor Schwartz – a former chair of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) – said students needed to learn to take notes by hand, instead of typing on a laptop or relying on YouTube videos or AI summaries.
While cursive writing remains part of the national curriculum, he said “hardly any’’ schools taught the old-school skill of running writing because it was not part of the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).
“Now with AI cheating in university, they’re saying they all want to go back to written examinations – and they’ve got all these kids who can’t write, they can only print,’’ he said.
“They’re like monks illuminating a manuscript – it would take years for them to write all the things down. It’s hilarious, but it’s what’s happening.
“It’s just all been pushed over to screens and computers and a lot of what we expect or used to take for granted is now gone.”

There came another snap of the ponce prof, Professor Schwartz says students needed to learn to take notes by hand, instead of typing on a laptop or relying on YouTube videos or AI summaries.

Does this help explain why the reptiles refuse to admit that there's climate change, and climate science is real?

Perhaps it does ... after all, if they're so afraid of laptops and digital thingies and such like, they probably can't handle science either ...

A psychologist and former vice-chancellor of three universities, Emeritus Professor Schwartz chaired ACARA from 2015 to 2018 – just after then prime minister Kevin Rudd spent $2.4bn of taxpayer money to buy laptops and iPads for every student through Labor’s “digital education revolution’’.
“Most of the research that’s been done over the last 10 years has shown [that screen time] is damaging,’’ he said.
“It’s not as if they won’t get screen time out of school, so I think that at least within school it’s probably a good opportunity to have human time.’’

Did the ancient prof know that this claptrap would be saddled with a stock image that is utterly banal, the worst sort of digital drivel you could provide as an illustration?

Even AI might have managed something a little less tawdry, cheap and pathetic: Children learn better when they write things down, says Professor Schwartz. Picture: iStock

Perhaps not, but that wretched image does rather undercut the prof's message, because if the pond contemplated it for more than a nanosecond, the pond might well pluck out an eye.

Then the bittish Bita went on to conflate reading with running writing ...

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has also called for a “digital detox’’ in classrooms, citing evidence that children remember more when they take notes by hand.
The nation’s education ministers have asked ACARA to look at changing the laptop-based NAPLAN writing test to a pen-and-paper exam next year.
Almost 25,000 parents and teachers have signed a change.org petition, initiated by The Heads Up Alliance, demanding “device-free’’ primary schools and greater emphasis on books, handwriting, pen and paper and “human relationships’’ in high school.
“We must ensure that by the end of primary school Australian children are able to read and write fluently for sustained periods,’’ the petition states.
“One-to-one internet-connected devices such as laptops are an ever-present source of distraction for high school students, disrupting the focus needed to think deeply and learn new concepts.’’

Oh the hideousness of the full to overflowing intertubes and distracting devices.

Wouldn't you know it, it is just a bit of culture wars sh*t stirring, what with petulant Peta turning up to join battle ...

A report from the Centre for Independent Studies argues too many people are now going to university to study subjects that "neither broaden their minds, nor prepare them for work", says Sky News (sic) host Peta Credlin. “Too many people are essentially putting off life for three or four years and, in the process, incurring a substantial HECS debt, and often having their minds filled with left-wing propaganda into the bargain,” Ms Credlin said Ms Credlin said Professor Steven Schwartz’s report notes student numbers “increased 70 per cent” in the decade after the Gillard government dropped admissions quotas. "And that, coupled with perverse incentive in university funding, that has … 'blight(ed) the life chances of many members of the younger generation'."

Did some reptile loon have to read that tag in running writing?

How else to explain that they still hadn't caught up with Sky Noise down under having undergone a rebranding?

And so to the real reason for the entire exercise.

It was just a promo and the prof was flogging a service.

Before proceeding to the final gobbet, the pond headed off to the MindChamps site to check the pricing ... (the pond confesses to using the intertubes and a computer to do it)

Nice work if you can get it, and so to the penultimate gobbet, and a full-on plug ...

Emeritus Professor Schwartz, a former vice-chancellor of Macquarie University, Murdoch University and Brunel University in London, is now an education adviser to the private childcare and preschool provider MindChamps, which promotes literacy and numeracy instruction even before children start school.
He said handwriting helped build “muscle memory’’, compared to taking notes on a laptop or watching a recorded lecture on YouTube.
“The reason why writing means that you’ll retain more is that you can’t write fast enough to write down every word the lecturer said – you need to process it into ideas and then write those down,’’ he said.
“You’re already getting deeper learning, because you are deep in the ideas.
“Writing it down helps you remember it better because you had to put that effort into putting it down on paper.’’
Emeritus Professor Schwartz said children must be explicitly taught to read and write using phonics – the sounding out of letters and words – and criticised teacher unions for opposing the Year 1 phonics check now mandated by state and territory education ministers.
“There is no real substitute for explicit teaching,’’ he said.
“Universities pretty much told [trainee teachers] that these things were wrong.
“Leaving students to do whatever they want to do, [thinking] they’ll eventually learn what they’re supposed to learn, is a lot easier than trying to teach them.
“There is an actual science to it [teaching] and we just have to inculcate that into the universities, but it’s been hard.’’
MindChamps founder and chief executive David Chiem – a former Australian actor – uses theatre and music to teach children literacy from the age of 18 months. “It’s about pre-literacy – we don’t wait until they get to primary school and struggle,’’ he said.

But wait, there's more ... MindChamps founder and chief executive David Chiem was awarded a doctor of letters by Western Sydney University.

And so to the final plug, and please write the name down in long hand, or perhaps devise a sales ditty up there with Mr Plough ...(that name again is MindCamp, remember to call MindCamp)

“We nurture the mind to love literacy, to love the narrative world, and then teach the mechanics of reading.
“Until they love reading, they’re not going to enjoy writing.’’
Dr Chiem said children needed to learn a love of books, plays and music before they started school, otherwise “all of these gadgets and devices that are so obviously designed to get children addicted will win the war because we didn’t nurture literacy from the earliest years’’.
Western Sydney University has awarded Dr Chiem an honorary Doctor of Letters for his significant contributions to early childhood education, literacy and educational innovation.
UWS vice-chancellor George Williams said he was “impressed and inspired’’ by the MindChamps teaching techniques, which could be integrated into the university’s early childhood teaching degrees.
“The engagement of the kids, the joy of the educators it’s obviously a highly effective model,’’ Professor Williams said.

Time out, a 'toon please, and as climate science was mentioned...

That left the pond in search of a bonus, and the pond rifled through the detritus and trash that had been discarded yesterday in the archive.

There was nothing for it, Dame Slap had to be picked out of the rubbish, if only to confirm the pond's running thesis that the reptiles are on an extended campaign to promote Gina's pampered pet ...

The header: Permission to speak? Hanson’s fight is ours; Her battle with Mehreen Faruqi has forced Pauline Hanson to ask the High Court to be heard, and they should listen on principle alone.

The caption: Pauline Hanson has lodged an application with the High Court to seek leave to appeal against the recent decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court in her litigation against Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, right.

Dame Slap spent a bigly six minutes dealing with the extraordinary suffering of Gina's pet, apparently because the poor thing's unable to rabbit on in the offensive way she somehow manages to do on a daily basis ...

Pauline Hanson’s rising popularity reflects our own growing disillusionment with many of our major institutions. Hanson is challenging the lacklustre two-party system that so often fails to reflect the values of ordinary Australians.
She has put the boringly biased ABC on notice. She echoes our frustrations with the woke and increasingly unskilled bureaucracies that we can no longer rely on to provide independent advice to government. It is only right that Hanson is now taking the fight up to our most senior courts.

Uh oh, that word again ...

So the reptiles are entirely on board with Gina's pet's agenda, but perhaps only because she's a mirror reflecting their world view back to them.

On with Dame Slap ...

On Friday Hanson lodged her application with the High Court to seek leave to appeal against the decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court in her litigation against Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi. Her case could – indeed, should – deliver one of the biggest shake-ups to laws that have stifled free speech in this country.

Quick, an AV distraction featuring the stifled one.

Note to subs, please make sure the snap of Faruqi is suitably comical ... One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson responds after she lost her bid to overturn a court ruling she racially discriminated Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi.

Did the pond mention that it has Irish antecedents and so bagging the dismal British empire is entirely right and proper:

The Full Court of the Federal Court (justices Melissa Perry, Geoffrey Kennett and Elizabeth Bennett) held that what Hanson said four years ago in a tweet in response to a tweet by Faruqi was illegal.
Less than 12 hours after Queen Elizabeth died on September 8, 2022, in Britain, Faruqi tweeted: “Condolences to those who knew the Queen. I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples. We are reminded of the urgency of Treaty with First Nations, justice & reparations for British colonies & becoming a republic.”
About four hours later, Hanson tweeted her response: “Your attitude appalls [sic] and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in a parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan.”

Charming.

The temptation is to respond in the same way as the troller did the trolling (she could at least piss off back to a fush and chup shop), but the pond again wasn't in a biting mood.

Luckily there followed a snap featuring the trolling charmer and her trolled victim ... One Nation leader Pauline Hanson during her Federal Court appeal against findings of racial discrimination. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian And Mehreen Faruqi.

Oh dear long absent lord, shades of the racist Bolter, we're back with 18C again.

Why aren't the reptiles of the lizard Oz allowed to descend into a cesspit of abuse with Pauline? Why is life so unfair, why are all these minorities so unkind, can't they take a white supremacist joke?

What Faruqi said may well have offended millions of Australians. Too bad, says section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. If you are not a member of a minority, people may freely offend and insult you. In a democracy, that is as it should be, I say. But if you are a member of a racial or ethnic minority, you can use the law to shut someone up because you claim you have been offended and insulted.
Section 18C is bad law. It should have been repealed by the federal parliament long ago as an affront to a robust and healthy democracy. Plenty of courts have pointed out that political debates are not polite afternoon teas where people recite poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Why on earth, then, is Hanson muzzled from responding with political verve to a politically charged tweet by Faruqi? Sure, Hanson’s response was colourful, rude and perhaps wounding. If Faruqi wants to protect her glass jaw, she shouldn’t be dishing it out. Most Australians would say they each gave as good as they got and this should be left on X, not take centre stage in a courtroom.
As former High Court justice Michael Kirby said about political debates in this country: “One might wish for more rationality, less superficiality, diminished invective and increased logic and persuasion in political discourse. But those of that view must find another homeland.
“From its earliest history, Australian politics has regularly included insult and emotion, calumny and invective, in its armoury of persuasion. They are part and parcel of the struggle of ideas.”
We might lament that parliament has left 18C on the books. However, it’s not too late for the High Court to rule it is unconstitutional. Hanson argues, among other things, that parliament acted outside its powers when it enacted section18C in reliance on the external affairs power (also called the treaty power) in section 51 (xxix) of the Constitution.
Hanson’s legal team argues that section 18C goes much further than the treaty on which it relies, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (known as ICERD) and is therefore invalid.

Inevitably Kirby got dragged into the fuss...Former High Court justice Michael Kirby. Picture: John Feder

Strange, way back in 2015 Kirby was quoted as saying about the act which contains 18C:

As former High Court judge Michael Kirby has said, the act represented, "for the first time, a clear parliamentary instruction, enforceable by law, that racial bigotry against members of a particular race would not be tolerated in Australia". (here)

Never mind, the reptiles have always been exceptionally keen on their right to indulge in racist bigotry and bile ...

You do not have to be a learned High Court judge to see that the low-range conduct prohibited by section 18C – offensive or insulting remarks based on race etc – is not even close to the serious conduct that is the real target of the convention. Article 4(a) of ICERD is aimed at outlawing the “dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination, as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any race or group of persons of another colour or ethnic origin, and also the provision of any assistance to racist activities, including the financing thereof”.
Anne Twomey is a constitutional guru and professor emerita at the University of Sydney’s law school. When she talks about constitutional law, it’s not just students who listen. So do judges.
Twomey’s recent episode of her YouTube Constitutional Clarion series raises similar concerns about the constitutional validity of section 18C. Twomey said article 4 of ICERD was clearly aimed at “criminal offences, and it involves action of a very serious nature”. Article 4 is also subject to article 5 of the convention, which includes the right of people to freely express their opinions.
“What is odd about the Full Federal Court’s reasoning in the Hanson case is that it doesn’t interpret that treaty obligation in the context of freedom of speech,” Twomey said.
“The judgment … sets out articles 4, 6 and 7 of CERD, but it leaves out the critical article 5.”
Twomey dismissed the Federal Court’s claim in the Hanson case that 18C validly catches low-range conduct to try to “nip in the bud” conduct that might become of the more serious kind that is the subject of treaty. The court’s reasoning is right up there with saying a cigarette is a gateway drug to heroin.
Hanson’s second ground of appeal is that section 18C of the RDA breaches the implied freedom of political communication. Now we get to the hot mess created by our courts.
The Federal Court said section 18C didn’t breach the implied freedom because this part of the RDA was enacted for a legitimate purpose of enhancing the free flow of speech by shutting down speech that was offensive and insulting. Hanson says the court’s reasoning is wrong. Incredibly, as Hanson’s appeal application notes, the Full Court of the Federal Court ignored the two most recent cases on the implied freedom.

And as a reminder that it's more culture wars fodder, petulant Peta turned up again, though this time the reptiles realised Faux Noise down under had indeed been rebranded ...

One Nation Chief of Staff James Ashby responds to the court upholding the finding One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson racially vilified Mahreen Faruqi. “I received a phone call today from a former federal court judge who said the outcome of today’s decision was intellectually dishonest and lazy," Mr Ashby told News24 host Peta Credlin. “We’re not happy with the decision.”

And so to Dame Slap's final gobbet, wherein she maintained the Ashby rage ...

The Federal Court made no mention of Farmer v Minister for Home Affairs where, as Hanson’s application notes, the High Court said that “a purpose of ‘curbing political disagreement and debate inside Australia’ is not legitimate. It does not become legitimate because it is done to protect ‘the feelings or sensitivities of the Australian community or a segment of the community (against) hurt.’ ”
The Federal Court also ignored Jarrett v NSW, where the NSW Court of Appeal said the Constitution entailed “acceptance of the potential for disharmony, incivility and disruption that is part and parcel of democratic intercourse”.
The legal niceties are, of course, important. However, the core problem is that our senior courts have made a dog’s breakfast of free speech in this country over many years. Scrap that. I know what’s in my dog’s breakfast. But I cannot for the life of me understand the slippery legal inventions made by judges to empower judges to decide what can and cannot be said in this country.
Plenty of lawyers more learned than me, and even a few judges, agree the High Court has made a mash of free speech. Some of them will be at the annual Samuel Griffith Society conference in Sydney this weekend, where judicial meddling will be front and centre of a robust debate about free speech.
The High Court’s invention of an implied freedom of political communication and further inventions of entirely subjective tests that apparently determine when the implied freedom applies, make the whole area harder to decipher than the Voynich Manuscript. At least the Voynich Manuscript has some pictures. This uncertainty means we, the people, have no real clue as to what we can and cannot say – until a High Court cryptographer tells us so.

Just to tie that joke in with the blather about calligraphy, the Voynich Manuscript is perfectly readable, because it's handwritten, it's not any of that dreadful digital nonsense ...

See The New Yorker ...

The Unsolvable Mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript
By Jo Livingstone
November 30, 2016 (*intermitten archive link)

Clear as a bell, there's the joy of handwriting for you in a nutshell ...

And so to the final whine ...

Hanson is forced, then, in this case to ask the High Court for permission to talk. This is policymaking, not law. Each case is the equivalent of tossing a coin by reference to previous cases that were coin tosses too. Heads, you win. Tails, you lose. Or shall we make it best of three?
This is untenable. Hanson supporters may not be reading Federal Court and High Court judgments, but their instinct to distrust the tendencies of a small group of elites to think they know better than the rest of us is entirely rational.
It would be a travesty and a sign of cowardice, or perhaps hubris, if the High Court refuses to hear Hanson’s appeal.
It is high time the nation’s most senior court took a long and considered look at the mess they have created and the uncertainly (sic) they have foisted on Australians.

The AI at the lizard Oz is beyond sloppy, but there's a cartoon designed to help tease out the hidden messages buried in that Dame Slap piece ...

Speaking of the uncertainly that Faux Noise has foisted on the entire world, here's a few more 'toons explaining all the uncertainly ...

Elbows up Canada ...

The weekly debrief is back, and whatever you do, don't ask about the forty trillion dollar debt bomb which is going to explode the United States economy (YouTube link), and any economy standing near by ...

In which the pond is left with the dog botherer, until the Angelic one comes to the rescue with a tykeathon ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:16:34 +0000

Shameful.

But what use is it invoking "shame" when dealing with the brazen and the shameless?

If the reptiles had any sense of shame, they wouldn't have allowed the lizard Oz to decline in to a propaganda sheet of the basest kind.

Why should the pond bother to recycle the reptiles shamelessly recycling Mathias, as if he's a disinterested observer?

And worse, at the top of the digital "news", draped in a distorted graphic of the Australian flag, what with patriotism being the lowest kind of rhetoric ...

EXCLUSIVE
Quiet drift to economic decline: Cormann’s stark warning
Australia ‘drifting’ towards decline as reform gains are surrendered, Mathias Cormann warns
OECD secretary-general Mathias Cormann has warned Australia risks slow economic decline, saying creeping protectionism and falling productivity are surrendering hard-won gains.
By Simon Benson

Shameful, dragging an ancient political warrior back on to home turf, and dressing it up as economic analysis.

Enough already, simpleton Simon, off to the intermittent archive wit ye ...closely followed by the next item ...

EXCLUSIVE
Rent rises up to 20pc: developer
Rent rises up to 20pc, warns residential property developer Nigel Satterley
Australia’s largest private residential land developer has warned rents could surge up to 20 per cent and first homebuyer inquiries have already dropped 50 per cent following Labor’s budget tax changes.
By Matthew Cranston

Enough already canny Cranston, giving property developers undue respect, when they should be treated in the manner of used car salesmen and journalists.

And just who should appear below the canny Cranston?

Himself, served up again ...

POLITICAL GAMBLE
Labor bets house on tax reform, but may wreck the economy
The jury’s out among economists on the bid to win the political narrative of fixing so-called intergenerational inequality with improved first-home buyer numbers.
By Matthew Cranston

This is how the weekend "news" looked early on the Saturday morning, squeezed up to make a point about the rag being an unrelenting propaganda sheet...

Crude propaganda graphics matching the crude propaganda.

It wasn't just the flag, it was another of those meaningless graphs and punters looking like they'd just stepped out of an Orwellian nightmare...

Enough already, but over on the extreme far right things were no better.

Dame Slap leading off proceedings pleading for Gina's pampered pet?

Pauline Hanson takes free speech fight to the High Court
Her battle with Faruqi has forced Hanson to ask the High Court for ‘permission to talk’, and they should listen on principle alone.
By Janet Albrechtsen

The pond would rather tear out its tongue than give space to the pitiful, sanctimonious verbiage. A link to the intermittent archive is being more than generous ...

The Lynch mob attending a lynching?

The rise of Arday and the death of ideological diversity
The tragic downfall of a disgraced Cambridge professor exposes a crisis at academe’s heart.
By Timothy Lynch
Contributor

Much like when the reptiles decide to get rolling on a transphobia jihad, the pond had resolved to have nothing to do with Arday's persecution and suicide, so the pond can't add to the disgrace of the University of Melbourne each time the Lynch mob appears by adding this piece to the queue. (Speaking of transphobia, there was Parker Molloy urging people not to feed the logarithm, but struggling with the disease).

And there was no way that the pond could cope with"Ned" scribbling away for the Australian Daily Zionist News:

Why a ‘softly-softly’ Commission can’t cure antisemitism

Hopes and fears: The task for Virginia Bell as Royal Commission risks falling short on antisemitism
Denied an extension, the antisemitism inquiry winds down leaving Commissioner Bell with a mammoth task. With key witnesses uncalled does it risk failure because of ‘unfinished business’.
By Paul Kelly
Editor-At-Large

Eleven minutes of "Ned" pandering to the Zionists when there's other news afoot?!

It's deeply offensive ...

And with that winnowing, that's how the pond was left with just the dog botherer ...and if the pond had had its druthers, it would have sent him to the intermittent archive as well.

But needs must - the pond needs a little spacing between cartoons ...

The header: How Pauline’s party of one is powering the protest vote: One Nation’s strength is Pauline Hanson, and may also be its weakness. She holds a power most political leaders could only dream of – and she has no intention of revealing who inherits it.

The caption for the truly awful artwork for which Debbie decided to take credit: Pauline Hanson won’t shed any light on who will succeed her. She smply says she’s not going naywhere (sic, sic) for a while. Pictures: News Corp/iStock. Artwork: Debbie Schipp

Don't take this personally Debbie, but your artwork is smply terrible, though it does prepare the hive mind for what is to follow, as they head off on their journey to naywhere ...

You see, the dog botherer purports to offer a critical examination of Gina's pet, but in the process he offers a hagiographic profile making her as useful as a chess queen ...

One remarkable aspect of One Nation is that one person controls the succession of the party’s leadership, and that person is the one and only Pauline Hanson. So much for internal democracy.
“The President of the Party is Pauline Lee Hanson,” says rule 4.3.2 of the One Nation constitution. Rule 4.3.2.1 says; “Upon resigning from the position of President, Pauline Lee Hanson shall appoint her successor to become the next President of the Party.”
Hanson, 72, is campaigning to form national government, leaving open the option of switching to a lower house seat so she can serve as prime minister. Just who she views as her successor is a pertinent question.
“Oh god, I can’t tell you because I haven’t chosen, Chris, I’m not going anywhere for a while, so just wait and see,” Hanson said when I interviewed her for my upcoming News24 documentary, The Fight for the Right. Then I proffered a couple of names: her daughter Lee and star recruit Barnaby Joyce.
“The media have alluded to my daughter, and I’ll tell you what, that’s not the case,” retorted Hanson. “She has to prove herself, her ability to be able to do it, she’s not even a member of parliament, Chris. Barnaby’s only been with the party for eight months, so why would I say, give it to Barnaby?”
Given the current One Nation leadership caucus has a membership of one, I expect only kindness and light from One Nation politicians and candidates towards their party’s founder. This is the sort of power and deference that Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull craved.
Hanson claims that as the party expands its membership across the country its level of internal democracy will increase (the other direction would take her into Kim Jong-un territory). I suggested Hanson write down her choice to be stored in a safe in case she is hit by a bus, but she declined.

Up came a portrait of a pose llama - alpaca if you will - which pretty much illustrates the aspirations of this cultural 'leet ...Senator Pauline Hanson with One Nation’s lead Senate candidate, her daughter, Lee Hanson on the campaign trail in Tasmania. Picture: Facebook

You didn't have to look far to see how the reptiles were just recycling propaganda ...

Straight from the Zuck's mouth, helping explain why Facebook has ruined a generation or three.

Imagine having that in your daily feed, but then the pond has the lizard Oz in its daily feeding, and has been driven not so quietly insane by the intake of soma ...

There is something vaguely surreal about conducting serious political interviews with Hanson in the current climate. It reminds me of a John Lennon song: “Nobody told me there’d be days like these, strange days indeed.”
In search of explanations over the past few months I have travelled across the electorate of Farrer (where One Nation turned the tables on the Coalition to win its first House of Representatives seat at the May by-election), the South Australian seat of Hammond (an electorate One Nation took from the Liberals in the March state election) and around Melbourne where the Victorian election in November looms as the next big test for the Coalition and One Nation.

Now for the bit where the dog botherer explains to the hive mind why Pauline and her policies are pretty okay, especially as they reflect the positions of the lizard Oz ...

When I spoke to former Coalition voters who already made the switch to One Nation, the core drivers became clear.
While the main policy issues have long been obvious – cost of living, especially driven by immigration and net-zero policies – the recurring theme from voters is that while the Coalition has waxed and waned on immigration and net zero, Hanson has been solid as a rock.
“I think she’s a woman who has stood her ground for 30 years and never wavered and hasn’t flip-flopped on policy,” Griffith citrus grower Joanna Barnard said.
Michael Pfitzner, a dryland farmer north of Griffith, said: “Pauline Hanson hasn’t wavered one iota in the 30 years she’s been in parliament.”
A bloke on the street summed up the mood by saying he voted One Nation because “I’m sick of the other bloody idiots.”
On her family farm in SA’s Eden Valley, the state’s Liberal leader, Ashton Hurn, had a couple of key insights. “I think a part of the reason we are seeing a bit of a rise in One Nation is a sense of complacency that people feel in their politicians,” Hurn said, insisting all major parties had taken voters for granted.

Just to back that up, the reptiles wheeled in a snap of Tamworth's enduring, ineradicable shame ...One Nation’s star recruit, Barnaby Joyce. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

See how the dog botherer keeps pumping up the volume for Gina's pet and her policies ...

She's a bloody feenomin ...

The Liberals in SA now have five lower house MPs, a single seat more than One Nation. Going back a few months, Hurn was the first person I heard focus on the Bondi Beach terror attack as a turning point.
“I think that really was the first event that was a catalyst, I suppose, to really accelerate the surge of One Nation,” the SA Opposition Leader said. “It really put in focus the concern that Australians, including South Australians, had on immigration.”
Like most observers, Hurn reckons the issue driving Hanson’s rise, “above all else”, is immigration.
Back in Griffith, a town built on immigration and still reliant on immigrant labour, this still rings true. Local baker John Bertoldo helps run a proud migrant family business employing many immigrants, yet he cites immigration as the main reason he voted One Nation: “I think it’s because there’s too many coming in and I think it’s putting the pressure on everyone.”
I have seen Asian Australians, Indigenous Australians and even a Sikh Australian resplendent in a One Nation-orange turban mob Hanson or sing her praises. This is more than a political realignment; it is a phenomenon.
Voters did not leave the Coalition, the Coalition left them. By adopting net zero, going soft on immigration and failing to resist the overwhelming reach of big government and the woke agenda, the Coalition left the mainstream right-of-centre field vacant, and One Nation did not need to march in, it was just left standing there, where it had always been.

There you go, there's the dog botherer approving Gina's pet and her policies, blathering on about climate change and the woke agenda in a way worthy of Malcolm Roberts.

Now compound the adoration with another snap ...The Paulinbe (sic) factor: Hanson signs seven-year-old Noah Reynolds’ t-shirt at the One Nation South Australian election night event earlier this week. Picture: NewsWire/ Emma Brasier

Diminish the beefy boofhead? Rabbit on about a lack of trust for a man who looks shifty from the moment he gets out of bed?

An easy task on any day of the week ...

Making corrections under Angus Taylor, the Coalition has ditched net zero and toughened up on immigration. But as Mannum Baptist pastor Colin Nieass warns, after switching from the Coalition to One Nation: “Trust is easily lost, it’s very had to get back again.”

At long last the dog botherer decided to throw in a crumb of doubt, offer up a morsel of a billy goat butt, dressed up as an "all the same", as some kind of pathetic attempt at balance ...

All the same, the critical question of the moment is whether the One Nation surge has peaked. As I discovered when I asked new member for Hammond Robert Roylance about his policy prescription (“I’m fumbling for words here, if you would just give me a moment”), some One Nation candidates and politicians face a steep learning curve.
Even Hanson failed to name the President of Indonesia or Prime Minister of Japan, connections that are second nature for any politician abreast of our regional priorities. With at least 128 candidates to be run in the Victorian election and 160 or more federally, the One Nation talent pool soon may suffer from water restrictions – or see some painful belly-flops.
Victoria will tell us much in November. If the Coalition wins a majority it will tell us One Nation has peaked, but if a change of government relies on support from Hanson’s team, the surge may have some way to go.
Many voters want the Coalition and One Nation to work collaboratively against Labor. When I challenged De Bortoli Wines managing director Darren De Bortoli on whether the shift to One Nation might keep Labor in power, he said: “Well, if they keep going at each other’s throats it will – they’ve both gotta get their acts sorted out.”
The fight for the right-of-centre vote is a high-stakes battle being fought in different ways by a variety of players.
Thirty years after being disendorsed by the Liberals Hanson is forcing them to re-examine their core principles and, ironically, this may help them reform and revive.
There can be no question that the red-headed firebrand from Ipswich has proven to be a durable and consistent lightning rod for voter dissatisfaction. But beyond that, what is One Nation’s function? And beyond Hanson, what is its future?

You see? Gina's pet is there to help the beefy boofhead's mob reform and revive by making them even more extreme far right, more in line with the dog botherer and the lizard Oz hive mind.

And that is Gina's pet's function, and her future for some considerable time in this wretched, tawdry rag ... in much the same way that Faux Noise has helped make the world safer for authoritarian dictators ...

For a bonus, the pond could have wheeled out Our Henry ...but it's just another contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

Court’s ruling gives antisemitism a free pass
A Supreme Court ruling on a young Sydney vandal reveals how judicial overreach, selective context, and faulty definitions threaten the fight against antisemitism.
By Henry Ergas

Even worse, the references were very low rent, e.g. ...

The “bad man”, as American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, cares only for where the line falls: draw that boundary too precisely and the Jew-hater will simply operate immediately inside it.

St Paul distinguished the true Jew from the merely outward one. Joseph Stalin and his successors relied on cringing statements by anti-Zionist Jews to shield the Soviet empire’s vicious antisemitism from criticism.

He really is off his oats ...

Luckily the pond did a deep dive, and discovered the Angelic one trying to cope with mad king Donald and his minions:

The header: Trump’s men put faith in America’s Christian nationalism revivalThe US President’s three most influential offsiders are expressing different views about Christianity in secular political life.

The caption for the snap of mad king Donald and some of his supine courtiers: US President Donald Trump is flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth. Picture: AFP

Now it would be optimistic to expect the Angelic one to entertain as much as the stories about troubles in Tyke town that are to be found in other places ...

Catholic Schools NSW CEO Dallas McInerney sacked after fronting anti-corruption commission

But the pond must make do with what's at hand ...

What is Christian nationalism? This ill-defined term loosely refers to the identification of Christianity with the American sense of identity. Three members of the Trump administration personify the idea to greater or lesser degrees: Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and liberally tattooed and bellicose Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Initially Hegseth set out to rid the military of “woke” and to reinstate a warrior ethic. Vance and Rubio have a larger project of civilisational renewal but for Vance, as a convert, Catholicism is paramount and of a different character to Rubio’s.
Vance has been described as “suspiciously devout”, but in the MAGA movement he was given a free pass as a Catholic because he is one of them, and in some intellectual circles Vance’s conversion has given him a philosophical credibility the rest of the movement doesn’t have.
Vance and Rubio convey the Trump administration’s conviction that the West suffers from civilisational malaise. Restoring confidence in our shared Western inheritance is of foundational importance.

Suspiciously devout? JD is both amoral and barking mad:

JD Vance Is the Loyal Convert in Chief
Vice president JD Vance is everywhere—and he’s the highest point of contact, Trumpworld sources say, for tech billionaires who went all-in on Donald Trump.

And again ...

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession
Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

And that sort of guff is supposed to restore confidence in our shared Western inheritance is of foundational importance?

But the reptiles insisted on "suspiciously devout": Mr Vance has been described as “suspiciously devout”. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

The Angelic one did her best to cope, but was way out of her depth.

Not those 'leets, oh not the bloody European 'leets again...

Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February was about civilisational renewal: to reindustrialise, enforce borders and place the international order on a more modest and realistic foundation.
But the most important element of civilisational renewal was the aspect European elites won’t, or can’t, acknowledge.
Rubio emphasised that the central element of Western civilisation was the “sacred inheritance” of “Christian faith”. He suggested that we must overcome the animus against engaging in religiously motivated political and civic action. Men did not have faith so they could do great things; they did great things because they had faith. Our civilisational future will depend on those whose eyes are turned toward something greater than restoration of confidence in the West.
The desire to reinstate Christian principles in civic and political life is the form of Christian nationalism that characterises Rubio and Vance. However, Vance’s background and journey to conversion have given him a broader perspective. He is regarded as the flag-bearer for young conservatives and he has more intellectual heft. His was a conversion of the rational mind as well as the heart.
This dovetails into the new conservatism and is reflected in Vance’s politics. He is more interested in the social project than the hardcore individualism of the liberals and Reaganite monetarist conservatives.

All that in praise of JD and liddle Marco and JD's "broader perspective"?

The pond didn't know whether to weep or to laugh, and had a similar reaction to the man who made the Pentagon home for warriors's wives and aircraft carriers the suppliers of bad rations ... Mr Hegseth characterises the militant version of Christian nationalism. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

Vance says Catholicism reflects a broader political spectrum than the old right. From the right he sees the emphasis on personal responsibility but on the left he sees the emphasis on the social good, especially the option for the poor, which means fewer barriers to economic flourishing.

It's easy to see where the Angelic one is going here. JD, as tyke, is inclined to the good, while Hogsbreath, being more evangelical, is a tad weird ...

‘It’s Bonkers’: Jennifer Hegseth’s Hands-On Role in Her Husband’s Pentagon
After an 18-year career at Fox News, she is now her husband’s most influential adviser and de facto producer, shaping the job as no Pentagon spouse has before. (*intermittent archive link)

The pond digresses, on with the Angelic one trying to cope by splitting hairs in favour of one crazy over another...

The more extreme aspect of Christian nationalism is the militant version characterised by Hegseth. With Deus Vult and the Jerusalem cross tattooed on his arms, Hegseth seems to fancy himself as a modern-day crusader.
Hence Christian nationalism has taken on a one-dimensional, slightly warped bellicosity under his auspices. Hegseth spent his first nine months as Defence Secretary reshaping the Pentagon, hosting monthly worship services, overlaying scripture on images of fighter jets and missile systems, and telling assembled troops the country needed to be “on bended knee, recognising the providence of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”.
From the beginning of the campaign against Iran the voluble Hegseth and the sense of moral authority provided by his Christianity have been frequently cited.
But what is the value of Hegseth continuously invoking his faith, expressed in the rather narrow terms of his own brand of evangelical Christianity?
At a Pentagon press briefing, Hegseth closed his remarks by reading from the Book of Psalms: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.” Not a few journalists, here and in the US, are asking: How far does this go? What happens when Christianity isn’t just present in the military, it becomes part of the military? When the pressroom lectern goes from being a podium to a pulpit?

Time to wheel in a figure guaranteed to make the average tyke seem relatively normal and harmless ... Pastor Doug Wilson is at the forefront of the controversial Christian nationalism movement, which is moving mainstream under Trump.

And so to a final tyke take, which pretty much entirely misses the point, because not once did she mention Natalie, as pretty weird an infatuation with an adoring youngling as any mad king has indulged in, making Bill Clinton seem like a rank amateur ...

There have been queries about the constitutionality of Hegseth’s public Christian pronouncements. Some members of congress are calling for a Department of Defence investigation over claims related to military officers allegedly invoking the Bible in pursuit of the Iran war. The question at the centre of this has become unavoidable: What does it mean to anoint the most powerful military on Earth in the language of Christianity and then go to war?
These three important people have different views about Christianity in secular political life. Non-denominational churches of the type that holds Hegseth’s allegiance, though numerous, do not have a unified public voice except for Hegseth. But the most interesting development in the story of Christian cultural revival and nationalism is the input of the two Catholics in a country that for many years did not welcome Catholics in high office.
Matthew Schmitz, in an essay in influential journal First Things, calls it “our strange Catholic moment”. Catholic ideas, terms and figures have increasing prominence in US civil and political life. Never before have three cardinals appeared on TV arguing against Donald Trump’s draconian immigration rules. Catholic terms have come up in discussions of just war. Vance even got people googling Ordo Amoris (the order of love).
Then we got an American Pope, Leo XIV, with whom Trump fought, but people were on the Pope’s side. And not only that, his encyclical was read by people in Silicon Valley. Even in secular terms something of a triumph.

Oh yes, a real triumph ...

And speaking of JD ...

Need the pond offer more? A Killer time, and with Our Henry too ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 22:05:43 +0000

The pond leapt on Our Henry like a starving wolf or hound in urgent need of nourishment, with a serve of the best of Western Civilisation.

Sure, the pond hadn't paused to do a survey of this day's lizard Oz offerings, sure the headline ominously warned of a treatise on Gina's pampered pet ...but Thucydides!

The header: Authenticity of Pauline Hanson to keep Labor in power; One Nation’s permanent fixture is eating into the Coalition’s core vote – proving that enduring authenticity beats policy depth.

The caption for the bog standard snap of Gina's pet looking smug and supercilious, if only someone would explain what that word meant: Thirty years after entering parliament, Pauline Hanson’s brand of unabashed authenticity continues to reshape the right side of Australian politics. Picture: Tony Gough

The pond drooled in anticipation.

A bigly five minutes of Our Henry using the very best references from his dictionary of quotes to demolish the bottle-bred ranga:

Thirty years after she rose in parliament to warn that Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”, Pauline Hanson has finally succeeded in swamping someone herself: the Liberal Party.
Newspoll’s August 9 survey has One Nation level with Labor on 29 per cent of the primary vote, with the Coalition sunk to just 18 per cent, its lowest primary vote on record. Roy Morgan a day later had One Nation ahead of Labor, 26 to 25.5 per cent, with the Coalition on 22. Pollsters disagree on who is running second; they all agree that a party founded in an Ipswich fish-and-chip shop is now contesting the lead in the national polls.
In part, Hanson’s rise reflects the old adage: persistence beats resistance. She has been a fixture of Australian politics for three decades, and longevity of that kind converts a personality into a well-known brand.
Familiarity, in turn, provides resilience – not least by undermining the demonisation tactics so effectively deployed against her years ago. A figure who has survived three decades in politics, including a wrongful imprisonment, cannot credibly be portrayed to the electorate as a wild and dangerous quantity; she has already been tried, in every sense of the word, and outlasted the verdict.
Meanwhile, her policies – and One Nation has plenty of them – remain what they have long been: vague in places, ill-judged in others, and sometimes simply unworkable. But it is far from clear how much that now counts against her.
The Australian Election Study asks, at each federal election, whether the major parties “keep their promises”; since 2019, neither party has ever convinced more than 23 per cent of voters that it does. Were the question put today – after changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing that Anthony Albanese had ruled out “for the 50th time” barely a year before – that proportion would surely be lower still.
Little wonder then that no one believes Labor’s National Platform, adopted barely three weeks ago, provides a reliable guide to what Labor will actually do. As for the opposition, try asking Liberal voters what their own party truly stands for.
But it isn’t only policy credibility that has collapsed; party attachment has weakened even more dramatically. In 1990, 4 per cent of Australians said they felt close to no political party; by 2025 that figure had reached an unprecedented 25 per cent, while just 34 per cent said they always voted the same way, a record low. As voters become less attached to party labels, the leader’s own persona plays an ever-increasing role in the political battle.
That factor may be the one that matters most. That Australians are disillusioned with political elites is hardly news: of the 28 major-party leader ratings at elections since 1987, three of the four lowest were recorded in the last three elections. As faith in politicians’ promises has collapsed, so has confidence that they hold any settled convictions at all.
There is, in contrast, no doubt that Hanson has steadfastly remained herself. She has kept raising the same uncomfortable subjects – immigration, multiculturalism, national sovereignty – others chose to ignore. That hardly means she offers good answers. But she at least has the courage to address good questions – and to do so without equivocating.

Well that was disappointing. A kind back-handed approval of Gina's pet for asking good questions, and not a single example of astonishing insights from Western Civilisation.

Even worse, the caption for the sole snap to break up Our Henry's text suggested a dire turn ... Unlike France’s Marine Le Pen, who built a disciplined party machine, Pauline Hanson’s movement remains dependent on a single figure. Picture: AFP

Not Le Pen?!

Is there no one Our Henry might invoke?

Outspokenness and consistency have given her something even rarer in Australian public life than competence: the ring of authenticity. Lionel Trilling brilliantly identified the mechanism more than half a century ago. Sincerity, he argued, asks whether what you say matches what you believe; but once society itself comes to be seen as a stage on which everyone is merely “playing the role of being ourselves”, sincerity no longer guarantees very much at all.

Lionel's a good first step.

The pond immediately rushed off to its book of quotes to be reminded of a thrilling Trilling:

“Insanity is a direct and appropriate response to the coercive inauthenticity of society ... it is an act, expressing the intention of the insane person to meet and overcome to coercive situation; and whether or not it succeed in this intention, it is at least an act of criticism which exposes the true nature of society” ― Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity

And again:

“In any genre it may happen that the ﬁrst great example contains the whole potentiality of the genre. It has been said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. It can be said that all prose ﬁction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.”

It could be said that all lizard Oz columns are but a variation on the theme of Our Henry ... but will there be more astonishing insights from Western Civilisation?

Spoiler alert, the pond was shattered to discover that Our Henry had banished the ancient Greeks and Romans, and any thought of a medieval sage ...not even a Locke or a Burke disturbed the text:

What steps into that vacuum is authenticity. The issue is no longer whether you say what you mean. It is whether you are who you say you are, so that voters know what they are getting. An unabashed rogue, such as Donald Trump, can then seem preferable to a dishonest priest – and it is worth recalling that Hanson, unlike most alleged crooks, was actually exonerated.
But Hanson is not only unmistakably authentic. As elites drift ever further from everyday Australians, she appears closer than her political rivals to their concerns, their fears and even their hopes. With only a small minority of voters telling the 2025 election study that “people like them” have much influence on government, that makes her authenticity an extraordinarily valuable asset: she seems “something like me” and at least she is not pretending to be anything else.
There is, in that, a striking resemblance to Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s right-wing Rassemblement National (National Rally) party. Like Hanson, she has drawn strength from decades of visible continuity, deployed with systematic discipline to shed a truly demonic image: Le Pen’s own father, the party’s founder, was a Holocaust-denying antisemite with documented links to former Nazis, leaving a political inheritance so toxic that Hanson’s pales beside it.
And Le Pen too offers a clear, stable and unquestionably authentic political identity against leaders the electorate no longer trusts. At a moment when confidence in personal political efficacy has collapsed, voting for her seems the only way to secure the real change other politicians promise but never provide.
The result is that despite a recently upheld conviction, voters have flocked to the RN, placing Le Pen ahead of her rivals for the 2027 presidential election.
There is, nonetheless, a crucial difference. Le Pen did not merely outlast her demonisers. Brick by brick, she built an actual political machine: succession planning well advanced around Jordan Bardella, a leadership team based on tested, long-serving lieutenants, a thorough policy development process, regional strongholds underpinned by ubiquitous local branches.
Reinforced by effective party discipline – “ultras” whose outbursts tarnish the party’s respectability are swiftly shown the door – that machine has made the RN the most cohesive grouping in the National Assembly, bolstering its standing as a potential party of government.
It is that patiently built apparatus that has let Le Pen push deep into the electorate of Les Républicains, turning an insurgency on the centre-right’s flank into a formidable bid to supplant it.
That transformation of periodic outbursts of electoral discontent into a disciplined, ongoing party machine is the whole difference between a mere disrupter and a genuine political force – and it is the one test Hanson has never passed. Thirty years in, One Nation still has no comparable depth of leadership talent, no equivalent network of trusted lieutenants, no plausible provision for a post-Hanson succession, and nothing resembling RN-style control over its own candidates.
Familiarity and authenticity have made Hanson a permanent feature of the landscape; they have not made her a government-in-waiting.
And with little sign that the Liberals have gotten their act together, she may well do to an unreformed Coalition exactly what the polls suggest – hollow it out, seat by seat, without posing a serious threat to Labor’s hold on office.
The real risk is therefore not that Pauline Hanson wins. It is that her rise simply guarantees Australians three more years of misery – a misery we now know so very well, and need so very little.

Sheesh, what a dismal, mediocre offering, with nary a hint of Plato or Socrates. Not a word about aspiring tyrannos? Couldn't Our Henry have spared a word for Cypselus of Corinth?

Instead the hole in bucket man sounded as if he'd overdosed on a dozen reptile offerings of the "Ned" kind.

Perhaps the pond should have begun by doing that survey of lizard Oz offerings ... but alas and alack, the lizard Oz "ticking clock" routine had been merely to announce the arrival of yet another bog standard true crime piece ...

The pond's YouTube logarithms are saturated with True Crime, so the pond only dipped in to the one piece of prose available on the matter:

How key witness in Rosslyn McQueen murder broke her 40-year silence on case
On a cold winter’s afternoon, two journalists knock on Donna’s door to ask about a decades-old murder mystery. She was ready to break her silence.
By Hedley Thomas

The pond did its best to stifle a yawn.

This is the way the lizard Oz is going to save itself?

On the other hand, perhaps that was more interesting than the reptiles indulging in their basic "news" jihad at the top of the digital page, ma...

For the record the reptiles had cunningly contrived to avoid having their lead story archived, but it contained a compelling message from the beefy boofhead, and so that at least needed to be clipped ...

How could the pond miss that opening image, and at least a little of the copy that followed?

The rag really is state opposition media in waiting ... and so it was something of a tragedy that the devilish reptiles had tricked the intermittent archive into a "page not found" routine.

When a page could be found in the archive, the pond quailed in misery...

EXPERT WARNS
Bailouts and welfare ‘drag us down’, say top economists
Former top Treasury officials and leading economists have urged Labor to tighten its fiscal rules as Australia’s gross federal debt briefly surpassed $1 trillion for the first time.
By Jack Quail

Strange, the reptiles routinely warn the hive mind of dangerous 'leets and so-called experts.

Lo, after the pond had quivered and quailed, there came the mug punter's friend, as the indefatigable Geoff, chambered away ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Jim shouts at the clouds, as Labor’s economic narrative falters
The Treasurer is a walking, talking propaganda machine who Labor colleagues and business leaders fear is losing control.

A reptile who could invoke "shouting at clouds" deserves a spot at the pond, even if it's just a link to the archive.

For entertainment purposes only, the reptiles even resorted to dragging out a moth-eaten relic ...

EXCLUSIVE

‘Deplorable’: John Howard blasts Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison over treatment of Fiona Brown
John Howard has condemned Labor’s attacks on former Liberal staffer Fiona Brown and noted the ‘inexcusable contradiction’ that then-PM Scott Morrison apologised to Brittany Higgins.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice

Of course, it had to be Dame Slap and a rather gluggy Rice keeping that ancient jihad going.

This is one of the sturdiest reptile jihads, a never ending story, and it served only to distract from a more recent jihad, melongate ...

Six weeks on, PM admits his appearance on racy podcast was an error.

Over on the extreme far right, the meretricious Merritt turned up with a bog standard contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News:

Ruling provides rare insight into judge’s thinking
How one judge perceives the great public policy issue of our time: antisemitism and hatred of Israel.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

Note the cunning way that the malicious Merritt's headline had managed to confuse and conflate anti-Semitism with a hatred of Israel, as if the sight of ethnic cleansing could be sneezed away.

A fine example of pedantry would follow, but the pond was immediately disturbed and distracted by a hint of heresy in Cameron's offering ...

Israel needed to go the extra mile on Frankcom killing
Australia right to call out Israel over refusal to launch criminal probe into aid worker deaths
Israel’s military has cleared its own soldiers of a crime over the killing of seven aid workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom. Australia is correct to say that is not good enough.
By Cameron Stewart
Chief International Correspondent

The pond was so astonished it saved Cameron to the archive and clipped him as well ...

Cameron had questions to ask, and while they were just about a single Australian, and while abuses of this kind happen on a daily basis in Gaza and the West Bank, it was a baby step that deserved some encouragement.

Ask away Cameron ...

The wrong mindset? But what if ethnic cleansing and genocide is the mindset?

Even so, it was remarkable, a deploring of the IDF and support for Wong and Albo. It was as if the pond had stumbled into an alternative universe.

There was an immortal Rowe to help Cameron with that ...

And so to the real bonus, and of course it had to be Killer Creighton.

The pond can hear the whining. What happened to the big fuss about the Swans? Sorry, down the page.

Why do I have to head over to another place for a beguiling tale about cultists in action?

Exclusive Brethren secretly paid far-right activists to perform stunts disrupting the federal election

Moan away. You can't expect the lizard Oz cultists to cover another cult.

What about the latest from ICAC?

Sorry, the reptiles love to bury that well down the page. You have to go elsewhere ...

‘You have got to go’: former NSW minister tells Icac ‘something strange at play’ when she was sacked by Perrottet

What about the Emeritus Chairman, who had entranced the ABC this morning?

Murdoch family succession drama laid bare in unsealed court documents

...James's ever-souring relationship with his elder brother and father has been well reported, but Commissioner Gorman points to Rupert's suspicion of his son as a key reason Project Family Harmony got the green light.
"Rupert Murdoch was brought into the plan … under the false assumption that James Murdoch was 'making trouble' by fuelling press speculation about governance of the [Murdoch Family Trust] after Rupert Murdoch's passing," he wrote.
But Commissioner Gorman said Rupert's beliefs about James's dealings with the press were "unsubstantiated".
In one example, the commissioner said Lachlan and others within the company believed James, or someone acting on his behalf, had leaked information to Financial Times journalist Alex Barker about the details of the family trust.
But Commissioner Gorman wrote: "At trial, Lachlan Murdoch admitted that he did not have any proof that James Murdoch or his associates had briefed Alex Barker."
A similar suspicion arose around a book published around that time called The Successor, an unauthorised biography of Lachlan written by Australian journalist Paddy Manning, now an investigative reporter at the ABC.
But the evidence in Reno pointed elsewhere. Commissioner Gorman found that for Manning's book, Lachlan's own adviser, Ms McKenna, had been a significant source, giving more than 14 hours of interviews plus follow-up correspondence.
"The evidence demonstrates that Lachlan Murdoch falsely told his father, without proof, that James Murdoch or his associates were sources for The Successor," the commissioner wrote.
"He did not tell his father that Siobhan McKenna had been involved, with his authorisation."
Commissioner Gorman also described Rupert's concern that his younger son would vehemently oppose Project Family Harmony.
"They assumed James Murdoch would be 'very hostile to this and would basically pull out the stops to block it,'" he wrote.

Forget it Jake, it's reptile town, we all know it's a Succession snake pit, and Lachy's one of the most poisonous snakes.

Spare a thought for Killer.

Everyone knows that the poor lad has never been the same since someone demanded he wear a mask during Covid ... so attention must be paid.

The header: States, Canberra to go over Covid cliff ‘all in debt together’; Ultra-low interest bonds issued during the pandemic are set to expire from 2030, threatening to add billions in interest burdens.

The caption for a splendid piece of art by Frank that lifted Killer's piece into distinguished, rarefied MOMA territory: Federal and state debts are set to pass $2 trillion as ultra-low pandemic bond rates expire post-2030. Sources: Supplied and iStock. Artwork by Frank Ling

Killer used Covid as a metaphor for an "we're all rooned" outing that put Dame Groan firmly in her place as a rank amateur:

Remember Long Covid? Medical experts still debate its provenance and prevalence, but when it comes to state and federal governments the affliction is very real, albeit mercifully in remission.

Trust Killer for expert medical advice, and know that we'll all be rooned by Xmas:

Come 2030 and beyond, though, it’s guaranteed to flare up with a vengeance. Our governments borrowed like there was no tomorrow during the Covid pandemic, issuing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of bonds during 2020 and 2021 at ultra-low interest rates to “keep us safe”.
The full price of that dubious safety is yet to be paid, years after anyone who was “saved” has long passed away.
The federal government’s gross liabilities this week bobbed above $1 trillion for the first time, but that’s only the tip of the growing debt iceberg.
For a start, state governments’ non-financial public sector balance sheets reveal another $706bn as of June, and those debts are no less “public” than Canberra’s.
But even those figures underplay the challenge ahead, obscuring the great Covid debt refinancing cliff that awaits beyond the customary four-year budget forecast period.
The four biggest states have almost $277bn of bonds outstanding, with coupons, or interest costs, averaging around 2 per cent, according to new research by the Institute of Public Affairs, released this week.
When those sweet deals progressively expire from 2031, they’ll need to be refinanced at current long-term borrowing rates, which for state governments are around 5.5 per cent for 10 years, adding well over $8bn a year to their annual interest costs.
Each of NSW and Victoria, for instance, will be up for an extra $2.7bn a year from 2030 onwards, even if they decided to abruptly become fiscal saints and never run a cash deficit again.
This will amount to around a 25 per cent jump over and above the $11bn of interest costs they’ve each budgeted for the 2030 financial year.
To put that in perspective, the entirety of Victoria’s payroll and insurance taxes will be just about enough to cover the state’s annual interest bill.
South Australia’s annual interest burden would be able to fund its police force more than twice over.
The commonwealth faces the same problem, too, having around $280bn of cheap Covid-era debt on the books at a coupon of 3 per cent or less.
Toby Johnston, former chief economist of the Future Fund, estimates those bonds will cost an extra $9.5bn a year from 2030 on, assuming the federal government faces today’s prevailing 10-year yield of 5 per cent.
Of course, interest rates could well be higher still, given grim forecasts embedded in practically every government balance sheet in the developed world.
“The global bond market is sending a clear signal to all governments – get your house in order or face much higher debt service costs,” Johnston, now director of Westwood Strategic Advisers, tells me.
“Every additional dollar spent servicing past debt is a dollar that cannot be used to fund services, reduce taxes or invest in the national’s future,” he adds.
Even before the great Covid refinancing cliff begins to ratchet up, combined state and federal debts will push past $2 trillion, according to forecasts by the Parliamentary Budget Office released this week.
Almost certainly this will understate the actual fiscal deterioration, given the “degree of systematic optimism” built into budget forecasts, as PBO chief Sam Reinhardt put it in a speech last month.

The reptiles interrupted with a terrifying snap, showing exactly why Killer had suffered so, way back when, a suffering that had left an ineradicable scar: Signs and tape baring (sic) people from an empty Bondi Beach in March 2020. Picture: Damian Shaw

No doubt some wag thought the pond might have had some fun with "baring", but this is serious people.

Killer is in pain, and suffering from a rare kind of long Covid dementia:

Budget forecasts assume no new spending, which “rarely eventuate(s) in full because governments later announce new programs, extend existing ones, or respond to emerging pressures”, she added.
One good example is the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which was meant to have around 300,000 participants, rather than the 780,000 it had as of June.
Apologists for Australia’s soaring public debt often point to its supposedly low level as a share of GDP compared to other countries (about 50 per cent including the six states). Yet the stock of debt matters little. Canada has gross debts the equivalent to well over 100 per cent of its GDP yet enjoys a 10-year bond yield of 3.7 per cent, well below Canberra’s. New Zealand has been borrowing at a cheaper interest rate than Australia too for some time.
The world keeps Australia on a tighter fiscal leash, and for good reason: we’re a smaller, remote economy, whose economic viability would be torn asunder by a clash between China and the US in the Pacific.
Our biggest export customer is the number one geopolitical enemy of our most important military ally.
The Australian dollar isn’t a reserve currency, and we have a chronic inflation problem that predates the US-Iran war too.
A cursory look at state and federal budget management reveals appalling levels of waste and stupidity, best illustrated by the massive increases in public sector headcount and pay, at state and federal levels. Indeed practically all economic growth has been in the public sector, and in particular the highly regulated and relatively unproductive “care economy”.
The treatment for financial Long Covid will be painful, and it won’t be optional: significant cuts in spending along the lines Australia hasn’t seen before.

Why chose this sort of painful metaphor and hammer it to death?

It's the masks, Killer has never recovered from the masks or the need to talk about vaccines ...

At least we know it will work. New Zealand in the 1980s and Canada in the 1990s offer past examples of chronically mismanaged nations that had to make radical cuts and soon returned to fiscal health.
State and federal governments have planned bond issuance this year of some $235bn, the highest amount since the 12 months to June 2021.
Back then the Reserve Bank was helping keep borrowing costs down by creating billions of dollars of new money. That will be much harder to do in coming years, given the growing loss of faith in the monetary system throughout the developed world.
At least more economic commentators are coming to realise that the nation’s real public-debt burden extends far beyond Canberra to the states. What more need to realise is that Canberra is ultimately on the hook for the lot of it.

And so to the wringing of that metaphor's chicken neck:

“We’re all on this together” might have been an irritating, nonsense slogan during Covid, but it certainly applies to public debt, given the implicit guarantee the states enjoy.
Adam Creighton is IPA chief economist.

Strange, the pond seems to remember that we were all in a Covid mask-wearing mess back in the day, but never mind, there's an infallible Pope to hand to help with the cure ...

You see Killer, if you have just the right mindset, the memory fades and it all becomes a blur, a killing field of lost ghosts.

Speaking of forgetting, or not being aware, this is a true story.

The pond's partner had to ask who Natalie was. No idea. As clueless as Alicia Silverstone.

The pond won't harp on it, but such bliss, to live so far away from the doings of the court of mad King Donald...

In which the pond gives up, but does offer an archival listicle explaining why the reptiles of Oz and their endless jihads are more tedious than ever ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 21:42:24 +0000

There had to come a time when the pond went to the lizard Oz well, and walked away still parched with thirst.

Not even doing a Bear Grylls could have ended the sense of bodily and mental dehydration ...

Not a single reptile jihad held any appeal this Thursday, and so the intermittent archive was forced into overtime.

The contrived "ticking clock" routine was still top of the "news", ensuring that the pond would have not the slightest interest when the alleged investigation came to light.

There's only so many ticking clock movie memes any possum should have to reference.

Immediately below came more news of fallout from the Lehrmann matter, though you'll never see his name mentioned in reptile headlines...

EXCLUSIVE
Defeat of MeToo mob: $1.5m payout for Higgins’ boss Fiona Brown
Fiona Brown gets $1.48m payout but no apology for false rape claims
The former Liberal staffer has settled her commonwealth claim for $1.48m, almost $1m less than Brittany Higgins received, saying she feels ‘vindicated’.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice

The deliberate, glib, cheap, provocative framing of the yarn as a defeat for the "MeToo mob", typical of Dame Slap and a boiling Rice, was more than enough to ensure the pond walked on by ...

Add to that talk of "false rape claims", and you might be left with the sense that the original claim of rape had been dismissed, rather than that it involved another stage in endless feuds about cover ups.

And just below that came another reptile panic ...

EXCLUSIVE
Australia’s national debt tops $1 trillion for the first time in history
The historic milestone comes as interest costs are forecast to consume an increasing share of government revenue by decade’s end.
By Matthew Cranston

The only fun thing about the canny Cranson's panic attack was the snap of Jimbo looking diabolical and demonic at the start of the yarn ...

Down below that came the indefatigable Chambers - is there another reptile who contributes more to reptile panic attacks at the top of the digital page ma?- offering another assault and bout of hysteria...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Drowning in zeroes: Debt bomb explodes for trillion-dollar man Jim Chalmers
The Treasurer once called a trillion-dollar debt bill a national disgrace – now he owns one.

Over on the extreme far right there was the usual transphobia ...

Covert gender activism wags the care watchdog
A national health regulator designed to protect patients from ideology has itself become an instrument of it.
By Gary Geelhoed

Personally saving that to the intermittent archive wasn't so much a chore as relief at not having to touch the muck by reaching for the archive barge pole.

Things that the pond might have been interested in kept being ghosted.

The reptiles still opted out of any commentary on the wretchedly flawed gambling legislation, leaving the pond to contemplate Wilcox ...

The Australian Daily Zionist naturally ignored stories of Israel's ongoing disgrace in Gaza, the butchery and the cover ups, with Jack leading the way ...

Why a longer royal commission will not solve antisemitism
Pushing to extend timelines and subpoena high-profile activists risks turning a serious inquiry into an influencer circus.
By Jack the Insider
Jack the Insider
Columnist

Again the pond had to be first to save the piece, to its eternal shame. Would anyone extend the same courtesy to an empty plastic bottle?

Down below, in the "news" section, came ...

EXCLUSIVE
Labor elders demand royal commission probe union antisemitism
Labor stalwarts have called on the Bondi royal commission to extend its deadline and probe antisemitism allegations within their own party and the union movement.
By James Dowling and Elizabeth Pike

Guess who featured at the bottom of that yarn? Jennie George, apparently as a way of suggesting she's not got a monocultural mania about renewables...

You had to scroll way down the lizard Oz page, or head off to the Graudian to read Israel admits its soldiers fired at car in which Hind Rajab was killed

Or in another place to check out ...No criminal probe over Israeli strike that killed Australian Zomi Frankcom

There's no end to the cover ups or the ethnic cleansing.

And apart from a yarn about Kyrgios taking to the coke and mad king Donald taking to Kim Jong-un - hasn't there ever been a repressive dictator he hasn't loved? - and air traffic controllers taking to overtime, there was only petulant Peta exhibiting her usual pique and taking to Keogh ...

COMMENTARY by PETA CREDLIN
Our Diggers deserve better than Keogh
Veterans’ Affairs Minister has faced calls to resign after allegedly complaining about a missed appointment during a long-delayed meeting.

Again it was left to the pond to save it to the intermittent archive and again the pond did it grudgingly. Why fill up the overloaded archive with useless petulant crap?

A little later, this also popped up on the extreme far right ...

WHO’s high-price pandemic plan
Australia is poised to sign major WHO pandemic agreements – but a new study warns the financial case underpinning them is built on smoke and mirrors.
By David Bell and Ramesh Thakur

... because who can remember a single pandemic in recent times creating any sort of world chaos?

On the bright side, that allowed the pond to do a segue into the infallible Pope, because who doesn't love a pandemic?

The lizard Oz editorialist also failed the pond, what with yet another bout of transphobia and another contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News.

The only piece to appeal to the pond?

Happily that pointed the pond to a WSJ piece, though in classic lizard Oz style, it didn't feature a link, what with the rag always keen to keep punters inside the hive mind.

Never mind, it was easily found, and it happened to be in the archive ...

Russia Burns Books and Sacks Libraries in Ukraine
Bibliocide—attacks on the written word—was a tactic of Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge and ISIS.
By Emily Hamilton

By way of contrast with the lizard Oz, the WSJ is a Murdoch rag which still attempts the odd bit of journalism ... and this will serve as a teaser trailer ...

And so on, and that was the pond's listicle or litany of all that unwary punters might encounter at the top of the lizard Oz, whether as "news" or in the commentary section, this dismal early Thursday.

Perhaps if Our Henry returns with a bout of Thucydides on the morrow the pond will manage to perk up and pay attention, but right at the moment, the lizard Oz is unreadable, its jihads overly familiar and utterly tiresome.

Almost anything newsworthy and/or interesting is happening elsewhere ...unless you happen to be interested in the doings of footy boofheads ...

Swans ban five players over hotel scandal involving exotic dancers
Tawdry details revealed of exotic performers being hired for lap dances at a hotel, as five Sydney Swans stars were rubbed out for the season and detectives move to speak to those involved.
By Damon Johnston, Jay Clark and Lachlan McKirdy

The lizard Oz artwork managed to hit just the right note of silhouette titillation and boof ...

Say what? The reptiles are now borrowing their yarns from the HUN?

Could the rag sink any lower?

Best to turn to the immortal Rowe for a wrap-up 'toon ...

And how does it go in Vlad the sociopathic invader's Russia?

It's amazing to live in a time when psychotic Lord Haw-Haws parade about, wanting to nuke this and bomb that and start the third world war ...

In which the pond winnowed the reptiles all the way down to Stewie stewing about the mad king and "Ned" stewing about the beefy boofhead mired in contradictions ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:27:23 +0000

Today seemed like a perfect day for the reptiles to opt into abusing the government and the opposition on the sordid matter of the gambling matter sell out, but they decided to opt out, and carry on their usual jihads.

EXCLUSIVE
Rental disorder: nation’s largest property manager backs warning on 30pc rises
Property manager Ray White has warned Jim Chalmers’ budget tax changes could force rents up by almost a third, as the Albanese government publicly rejects the analysis.
By Thomas Henry, Matthew Cranston and Ewin Hannan

The pond guesses that the lizard Oz's devotion to tabloid revenues for the Murdoch empire trumped any concern for hive mind punters ...

EXCLUSIVE
$240 rent hike for Christmas: Jim’s people pay price
Rents in Jim Chalmers’ Rankin electorate climb at three times Treasury’s forecast rate
The Treasurer promised rents would rise just $2 a week – but in his own electorate, landlords are hiking them by up to $240.
By Mackenzie Scott and Jordan Lamont

The indefatigable Geoff was standing by to chamber another tirade ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Tell ’em they’re dreaming: Treasury’s forecasts were simply pie in the sky, Jim Chalmers
The Treasurer’s frustrated reaction to an NAB client note discussing impacts of the government’s housing tax crackdown reveals a politician under pressure.

It wasn't as if they couldn't have turned to the 'toons to see what was going down in the real world, courtesy of the likes of the infallible Pope ...

As a way of continuing their avoidance tactics, the reptiles also dragged truly moth eaten Petey boy out of the closet to join another jihad ...

EXCLUSIVE
Costello warns Victoria faces multi-term battle to repair ‘sickly’ state
The former treasurer urges the next state government to rein in spending, slash taxes, and dismantle Daniel Andrews’s ‘command-and-control’ public service.
By Anthony Galloway

Sure enough it turned out that trained parrot Anthony was just regurgitating what Petey boy had offered over on the extreme far right.

First steps on the road back from this state of decay
The state that gave the world its longest Covid lockdown now faces a $200bn debt crisis – it will take years to escape.
By Peter Costello
Contributor

Couldn't the reptiles rustle up a relevant Victorian Liberal rather than this ossified antique?

What a joy to be able personally to consign both of them to the intermittent archive.

If the reptiles had wanted to strike a Victorian tone, they could have turned to Golding, celebrating the vultures at the footy ...

The pond also did the same archival service for Dame Slap, what with her deciding to act as chief reptile ghoul this day, performatively showing off her routine of hard bigot...

‘Soft bigotry of low expectations’ claims don
One of the world’s greatest universities, home to Newton and Darwin, seemingly let identity politics trump academic rigour – with devastating consequences.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

It was the pile on of jihadist bigots that claimed the don, and the pond refuses to indulge Dame Slap in her version of the blame game.

There was avoidance wherever the pond looked.

Instead of the gambling matter, the bouffant one summoned up his usual two minute bleat ...

Keogh fiasco takes the gloss off reforms and energises opposition
On the day Australia honoured its Vietnam veterans, their own minister was too busy to meet them – until the Prime Minister personally intervened.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

Come on bouffant one, couldn't you have at least joined the immortal Rowe?

Oh and the pond should note that the reptiles are still continuing their silent movie ticking clock count down at the top of the digital page ...

It better be good, but the pond suspects it will turn out to be a dud, a bit like when Richard Harris turned up to defuse the ticking time bermb in Dick Lester's Juggernaut. Cut the red wire (or was it the blue one?)

With all that winnowing of the hive mind, the pond had to go below the page to discover Cameron in a tither and a dither ... bermb, bermb, bermb Oman ...

The header: Donald Trump’s foreign policy unravels with threats to key international partners; The threat to ‘bomb the s..t’ out of Oman signals a presidency unravelling on the world stage, with Iran, Gaza and the Strait of Hormuz all defying his grip.

The caption for the bone spurs clown carrying on like a member of the military: President Donald Trump arrives at the White House on Sunday. Picture: AP Photo

It's tough times for the reptiles down under, what with their kissing cousins at Faux Noise still actively campaigning for the triumph of the GOP at the mid-terms, so that mad king Donald might continue his reign without let or hindrance.

This might help explain why Stewie could only summon up three minutes and the reptiles larded the piece with a number of AV distractions ...

One day it’s South Korea, the next day it’s Oman. Donald Trump’s threat to “bomb the shit” out of Oman was the latest bad day of geopolitics for an increasingly frustrated President.
These are tough days for Trump on the international stage. Nothing seems to be going right. The war against Iran is at a stalemate, with no hope of a meaningful resolution any time soon. Trump can’t break an increasingly belligerent Iran with military force and can’t even get Tehran to the negotiating table to secure a face-saving peace deal. The collapsed 60-day memorandum of understanding with Iran ended this week with no achievements and no move on either side to try to revive it.

This really should be bromancer turf, but perhaps he was exhausted by yesterday's outing, as the reptiles piled on the AV distractions ... US President Donald Trump is threatening to bomb Oman as it reportedly closes in on a deal with Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz. “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s**t out of them,” President Trump said. The White House has maintained one of its key goals is to fully reopen the waterway for free passage. President Trump also reiterated that the main objective is stopping Iran from having nuclear capabilities. Iran told Reuters it plans to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz if diplomacy continues to fail and it’s giving the US a few weeks to fully implement the MOU and end its naval blockade.

Stewie was as perplexed as the bromancer. Perhaps both of them need to head over to Faux Noise for retraining on the inhouse e-emetre, so they might become clear ...

In Gaza, Trump’s peace process has come to a halt after Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Trump’s plan under pressure from the far-right faction he needs to court to retain power in the October election. There is now almost zero chance of the Gaza peace process advancing before the Israeli election despite Trump sending his son-in-law Jared Kushner there this week to try to push it forward.
With each passing day, it is increasingly likely that the Iran conflict will remain unresolved by the midterm elections in November. In other words, Americans will go to the polls with the motivation to punish Trump for this unpopular war and for the soaring gas prices and flow-on inflation it has generated. The likely outcome is that Republicans will lose the House of Representatives and most likely the Senate, making Trump a lame duck for his final two years in the White House.
Trump’s frustration with this situation is playing out in the increasingly bizarre comments and empty rhetoric he is employing on Iran.
His bewildering order this week for the Pentagon to scale back military exercises with an ally South Korea – and hand a diplomatic win to the ‘unthreatening and respectful’ Stalinist dictatorship of North Korea – because Seoul did not do more to help the US on Iran, can only be interpreted as a presidential tantrum.

The reptiles threw in another AV distraction ... US President Donald Trump claims North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has always treated him with “great respect”. “I understand him, he understands me,” he said. “I get along with him very well. What I’m doing is making things safer.” This comes after President Trump ordered the military to scale back joint drills with South Korea hours before they were due to begin.

Stewie was relentlessly gloomy ...

Likewise, Trump’s empty threat to “bomb the shit” out of the unthreatening gulf state of Oman is another ‘lash-out’ moment.
Trump’s beef with Oman is that it is negotiating separately with Iran for a deal to allow shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran overseeing ships entering the Strait and Oman overseeing those leaving the Strait.
The details of the proposed deal are unclear but Trump is unhappy with the prospect of a deal which could potentially give Iran any form of control over shipping in the Strait.
Trump also lashed out at Oman in May over the possibility that it would join forces with Iran to re-open the Strait with conditions attached.
Oman frames itself as a neutral negotiator between the US and Iran and Iran even though Iran has launched strikes against Oman during this war. But Oman has been too close to Iran in the eyes of some in Washington, with its leader Sultan Haitham, having sent a message of congratulations to Iran’s newly selected supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, earlier this year.

The reptiles turned to a final AV distraction ... President Donald Trump's approval rating fell to the lowest level of his presidency, ‌with an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned the U.S. war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday (August 17). Reuters Politics Editor Scott Malone explains.

As a way of wrapping up the Faux Noise follies, Stewie decided the mad King needed a little advice ...

Yet in the end, Oman is not a key player in the conflict and Trump would be better served focusing on more effective ways to break the impasse in the oil-critical Strait of Hormuz. Not that he claims there is an impasse. Trump has claimed falsely that the US already controls the Strait and that it will eventually claim the waterway as US territory. This sort of empty rhetoric only serves to undermine Trump’s reputation and US prestige while giving confidence to the abhorrent regime in Iran.
Trump has enough challenges trying to re-open the Strait of Hormuz and seek an honourable exit from this conflict without tilting at windmills and lashing out at countries like South Korea or Oman rather than Iran.

Buckle up Stewie, it's an astonishingly effective distraction, though it's hard to work out what's distracting from who or what these days ...

The lizard Oz editorialist was equally distracted ...

The pond can reassure the reptiles of Oz that the pond is in daily personal contact with the mad King, and no doubt if palms are greased, something can be worked out ...

Consider the pond and Faux Noise as signed up members of the prestigious group, the Midterms Patriot Roster. How else to ensure the madness continues?

And with all that aforementioned winnowing, the pond had backed itself into a corner and only had "Ned's" natter to hand out as a bonus ...

Some bonus, though it's arguably better than a kick in the teeth:

The header: Are the centre-right ready for a fight on super? One Nation and a Liberal maverick have put compulsory superannuation on the election agenda.

The caption for a man inclined to brag out of turn: Andrew Bragg says super is “probably the biggest failure of public policy in the last 50 years”. Picture: Martin Ollman

"Ned" took a bigly five minutes, and the pond can safely say it had no interest in what he had to say, nor much in the topic itself.

The pond merely offers it as another example of the way the reptiles continue to torment themselves, haunted by Gina's pampered pet Pauline, and the odd pollie inclined to brag too much ...

A combination of One Nation under Pauline Hanson and Liberal maverick Andrew Bragg has put on the table the most potentially incendiary item at the next election – how far the convoluted forces of the centre right venture to undermine compulsory national superannuation.
The immediate retaliation from the Albanese government gives the game away. The two policy edifices sanctified and untouchable in Labor’s pantheon are superannuation and Medicare. Labor sees them as weapons to be mobilised and fortresses to be defended at all costs. And, to a great extent, the Liberals have long been intimidated by these Labor icons.
The centre right is trapped. It resents and disputes the principles that underpin compulsory super but it has always failed to devise any enduring reform that strikes at the Labor model. But with the Liberals needing to be bold, lusting to differentiate themselves from Labor, and a public agonising over cost-of-living pressures, the same issue arises again: will the Coalition strike against the edifice?
Their core proposition is obvious: with real wages declining and living standards stagnant, why should the Australian people tolerate a law that confiscates 12 per cent of their wages to be locked into a retirement fund that they cannot access for the rest of their working life? Who decided on this level of imposed sacrifice? Might its social licence be far less than what Labor and the union movement assume? Will the centre right have the courage and the brains to test the issue?
Many Liberals, if not most, still see compulsory super as the embodiment of government control and union influence, hostile to their core philosophy of individual freedom. The system is a permanent torment for the Liberals – they can’t accept its principles but they can’t devise the means to change it (even when in office).
Two influential Liberals, opposition Treasury spokesman Tim Wilson and housing spokesman Bragg, have long been hostile towards the model. Wilson opposed the increase in the contribution rate to 12 per cent, has previously called for low-income earners to be exempted, and said people should be able to access their super to buy a home.
Last week Bragg called for a New Liberalism and attacked vested interests, with super funds top of the list. He branded the super system a “massive failure, probably the biggest failure of public policy in the last 50 years”. He slammed the 12 per cent compulsory rate, saying it took “from people’s wages to vest them with managers they will never meet”, constituted a loss of liberty and choice, and asked pointedly whether people in their 20s would prefer to put their 12 per cent into super or buying a home.
What happened next defines our politics. Hanson jumped on the train last weekend. She doesn’t have policies but she emotes. Her message on News24: people should be able to access their super. “A lot of Australians are doing it tough now and struggling to pay off their mortgages,” Hanson said. “In some ways I feel that you should give them their money now and let them help them with the cost of living. It is their money. They’ve sacrificed it in lieu of pay.”

Freedumb boy with Gina's pet?

At least it keeps "Ned" far away from that gambling matter: Pauline Hanson believes people should be able to access their super. Picture: Tony Gough

It was up to "Ned" to lather up fear and loathing as best he could ...

Hanson has emotional pull. But she offered no rule changes, no details, no message on how wide or how high she wanted access changed. Nothing. Jim Chalmers didn’t miss. “One Nation wants to destroy the compulsory superannuation system,” he said. He warned any government of Liberals, Nationals and One Nation would “absolutely decimate the economic security and retirement incomes of millions of Australian workers” because they shared a “divisive anti-worker, anti-super ideology”.
The Treasurer said it was the biggest threat to the superannuation model in four decades. And it is another campaign weapon for Labor. If the Liberal Party plans to offer serious changes to the super system, this is a bad start.
If you have been impressed in the past by a Labor Medicare scare, that will be dwarfed by an election based on super, with Labor, the union movement and the power of industry superannuation funds united in their assault on the centre right. Nothing is more institutionally and policy precious to Labor than compulsory super – it would sacrifice everything to win an election-driven referendum.
On display is how Hanson eats the lunch of the Liberal Party, then spits it out. She issues populist declarations (not viable policies) from immigration to super, pre-empting the Liberals who typically find that their own policies, when realised, can’t match Hanson’s recklessness or just duplicate it, and are then dismissed as ineffective or unsure about their beliefs.
In retrospect, Labor’s creation of compulsory super is one of the most astonishing achievements since Federation. It testifies to Labor’s mentality as an institutional party, from its bond with the unions, its creation of Medicare, its IR machinery, to its most recent creation, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, despite its many flaws.
The $4.5 trillion super sector, unique in the world, is based on compulsory contributions from wages to private superannuation funds (as opposed to a nationalised model). It originated as a Labor-ACTU project, the architects being Paul Keating and Bill Kelty, the model developed initially through the ALP-ACTU Accord during the 1980s and then, under Keating’s influence, becoming a mandated super scheme by law with a 9 per cent contribution target.

The pond would dearly love a penny each time the reptiles show that the French clock man keeps living rent-free in their heads ... Paul Keating shakes hands with ACTU secretary Bill Kelty at a rally in Melbourne during the 1996 federal election campaign.

Some pond correspondents might have a view, but "Ned" moaning away about super fun with Pauline isn't the pond's problem.

He's the one forced to shout at clouds that the beefy boofhead's mob are mired in contradictions, and that means the pond just has to sit back and marvel at the show ...

Keating noted that in progressing to 9 per cent, rising productivity meant while employer contributions rose, so did the profits share of the economy. While Keating’s aim was a 15 per cent rate, that was rejected by the Howard government.
The only remarkable thing about the current outbreak on super is that it didn’t occur earlier, given cost-of-living and housing pressures. In the 2022 campaign Scott Morrison unveiled a policy allowing people to access 40 per cent of their super account, capped at $50,000 – yet delayed the release until the end of the campaign, fearing the retaliatory power of industry super funds.
It was, however, the earlier debate about the lift to a 12 per cent contribution that triggered substantial critiques.

How weird did it get? Despite his blather, "Ned" felt the need to help out Gina's pet and the man inclined to brag:

In 2018 an article by Grattan Institute analysts Brendan Coates and John Daly delivered a frontal assault: “The bipartisan plan to increase compulsory super contributions to 12 per cent will reduce wages today, do little to boost the retirement incomes of many low-income workers, and cost the federal budget billions now and well into the future. If politicians really want to help low-income earners, the planned increases should be scrapped …
“As the Henry Tax Review and others have noted, higher compulsory super contributions are ultimately funded by lower wages, which means lower living standards for workers today.”

That meant "Ned" had to wheel out a big billy goat butt, handsomely dressed up as a "despite":

Despite this analysis, compulsory super is embedded in our political mentality, as revealed in the absence of any serious “rollback” proposal – so far – despite falling real wages, stagnant living standards and agitation over the pressures that households have faced for some years.
Presumably, Hanson will keep running her campaign. If she gets traction, watch out; that will intensify pressure on the Coalition. The Liberals, meanwhile, are mired in contradictions. Angus Taylor backs stability in the system and also backs investment flexibility for superannuation. Liberal analysis shows that when the super contribution rose from 10 to 12 per cent, real wages fell by 2 per cent over the same time. OK, but what, if anything, will they do about it?

Okay, but why should the pond give a FF? It's all on the beefy boofhead, and all on the reptiles and the way that Gina's pet has plucked assorted positions straight from the pages of the lizard Oz, whether it be Dame Groan's furriner bashing or Lloydie of the Amazon's climate science denialism.

How about a lengthy meditation on this Wilcox instead? It would still have consigned the gambling matter to an opt out chamber room ...

Meanwhile, just to keep the bermb, bermb, bermb Oman fun flowing ...

In which the bromancer and Dame Groan set the Tuesday pace, with other reptiles sent to the archive ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:41:15 +0000

The reptiles today deployed the hoariest of ancient thriller movie devices ... the ticking clock ...

Are they going to keep that damned thing top of the page for the next two days?

Things must be desperate in the attention-seeking hive mind, with the top of the digital world "news" ma this day just a standard bout of alarmism from the canny Cranson ...

COST OF LIVING
Brace for an extra 30pc on your rent after Labor’s tax changes
Renters facing a housing crisis could be hit with rises of up to 30 per cent after the Albanese government scrapped key investor tax concessions, NAB has warned.
By Matthew Cranston

It's the "could be" that gets the pond.

Give a shout out when it's a "will be", "are being" or "have been", and the pond will take note of the sky falling in...

As usual, it mainly served as a vehicle for a snap of Albo and Claire looking startled, as if a melon had hovered into view ... (where has melongate gone?)

Luckily the pond didn't have to pay attention beyond that teaser trailer because the bromancer was on the scene, dealing with an imponderable, intractable Faux Noise issue ...

The header: World rides rollercoaster with Donald Trump to midterms; The US midterm elections loom as a defining moment for global politics, shaping international policy in unpredictable ways.

The caption for the mad king: US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One in Morristown, N.J. Picture: AP

The bromancer eventually works his way to "nearly chaotic", a big leap for the hive mind, but it takes him some time to get there, so please be patient, as we wade through the ramble ...

Everything that happens in the world for the next three months will be influenced, if not shaped altogether, by the lead-up to the US midterm elections in November, which at this stage look like being a car crash for Donald Trump and his Republicans.
It will be a tricky period for Australia as the US, and every other nation, will combine, in the most confusing fashion possible, internal and external policy. US enemies will try to influence the outcome. US allies will be worried about even more unpredictability than usual.
The Democrats will win the House of Representatives. In the Senate the race is more finely pitched. The last two years of Trump’s presidency will be characterised by congressional chaos and divided government. The House will devote itself energetically to inquiring into any and all of the strange processes of government that have characterised the administration.
It’s quite likely the House will impeach Trump for a third time. It’s inconceivable Democrats would do well enough to have the 60 members in the Senate necessary to convict Trump.
One lifeline for Republicans is that the Democrats, under the influence of the Democratic Socialists of America, are choosing a number of far-left candidates, such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
In some ways it’s shaping as a reverse of the 2022 midterm elections. Trump insisted on backing a number of fairly loopy MAGA candidates for the Senate. They beat more mainstream Republicans in the primaries but lost the Senate races to Democrats.
However, for a dynamic like that to take hold, the Republicans have to be at least in the race. It’s absolutely clear now that the Iranian regime is determined to keep control of the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely, and incidentally hurt Republicans in the midterms.

It wouldn't be a bromancer piece without a gesturing deviant, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian gesturing as he speaks during a press conference in the capital Tehran. Picture: AFP

Under extreme pressure from his Faux Noise cousins - Has Sean Hannity given up on the Iran war? - the bromancer went a "weirdly" ...

Trump has said so many weirdly self-contradictory things about Iran over the past six months that his words are the least reliable guide as to what might happen. Remember just two weeks ago he said if Iran didn’t make a deal he would unleash the greatest military attack since World War II.
Iran didn’t make a deal and of course Trump didn’t launch such an attack. It’s now a reliable rule of thumb that the more Trump talks of an imminent attack, the less likely it is to take place.
Those folks who think Trump never makes a mistake will say this is all savvy negotiating tactics by Trump. But for a statement to be an effective negotiating tactic it’s necessary for the other party to the negotiation to think the statement has some meaning. The Iranians have worked out that Trump is now mainly bluffing about renewed military actions.

The reptiles then reverted to a much loved image ... Children swim as ships are seen anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran. Picture: Getty Images

Realising he might have gone a tad too far, the bromancer organised a hasty retreat, because there must always be indecisions and revisions, and not just in an Eliot poem ...

This is not to damn Trump altogether. His administration has done some very good things and some very bad things. The polarised positions on Trump – that he is always the devil versus the idea that Trump is always the only possible saviour – are both wrong. Trump is a mixed grill, like most leaders.
However, I would say Trump is now a victim of his tactics. He is much more tactical than strategic. He saw a tactical opportunity to decapitate Iran and change it forever. The decapitation was tactical, and worked, the permanent change was strategic, and didn’t work.
If Iran had actually been on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, almost any American action would have been justified. But Trump had told us he had previously totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff saying that Iran was within a few weeks of producing a weapon completely lacks credibility and has never been backed up by any evidence.
Iran nonetheless remains an intensely evil regime. It has several times tried to assassinate Trump. For the past two decades it has been the world’s chief state sponsor of terrorism. It’s on the record that Tehran has undertaken cyber espionage against civilian infrastructure in the US. As artificial intelligence develops, this kind of capability will become more lethal.
The biggest US enemy, the People’s Republic of China, will also be working to affect the outcome of the US midterm elections. In the past couple of weeks there have been credible reports of Beijing backing pro-Palestine groups in both the UK and the US. This suits Beijing’s interests because it sows hatred and division within Western societies.

All good, but then the bromancer had to deal with the elephant in the room ...

That had sent Tom Nichols in The Atlantic into a state of hysteria, Trump Will Make South Korea Pay For His Iran Humiliation, His rage is driving him to make irrational policy choices. (*intermittent archive link)

...When Trump makes the effort to say something is “unrelated” to his actions (and then adds a coy question mark) it usually means it is completely related—and probably his central motivation.
Scaling back the exercise is, of course, an insane decision, which does nothing but hurt an ally, and tempt an adversary to think—correctly—that American leadership is feckless. You could be forgiven for wondering why South Korea and the rest of the free world must pay for Donald Trump’s failures. Such confusion is understandable, except that in Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult. When things go wrong, someone must be held responsible—and that someone is never Donald Trump.
America and the rest of the world are now witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage. Trump embarked on a war for personal glory, and what he got instead was ongoing humiliation. He clearly finds it all unbearable.
Trump both fears and respects the autocrats who rule Russia, China, and North Korea, and so he dares not cross them. Instead, he is seeking to assuage the psychic injury of his loss in Iran—including the American public learning of the shameful conditions to which he has subjected U.S. forces—by kicking America’s allies, the nations he can punish without fear that they will kick him back.
The Iran war was not the president’s failure, you see. Others failed the president. Those disloyal South Koreans, who every few years drag him into a needless confrontation with that respectful and peace-loving young man in Pyongyang, refused to help him topple the Iranian regime. And because Trump is unable to subdue Iran, unable to replenish stocks of U.S. weapons he should never have expended in this war, unable to take care of the service personnel he has put in harm’s way, someone is going to pay. The most convenient target he could find, at least for the moment, was South Korea.
At a better moment in American history, an enraged Congress would step in and demand answers about such dangerous idiocy. They would rush to the White House, talk to the press, hold hearings, and in general act like responsible stewards of American power. Those days, at least among legislators of the president’s party, are long past. They will take whatever Trump dishes out. Our allies might for the time being similarly ignore Trump’s tantrums, but they have power and agency of their own, and even now are likely planning for a world in which the Americans are no longer men and women of principle who stand by their word and by their friends.
The Chinese and the Russians and the North Koreas are certain to draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy. They have been shown, yet again, that when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting. Already, North Korea is dispatching missiles and thousands of soldiers to aid Russia in its war on Ukraine. If a conflict should break out in the Pacific or on the Korean peninsula, or if the war in Europe spreads further West, the world’s dictators might well count on Trump to focus American wrath not on the enemies of the free world, but on the nations that have always pledged to stand side by side with the United States in a mutual defense of freedom.

And the bromancer himself has form in this area.

When he's not organising a war with China by Xmas, he could reliably be found berating North Korea ...

Mad North Koreans can destroy Australia
We must make ourselves indispensable to US interests.

That didn't age well, and how he has to bite the bullet, verging towards his own kind of incoherence ...

Rather bizarrely, Trump has now issued a fusillade of abuse against US ally South Korea for not joining US military efforts against Iran (neither did anyone else). He has ordered that US joint military exercises with South Korea be curtailed. In his Truth Social post, Trump said such exercises “send a signal to a Country (North Korea) which since Donald J Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and respectful”.
This is one of the most bizarre things Trump has ever said. Pyongyang has sent tens of thousands of troops to aid Russia, rapidly expanded its nuclear missile force, and supplied Moscow with artillery and weapons in exchange for military hi-tech.
Yet Trump also plans to put punitive tariffs on nations that buy Russian oil and gas. That’s totally incoherent. One possible explanation: Could there be Washington/Pyongyang back channel talks under way?
At the same time, Trump has changed the name of the US regional military command from Indo-Pacific Command to Pacific Command, which signals some kind of retreat in ambition, while US Defence under secretary Elbridge Colby explained he no longer calls China out by name because the Trump administration now wants to avoid harsh rhetoric with China because this might lead to war.

Et tu, Elbridge? Elbridge Colby, US under secretary of defence. Picture: Getty Images

It was a sad and sorry bromancer that had to move on from "most bizarre" and finally wheel out that "nearly chaotic" ...

This is all incoherent and nearly chaotic.

Fear not, there's always a billy goat butt from this kind of billy goat:

Yet the US remains our indispensable ally.

What do do? is there some sand handy, because the bromancer is feeling very ostrich:

The best policy for Australia, in this turbulence and confusion, is to keep our head down, avoid personal confrontation with Trump, and continue to deepen institutional linkages with the Pentagon and other US institutions that will outlast Trump.
The Albanese government is actually managing the US relationship pretty well. The other thing we should do is build our own formidable defence force. The Albanese government’s not doing that much at all.

Sheesh, is that any way to treat a master detective?

With that done, the pond delicately stepped past the bouffant one ...

ALP’s veterans debacle a self-inflicted wound
A minister who could not find time to meet veterans somehow found it within two hours after they staged a dramatic public gallery walkout at Parliament House.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

The old lizard Oz foot soldier could only manage a "less than two minute read", so the pond personally saved it to the archive ...

Ditto the pond had no interest in this yarn ...

A plea to keep faith in our cultural diversity
Two of Sydney’s most prominent religious leaders have united across faiths to warn that monoculturalism would deepen social divisions.
By Kanishka Raffel and Benjamin Elton

This said all the pond needed to know ...

...Yes, a flawed multiculturalism can be damaging, but the better alternative is not to retreat into a monocultural illusion that neglects history and human nature. We can take inspiration from the variety of the Australian bush or the cityscape of our home in Sydney, with its churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. We should invest our efforts in nurturing a form of collaborative multiculturalism that serves Australia and all its people, creating an Australia that is stronger precisely because it is diverse.
Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton is Chief Minister of The Great Synagogue in Sydney. The Most Reverend Kanishka Raffel is the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney.

The pond has been spanked too many times with a warm lettuce leaf to care about that kind of word salad ...

And the pond had absolutely no time for this yarn, as it didn't seem to feature a saucy novel with a sexy pulse ...

EXCLUSIVE
ICJ gags former top judge’s verdict on its green overreach
Top Australian judge Ian Callinan blasts world court for wading into climate change policy
The International Court of Justice invited a former High Court judge to write an essay for its 80th anniversary – then tried to suppress his criticisms of the court.
By Paul Garvey

Is it too reflexive to wonder why a "top judge" - the reptiles new way of saying "top loon" - has himself waded into climate change policy, if only to berate the ICJ for allegedly wading into climate change?

In reality, it's just a way of drawing attention to the IPA, a reminder that most days the lizard Oz is an IPA publicity machine...

On what basis did the not so learned judge decide that the ICJ's opinion on climate change was unpersuasive?

Is he an expert on climate science as well as a zinger of a racy novelist?

...by all accounts Chief Justice Murray Gleeson had barristers in fits at a dinner at the Brisbane Club to mark the retirement of Ian Callinan. Reading selected quotes from the works of the former Brisbane judge, Gleeson lingered on the more racy sections of the books. Likening these accounts of sex as akin to an old movie in which the act was not fully depicted but represented by a shot of the male fast asleep, Gleeson remarked that Callinan's interpretation of sleeping with a woman "meant exactly that - going to sleep". (AFR)

So that's how the pond should be training to become a top notch climate scientist!

Of course the whiner had many other whinges, but typically the reptiles treasured the climate change angle, because nothing's wrong with the world right now ...

All that clearing of the decks kept the pond wide-eyed awake, and left room for the most treasured Tuesday moment of all for Dame Groan cultists ... a serve of her groaning ...

The header: Tomago more proof Anthony Albanese backs politics over good policy; Faulty energy policy has cost taxpayers $2.5bn to save the very industry it helped cripple, as the Albanese government’s political calculus overrides economic reform.

The caption for the grinning fiend: Anthony Albanese visits Tomago Aluminium Smelter to announce a financial lifeline to the smelter for 10 more years. Picture: Thomas Lisson

This is a classic reptile ploy. Spend weeks, neigh months, neigh years, groaning about the lack of an industrial base in crucial areas relating to defence and security...

Remind us bromancer ...

...A related decline in deterrence comes from Western governments deciding not to spend the money to produce the military capabilities that deterrence requires. All around the Western world defence spending is in a fight to the death with social spending. Defence is losing. Governments and electorates are choosing limitless social expenditure on infinitely expandable personal needs over national security spending.
As a result, the conventional balance of forces, as well as the nuclear balance, is moving against the West.
Further, the West’s defence industry base is plainly inadequate, having been greatly reduced since the end of the Cold War, with much Western manufacturing relocated to China. Western powers are slowly rebuilding this industrial base, but the process is almost criminally slow. (from August 2024, in the archive)

... then send in the groaner to beat them up, as the get 'em coming and get 'em going strategy requires:

Good policy is good politics; it’s the principle Paul Keating followed during his reforming purple patch as treasurer. What is less understood is that constant communication and explanations were also essential ingredients.
Virtually all policies involve winners and losers. Unless the losers can be compensated in some way, including through an understanding of the benefits of a bigger economic pie, economic reform becomes very difficult.

The pond can still remember ancient times when the French clock fan, sometimes observed flying over Australia on his way to Paris, sent the reptiles into a frenzy, but now he's best seen as a golden age club with which to beat the current age of lead ... Treasurer Paul Keating abided by the principle that good policy is good politics.

With that warm up, it was on for young, old and the "we'll all be rooned" biddy ...

This message is totally lost on the Albanese government. Politics trumps every other consideration. Bad policy that leads to lower productivity, higher costs and a shrinking economic pie is tolerated if there are votes involved.
Last week, we learnt of the bailout of the Tomago aluminium smelter in the Hunter Valley. It is the biggest smelter in the country and uses a very large chunk of the electricity generated along the east coast. The estimated cost of the bailout is $2.5bn over a decade, with the contribution of the NSW government capped at $1.225bn. That’s clever on the part of Premier Chris Minns, but not so appealing for Australian taxpayers.
Aluminium is essentially congealed electricity, with between 30 and 40 per cent of Tomago’s costs being energy. The long-term contract the smelter previously secured guaranteed affordable electricity until 2028 when the agreement expires. The figures for a new power contract quoted to the owners – Rio Tinto is just one of the parties – would have necessitated the closure of the plant.
The global aluminium market has shown considerable volatility historically. Russia is a big producer, as is China. There are multiple smelters in China’s western region, with modern coal plants their principal source of energy.
Other countries that are consequential producers of aluminium include Iceland, Norway, Canada and, more recently, Indonesia. Some delays in the commissioning of new plants have led to relatively high aluminium prices in the past few years, with strong demand from a variety of sources, including electric vehicles and renewable energy.
The Prime Minister claims Tomago is an example of “strategic capability” as one reason for the bailout. But given that aluminium is produced by many of our strategic allies, it’s not clear that this rationale stacks up compared with some rare minerals, for example. There is also talk about new renewable energy projects going ahead because of the deal, but Tomago’s investment in these is trivial.
The real motive for the Tomago bailout is that the plant directly employs 1000 workers, with other jobs indirectly hanging off its continuation. (The figure of 5000 in total is a stretch but is quoted to emphasise the importance of the smelter and downplay the cost of the governments’ handout per job. At $2.5m per direct job, this intervention is very expensive.) It is also located in a politically sensitive part of Australia.
But the biggest irony of this announcement, which follows several other bailouts of similar smelters/refineries, is that faulty energy policy is the main reason for the rescue operation. Had Tomago been able to roll over the energy contract at similar prices, there would be no need for such hefty compensation.
But the headlong pursuit of decarbonisation and subsidisation of renewable energy have led to much higher electricity prices and a potential loss of reliability. (Aluminium smelters require 24/7 power, although they can power down to some extent.)
But there was Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen at the announcement of the bailout, seemingly unaware that his actions, in part, have led to taxpayers being tapped on the shoulder to save the plant.

Maestro, please, a snap of the hapless one, gesticulating and requiring Dame Groan's correction, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Dame Groan was quick to send the likes of the bromancer to the corner ...

Let’s be clear here that the bailout of Tomago is all about politics, not economics or geostrategic factors. It’s stretching the meaning of words to describe it as part of the Future Made in Australia project. A private sector company could easily have the regulatory authorities knocking on the door, accusing it of misleading advertising.
Then we come to the GST deal with Western Australia and the PM’s clear assurance that nothing would change, notwithstanding the release of the Productivity Commission’s draft report on the topic. Again, this is all about politics, not good policy. And in this case, the fault is bipartisan, with the special deal having been first introduced by a Coalition government led by Scott Morrison.
For many years, WA had been a recipient state under the arrangement known as horizontal fiscal equalisation. This century HFE has been applied to the revenue generated from the GST.
But the outstanding development of the resources industry in the west, as well as high commodity prices, turned the state from being a recipient state to being a donor one, meaning the relativity of its distribution – 100 is even – began to sink and could have been as low as in the 20s. It’s easy to see how the citizens of WA felt deeply annoyed.
Now there are several ways of dealing with this conundrum; some sort of short-term adjustment may have been in order. The truth is that the way in which HFE works in this country has several flaws, including the disincentive it creates for states to develop their own resources and for governments to operate as efficiently as possible. There are also some arbitrary exclusions from the calculation – for example, gambling revenue.
Other federations around the world run much less extreme versions of HFE, which in our case is designed to allow all states to provide services of similar standard to their citizens. In Canada, for instance, only a portion of the provinces’ mineral royalties are counted towards the calculation of HFE. This is one solution to our WA problem. In the US, the extent of HFE is much lower again. There is a simple acceptance of big differences in the standard of government provision between the states and the role interstate migration can play.
The point here is that rather than create an arbitrary baseline relativity figure for WA and top up all the other states so they are no worse off – that was the Morrison deal and continued thereafter – there are other, superior policy changes that could be implemented.
Bear in mind here that the fiscal cost is now around $60bn over a decade, a large multiple of what was originally expected. This is money the federal budget cannot really afford. Note also the current arrangement produces the bizarre outcome that WA receives 113 per cent of its assessed fiscal needs compared with just under 100 per cent for the other states.
It’s a clear case of politics trumping good policy, something that has become a hallmark of this government. WA is politically important, and Albanese has made it clear there will be no change to its special GST deal. There are better ways of dealing with the issue, but he is not interested.
The Keating principle that good policy is good politics has been totally forgotten.

Um, wasn't it a hallmark of the clap happy's government?

And now the current government lacks the balls aka the wherewithal to do anything about it?

And as for the French clock devotee, you have to admire the way he's moved from this ...

... to becoming the old biddy's poster boy, bedecked with her good housekeeping seal of approval ...

And now time to close with the immortal Rowe heading off to the races ...

Credit where it's due ... this is what Faux Noise has produced ...

In which the Caterist shows of his style, with Shanners and simpleton Simon also on hand to help out ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:52:57 +0000

Thrashed by Bangladesh!

The pond would love to meet proud warriors of Judaeo-Xian Western Civilisation to discuss the result, or perhaps some triumphalist white Xian nationalists proclaiming the ascendancy of the British empire, colonialism and Ming the Merciless ...

Wait, the reptiles of the lizard Oz are standing by ...

Alas, they've been distracted by the war on renewables, with Geoff leading the way with an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
Energy firms promise $40bn to win renewables scheme deals
Cash payments, Indigenous artwork commissions and free energy systems – the extraordinary price renewable companies are pledging for social licence under Chris Bowen’s secretive scheme.
By Noah Yim and Geoff Chambers

Just look at the richly comic portrait of their mortal enemy, a strategy worthy of the Reich in its glory days ...

And so on, there's more at the archive, but don't stop there, there's another reason to head off to the intermittent archive because indefatigable Geoff personally took a view and Chambered another round...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
It’s time to expose Labor’s secret renewables fund
Chris Bowen’s Capacity Investment Scheme is the most egregious of the Albanese government’s growing pile of ideologically-driven slush funds, subsidies and bailouts.

And waddya kno, as Geoff exposed away, there was another richly comic portrait of their mortal enemy at the head of the column, a strategy worthy of the Reich in its glory days ...

Wait, with just a few more lines, the pond could save a trip to the archive:

How convenient.

The other glaring problem with the CIS is the government’s omission of gas. As wind farms fail to deliver on the potential Bowen had hoped, and the “tax the gas” noise grows among left-wing MPs and supporters, Labor’s caucus is divided over the inarguable fact that affordable and abundant gas is needed to keep heavy industry and manufacturing jobs alive.

Australians, who were falsely promised by Labor at the 2022 election that their household power bills would be $275 cheaper, want reliable and affordable power generation.

If the Albanese government continues down a renewables-only path that excludes gas and zero-emissions nuclear, expect more Tomago smelter bailouts in the near future and fewer data centres.

Nuke the country to save the planet, if only the planet needed saving, what with climate science either a religious cult or a hoax!

The pond regrets that Geoff really isn't up to much, and only knows how to regurgitate a few standard reptile talking points. Bring back the Riddster and Lloydie of the Amazon!

And so to other matters, and the pond regrets that it has become incredibly weary at the thought of tackling the Australian Daily Zionist News, so passed on by the top of the digital "news" ma ...

INSIDE STORY
Forensic inquiry or ‘tokenistic’: will Bell toll for antisemites? Will royal commission deliver solutions to antisemitism crisis?
With four months left, the antisemitism royal commission’s strongest proponents are questioning if it has sufficiently used its extraordinary legal powers – or let them go to waste.
By James Dowling

A 12 minute read?! Good luck on that journey, with the pond personally saving the outing to the intermittent archive.

The pond also passed on by Major Mitchell, if only for incessant and inane Zionism of the first water.

Hamas lies swallowed by the woke West
How Hamas outsmarted the UN and Western media in the Gaza propaganda war
Hamas strategically exploited Western media, governments and institutions after October 7 to convert Jewish deaths into Israeli guilt.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

How could the pond get past the inanity of the Major, in from the golf course, deploying "woke"?

Put it another way, perhaps substituting "Major" for "American", and "green fees" for the price of gas will do...

Luckily the pond could avoid talk of ethnic cleansing and genocide because the quarry whisperer was out and about, proclaiming his expertise, already firmly established in court actions marvelling at his credentials when it came to observing the movements of flood waters ...

The header: Few Australians see themselves in the people who sit in our parliament; Only a handful of MPs has engineering qualifications, which may explain Canberra’s naivety about energy and infrastructure.

The caption for the snap of a ragtag mob designed to trigger the Caterist: Too few Australians see people like themselves representing them in Canberra. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

For those who've forgotten the Caterist's credentials, please allow the pond to quote his wiki:

He graduated from the University of Exeter with an honours degree in sociology in 1980 and drove laundry vans for a year before joining the BBC as a trainee studio manager.

If that doesn't say rigorous scientist, expert in climate change, and yet humble man of the people, perhaps your standards are too high?

Now let the Pom import smote and smite away ...

Australia’s 48th parliament is the most diverse in the nation’s history, at least by conventional measures. The female, Indigenous, ethnic and LGBT+ communities have never had so many MPs and senators advocating their cause. Yet polling consistently shows voters have never felt so disenfranchised.
Measures of trust and satisfaction in elected representatives are at record lows amid rising anti-politician sentiment and record-low support for the major parties.
For a substantial cohort of disenchanted voters, the proclaimed diversity of parliament is bunkum. One Nation’s attacks on the so-called uniparty are gaining traction, despite the stark differences between a dreamily progressive Labor government and an increasingly hard-nosed conservative opposition.
It suggests the most important political divide is not between left and right but between the politicians and the people they claim to represent.
Yet by less fashionable measures of diversity – such as age, education and career paths – parliamentarians increasingly conform to type. More than 80 per cent of MPs and senators are university graduates compared with just 26 per cent of Australians at the 2021 census.
The focus of their studies leans heavily towards the arts, including law and economics. Only a handful of parliamentarians have engineering qualifications, which may help explain Canberra’s recurring naivety about energy and infrastructure.

Too true, the last thing we need is some bloody sociology-trained pundit blathering away with no more than a passing knowledge of applied science, especially if they don't know how to apply the science to the movement of flood waters in quarries ... Rebuilding an energy system from scratch demands more than a passing knowledge of applied science, yet Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s academic background is in economics. Picture: Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP

How disappointing is that snap?

Sure, every reptile yarn about climate change has to have a snap of terrifying windmills, designed to put fear into the hive mind and into the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, but what an opportunity was missed to show the baleful Bowen, in a way given unto Geoff.

That's better, that's how it should have been done, unless they could have combined that snap with the shot of those infernal bloody windmills ...

Never mind, back with the sociologist for an extended rant ...

Rebuilding an energy system from scratch demands more than a passing knowledge of applied science, yet Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s academic background is in economics. MPs and senators with trade certificates are few and far between. Which leads us to the frightening conclusion that most of the politicians who legislated targets for the transformation of our energy system couldn’t be trusted to change a light bulb.
Parliament, in other words, has become a hotbed of intellectuals, defined by Thomas Sowell as “a social class of persons whose economic output consists of generalised ideas”, as opposed to those with useful skills that can be used to actually fix things. To the extent that they are problem solvers, their inclination is towards social problems – fairness, equality, diversity and the like – rather than practical problems such as saving for retirement or addressing the cost of living.
Politicians also are concentrated in a relatively narrow stage of life, from their 30s to their mid-50s, when household finances tend to be dominated by earnings and mortgages rather than accumulated assets.
As the giant cohort of Baby Boomers retires, the number in parliament is slipping. In 2013, when Tony Abbott became prime minister, 48 per cent of parliamentarians were born before 1965. In today’s parliament, the proportion of Baby Boomers and older cohorts has fallen to 20 per cent, compared with 30 per cent in the general population.
The sole representative of the Silent Generation, those born before 1946, is the magnificently un-silent Bob Katter.
The ascendancy of the narrow graduate class has encouraged a political focus that is preoccupied with intentions and abstractions – climate targets and gender identity – while paying less attention to practical consequences: cost, feasibility and the disruption imposed on ordinary lives.
On the rare occasions when the preoccupations of the political class are put directly to a popular vote, as with the Indigenous voice referendum, the gulf between Canberra and the country becomes impossible to ignore.
Yet the political class has become adept at getting its way by stealth, covering its tracks with feel-good words. The cumulative frustration over changes that most voters abhor being made without consultation – let alone a vote – is fuelling the rise of populism.
The Australian Election Survey conducted after the 2025 election revealed that the conditions were ripe for political revolt. Barely one in three Australians trusts the people in government, compared with more than half in 2007.
The proportion of the population that agreed that “People in government look after themselves” has risen from about 40 per cent late last century to about 75 per cent.
None of this would surprise American political theorist Hanna Pitkin, whose 1957 distinction between descriptive representation (who representatives are) and substantive representation (what representatives do) serves as a useful correction for identity politics.
In The Concept of Representation (1967), she argued that representation was fundamentally about acting in the interests of the represented, not merely resembling them.
In a descriptive sense, women were woefully under-represented in the blokey parliament elected in 1996, in which four out of five MPs and senators were male and only one parliamentarian was openly gay – the newly elected Greens senator Bob Brown.
Yet around twice as many voters trusted this predominantly straight white male parliament to do the right thing, suggesting the quality of political representation should be judged by the content of one’s character, not the colour of one’s skin or one’s inherited chromosomes.

Did the Caterist just attempt to show Our Henry he wasn't the only one with a reference book, while explaining the urgent need to bash womyn for ruining everything? ... The lesson for the Liberal Party is that it should reject the persistent demand for sex-based quotas and focus on recruiting members from a broader constituency of working Australians. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

Eek, a bloody woman, and isn't there another one on the far right, making life extremely hard for the beefy boofhead?

As for Our Henry, let him try to buck at the Caterist citing Burke ...

The lesson for the Liberal Party is that it should reject the persistent demand for sex-based quotas and focus on recruiting members from a broader constituency of working Australians. Neither should it become obsessed with ethnic cohorts. We hardly need opinion polling or focus groups to tell us that the No.1 issue for most Australians, whether born here or migrants, is the cost of living.
If the party wants a targeted recruitment drive, it should target people who genuinely support Liberal values and have succeeded at something other than politics – not those whose career trajectory runs from a politics or communications degree to a staffer’s desk and thence up the party ladder.
It would eschew identity politics in all its forms, recognising that it has become a gateway drug to narcissism, encouraging politicians to lean into their personal narrative rather than quotidian concerns of the anonymous Australians who sent them to Canberra.
The more parliament sees itself as an assembly of identities, the less capable it becomes of speaking and governing in the national interest. The exhibitionist displays we sometimes see in the Senate, in which the chamber becomes a bear pit for competing grievances, serve as a warning for where this leads.
It calls for a return to humility – a dying virtue in contemporary politics – that underpins an equally unfashionable notion of public service.
Parliament will never regain public trust if it acts as what Edmund Burke describes as “a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests”. Instead, it must pursue a higher goal: “a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole”.

Eschew identity politics! Embrace the humility espoused by the Caterist, a veritable monk of reticence and modesty!

Of course, how else could enthusiastic members of the white nationalist Judaeo-Xian proponents of Western Democracy stay in charge (no minorities or womyn allowed).

And what a way to stop the immortal Rowe, busy hatching eggs ...

Is there an upside to all this? Well it seems that the reptile melongate fever has finally passed, unless you mistake those eggs for melons ...

For a bonus, the pond turned to the bouffant one. Luckily he usually only lasts for a couple of minutes, as do many Australian men, so it was a quick read ...

The header: How the Nationals leader is using food security to plot a comeback; After defections, splits and Barnaby Joyce joining One Nation, Matt Canavan has pulled the Nationals back from the brink – and new polling data could hand him an unexpected lifeline.

The caption for the AV distraction featuring Rita, meter maid, offered at the start in case nobody felt up the task of reading the morally uplifting yarn: Nationals Leader Matt Canavan says the media made a “total beat-up” of shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg’s National Press Club address. “He said it could be done; he didn’t say we’re going to,” Mr Canavan told News24 host Rita Panahi. “At least Andrew Bragg didn’t have to cancel a Press Club speech.”

Get ready for some adoring adulation:

Matt Canavan has brought the Nationals a long way in six months.

How could he bring them such a long way? Remember, he's got a ute ...

It was inevitable a reptile had to join the Canavan caravan, if only for appearances sake, and who better than Shanners?

From two recent splits with their Liberal Coalition partners, an unsuccessful leadership challenge against his predecessor David Littleproud and a slew of defections and resignations that included Nationals MPs becoming independents, joining the Liberals and, in the most spectacular action involving former leader and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, defecting to One Nation.
At the same time, Pauline Hanson’s popularity had pushed One Nation to unprecedented levels of support in the polls, not to mention successes at the South Australian election.
But this weekend Canavan managed a unifying – at times robust – Nationals’ conference that was not afraid to back conservative causes, such as criticising Labor’s gun laws, and left MPs feeling satisfied they were heading back on track.

"At times robust"!: Senator Matt Canavan managed to push his own agenda to revive the Nationals’ standing. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman.

"Back on track"! A patriot! Staking out new territory!

And a reference to the pond's favourite poem, as the rustic from the north declared that we'd all be rooned, unless we voted for him, and if we didn't he'd be rooned ...

Canavan managed to push his own agenda to revive the Nationals’ standing, stake out a conservative territory, declaring he was not afraid to say he was a patriot, and, perhaps most importantly, raised a new and vital debate about food security, water policy and the prospect of Australia becoming a net importer of supermarket vitals such as chicken, pork and dairy.
Munching on an apple in his opening speech, Canavan demonstrated no fear of the theatrical and flair, declaring apples would be on the import list as well.
“By the year 2040, Australia may not produce enough cheese, eggs, butter, chicken, pork and apples to feed ourselves,” he warned his colleagues and the public.
“The reasons for this are all the same. Production levels staying still but population rapidly growing,” even as farm production should hit $100bn a year for the first time this year.
Canavan was doing more than whingeing and declaring “we’ll all be roon’d” because he was linking what is a decline in food and fibre production in Australia’s food bowl to the crucial political issue of population growth and immigration.
Just as Angus Taylor has linked the housing crisis to immigration levels, Canavan has linked food security to population growth.

Quick, another snap, so punters in the hive mind might have the foggiest about the mortal enemy rustics should fear: As he campaigns without talking about Pauline Hanson, Matt Canavan may have another boost to his otherwise dismal outlook – the absolute Labor and Greens rejection of One Nation. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

Let them reject Gina's pampered pet! Let the Canavan caravan hit the road with Pauline!

And so to a final flourish of triumphalism, hitting the hive mind with Shanners' best shot:

As he campaigns without talking about Hanson, Canavan may have another boost to his otherwise dismal outlook and one that has not been recognised – the absolute Labor and Greens rejection of One Nation.
New qualitative polling from Australian Institute for Progress has found that when asked about preferences after casting their first preference, 99 per cent of Labor and Greens’ supporters will refuse to put One Nation ahead of the Coalition.
This opens the scenario of compulsory preferential voting federally actually giving Coalition candidates victory even if they finish below One Nation on preferences.
This is a long shot for Canavan but, at the moment, he is taking all the shots he can.

Splendid stuff, but the pond decided it hadn't reached peak thrills, and decided there should be a bonus to the bonus, while managing to give property prices a rest ...

Instead of having an anxiety attack about falling house prices helping out vulgar youffs - shed tears for property investors - the pond turned to simpleton Simon acting as advisor and coach to the beefy boofhead, in his hour of Pauline peril.

The header: Labor has used the Greens to stabilise the power of the Left; The Liberals’ failure has been spectacular. It is as if it hopes its hero Robert Menzies will one day provide an answer from the grave.

The caption and credit for another splendid outing by Emilia: Anthony Albanese, Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson are trying to come to terms with their popularity with voters. Art: Emilia Tortorella

Simplistic Simon took a bigly four minutes to help the struggling boofhead from down Goulburn way, and for those who doubted the pond's invocation of the 1950s and Ming the Merciless, Simon was on hand to wash away their saucy fears ...

One would have to cast one’s mind back to what seems a distant time to recall when either of the major political parties had a four in front of their primary vote while in government.
For the Coalition, it was June 2021. For Labor it was more than 16 years ago.
There have been sporadic episodes since when both have managed to achieve this benchmark in opposition, but these have been oddities; fleeting in their longevity and rare in occasion.
Today the Coalition struggles to get a two in front of its primary vote and Labor can barely muster a three. It is questionable that either side will ever get to the 40s again.
The ALP worked out long ago that to contrive a path to government meant an accommodation on the left and inner-city voters lured by its radical affiliate.
As much as the Greens have proven problematic for Labor, so too have they become its useful idiots. This is now a well-tested mathematical proposition considering for the past two elections only a third of voters have got the government they claimed as their first choice.
The Liberal Party’s greatest failure has been its inability to foresee that it too would one day face an analogous schism. And its failure has been spectacular as it persists in a beleaguered belief that Robert Menzies will provide an answer from the grave.

Take that, Bangladesh cricketers, there will be a second coming, have no doubt of it, The Liberals are hoping that Sir Robert Menzies will guide them from the grave.

But was Ming the saviour, the redeemer speaking from the grave, telephoning down from a heavenly Cinque ports?

How simpleton Simon brooded ...

The circumstances or events that have led to the recent collapse in support for the Coalition are still contested. But the foundational decay that allowed it to happen in the first place has come with plenty of warnings. How this has come as a shock to the Liberal Party reveals the depths to its delusion.
It would be absurd to assert that Pauline Hanson could suddenly become popular by a singular event such as Bondi and in a time frame that defies logic. By her own admission, Hanson says her views are unchanged over 30 years.
So is it Australians who have changed, a response to the circumstances in which most people find themselves – poorer and ignored?
Last week’s Newspoll showed support for Labor dipping below 30 per cent for the first time since the Gillard era, proving Labor is facing a new challenge as well. Having established a franchise model of electoral power on the left, it must make adjustments to stop leakage to populism.
The key to electoral success now depends on which side has the greater comprehension of, and the ability to manipulate, a simple fact: Australians live in a preferential political world. This is why Labor’s primary vote of 29 per cent would indeed appear abysmal if not assessed by normative standards.
The latest Newspoll heralds a new yardstick for Anthony Albanese. Under his leadership, primary support has fallen to levels that characterised the level of contempt voters held Labor in following the deposition of Kevin Rudd. It should be noted that under Julia Gillard the primary vote for Labor at one point was higher than it has ever been under Albanese.

Sheesh, not Juliar, did the reptiles run out of chaff bags? The primary vote for Julia Gillard was higher than it has ever been under Mr Albanese.

And where would the hive mind be without a simplistic history lesson, filled with alarm and trepidation?

The more important measure is what Labor’s primary vote was compared with the other side. When Labor’s primary vote was last at 29 per cent, the Coalition’s primary vote was at 48 per cent. The Liberal-Nationals combination could be assured victory even before preferences were counted.
Today, against a primary vote of 29 per cent for Labor, the Coalition is at 18 per cent. The picture has fundamentally altered. And it demonstrates that while Labor’s primary vote appears dangerously low in isolation, context is everything. It looks bad, but when compared with its traditional opponent it is far less so.
Labor’s primary vote was as low as 26 per cent in 2012. In April that year, the Coalition went as high as a 51 per cent primary vote against a Labor primary vote of 27 per cent.
The absence of One Nation was not a significant factor considering before that its primary vote was less than 5 per cent.
By 2017, with One Nation’s re-entry, the minor right-wing party was polling as high as 11 per cent, which was higher than the Greens. Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister and Labor’s primary vote was higher than the Coalition, in the mid to high 30s, getting as high as 41 per cent in the immediate aftermath of Morrison-Turnbull leadership spill.
By the 2019 election, the Coalition had settled under Scott Morrison and One Nation’s primary vote dropped back to about 3 per cent. It is a different story today, obviously, but there were signs some time ago of the potential for a dramatic change in direction for the broader body politic because of an emerging instability in the electorate.

Want a reminder of the glory, or should that be gory, days? How about a snap of a clap happy? the (sic) Coalition had settled under Scott Morrison by the 2019 election. Picture: Getty Images

What a chance to drag an infallible Pope out of the archives ...

Then came a final gobbet, and dare the pond say it, the notion that the reptiles' hero might be rooned, at least for the moment ...with the pond's appetite for a bout of relativism on a Monday finally sated ...

These signs, ignored at the time as the Coalition began to obsess about the teals, were evident in the post 2022 election review by the Liberal Party. It wasn’t the size of the One Nation vote that was concerning, although it had increased 60 per cent on the 2019 result; rather, it was where the votes were coming from and how they were being returned in preferences.
The review found 36 per cent of One Nation preferences flowed back to Labor. This tilted more in favour of the Coalition in 2025 but not by a significant margin.
The point is that the pool of conservative voters being harvested by One Nation was already starting to grow years ago but more than a third of them ultimately helped Labor. This is not the case for the centre-left, where Greens preference flows have been steadily rising across the past three decades and peaked last year at 88 per cent to Labor.
In other words, the preferential system offers electoral reward for strategic voting behaviour, which is evident among Greens voters who know they end up with a Labor government anyway.
This is the fundamental difference that denies the Coalition from replicating on the centre-right what Labor has achieved on the left. The One Nation voting motivation is self-evident; they dislike both major parties and preference only because they have to. There is ample evidence of that when preferential voting is optional – as it is in NSW, where it will be tested in March next year – and where most Greens voters are still disciplined enough to preference Labor but One Nationvoters are much less obedient.
The problem for the Coalition is potentially aggravated also by Liberal voters refusing to preference One Nation and potentially even putting Labor ahead of it.
Unless the Coalition can reverse the tables as they stand today and get ahead of One Nation on primary vote, it will be its preferences that get distributed rather than the other way around. While Labor would appear to be in trouble with a primary vote so low, the fact is that this is structurally mitigated by conservative voters refusing to play by the rules.

Structurally mitigated!

What a simple lesson from simple Simon. Do a deal with Gina's pampered pet, swing to the mad far right, or perish ...

And so to end with a remarkable tribute to a remarkable Xian ...

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Matthew 19:18

He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 1 John 2:4

And how goes Vlad the sociopathic invader's world? (Steve can never resist a tinkle)

In which Polonius does a far left Tootle, while the dog botherer joins yesterday's catastrophists ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

It's finally a meditative Sunday, so the pond can be more expansive and indulgent.

Monday will be time enough to get back to standard lizard Oz lentils and beans, with the pond wanting to have a little variation in its diet.

Why not start by referencing a compelling read in the Financial Times?

Israel’s campaign to make southern Lebanon ‘unliveable’
Israeli forces have systematically destroyed homes, roads, farmland and forests despite ceasefire with Hizbollah
Raya Jalabi in Beirut and Aditi Bhandari in London

An excerpt will serve as a teaser trailer ...

An FT visual investigation with journalism non-profit Lighthouse Reports found systematic destruction across Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, including tens of thousands of homes, schools, farmland and forests.
Analysis of satellite imagery, open-source data and verified footage shows that much of the damage occurred after Israeli forces established control over emptied villages in mid-April. It has rendered large areas uninhabitable, destroying systems needed for civilian life, from water and energy infrastructure to medical care, a tactic rights groups and legal experts say appears designed to prevent residents’ return.
“It’s an extensive, long-lasting and organised attack on the people of southern Lebanon,” said Kristine Beckerle, a deputy director at rights group Amnesty International. “If you raze everything to the ground, critical infrastructure and healthcare, if you scorch the earth, you are creating effective wastelands that are unliveable and making it very difficult for people to return to southern Lebanon.”
Southern Lebanon has long borne the brunt of Israeli bombings and invasions, including before the rise of Shia militant group Hizbollah and the threat it posed to Israel’s northern communities.
But weeks into the latest conflict, defence minister Israel Katz invoked a different approach, one used with devastating consequences after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack: the “Rafah and Beit Hanoun model”, a reference to Israel’s wholesale levelling of cities in Gaza. “All homes in Lebanese villages near the border will be destroyed,” Katz said.
By July, Katz claimed his threat had been carried out. “Twenty-four Lebanese villages, hundreds of years old, we destroyed all the buildings,” he said, boasting that up to 20,000 homes had been demolished. “Not house by house, but entire villages.”

And again ...

In Lebanon, the wreckage extends beyond combat damage or sites Israel claims are Hizbollah infrastructure to the broad clearance of villages under Israel’s effective control. This type of destruction would be governed by the more restrictive law of occupation, said Janina Dill, an Oxford university expert on the law and ethics of war.
Under this, an occupying power may destroy civilian property only where required by “imperative military necessity”. A general claim that Hizbollah might return and use civilian structures in the future would not be enough, Dill said: “It’s deeply implausible that imperative military necessity applies to every house in a particular village.”
Preventing the return of civilians who have been forcibly displaced would also amount to a war crime, said Amnesty’s Beckerle. More than 400,000 displaced people have returned south, according to Lebanon’s government, but many remain displaced and others were “staying with friends, family or in damaged structures with lacking services”, Beckerle said.
For months, Lebanon and Israel have been engaged in US-brokered talks, with an ostensible goal of IDF withdrawal and eventual peace. But these have made little difference on the ground, as Israeli forces continue to demolish villages and set orchards ablaze, unfettered.
The negotiations have also enraged many Lebanese, who feel the state is helpless to stop the destruction of their homes. Bazzi, meanwhile, is still waiting to learn how much remains of hers.
“Our people used to say long ago: ‘If only a bird would bring me news,’” she said. But “even the birds are no longer there above the south and above Bint Jbeil. There is no one left to bring us news.”

Speaking of birds not bringing any useful news, Polonius was out and flapping about this weekend, and in his usual way, meandering down ancient history:

The header: The 1996 Parliament House riot: The violent attack on Australian democracy we choose to ignore; While the January 6 Capitol Building attack dominates global memory, Australia’s own parliament was stormed three decades ago and history has largely forgotten it.

The caption for a collage best left uncredited, and only useful because Bill will appear way down this page: The Capitol Building riot in Washington DC on January 6, 2021; ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, inset left, and prime minister John Howard, right, in 1996. Pictures: AFP, Suzanna Clarke, Michael Jones

Polonius wasted four minutes of the pond's time on a trip which might appeal to a certain hive mind demographic, though the pond hasn't the foggiest idea why.

Please join Polonius in his time machine, and remember this isn't H.G. Wells:

Next Wednesday is a day to remember – if not a memorable day. It is the 30th anniversary of what has been called the Parliament House riot of 1996.
Many Australians are aware of the riot that took place on January 6, 2021, in Washington DC. Supporters of President Donald J. Trump stormed the US Capitol Building to express their view that Trump was “robbed” of victory in the November 2020 US presidential election.
It was a dangerous affair – as most riots (whether indoors or outside) invariably are. However, the most serious casualty occurred when a Capitol Hill police officer shot and killed an unarmed female protester who happened to be a returned veteran.
As is known, congress was sitting as it was about to authorise the election of Joe Biden as US president to come into effect on January 20. The event is reported in The New York Times’ published book The January 6 Report, consisting of the findings of the select committee set up to investigate what it called “the attack on the US Capitol”.
And now back to Australia. The John Howard-led Coalition government came to office in March 1996, having defeated the Paul Keating-led Labor government in a landslide. Prime minister Howard’s first budget was set down for August 19.
The Howard government was elected on a platform of bringing the budget back into surplus, reducing Australia’s net debt, industrial relations reform and more besides. This upset the Australian labour movement.
There is very little written on this event, presumably because the trade union movement was involved in the protest that became a riot. It is my experience that most commentators on Australian history are on the left – as are most of those who write about industrial relations in their capacity as journalists or academics.

Now please stand by for that bee hive which keeps on buzzing in the old Polonial noggin:

So do not expect to find much in the left-of-centre mainstream media (Nine newspapers, the ABC, SBS, Guardian Australia) covering the event. It was, after all, a public relations disaster for the organisers.

Oh dear, and even worse the reptiles wheeled out the lying rodent, Former Prime Minister John Howard remembers Australia's waterfront dispute, 20 years later.

At this point Polonius turned to an unexpected source, a certain Luke Deer:

Unexpectedly, I have found an online article by Luke Deer titled “The Parliament House Riot of 1996” (which is based on an honours thesis at the Australian National University in 1998) to be the best contemporary account. Unexpected, since his work presents as something written from a left-wing perspective. The key point being that it is based on facts – and not driven by theory.

What's a classic reptile ploy with this? They didn't provide a link, though the essence of it could be found here. (Yes, it's a Marxist Interventions site!)

The reptiles never want any punter to leave the hive mind. They want them trapped in some kind of alternative reptile universe from which they can never leave.

What's a typical example of this? Well the reptiles did provide a link in the next paragraph to matters deemed relevant to Bill Kelty:

Before the 1996 election, Bill Kelty, the ACTU secretary, had threatened an “industrial war” if a Coalition government was elected and, as prime minister, Howard was intent on breaking the power of the trade union movement.

Some mug punters - not hardened pond herpetologists experience in the ways of the reptiles - might have clicked on that link, only to have discovered it was just another way of discovering they could never leave...

What's interesting about that? Well it shows what happens when ancient lefties get a taste of billionaire lettuce leafs.

Suddenly Bill is pretty much okay in the reptile universe because he's a Fox man:

Kelty was a responsible and talented trade union leader but inclined to militant hyperbole at times. As it turned out the protest was counter-productive.
Liberal Party MP Bob Halverson was Speaker of the House of Representatives in August 1996. Halverson was a strong Howard supporter who acted with professionalism.
Halverson reported that “the protest started peacefully enough” but soon after “a separate group of marchers entered parliamentary precincts”. This group refused to accept directions from police. They were supported by some participants in the main rally.
Both groups of protesters, some fired up by alcohol, charged at the main door of Parliament House. After a time, they both broke through and got inside.
As Deer described the occasion: “Once inside the area, demonstrators used weapons including a large hammer, wheel brace, steel trolley and stanchion torn from the internal doors to break down the internal doors.” Another group broke into the Parliament House shop and looted it.
The demonstrators dispersed within a couple of hours but not before some police were injured. Deer described the occasion as “the most forceful physical attack on the federal parliament in Australia’s history”.

Where would we be without a sign of another old unionist who's developed climate change denialist syndrome, and so has also become part of the reptile Valhalla ... Jennie George at her official appointment as ACTU President elect with then-ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty in 1995.

Two turncoats, two rats in the reptile ranks, in the one fell swoop or snap... as Polonius developed signs of the disease that the pond noted yesterday.

It was a catastrophe, of a kind ...

Initially, Kelty supported the demonstration – apparently unaware of the violence that had occurred at Parliament House. Jennie George, the ACTU president, was reported to have looked devastated at the outcome. Some CFMEU members played a prominent part in this riot.
The current Parliament House opened in 1988. What is now called Old Parliament House, or the Museum of Australian Democracy, operated in Canberra between 1927 and 1988.
It, too, was the subject of an extreme left attack. On December 30, 2021, a fire was lit at the front of the historic building, which was severely damaged. There were staff members and visitors inside at the time.
Scott Morrison, then prime minister, and Anthony Albanese, the opposition leader, condemned the attack. But senator Lidia Thorpe, then a Green, who identifies as Indigenous, put out this message: “Seems like the colonial system is burning down. Happy New Year everyone.” Fortunately, the fire was extinguished without casualties.
Both the extreme left and the extreme right have been involved in acts of violence since the creation of the commonwealth in 1901. However, it has been slight compared with many other democracies.

Then came an AV distraction designed to terrify the hive mind ... younglings in the street, trying to do a Modi ... Sydney school-aged students were seen protesting Pauline Hanson, One Nation and the party head's policy stances.

Shocking stuff ...and naturally Polonius bolted, and provided a little nugget entirely lacking in data or substance.

The main culprit has been the extreme left. During World War I the radical Industrial Workers of the World engaged in acts of arson and murder.

Actually to be fair to right wing thugs, they've managed a pretty fair share of violence, from the glory days when Captain Francis de Groot charged up on a horse to try to slash the ribbon at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the cavortings of the NFA and the likes of Ross "the skull" May to the recent carry on of assorted neo-Nazis, such that the 47th parliament felt the need to issue a briefing paper on Right-wing extremism in Australia.

But don't let actual data get in the way of a single Polonial experience:

I remember a violent demonstration in Melbourne in July 1968 against Australia’s commitment to defend non-communist South Vietnam in its conflict with North Vietnam. The target was the US consulate-general in Melbourne. Journalist Jack Darmody reported that “demonstrators fought savage street battles with police”.

And don't let actual data in the way of Polonius doing a free association routine and downplaying the neo-Nazis:

And now there is some evidence of a link between radical Islamists and the traditional extreme left.
In recent times Victorian Police is investigating an arson attack on a Melbourne defence manufacturer as a possible “act of terrorism”. Similar concerns have been expressed by ASIO director-general Mike Burgess in his 2026 annual threat assessment with respect to what he described as “antisemitic arsons”.
It is fashionable among the left intelligentsia to focus on alleged fascists or those claimed to be “neo-Nazis”. Certainly neo-Nazis in our midst are threatening and at times dangerous.
But concern about violence and terrorism should focus on the extreme left. For the moment at least.
It’s time to remember that the one specific attack on Australian democracy took place at the hands of the extreme left at the seat of government in Canberra three decades ago.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Polonius can focus on the extreme left all he likes, but the pond will remain focused on the biggest ratbag in the business, prone to violence on a daily basis:

Meanwhile, other catastrophists were out making melongate hay, just like the ones noted yesterday ...

Garrulous Gemma, in her grating way, joined the hive mind throng ...

Albo’s refusal to own Melongate proves the denial is worse than the sin
What he did was sexist, crude and juvenile. If a man did that in front of me, I’d walk away after possibly first baptising him with whatever beverage I had handy.
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist

The pond didn't want to go there, if only because it would have meant leaking a Leak Jr. cartoon out into the blogosphere.

Luckily the immortal Rowe was handy to evoke the sort of peril that plucky Gemma offered Albo ...

Between garrulous Gemma, safely tucked away in the archive, and the dog botherer, the pond decided his carry on should be given preference:

The header: DJ Albo’s latest spin can’t hide the rot at the top; Anthony Albanese’s pretence at infallibility exposes his judgment and character; Whenever reality does not suit this Prime Minister, he confects another version of events.

The caption for the AV distraction that started proceedings, here reduced to screen cap: Source: Nikki Osborne on YouTube

As a catastrophist of the first water, the dog botherer took yet another reptile deep dive into the affair:

Until Anthony Albanese humiliated himself, his wife Jodie Haydon, Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Rhonda Burchmore, Sanae Takaichi, Japan and Australia, I had never heard of Nikki Osborne and the Bush Deep podcast.
It seemed inconceivable that the leader of a significant country such as ours would voluntarily diminish himself and his office in such a tawdry way, so I figured he must have been caught by surprise to some degree.
Checking out the podcast, it did not take me long to ascertain that apart from its crass sexual reference the title was oxymoronic. It was oddly deflating to discover that our Prime Minister was so needy or pathetic that he had offered up himself and his office, and even the official residence, to such a platform. The first episode that came up in my search had been published only weeks before Albanese’s – it was his warm-up act, if you like, or should have been his warning sign.
Osborne interviewed Annie Knight, who has made a small fortune by bedding large numbers of strangers, including barely legal schoolies, and publicising her antics. Minutes into the podcast Osborne was discussing Knight’s session with 583 men (using the term loosely) over six hours.
Lying across a couch, legs akimbo, Osborne was re-enacting the action under instruction from Knight, who explained how she would have “one guy inside me while I was getting other people ready with my hands and my mouth”.
A few weeks later Osborne was on a couch in the Lodge interviewing our Prime Minister.
Albanese has not merely been reckless with his own standing but with the dignity of his office. We have all cringed and wondered how a married man could think it was OK to discuss his own sex life in public – most husbands and wives I have spoken with agree this would be seen as disrespectful, triggering instant discord.
Yet the Prime Minister then went on to canvass a puerile game of “shag, marry, date” involving three accomplished Australian women. Inexplicably, he capped it off by engaging in a conversation about “crap gifts” and offering up his now infamous melon story involving the first female Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi.
Gaslighting the public
Since then, he has spent considerable time and political capital denying what we all have seen, effectively gaslighting the public. His inability to be frank and contrite has led to the excruciating spectacle of his leading female cabinet ministers – the strong women helping to run the country – sacrificing their honour on the altar of Albanese’s idiocy, defending his actions and denying any disrespect or insult.
These are the same political players who ran a false and vicious campaign wrongly accusing Coalition women such as Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown of a political cover-up over the Brittany Higgins rape allegations.
This version of the #MeToo movement, now practised by Penny Wong, Katy Gallagher and Tanya Plibersek, seems to include a shared commitment to denying disrespect against women if it is delivered by your male superior.

Oh dear, not the Lehrmann matter for the umpteenth time.

The reptiles are still calling them "allegations"? But billy goat butt, the matter went all the way up to the High Court, where an appeal was dismissed.

...In his judgment, Justice Lee said he was satisfied that it was "more likely than not" that Mr Lehrmann was "so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins's consent and hence went ahead with sexual intercourse without caring whether she consented".
Justice Michael Lee said that Mr Lehrmann was "so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins's consent".
In their ruling more than a year later, the appeal judges went even further than Justice Lee over the question of whether Mr Lehrmann had knowledge of Ms Higgins's lack of consent.
During the 2024 defamation trial, Justice Lee found Mr Lehrmann's conduct amounted to "non-advertent recklessness".
But the appeal judges accepted a contention from Network Ten and Ms Wilkinson that the primary judge ought to have found Mr Lehrmann had "actual knowledge" that Ms Higgins did not consent to sex.

You don't have to be interested in the behaviour of Liberal staffers - the pond's tends to nil - to see that the matter went beyond the allegation phase, partially because of Lehrmann's behaviour.

But that's a long time reptile ploy, all the more ironical for berating Albo for an inability to be frank and contrite, when the reptiles resolutely refuse to name Lehrmann, while reducing the matter to Higgins' "allegations".

There was doubled up dog botherer with the AV distraction:

News24 host Chris Kenny reacts to Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek providing cover for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comments on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s diplomatic gift. “Anthony Albanese is getting smaller every day,” Mr Kenny said. “Sadly for his colleagues, they now diminish themselves providing cover for him. "You only had to see the minister for social services on television this morning, defending what any self-respecting feminist might call indefensible."

The dog botherer followed up that with an infinite jest:

To be fair to Albanese, he will always be regarded as a Labor hero. That is a status earned for keeps by taking power from opposition and then winning a landslide re-election.

To be fair? Such an excellent fancy, as if the current melongate jihad was in any way fair, with reptiles piling on in a way that makes many of their other jihads seem like kindergarten affairs.

Yet it's such a one note saga that inevitably the dog botherer got tired of the game, and like other reptile catastrophists, began searching for other matters with which to develop a litany:

Yet across the country now he is a greatly diminished figure. Albanese has become our incredible shrinking Prime Minister.
On the night he first took office he surprised the nation with his first grand promise: to deliver an Indigenous voice to parliament. He took a detailed proposal built on years of hard-won consensus and trashed it through political arrogance.
His hubris manifests time and again as denial. Whenever reality does not suit this Prime Minister, he confects another version of events.
When he fell awkwardly off a stage during last year’s election campaign, apparently the eyes and cameras of the nation had deceived us. “I stepped back one step, I didn’t fall off the stage, just one leg went down,” Albanese said, “but I was sweet.”

You see? From a moment of silliness to national disgrace, with Dania wheeled in to repeat her "falling off the stage routine: Sky News host Danica De Giorgio has taken aim at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for attempting to downplay his fall of a stage in Cessnock. The Prime Minister told ABC Radio that he did not fall, but instead ‘stepped back one step’. “He fell off the stage, then lied about it,” Ms De Giorgio said. “This is the guy who wants us to trust him?”

Still with ancient history? That's what you need when doing a reptile jihad by way of litany.

From there it was just a matter of expanding the litany into a catastrophic recitation of sundry dooms:

Playing a name association game, he responded to the name Grace Tame with “um, difficult”. But when Tame suggested this answer conjured sexism, the Prime Minister said, “She has had a difficult life and that was what I was referring to.”
In March this year during a visit to Lakemba Mosque in southwestern Sydney, Albanese was heckled vigorously by men inside and others yelled abuse outside when he was escorted to his car under heavy security. Later he said reports of this strife were “simply not accurate” and that “overwhelmingly the reception was incredibly positive” as he dismissed the negative reaction to “a couple of hecklers inside”.
Each time he denies the obvious it is like putting the woollens through the wash; the Prime Minister shrinks. His pretence at infallibility exposes his judgment and character.
And then there is his reliability. His honesty.
Albanese promised not to meddle with the legislated tax cuts he inherited from the Morrison Coalition government. Then he changed them, undoing the cuts at the top marginal rate.
He promised not to fiddle with negative gearing or adjust capital gains tax. But he has done both, increasing the tax burden on everyone except those, like him, who had already taken advantage of the rules.
Repeatedly Albanese promised to cut electricity prices – by $275 a year. Instead, they have gone up by about three times that amount and he sheeted home responsibility not to his broken promise but to RepuTex’s failed modelling.
Last year the Prime Minister attended the Garma Indigenous festival in northeast Arnhem Land and vowed to attend “every single year that I have the great honour to be Australia’s Prime Minister”. This year, the first year after making the promise, he did not go – he had a week off instead.

Every thought crime in the reptile playbook came tumbling out ... Anthony Albanese at Garma in 2024. Picture: Yothu Yindi Foundation/Leicolhn McKellar via NewsWire

And so to the final bout of catastrophism:

Rinse and repeat. Our incredible shrinking Prime Minister is no longer fit for purpose – it is like they have discovered an Ozempic for character.
I am conscious that what I am saying amounts to a personal attack, a detailed assault on the political character of our leader.
Yet this is warranted, is borne out by the examples I cite, and it matters.
The policy failings are clear: record spending, record debt, record public sector growth, high inflation, low growth, disappearing productivity, self-imposed energy harm, weak on antisemitism and Islamist extremism, expanding union power and diminished standing in global affairs.
To right all this demands leadership credentials, sound policy instincts and a capacity to level with the public to take them with you on your chosen course of action.
It is all unfolding at a time of worrisome strategic circumstances in eastern Europe, the Middle East and the East Asian hemisphere. And the social and economic impacts of the digital age and artificial intelligence continue to confound us.
Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard and Peter Costello showed the gravitas and built the trust to tackle imposing tasks. Albanese gets smaller every day, juggling melons and double entendres on a couch in the Lodge.

To mangle Sam Johnson, "A quibble poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal ~~Cleopatra~~ melon for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it."

And now, this being a Sunday meditation, to hell with length.

What's torturing the soul of the lizard Oz editorialist, heart of reptile darkness?

There was the tragedy of white men ...

Um, cancel that. They need a reptile perspective.

So much suffering, but yet came more because the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to help out the Canavan caravan ...

Of course. It's all about climate change, and the reef in splendid shape, and never anyone mind all that talk of Europe on fire, and sundry other countries ablaze.

If you live in bizarro world, none of that's happening.

And finally there was a bleat worthy of Dame Groan herself ...

We'll all be rooned by Xmas, please allow the beefy boofhead from Goulburn to show the way. Why with treaties abandoned, we'll soon be able to build substandard homes and send furriners packing, and won't that be a fine thing.

In the interim, perhaps the reptiles could show the way by sacking the lizard Oz editorialist, because the pond can't understand how the three outings above in any way enhanced the nation's productivity.

On the other hand, it could be worse, at least if you look at a country where its unhinged ruler is cultivated by Faux Noise:

Hope and indignation springs eternal in the hearts of Lord Haw Haws ...

Quelle catastrophe. The bromancer and the Ughmann provide most excellent examples of the lizard Oz's catastrophic ways ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 21:46:00 +0000

As well as being professional jihadists, the reptiles at the lizard Oz are professional catastrophists ... and all hands were on deck this day to do their duty ...

Top of the digital "news" page ma came this ...

It’s official: Albanese has hit rock bottom
The crown of Labor’s modern-day emperor is slipping as he approaches a moment of reckoning.

The pond regrets that it was quickly dropped down to second place by the news of Jason Arday's death - didn't that jihad produce a satisfyingly catastrophic result? - but still that image of the skulking ratbags will haunt in the hive mind...

What a disaster, quelle catastrophe, but what made it "official"?

Geoff Chambers had deemed it so, and if Geoff says it, it must be true, but when you read the full piece, not once was "official" actually mentioned...

The actual heading? Albanese’s moment of reckoning will define Labor’s long term direction.

So it's official, the art of the reptile sub-editor as jihadist has defined the lizard Oz's long term direction.

With the Chambered round safely in the intermittent archive, the pond could quickly move past an offering by a boiling over Rice ...

EXCLUSIVE
Trial of Bornstein and Labor: ‘secret, unfathomable betrayal of whistleblower’
A botched Labor plan to sideline a whistleblower has entangled some of its most influential figures – and high-profile lawyer Josh Bornstein – in claims of betrayal and cover-up.
By Stephen Rice

Want stories of the ICAC follies?

Sorry, that's only to be found outside the lizard Oz's top "news".

Car park chaos and Dallas’ dictionary of lost words: Two days of ‘iterations’ at ICAC

Want stories about the world on fire? There's an abundance of them out in the real world ...

How did you get lost and land here?

Any of those other places will do for signs of genuine catastrophe ...

Counting the cost of Europe’s summer of fire, drought and lost harvests

Back to the professional catastrophists, and today the pond turned to just two of the lizard Oz's best exponents of the art (some say it's a science)...

This required walking past snappy Tom, who in a moment of reptile madness, pretended he wasn't in the catastrophist game ...

Get a grip, people, mini hit to house prices not the ‘main game’
Buying and selling property is not the country’s path to prosperity
It’s time to get over this collective mania with the up-escalator of residential property and focus on the real changes and sacrifices needed to deal with our economic funk.
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist

You need the occasional heretic to confirm even more deeply the catastrophist faith, and there is no better exponent of that faith than the bromancer ...

The header: Albanese fails to learn the key apology lesson mastered by Hawke and Howard; Anthony Albanese’s stubborn refusal to apologise over the Bush Deep podcast scandal has turned a simple mistake into a self-inflicted political catastrophe.

The caption for a man looking completely bewildered and in urgent need of a correctional homily straight from the bromancer: Anthony Albanese will look to revive his standing as PM as parliament enters a new sitting period. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

The bromancer began his piece with an impeccable quotation up there with Our Henry's devotion to Thucydides:

“Oh, it seems to me that sorry seems to be the hardest word.”
– Elton John, 1976

There followed a six minute or so exposition on the theme.

The pond makes only a few preliminary observations on the art of the professional catastrophist.

First, keep on making a mountain out of a molehill.

Sure, the discreet Japanese had attempted to go minor key, as reported in the Graudian.

Japanese ambassador to Australia downplays Albanese melon gaffe as Taylor claims PM has ‘stuffed up’; Coalition demands police investigate apparent leaking of diplomatic cable to newspaper but Labor calls it a ‘silly political stunt’

Ignore the farcical quality of the melongate jihad. Keep on pushing that wheelbarrow.

Second, remember that these are the worst of times. There has always been a golden age, just not now. Drag in as many examples of long lost golden ages as you can find, and no matter if it features Bob Hawke, once the victim of many reptile jihads, or John Howard, the man who lost his seat and government all in one go.

You can't go on a catastrophistclubbing day without a golden age club or three.

Third, make sure you dig through the art of the apology, perhaps even turning to the likes of Jane Austen. You yourself might never have apologised for the many stupidities, contradictions and rampant hypocrisies in your own pieces, but never mind, righteous indignation is your stock in trade and you must maintain the rage.

Say what? Jane Austen? Surely not? Ah, the pond sees, grasshopper, that you still have much to learn about the ways of the professional catastrophist, the astonishing range of references they bring to their task.

With that in mind, let's see how the bromancer performs ... and remember, it helps to have "catastrophe" in the headline and in the opening sentence, even if the catastrophic abuse of the English language and any sensible definition of "catastrophe" must be apparent to anyone standing outside this current catastrophegate...

Everyone makes mistakes, including prime ministers like Anthony Albanese. Stubbornly refusing to apologise for them, as Albanese is doing, turns mere mistakes into epic catastrophes, morally and politically.
Albanese’s bizarre refusal to apologise over his frankly incomprehensible remarks about Japan’s Prime Minister, in the smutty, crass, juvenile and utterly wretched Bush Deep podcast he did, in which he also chose Kylie Minogue from a list as one he’d like to “shag, marry or date”, casts grave doubt over his judgment.

Quick, shift any disqualifying disclaimers into the small print in the attached AV offering ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he apologised for “elements of the podcast” and insists he doesn’t do interviews with his arms folded. “That characterisation is not right, and if you look at any interviews I’ve done, I don’t do them with my arms folded,” Mr Albanese told News24. “I apologised for elements of the podcast; I gave an unequivocal apology. “But there is nothing I have done with the Japanese prime minister, importantly, whose visit was a really warm one … we got to know each other and build a really strong relationship through that.”

Did the man hint that he'd given an unequivocal apology? Strike that out at once ...

If as PM you can’t navigate a smutty podcast, how can you navigate war and peace? Albanese has embarrassed not only himself but the nation, as well as the leader of our closest friend in Asia, but also all his sad female ministerial colleagues who have had, one after another, to immolate their credibility and integrity on the funeral pyre of his insecure political ego.
Whereas a simple apology early on would have been clean, clear and, given how forgiving Australians are, probably politically effective. Albanese seems astonishingly stubborn about not apologising, and stubborn in the dumbest possible way. (I have adult sons and advised each at their wedding to master seven words: Yes dear, I was wrong, you’re right. If seven was too many, two could also do the trick: I’m sorry.)

After that touchingly silly personal touch, time for the golden age mantra, with a list of those who might - or might not - be a part of a golden age parade ...

Apologies are a big deal for successful political leaders. Two politicians Albanese has thought a lot about, Gough Whitlam and Donald Trump, famously didn’t apologise. It’s a pathology in both men, two of the most arrogant figures democratic politics has known.
The most successful democratic politicians master apology. Bob Hawke, John Howard, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Peter Beattie, Bob Carr – all immensely successful government leaders who used apology strategically and tactically, which is not to say their apologies were insincere.
Albanese has described Hawke as Australia’s greatest prime minister. That might be overstating things but Hawke was certainly very good. If Albanese thinks Hawke the greatest, it’s strange that it’s Whitlam’s policies Albanese implements while rejecting pro-market deregulation, supply-side reforms and balanced budgets as Hawke produced.

Cue a once reviled bloke, now elevated to golden age pantheon, at least if he can be used to club the current incumbent ... Former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke in 1990.

Once you've established a golden age hero, mine it for all its worth and more ...

Until near the end, Hawke’s approval ratings were mostly stratospheric. Albanese’s are disastrous. Hawke was the supreme master of apology, in small things as well as big. Once, in the 1980s, he imitated and lampooned the upper-class accent of John Spender (Allegra’s father), then a Liberal frontbencher. Hawke realised that was crass and wrong. He came back to the House of Representatives and apologised. Spender accepted and said the apology did Hawke nothing but credit.
Hawke apologised over big things, too. As he prepared for national leadership, he told the Australian people he’d drunk too much. But he intended to do better.
Across the board, Australians admired him for this. I remember my father, an instinctive supporter of the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party, who became very conservative, deeply respected Hawke for just those honest admissions.

Drag in an example of the golden age god as a family man ... Hawke with daughter Rosslyn Dillon in 2013. Picture: AAP

Weep along with your golden age hero ...

Like all national leaders, like all human beings, Hawke was a complex, contradictory mix. He publicly wept over his daughter’s drug situation and his failures as a parent. In his memoirs he wrote of learning of Rosslyn’s heroin addiction: “I felt numb with guilt now as I wondered whether she would have exposed herself to the dangers of the drug culture if I had been more available.”
That’s not a humble-brag. That’s genuine regret. Hawke had a quality Albanese seems to lack – tremendous psychological security. To apologise is not an act of weakness but an act of courage. Hawke had courage.
Albanese’s backers sometimes try to promote him as a Labor version of Howard, the underestimated everyman. The political comparison is misplaced because Howard, unlike Albanese, enacted economic reform that made Australia wealthier and stronger. Howard had the courage to take controversial tax changes to an election rather than simply reverse all his previous commitments.
The comparison falls down in another way, too. One of Howard’s great strengths was that he spoke directly, in plain language. Albanese these days barely manages a straight answer to even the most mildly disobliging questions.

You see? There's simply no way he can match up to those golden age warriors, even if the plainly spoken lying rodent managed to lose both seat and government, a tad careless in the Oscar Wilde sense.

Now quick, offer an AV distraction ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has detailed what was discussed in his recent call with US President Donald Trump.

Now use mad king Donald, Faux Noise's favourite, to berate the local ...

Albanese certainly doesn’t model himself on Trump but he or his minders seem to have taken two very bad political technique lessons from the US President. The first is to seek out low-engagement voters through edgy, sometimes strange podcasts and the like. This has been central to Trump’s success, but that’s because voting isn’t compulsory in the US. Getting people to the polls who don’t usually vote is a big part of Trump’s winning formula. In a parliamentary system, such behaviour can easily make a prime minister look shabby and duplicitous.
And don’t forget even Trump won once, then lost decisively, before winning again. His approval rating now is about 34 per cent.
The other lesson Albanese takes from Trump is to shape endless content for social media. It’s likely some of what seems a neurotic, if not manic, unwillingness by Albanese to answer questions is a deliberate decision not to furnish certain images and sounds that could be used against him on social media. Thus his office issued a one-line apology to Minogue, but Albanese never spoke the apology in front of cameras.

Mined mad king Donald enough? Return to that other ancient hero, and remember never to practise what you might preach ...

His social media advisers are no doubt telling him not to furnish a moment of weakness for the cameras. That’s strikingly bad advice. Apologies that are straightforward, personal, unambiguous, take responsibility and promise better in the future are often extremely effective.
In Howard’s first, unsuccessful leadership stint he too was stubborn and hated admitting mistakes. But he grew in leadership. He made a silly remark in 1988 suggesting Asian immigration was too high. Among many others, I was critical of his remarks. Howard recognised the mistake straight away but was reluctant to correct his position. It played a role in his losing the Liberal leadership. By 1994, Howard was preparing to come back as leader and defeat Paul Keating at an election.

Throw in some nonsense about the lying rodent being sensible, an abuse of the English language, unless you think that "sensible" actually means bigoted ...‘I can’t for the life of me see why we can’t have a sensible debate about the level of immigration’ … John Howard in his Sydney office. Picture: Adam Taylor

Throw in another personal touch, and remember to cite Bill as an exemplar ...

He wanted to put the 1988 incident to bed. He got in touch with me and, at his suggestion, we did a big interview. It was a huge front-page story under the banner headline: “I was wrong on Asians, says Howard.” In his memoirs Howard recounts all this and says he’d gone the whole distance to erase hurt feelings over “my (Howard’s) serious error of judgment back in 1988”.
Incidentally, Howard handles all this with supreme graciousness, and frank self-criticism, in his memoirs. The dynamic is that Howard recognised his own mistake and far from running from it, hiding, getting others to take the flak, he came and dealt with it directly by apologising and learning the episode’s lessons.
Clinton apologised profusely for lying about the Monica Lewinsky episode. Earlier in his career he apologised for his unsuccessful first term as Arkansas governor. Having lost office he didn’t defend a poor record but said he’d learnt from his mistakes. He then won back the governorship and never lost again.

This is how it's done ... score a blow job and become a reptile hero ... Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky.

And so to quiet the noise emanating from all those sceptics and disbelievers.

Why did you doubt the bromancer's ability to wangle Jane Austen into this tale of a "catastrophe"?

Not all apologies work. They’re not effective if forced out of someone at the last minute. Apologising for someone else’s historic crimes is just patting yourself on the back. Apologising “if anyone took offence” is also pathetic. You’re apologising for other people’s hypersensitivity.
It’s difficult for Albanese to apologise now because so many of his ministers have defended him. But as long as footage of the grotesque podcast continues to be shown, the sheer ridiculousness of his position will remain unresolved. Better if he now said something like: “I’ve thought a lot about this episode and I now see that doing that podcast was a serious error of judgment. I meant to convey no innuendo in my remarks about the gracious gift of the Japanese Prime Minister. But I now see my words were clumsy, ambiguous and easily open to misinterpretation. The fault was mine and I take full responsibility for it.”
The greatest literary apology came from Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen so enjoyed the spectacle of a powerful man apologising over his treatment of a woman that she has Darcy apologise by letter, as well as in person, and repeatedly. Darcy says at one point: “I am sorry, exceedingly sorry …” He doesn’t let himself off lightly: “My behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”
Darcy won Elizabeth with his apology. Everybody loves him now. Imagine if he’d begun instead: “I don’t accept the assertion …”

Quelle catastrophe ... and for those who don't understand, AI will explain ...

Put it another ways, that AI might better understand catastrophes d'origine reptilian ...

For the second example of a professional jihadist at work, the pond will turn to the Ughmann ...

Early this weekend the Ughmann was out and about co-authoring an EXCLUSIVE, second from the top in the "news" section ...

EXCLUSIVE
Wong’s edict to universities: axe China research links
Just weeks after the Pentagon blacklisted Shandong University, the Foreign Minister has axed the Australian National University’s joint venture with the Chinese institution on national security grounds.
By Natasha Bita and Chris Uhlmann

Again you actually had to read the real headline to get the context...

Penny Wong axes ANU joint venture with Chinese university linked to nuclear weapons

But having a bit of Bita in that beat up ruined the art of the professional catastrophist.

To admire the Ughmann in his native habitat, he must be studied alone ... and sorry, it's melongate again that's the springboard...

The header: Albanese’s melons joke risks $160bn Japanese investment — and opens a path for Canada; As Anthony Albanese puts his foot in his mouth, Canada is poised to eat our lunch.

Just in any case anyone in the hive mind had forgotten the saga, the reptiles thoughtfully provided a reminder: Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi gifted Anthony Albanese Japanese melons and it’s been a diplomatic disaster ever since. Picture: X / @takaichi_sanae

The Ughmann also managed to wring some six minutes of hysteria out of the notion that Canucks were a dire and immediate predator threat.

"Poised", so to catastrophist speak.

Elbows up Canada, you've got your problems with mad king Donald, but apparently they're minor up against the dire threat you pose to us (or so the Ughmann says).

The pond should have added a fourth item to the art of the skilled catastrophist.

That's the litany.

You take a simple affair, such as "melongate", and wring it until the pips squeak, but you also use it as a trigger for a litany of disasters ...

Travel is a great leveller and one of the things it levels is any notion that most of the world gives much of a toss about what goes on in Australia.
Last year the two stories that really resonated worldwide were the shocking massacre atBondi Beach and the social media ban for those under 16. The Albanese government’s stab at trying to unplug children’s brains from online toxins is the one domestic policy that other nations are copying or monitoring. Beyond that our dangerous wildlife usually gets more coverage than our politics. Shark and crocodile attacks almost always make news overseas.
At the time of writing the local story that appears to have travelled most widely this year is Queensland’s proposal to host the 2032 Olympic rowing events in the “crocodile-infested” Fitzroy River. By luck or design this move is a stroke of genius as it has raised the profile of Rockhampton in a way no tourism campaign ever could. The story was picked up by international newswires and sprayed around the globe.
Hopefully there is a team tasked with ensuring there are semi-regular updates about the development of the course and baroque plans to keep the rowers safe. Maybe float the idea of building crocodile fences, release pictures of surf lifesavers armed with crocodile stun guns, provoke a fight over crocodile culls and then parade our green energy superpower credentials by announcing plans for a solar-powered submersible drone fleet steered by artificial intelligence to safely herd the creatures away from the athletes.
Or maybe lean into the danger. Given there are already kayaking events that include rapids and numerous obstacles, someone should pitch the notion of inserting a crocodile pool just before the finish line. There are years of stories here.
Beyond that, in several weeks travelling Europe in July, I can report only two Australian stories ran prominently in the offshore media: Barnaby Joyce yelling at his dog during a TV interview and the Prime Minister saying he would shag, marry and date Kylie Minogue.

Again make sure that any talk of an actual apology only appears in the small print accompanying the AV distraction ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has apologised for comments he made about wanting to “shag” pop star Kylie Minogue during a podcast last week. Mr Albanese took part in a game called “shag, marry, date” on the programme alongside comedian Nikki Osborne. His office later issued a statement saying: “I apologise unequivocally for the comments.”

Now do your best to turn common gossip and fleeting headlines into a catastrophe, and to help out the reptiles will strip you of any illustrations ... quelle ennui ...

This is obviously not a scientific study given I was reading only the news in English but it’s a fair bet there was little talk of Australia in Europe’s many tongues. That these two stories did echo overseas is a poor reflection on both the state of our politics and what animates the media, and the public, worldwide.
The Joyce dog story falls into the curiosity category of international media interest in our affairs. It fits the stereotype of Australia being a remote, quaint and often bemusing outpost of quasi-civilisation. And the shagging story got a run only because Britain has an abiding interest in all things Kylie. If Albanese had confessed a secret desire to bed some obscure domestic starlet the story would have sunk at Sydney Heads.
Are we being served, Australia?
Intrigued at how Albanese came to disclose this nugget, I rummaged through Australian news sites to find the source of the revelation. As everyone now knows it was on a videocast with comedian Nikki Osborne titled Bush Deep. A cursory glance at the content of pre-Albanese interviews was enough to discern that this show’s DNA is drawn from the Mrs Slocombe “my pussy” school of comedy.
Trapped in a show he should never have been on, Albanese was asked what was the “most crap” gift he had ever received on an overseas jaunt. Scrounging for an amusing anecdote, his mind clutched at the “pretty strange” offering of perfect Shizuoka Crown melons from Sanae Takaichi. Endearingly, Osborne did not seem to know that the Japanese Prime Minister was a woman. “She brought two, as you do,” Albanese rhymed, juggling imaginary melons, channelling his inner Benny Hill and nailing the ethos of the podcast.
Just in case some innocent missed the dubious double entendre, Osborne underlined it, “She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson”, as the whole experience went tits up for the Prime Minister.
Let’s pause here and consider mitigating circumstances. It is perfectly understandable that any modern leader would seek to engage with all manner of new media because the old ones have been bleeding audience share for nearly two decades. If you want to speak to young Australians it is not on conventional news programs.
But in making a decision about where the Prime Minister should spend his precious time surely the first consideration is risk and reward. Respect for the dignity of the office should also be somewhere high up on the list. Maybe taste? These are matters of judgment and everyone makes mistakes. Albanese admitted to one by issuing an unequivocal apology to Minogue.

At this point, the reptiles broke into italic print for this insight ...

What’s galling about his endless equivocation on the Japanese gift gag is not just the original sin but the litany of lies and hypocrisy that followed.

So it was just a venial sin, and now it's become an immortal sin? That's a fine example of the unreformed seminarian at work, and meanwhile you've avoided all mention of actual catastrophes ...

Remember, we're dealing with the art of the catastrophic litany.

How many catastrophes would you like?

The Labor Party closed ranks to back the Prime Minister’s claim that any smut seen was entirely in the eyes of the beholder. This is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has watched it and yet more evidence of a government assuming we are mugs.
Apply this simple test: what would Labor’s panzer division of female MPs have said if Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton had uttered anything approaching what Albanese said about Minogue or Takaichi? How would the taxpayer-funded discrimination industry have responded? What would the earnest evangelists in the progressive media have done with the story?
Labor has pioneered weaponising any real or perceived slights against women by conservative men. Remember how Tony Abbott’s wink during a talkback call with a phone sex worker was interpreted? Or the storm that followed the puerile “meow” uttered by Tasmanian senator David Bushby at Penny Wong during a Senate hearing?
So spare us the whining about getting flak over this far more substantial lapse of judgment.
Japan has demonstrated how much store it sets in the relationship with Australia by throwing Albanese a lifeline, but the wording of the first paragraph of its official statement on the incident speaks volumes: “We have been informed by the Australian side that Prime Minister Albanese did not make the comments in the way that has been reported.”
This shows a commendable mastery of English and diplomacy: we will take the Prime Minister at his word.
The dinner that helped make us rich
Words and deeds matter and Tokyo’s list of concerns about the kind of friend it has in Canberra is piling up. It also has noted Albanese’s decision to prefer a gig with Spotify over a gala dinner in Parliament House to honour the 50th anniversary of an Australia-Japan treaty that transformed the relationship between the two nations.
That relationship helped make us rich. The latest figures show Japan was the second largest direct foreign investor in Australia ($159.5bn) in 2024. Japanese money and Japanese customers helped build Australia’s liquefied natural gas export industry. It is also a major customer for our black coal exports. Albanese leveraged these supplies when he toured the region to shore up our liquid fuel supplies when the third Gulf war flared.
When a cash-strapped Queensland raised its top royalty rate on coal from 15 per cent to 40 per cent without consultation, a shock wave ripped through corporate Japan.
For the first time Tokyo began to wonder about sovereign risk in Australia and the move brought a rare rebuke from the then Japanese ambassador, Shingo Yamagami. Now, the plan for a domestic gas reservation and talk of a federal gas tax has Japan wondering about whether it should hedge its bets. Other markets beckon. The Australian Financial Review reported this week that Australia “risks missing out on lucrative new gas contracts with Japan as uncertainty over Canberra’s energy policy and pressure from Washington to buy more American LNG reshape the competition for Japan’s future energy supply”.
Australia is the largest supplier of LNG to Japan but across the next 15 years the contracts that underpinned that relationship will expire.
This column has reported before that after he spoke in Australia’s parliament in March Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney flew to Tokyo, where he pledged that “Canada is in a position where we can double our LNG exports by the end of this decade, and double again by the end of the following decade.”
Carney was feted here for his leadership on middle-power diplomacy as the world deals with the growing military might of China and the trashing of alliances by Donald Trump. He said Australia and Canada should work together as “strategic cousins”. But our Canadian cousin wants to pick the Japanese fruit Australia spent a half-century cultivating. And there are only so many melons to go around.

And there you go. Expiring contracts and LNG, and never mind the genuine catastrophe, a world in fire.

Want other examples of bamboozling the hive mind by suggesting catastrophe when it's actually a kind of distilled essence of performative comedy?

Easy ...

Want an example of a catastrophe working its way through the system, as shown by the pond's cheerful use of AI?

Easy ...

Remember, all this is as easy as brain surgery to a reptile expert in the art of catastrophe ...

No hole in bucket man this day, with just Killer Creighton and the Canavan caravan to fill the gap, hide the tragic loss ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:37:01 +0000

Europe is still ablaze with heat, mad king Donald gets madder by the day, a Senator goes rogue on the beefy boofhead, an ICAC investigation provides endless juice, and yet those who dwell with the reptiles remain entombed in melongate.

Take it away bouffant one ...

How did podcaster catch question-avoidant PM over melons?
If Anthony Albanese is so clever at deflection, why didn’t he avoid the dumb, degrading questions in the first place?
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

Just two minutes? No wonder the pond turned it over to the intermittent archive ...

Meanwhile over at the top of the digital "news" ma ...

EXCLUSIVE
Falling house prices: the tipping point that sparks a recession
Australia has not seen a national home price crash exceeding 10 per cent in more than 50 years – economists say that record could be broken.

There isn't an actual recession at the moment, but when has a reptile gone wrong with portents of disaster, and saucy doubts and fears?

It's doom and gloom all the way, but much more importantly, the pond was suffering its own crisis.

No Our Henry!

No Friday foray into Thucydides!

Sure the pond could have stepped back in time to 8th August ... IBAC inquiry exposes the rot at heart of government, but the pond always never looks back, you can never look back ... except perhaps if the pond was travelling and missed yesterday's serve of the infallible Pope ...

Don't get the pond started on how it loathes monster trucks.

The canny Cranston was on on hand to show a deep concern for the working class, as only servile slaves to the billionaire class can do ...

ECONOMY
Same job, less real pay: workers’ earnings going backwards
Australians’ real wages go backwards as falling productivity hits economy
Official figures show Australians’ real earnings have fallen up to 5 per cent since Labor came to office, with public servants largely protected by inflation-adjusted union pay deals.
By Matthew Cranston

But he's just Dame Groan lite with his talk of roonation, and he soon got swept away by news of Albo and mad king Donald having a chat, and what do you know? Still more melons! Trump, Albanese talk in phone call; PM doubles down on melons episode, as you'd expect when chatting with a man who loved to go the grope, and so endeared himself to Faux Noise...

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has again rejected calls to apologise to Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi over his comments about the “melons” she gave him in a comedy podcast.
Mr Albanese told News24 he has already said sorry for “elements of the podcast” but has nothing to apologise for in relation to the diplomatic incident.
Speaking to News24, Mr Albanese said he respected Ms Takaichi and Japan, while arguing his comments were misrepresented.
“I do respect the Japanese Prime Minister,” Mr Albanese told News24 when asked about his controversial comments.

But where's the hair shirt, the grovelling and the mortification, perhaps with a hundred lashes with a pine branch, Percy Grainger style...

Somehow Killer Creighton managed to tag team himself with whatever was happening, and so stayed near the top of the "news", and that's where the pond began ...

The header: Socialism set to rot New York, as it’s doing in Australia; New York is repeating a government grocery experiment Queensland tried – and abandoned – more than a century ago.

The caption for a piquant snap of bananas in play: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at an announcement event of a discounted grocery plan for city-run municipal grocery stores. Picture: AP

It turns out that Killer was outraged by the Mayor's socialism, but what about mad King Donald?

It was Forbes that recently ran a piece by James K. Glassman, Our First Socialist President:

Forget Mamdani, AOC or El Sayed. It’s Donald Trump who can lay a strong claim to being America’s first socialist president.
The hallmark of socialism is control of the means of production. In a manner unprecedented in U.S. history, the federal government under Trump has been gaining direct ownership of American corporations – some of them historic icons.
The government a year ago bought 433 million shares of Intel Corp., the semiconductor manufacturer. Donald Trump (“Trump sees the government as himself,” says Brooke Masters, the U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times in discussing the deal) becomes the largest shareholder in Intel, a half-trillion-dollar corporation, at 10%.
When a Japanese company wanted to purchase U.S. Steel, Trump approved the deal only if the government received a first-ever “golden share”, giving Washington veto power over major corporate decisions. In November, the government made a deal to own up to 20% of Westinghouse Electric. In July, the U.S. took an equity stake in Global Foundries, a profitable chipmaker spun off from AMD, for $300 million.
In the past, the government intervened in a crisis to keep a critical company afloat; the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler in 2008 is the best example. Loans, grants and commitments to purchase products to promote federal priorities have been a regular feature of industrial policy. Those subsidies lean toward socialism. But what the Trump Administration is doing is qualitatively different – a full-on embrace of socialist principles.
“They’re converting loan and grant programs into equity stakes,” said Brent Cebul, an associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania who researches business-state interactions. He called the Westinghouse deal “an important precedent-setting disjuncture.”
The Council on Foreign Relations has a deal tracker that lists two dozen businesses in which the Trump Administration has announced or closed an equity investment. One of them is IBM, a 115-year-old company that will receive a $1 billion infusion. IBM has a market capitalization of $223 billion and a stock that’s roughly doubled in the past four years.
Another example of a company that doesn’t need the money is SandboxAQ, an artificial-intelligence start-up backed by Nividia, the most valuable U.S. company, and Alphabet, which ranks third. The U.S. government on June 17 signed a definitive agreement to acquire an equity stake in SandboxAQ, plus royalty payments on sales.

And so on, and what an inspiration, but Killer seemed not to have caught up on the trend as he embarked on his rant, because how could he forget the Mayor (he's Islamic, don't ya kno) ...

In a week when the government announced a $2.5bn bailout of an aluminium smelter that its own “renewable” energy policies had deliberately made unviable, it’s hard to believe there’s competition for the most stupid economic policy around.
But self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” New York mayor Zohran Mamdani has proved a strong contender with his plan for a government-owned grocery store in each of the city’s five boroughs from late next year, as part of his “affordability” push.
NYC Groceries, as they are to be known, will sell a “core basket” of staples including meat, milk, eggs and bread at yet to be established locations.
The city council will tip $US70m ($100m) into construction and fit-outs, waive rent and taxes, and hand the day-to-day running to private operators who will receive “affordability payments” on the condition they can sell the produce at a 30 per cent discount to market prices.
Mamdani’s administration says the stores will save New Yorkers $US1000 a year, failing to specify which New Yorkers. Use of the store won’t be means-tested. And with only five outlets in a city of 8.5 million people, the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers will never receive a cent. But they will be paying higher taxes so the time-rich retirees and unemployed living just north of Central Park (one of the first planned locations) can take a stroll to buy subsidised salmon.
But it’s doubtful even those lucky few will benefit.

Naturally the melongate man was inked into the yarn, Anthony Albanese announces the bailout of the Tomago smelter on Thursday. Picture: Thomas Lisson

But Glassman wasn't the only one to note the Mayor's real inspiration.

Over in Foreign Policy, Keith Johnson offered Trump Has His Own Communist Manifesto

At a time when U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are warning about the threat of “communism,” the Trump administration itself has taken over much of the means of production.
If Trump’s foray into state capitalism last year seemed alarming—and it did—it has only gotten worse.
The U.S. government now holds equity stakes in as many as 30 companies across a gamut of industries. What started with a “golden share” in U.S. Steel has morphed into a government takeover of vast swathes of the economy. Trump recently browbeat oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron over their refining margins, as the Iran war’s economic toll has led to higher gasoline prices. His own pick for the Federal Reserve is floundering, even as Trump spam calls him repeatedly. All the while, Trump continues to arrogate congressional powers of taxation to raise import duties on U.S. consumers.
“There are some novel economic changes going on, and nobody is talking about it,” said Tad DeHaven, an analyst at the Cato Institute who is setting up a program to research state capitalism. “Since it is driven by one man’s personal desires, there is no plan and no strategy. It changes by the day.”
Trump’s blitzkrieg on industry has focused on rare earths, mining, metals, and semiconductors, among other sectors. It is a jarring move for a nominally Republican president, from a party that has long espoused free-market values.
There is a case to be made for state intervention in certain industries that need government injections of money, know-how, or support otherwise. Shipbuilding is a good case in point and was, at one point in Trump’s second administration, a priority—until it wasn’t. Semiconductors are another critical sector that requires government support in most cases; Taiwan’s world-beating chip industry grew off government largesse, as did, for a spell, the U.S. chip sector. There are scads of academic research about the spread of state capitalism worldwide.
The difference between what Trump is doing and what other countries are doing is significant. While other countries grapple with the sudden vulnerability of supply chains or a needy infant industry, the Trump administration has turned state capitalism into a revenue stream. The number of exemptions and exclusions for tariffs, and special treatment for certain firms, has grown.
“The spin is always, ‘It’s just the critical industries.’ There is not some sophisticated plan here. This is someone who wants to exercise control over the economy,” DeHaven said.

But Killer still hadn't caught up with the trend ...

The supposed 30 per cent discount will invite shortages and arbitrage, not to mention rich opportunities for the successful operators to learn how to maximise their “affordability payments” while satisfying the black letter of their obligations. For example, 30 per cent below what exactly?
Operators may use market data, their own advice or “other observable data points”, to fulfil this requirement. And equivalent products are left vague – private label or premium brand? The whole political sales pitch becomes a joke once specifying a market benchmark becomes impossible.
And even if the stores can manage to meaningfully offer cheaper goods, savvy customers will naturally buy in bulk. Indeed, if meat could be bought far below market price, why wouldn’t restaurants or enterprising middlemen buy it in bulk for themselves, or resell it? Stopping such behaviour would mean quantity limits, membership cards and bureaucrats policing shopping baskets, all of which will add to the cost of the whole process.
Moreover, the stores will put some of the city’s existing 1100 grocery stores and 10,000 bodegas (which, unlike NYC Groceries, have to pay tax and rent and get by without lucrative “affordability subsidies”) out of business, thereby exacerbating the above problems.
Mamdani’s argument that existing providers are profiteering or price gouging doesn’t make sense.
American food retailers made an average net profit margin of just 2.1 per cent last year, according to the Food Industry Association. In other words, confiscating every cent of grocery store profits would get Mamdani’s stores only barely one-14th of the way to his promised discount.
If Mamdani’s shops manage to achieve lower prices it’s only because he has shifted the bill from the checkout to the tax system, while adding administrators’ and other compliance costs along the way.
And as Margaret Thatcher once observed, socialist governments eventually run out of other people’s money. New Yorkers collectively cannot save money by subsidising themselves.

Maggie is Killer's inspiration? The woman who produced little England all on her own, and it's been littler England ever since? Sure 'nuff ...Britain’s former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

And so to the final gobbet ...with Killer ranting away for a corporation which in the past has shown an appetite for government funding and/or marketplace "adjustment", as a replacement for failing market interest, though it's never enough.

To the extent New York’s groceries are overpriced, it’s because of government regulation. Strict zoning has made it very hard for large low-cost supermarket giants such as Aldi or Walmart to compete.
Just as Anthony Albanese could scrap the energy regulations that make smelting unviable, Mamdani could tear up regulations that make real competition possible. Instead, both prefer to waste billions of dollars of other people’s money and present themselves as the saviour.
The two virtues of Mamdani’s policy are: first, its relatively small cost and scope given the city’s budget of over $120bn. It’s almost as if Mamdani or his advisers don’t even believe the scheme can work or will last. It’s really a $US70m political campaign marketing expense.
Second, it is very likely to become a wonderful case study in economic stupidity.
Socialists often proclaim “health” and “education” are “important” so they should supposedly be subsidised or provided by the government. But food is certainly at least as important as those things, and its provision by the private sector has been one of history’s greatest successes.
Mamdani probably isn’t aware that it was American supermarkets that in fact helped defeat his beloved “socialism”. In 1989, then Soviet reformer Boris Yeltsin made a visit to a supermarket outside Houston, Texas, where he reportedly wandered the aisles astonished at the abundance and variety of food available to ordinary Americans.
“Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice,” he marvelled, according to the Houston Chronicle. If Soviet citizens saw it, he said, “there would be a revolution”.
If only we’d learn from our mistakes. A Queensland Labor government launched dozens of government-owned butchers from 1915 onwards, specifically to provide cheap meat and restrain private prices. Naturally they ultimately failed and the last were sold by 1929.
A century later, Mamdani is repeating Queensland’s experiment, proving that if anything requires government subsidy it’s the study of economics and history.

Splendid stuff and all that the pond might expect from an IPA man, and what joy to see public utilities privatised, because it's worked out so well for the Poms - nothing like swimming in sewage - not to mention how well we're doing down under ...

But what to do for a bonus, with much of what's happening in the real world excluded from the reptile purview?

The pond stepped past the usual AUKUS silliness ...

Canberra honesty the key to social licence of AUKUS
Conflicting ministerial accounts of how long US submarines will rotate through HMAS Stirling have left Western Australian communities exposed to planning uncertainty.
By Cathy Moloney

If it ain't the bromancer, it ain't on ...

...The way governments handle both places will shape expectations for any future submarine basing decision on the east coast, including Newcastle, where similar questions will arise.
A more persuasive AUKUS story will not come from smoothing over these tensions. It will come from showing that governments are prepared to be honest about them, and that places asked to host capabilities central to the Australian defence strategy of deterrence by denial will also be given the planning certainty, investment discipline and political respect needed to manage it. That is why the rotational question cannot be treated as a technical footnote – it is a matter of trust. Australians need a clear account of the trade-offs, safeguards and local obligations that will define AUKUS in practice, because trust will depend not on what governments promise at the start, but on whether host communities can recognise success when it arrives.
Cathy Moloney is an independent strategic adviser and an executive member of Women in Nuclear Australia.

If the government was being honest, it'd have to confess that AUKUS is a turkey of the first water, and a bunch of Moloney isn't going to help with that.

Delusional, but it ain't the pond's business to deal with reptile dreams ...

The pond also stepped past the meretricious Merritt and an educational Alex ...

Why a charter of rights undermines parliament as the true guardian of our liberty
Human rights charters make almost no difference to protecting ordinary people, as NSW parliament considers adopting its own Human Rights Bill.
By Chris Merritt

Memo to self.

Must at some point advise dumb Yanks of how useless their dumb bill of rights is ...

Actions speak louder than vacuous words in bonding society
Australia’s classrooms once built a shared national story – now the traditions holding the country together are going untaught.
By Alex McDermott

Bonded society?

Memo to self.

Must at some point boast about having avoided being a teacher, despite being a bonded student, destined to wake in fright out woop woop way ...

Memo to Alex, must at some point explain to reptiles that living in the days of Ming the Merciless wasn't some sort of golden age.

Must point out that this might appeal to the aged lizard Oz demographic, but the days when a cheap arsed medal and a commemorative booklet worked their magic are long gone.

Been there, done that, move on ...

And with that the pond could allow itself an indulgence.

And it wasn't ...

‘NO PROBLEM’
Pauline Hanson unable to name leaders of Japan and Indonesia
In a moment reminiscent of Senator Hanson’s infamous ‘please explain’ moment, the One Nation leader was unable to name leaders of key international partners but maintained diplomacy with South East Asia would be ‘no problem’.
By Noah Yim

No, it was the bouffant one talking up the Canavan caravan, a man these days attempting to sound saner than Malcolm Roberts and Gina's pet, despite them all sharing a deep love of coal ... and better still, it was an EXCLUSIVE ...

The header: Matt Canavan push audit of foreign treaties as Nationals meet and discuss Pauline Hanson threat; Nationals leader Matt Canavan has called for a full audit of more than 4000 international treaties, warning some are being weaponised against Australians.

The caption for the snap of a man attempting to catch flies with his mouth: Matt Canavan on Thursday, and Pauline Hanson, inset. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire, Getty Images

What's more, it was only a two minute read, because when attempting to puff up a boofhead, the less said the better ...

Nationals leader Matt Canavan is calling for a full audit of more than 4000 international treaties to which Australia is a party, to prevent foreigners, international organisations, unelected bureaucrats and those seeking to impose a “global tyrannical order” from weaponising agreements against the Australian people.
In a speech to the Nationals’ conference in Canberra on the weekend, Senator Canavan will declare that an audit is necessary to know what treaties Australia is subject to and to ensure “each treaty puts Australians first”.

This is the best he's got? This will turn the tide against Gina's pampered pet? So it seems...

The bold foreign policy move comes as the country party meets over two days to discuss their direction, amid a tidal wave of One Nation support that threatens MPs at November’s Victorian state election, the NSW poll next March and the federal election due by 2028.
Senator Canavan will tell the conference he is concerned that there are thousands of treaties in which the content and intent is not known and whether they “serve the national interest and protect the sovereignty of Australian people?”
“The Australian public deserves to know, do the thousands of international agreements that we have signed up to and that any agreement that Australia is party to must serve the interests of Australians, not foreigners,” told The Australian on Thursday.
Senator Canavan said some of the 4000 treaties “were signed by the King of England on behalf of his British Dominions, and others were with countries that no longer exist”.

Railing at the doings of King Chuck (no Queen?) is the best he can do? So it seems ...

“In the past few years, international bodies have lectured Australians about what energy we should use, what cars we should drive, what food we should eat, who we should let into our country and even what we should be allowed to say,” he said.
“The only people that should decide what happens in this country are the Australian people.”
In 1995, Liberal elder Rod Kemp backed a Senate committee recommendation that government conduct an audit of treaties, partly because “there is still uncertainty as to the exact number of treaties to which Australia is currently a party”.
But, the audit was not done and Senator Canavan said it was time it was done.
“Too often, international agreements have become weaponised to take away the basic rights of farmers and everyday Australians,” he said. “The increasing abuse of the external affairs powers is weakening our federation.”
Senator Canavan said the Albanese government did a deal with the Greens to use international treaties’ powers to expand the laws surrounding the Great Barrier Reef catchment area. “For many farmers this means the federal government has effectively taken over control of their entire farm, when it should be the states that have control of basic land planning issues,” he said.
“The only people that should decide what happens in this country are the Australian people.”
Senator Canavan said the Nationals would be accused “of all sorts of bad things for wanting to oppose the attempt to impose a global tyrannical order”.
“But I will not apologise for being a patriot. I will always defend the right of a free people to decide what happens in their nation,” he said.
Senator Canavan’s speech will be his first as leader. The party conference comes after Senator Canavan’s predecessor David Littleproud quit following two Coalition splits and questions over his ability to mount an electoral case against Pauline Hanson’s surging populist party.

What a dismal bout of impending blather ...

The pond felt so bereft it turned to the lizard Oz editorialist, still trying to coach some sense into the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

Thanks coach, that ought to fix everything ...

Stay focussed, take the ball up the guts, and don't get distracted by dreams of glory ...

And so to a whiff of heresy ...

Akker Dakker holds the fort ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

As forewarned yesterday, the pond today is in the big smoke, and unable to deal with the reptiles of Oz.

So a placeholder is required.

As a warm up act, the pond would like to follow up on the good news from Lloydie of the Amazon and the Riddster, advising that all was well with the reef and the world.

So much good news ...Summer 2026 on course to be UK’s hottest on record, says Met Office – as it happened

And here ...

But not just there, so many other headlines to choose from ...

But why not go here?

Or why not go to climate denialist heaven? There's graphs ...

If that reminded you of alternative reality and the story of vaccine hysteria, there's probably a reason. It's all bizarro world science in the MAGAfied News Corp mind.

Feeling sated by all the good news?

Feeling primed for a serve by one of News Corp's top notch climate scientists?

The header: Piers Akerman: Nation’s twin pillars of success – energy and immigration – chipped away by Labor’s ideology, Piers Akerman argues Labor’s energy and immigration policies have simultaneously undermined Australia’s economic reputation and social cohesion.

Dear sweet long absent lord, how to move past that thumb of Barners looking like an overheated football?

The pond struggled to get to the homespun, rustic wisdom in the accompanying text, of a kind for which Barners is justly famous: One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce calls out Energy Minister Chris Bowen for wanting to run data centres on intermittent power. “So, you’re going to feed this horse rocks, and it’s going to live,” Mr Joyce told News24. “The data centre horse won’t live on rocks; we've got to feed it hay. “It’ll die.”

Should we be buying that sort of nag? Might it not be better off in the knackery? Couldn't we use a little extra glue?

Now stand aside, here comes Akker Dakker, top notch climate scientist:

The twin drivers of Australia’s amazing decades of global success were its access to unlimited fossil fuel reserves and a carefully managed immigration policy.
Both economic engines have now been smashed by Labor’s ideological approach to governing.
Once the envy of the world, Australia under the ALP has lost its reputation as a nation worth emulating, as it plummets downward toward the bottom of the developed countries list.
Unsurprisingly, both policies are controlled by the most questionable ministers in the extreme-Left Albanese government, Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen and Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke.
Bowen displayed his ignorance when promoting his unachievable net-zero goal (without using the phrase) in an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday. Ironically, he passed the platform when a Burke address had to be indefinitely postponed because cabinet was unable to agree on the direction of the government’s immigration reforms.
Bowen further confirmed he lives in another galaxy as he announced the rollout of further heavily subsidised rooftop solar and battery installations for factories and sheds.

As always there has to be a villain, and the Daily Terror, just like the lizard Oz, has an endless supply of comical snaps ...Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen displayed his ignorance when promoting his unachievable net-zero goal at the National Press Club. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Akker Dakker is old school ... birds of a black coal batters feather ...

Marvel at how he's devoted to that black gold ...

Whenever he opens his mouth to claim power will be cheaper because of greater access to so-called renewable sources, he fails to mention that the price of electricity has only increased because of his nonsensical virtue-seeking renewable energy transition plan. Subsidies are not free money – taxpayers carry the burden of paying for Bowen’s grandiose plans.
He made the false claim that “coal isn’t baseload power anymore – it’s an unreliable asset.
Every time coal breaks down, your bills go up”, when his own department acknowledges coal contributed 55.2 per cent of the power in NSW, 56.5 per cent in Queensland and 50.6 per cent in Victoria last year.

Could there be any reptile story that didn't feature a loving shot of a coal-fired station? Any unreliability is due to the Labor-Green pressure on coal-fired utilities to neglect necessary maintenance and upgrades. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Dear sweet dinkum, ultra clean, extra virginal, Oz coal ... and remember we must feed AI so it can spread misinformation throughout the planet ...

Coal is reliable. Any unreliability is due to the Labor-Green pressure on coal-fired utilities to neglect necessary maintenance and upgrades.
China has no such barriers and uses our coal to manufacture and sell windmills and solar panel furniture for Bowen’s 82 per cent renewables-only 2030 fantasy.
He compounded his reputation for economic stupidity by introducing plans to force energy-hungry data centres to run only on new unreliable renewable sources rather than fossil fuels, and a proposal to ban a data centre slated for the NT’s Beetaloo Basin natural gas field.
In the real world, his ministerial fiat makes no sense whatsoever. It sits with his fantasies about the illogical ban on domestic nuclear energy, which is being used by every other nation in the OECD.

At this point in his two minute rant, the reptiles signalled a shift for the fat owl of the remove ... Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship Minister Tony Burke is equally delusional about immigration. Picture: Richard Dobson

Just time to do a little furriner bashing, in the patented News Corp way ...

Burke is equally delusional about immigration. Where once Australia attracted and admitted only hardworking migrants, anxious to live here and subscribe to the values of a liberal democracy, we now assist a cohort that hates our way of life.
A former senior public servant recently recounted his experience at the Australian embassy in Damascus during the Lebanon war in the 1980s.
“The walls were decorated with scenes of Australia, including beach scenes with women in bikinis and blokes in Speedos,” he told me.
“I spoke to a Lebanese woman who had just been interviewed with her family. She indicated the pictures on the walls and made it clear that she thought the scenes were immoral.”

Does that mean we can ban all Poms? Can we kick out the onion muncher?

That was in The Bulletin, 6th October, 1973. Such sweet memories.

Back to doing the warm up.

Another topic.

The pond usually likes to revert to Haaretz when any reptile strays in to the middle east, but because the pond has wasted so much time on sweet virginal Oz coal, this will have to do ... Israel Captured 230 Square Miles of Lebanon, Razed Villages and Built New Bases

Splendid stuff, the work of building a greater Israel is never done, theocracies never sleep...

And that's a jolly good warm up for the second instalment of the fat owl of the remove ...

The header: Piers Akerman: Take news of Hamas disarming with a pinch of salt as violent terrorists can’t be trusted; As the world cannot trust Hamas to disarm, Australia’s $130m in Gaza aid faces greater scrutiny over UNRWA’s documented links to the terrorist organisation, writes Piers Akerman.

The caption for the AV distraction, featuring the sort of image designed to terrify Daily Terror readers, provided they can spare a moment from thugby league types going the biff: News24 Defence Analyst Peter Jennings says nothing should be taken at face value from Hamas. “Let’s be cautious,” Mr Jennings told News24. “Nothing should be taken at face value from Hamas.”

Jennings of the fith form appears everywhere in News Corp these days peddling the standard line about a group which was pumped up by Benji himself ...

Again it's all there in Haaretz ...

Sheesh, distracted from the obfuscating Akker Dakker again ...

Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organisation which invaded Israel in October 2023, murdering, raping and torturing civilians, may disarm its force in Gaza, according to the US, Turkish, Egyptian and Qatari governments.
There are many conditions required but, given it’s just a proxy for Iran’s lunatic fundamentalist Islamic revolutionary government, nothing it says can be trusted.
In the off-chance that it’s relying on the Muslim tradition of taqiya, which permits lying to protect Islam from attacks by infidels, Australia should demand the return of the millions the hard-Left Albanese government has poured into Gaza since it came to office in May 2022.
At Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s direction, at least $86m has now been sent to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
UNRWA has employed Hamas terrorists, including many who took part in the October 7, 2023, Nova music festival massacre.

The reptiles followed up that drivel with a snap also designed to terrify Daily Terorist punters, Given Hamas is just a proxy for Iran’s lunatic fundamentalist Islamic revolutionary government, nothing it says can be trusted. Picture: Omar al-Qattaa/AFP

Fortunately, the Israeli defence forces have relentlessly tracked many of the murderers down, just as they found and killed the 1972 Munich Olympic assassins who murdered Israeli athletes.
Critically, the Morrison government reduced Australia’s annual core contribution to UNRWA from $20m to $10m in 2020-21.

There's nothing like helping with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza ... Gazans with humanitarian aid packages provide by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in al-Shoka, east of Rafah. Accepted Israeli figures show how many UNRWA workers were active with, or had family connections to, Hamas. Picture: Bashar Taleb/AFP

But the pond takes Akker Dakker's point that Israel knows how to hand out rough ... well, it's hardly justice ...

C.f. Israeli settlers besieging Palestinian families in West Bank village

Israeli settlers have been besieging two Palestinian families in their homes in the occupied West Bank since Sunday, with the families saying their supplies were running out and rights groups urging the authorities to step in.
On Wednesday Israeli security forces were reported to have withdrawn from the Jewish settler outpost in the village of Qusra near Nablus, following clashes with a crowd of extremist settlers. About a dozen settlers are said to remain at the site.
After the Palestinian homeowners made their initial report to the Israeli army, the first soldiers who arrived at the scene were filmed praying with the settlers.
The Abu Ridi and Hassan families have been posting on social media appealing for help after their water and power supplies were cut off and their food stocks ran low...

Just another part of the ethnic cleansing, and please allow the fat owl of the remove to help with the job ...

After the first reports that UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 attacks, funding was temporarily paused in late January 2024, but restored by March.
Australia has sent more than $130m to Gaza since October 2023 through UNICEF, WFP, the Red Cross and Jordanian field hospitals.
According to accepted Israeli figures, out of UNRWA’s approximately 13,000 employees in Gaza, at least 185 UNRWA workers were active in the military branch (Al-Qassam Brigades) of Hamas, and 51 were in the military branch of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
However, there is evidence that roughly 10-12 per cent of all UNRWA Gaza staff (around 1200-1500 individuals) have family or political ties to Hamas or PIJ.
Wong and her DFAT staff were quiet when a 700m, 18m deep tunnel was discovered directly under UNRWA’s Central Headquarters in Rimal, Gaza City.
The subterranean facility housed a major Hamas military intelligence data centre powered by UNRWA’s electrical grid.
The ABC and other Left-wing Australian media have been just as silent about the number of combat tunnels constructed directly below UNRWA elementary schools in Zaytoun, Maghazi, and Sheikh Radwan, though UNRWA has now publicly confirmed and condemned their presence.

Naturally there's a snap ... Part of the reinforced tunnel complexes uncovered beneath Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital. Picture: Reuters/Mohammed Salem

Speaking of that unhappy strip, largely reduced to rabble, how's the greater Israel project going?

And so on and on, and you won't be reading any of that in Akker Dakker ... you'll just read smug Islamophobic jokes of the ululating kind ...

Nor did they give much coverage of the reinforced tunnel complexes uncovered beneath Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, with command rooms, living quarters and air-conditioned spaces tied directly into hospital power lines. Or the tunnel shaft below the Rantisi Children’s Hospital which led to an underground bunker network that contained weapons caches, communication gear, and evidence suggesting hostages had been held there.
Another tunnel under the Sheikh Hamad Hospital (Qatari Hospital) & Indonesian Hospital also accessed underground chambers within the medical facilities.
Tell me that DFAT bureaucrats overseeing the handouts and the Australian-paid UNRWA officials didn’t notice the tunnels being dug, the concrete being poured as Hamas diverted money meant to provide civil infrastructure and health and education facilities for the Gazans.
News of the possibility of a Hamas backdown won’t be greeted with ululations in the mosques of Western Sydney and Western Melbourne.

What an insufferable, condescending clown he is, and there's a reason for shaming him the way the pond does ...

And now a couple of 'toons not likely to be dated in the next few days ...

Melongate rulez, with the bromancer fully woke, and Clive assigned his mad king Donald duties ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:27:57 +0000

A housekeeping note: perforce the pond will be in the big smoke tomorrow and away from a computer and the reptiles, so there'll be a placeholder, but it's a Thursday in the hive mind, so no biggie ...

As for today, it seemed for a moment that the reptiles had given up on melongate, what with new lines of attack for the relentless jihadists.

This day seemed at first glance to be all about housing, with three fear mongering hit pieces at the top of the digital "news" world, ma...

Off to the intermittent archive with them ...

PROPERTY
Housing price falls? PM is down with that
Anthony Albanese has backed falling house prices and labelled negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts ‘taxpayer-funded landlord welfare’ as the Coalition unveils rival housing policies.
By Geoff Chambers, Noah Yim and Elizabeth Pike

MID-SIZED CAPITALS
‘Perfect storm’ hits property market
Perth and Brisbane property prices tumble as housing market enters ‘perfect storm’
New data has revealed Perth and Brisbane’s once-resilient property markets are now among Australia’s fastest cooling, with declining locations nearly quadrupling in a single quarter.
By Mackenzie Scott and Ben Wilmot

Even the indefatigable Geoff, chambering yet another round in his barrel-hot shottie, had to go ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Albanese wields sledgehammer on property for votes
The PM gives Labor MPs a green light to be honest about how the budget inflicted a sledgehammer – rather than a scalpel – on an already vulnerable property market.

Will we ever return to sob stories about vulgar youffs and younglings exiled from the housing market?

But the pond didn't have to brood for long about that, because down below all that came the bromancer and he was hot to trot on the melongate saga, because what red-blooded reptile could fail to keep this jihad alive?

It was time for the bro to go fully woke, and be incredibly polite...

The header: Anthony Albanese tries to be cool but gives us a high-class, refined stupidity; Anthony Albanese’s attempt at casual banter has backfired badly, reinforcing Japanese quiet doubts about Australian political maturity.

The caption for the sinisterly sneering PM: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces criticism over his podcast remarks regarding Japanese leadership. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The bromancer started out in typical hard-hitting style ...

It takes a special kind of high-class, refined stupidity, not available to normal people, for an Australian prime minister to choose to make crude jokes about a female Japanese prime minister.

Ah memories ...

Don't get the pond wrong. The pond is incredibly pleased that the reptiles have at last gone fully woke.

No country more thoroughly practises, and places greater value on, courtesy, politeness, dignity, “face” and respect than Japan. So Anthony Albanese in his all-but-inexplicable jokes about Sanae Takaichi’s “melons” has re-established that the Les Patterson streak of deeply unimpressive Australian mediocrity lives on.
Leave aside for a minute the grotesquely crude innuendos – which everyone except Albanese and his hypocritical defenders recognise (imagine if Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott had made these remarks) – of talking about the Japanese PM smuggling in “two melons, as you do”, while mimicking, in front of his chest, the hand gestures of his interviewer who was clearly referencing a woman’s anatomy.
For what reason on God’s green earth would any Australian PM with an IQ above room temperature answer a question about the worst gift he had ever received by referencing Japan’s leader?
The whole Japanese language is built around formal terms of address. You use a different term to address an aunt, as opposed to a cousin, a friend or a stranger. It is a profound achievement of contemporary society that it is so orderly, polite and law-abiding.

The reptiles tried to bolster the bromancer's rage - he's a gentleman and a scholar - with a few inserts ...

Way back when the pond had extensive dealings with Japanese wheeler dealers, and discovered that you could never win in the civility games, and that a lot of crude gaijin behaviour would be tolerated if there was a deal to be made.

It's safe to say that this epic failure caused more pain ... Japan building Australian submarines is a match made in heaven

And the rest, as they say, is history ... and that had to hurt.

And now back to being woke...

Albanese’s defence of his comments is almost comically implausible. He referenced the melons shortly after saying, in response to a question, that he would like to “shag” Kylie Minogue. This is Albanese imitating Donald Trump at his crudest. It’s the opposite of virtue signalling, it’s vice signalling.
Some genius in the Prime Minister’s office, perhaps in the social media team, must have advised him that this was a good way to “connect” to young people who don’t normally follow politics. The problem is you can’t narrowcast to one audience without all audiences seeing you. At no point has Albanese ever shown he understands the importance of the Japan relationship.
Japan is perhaps the US’s most important ally in the world, certainly its most important in Asia. It’s immensely important to us. Yet while the Albanese government is relentless in making special gestures of friendship towards China, it seems permanently tone deaf, if not downright reckless, in the way it treats Japan.
Was there an invitation to the Japanese leader to address our parliament during her recent visit? Why is it that Albanese couldn’t be bothered attending the 50th anniversary dinner of the NARA Treaty between Australia and Japan?
The PM and his defenders argue that only his political opponents are making a fuss of the melons. That’s not true. His crude and inexplicable remarks were the subject of a devastating opinion piece by a left-of-centre feminist in The Japan Times, which is read by much or most of the Tokyo leadership class. It was also subject to devastating criticism from former Japanese ambassador to Australia Shingo Yamagami. Albanese defenders dismiss Yamagami as a hawk who never liked the Albanese government. But the bottom line remains, he’s a senior Japanese diplomat and well plugged in to Takaichi and her conservative government.

Cue the final insert ...

And so to a final gobbet ...

The Albanese gaffe was subject to official cables between Canberra and Tokyo. The Japanese government, unlike its Canberra counterpart, is led by people of maturity and substance, so naturally they didn’t lower themselves to get into the grubby muck with Albanese. But this incident will certainly reinforce every negative opinion, every doubt, that senior Japanese have long privately held about Australians.
After the catastrophe of World War II, Japan went about building a new and thoroughly good society, not perfect but very good. It emphasises hard work and social solidarity at home, and is generally exemplary internationally. It’s one of the great human success stories of the past 80 years.
The Japanese greatly appreciated the reconciliation and friendship they received from Australia, pioneered, inconveniently for Labor, by Robert Menzies, Black Jack McEwen and later Malcolm Fraser, who signed the NARA Treaty, and John Howard. They also recognise, unsentimentally, that Australia has three great assets – strategic geography, mineral wealth and alliance with the US. But they’ve long harboured doubts that Australia is not altogether a serious country, not led by serious people.
As long ago as the 1990s I unintentionally caused a diplomatic incident. At a small dinner a visiting Japanese economics minister was speaking off the cuff. He said that while Japan valued Australia, trade unions made us one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to run a business.
Thinking the remarks were on the record, I reported them. The minister thought his remarks off the record. It was an innocent misunderstanding. The minister was mortified that he might have unintentionally given offence to his Australian hosts.
There is a lurking, generally publicly unspoken, sense among many Japanese that Australian leaders are not to be taken altogether seriously. Albanese reinforced that a hundredfold and added to it the perception that we can’t even muster elementary good manners either.

Only the immortal Rowe could bring together the two lizard Oz strands for the day in his own inimitable way ...

The bromancer wasn't the only reptile to be mortified.

The pond only notes it by way of a screen cap, but the bouffant one was also on hand ...

And Dame Slap went fully woke as well ...

Albanese’s women fail their own sexism test
Labor’s most senior female ministers have spent years calling out sexism – until their own leader made a lewd remark about a female ally.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Dame Slap's opening thrust set her fully woke tone ...

It must be exhausting being a lefty feminist. Always toeing the line, tying yourself in knots, pulling up a po-faced expression one minute, then contorting a smile to fob off a boob gaffe by your leader the next, gaslighting us, all while carrying that heavy flag for hypocrisy.
Hard work. I’m glad it’s not me; I prefer a more honest day’s work.

Um, that'd be the honest work of telling womyn to stop being snowflakes, stop being teary-eyed pussies, and to harden the fcuk up, and so on and so forth ... and anyone wanting more of Dame Slap carrying that heavy flag of hypocrisy can head off to the intermittent archive.

What else?

Early in the morning the canny Cranston was out and about ...

Labor has no answer on weak productivity
Labor’s cheap population trick no answer for feeble productivity
The Reserve Bank is not happy about Jim Chalmers using increased population in an attempt to boost lacklustre economic growth.
By Matthew Cranston
Economics Correspondent

And William Wright delivered the sort of advice that proved astonishingly handy for the conservative German businessmen who were on hand to help Herr Adolf in his rise to fame and glory (and didn't that work out well)...

Business ponders ways to win the ear of One Nation
The lobbyists who built careers connecting business to Labor and the Coalition now face a problem: nobody knows who to call at One Nation.
By William Wright

It's not just Gina who should be pampering Pauline ...

Whether One Nation forms government, holds the balance of power or simply reshapes the political debate remains uncertain.
What is not uncertain is that corporate Australia can no longer afford to view politics through a two-party lens.
William Wright is chief executive and co-founder of GovLens, an AI political intelligence platform for Australian and British businesses. He was previously UK managing director of GovConnex and is a regular political commentator.

Well played Bill ... showing off all the best that AI can offer.

And so to a bonus, and with so many reptiles fully woke and others sent off to the archive, the pond was left with just Clive ...

The header: Donald Trump learns there are no clear winners in Middle East war; US President promised American strength would deliver – instead he faces an Iran that survived and an Israel that won’t comply.

The caption for the snap of a man imitating a cane toad: President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Picture: AP

Clive could only manage a three minute piece, but be fair, he was standing in for the bromancer, what with the bromancer being far too busy dealing with being fully woke, the real issue this day ...

Iran has demonstrated resilience and tactical opportunism under pressure, while Benjamin Netanyahu has put Israel’s security red lines ahead of alignment with Washington. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is discovering the limits of presidential leverage in a region where allies and adversaries pursue their own interests.
The pattern is less a novel Iranian psychological victory than a familiar feature of Middle Eastern politics. The US and Israel launched their campaign against Iran on February 28, targeting its nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities. Iran suffered severe military punishment but survived and responded with attacks of its own. The conflict then moved towards negotiation, particular after the impact on domestic oil prices became difficult for Trump to ignore.
Since then, Trump has combined military threats with somewhat erratic diplomacy. A June memorandum of understanding with Tehran declared an end to military operations, provided for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and committed the parties to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The nuclear issue was not resolved: enrichment and the disposition of enriched uranium were left for subsequent negotiations. The agreement has since frayed, while negotiations over Hormuz remain difficult, with Iran seeking a significant role in controlling maritime access.
Iran’s achievement is therefore not that it has defeated the US or Israel. It is that it has survived without losing the regime or all of its strategic leverage. Its nuclear infrastructure has been severely damaged, but military action cannot easily destroy the scientific knowledge needed to rebuild a nuclear capability.
Nor has the fate of all Iran’s nuclear material been conclusively established. This is consistent with Iran’s longstanding approach: absorb punishment, preserve the regime, negotiate when necessary, and exploit divisions or fatigue among its opponents.
Netanyahu faces a different calculation. For Israel, the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon and the survival of hostile armed groups on its borders are existential security questions. Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that Iran must not acquire a nuclear weapon, with or without an agreement. Israel’s willingness to act independently is consequently greater than Washington may find comfortable.

Clive won the pond's heart with that sublime understatement about "somewhat erratic diplomacy".

That's worthy of Sir Humphrey providing discreet advice to Minister Hacker - or is that Bernard, explaining eccentricity: "I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist".

The pond also appreciated the subtle nuance in mad king Donald not feeling "comfortable" about Benji telling him to fcuk off, he was going to keep the ethnic cleansing going ...(that's what the google bot forces the pond to do) ... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in March. Picture: AFP

Clive continued to make the whole affair seem like a normal set of diplomatic tiffs, with the odd bit of biff ..

The disagreement is now particularly visible over Gaza. Netanyahu has rejected Trump’s 15-point roadmap, which envisages Hamas disarmament in stages alongside a phased Israeli withdrawal and a new civilian administration in Gaza. Netanyahu insists there will be no withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely and comprehensively disarmed. The rejection is a significant disagreement with Trump, although not a rupture: discussions continue and Netanyahu still describes him as “a close friend”.
Israel is due to hold a national election on October 27, and Netanyahu is under pressure from right-wing coalition partners and voters concerned about the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. His refusal to accept an American timetable can therefore be seen as both a security position and domestic political positioning.
Trump needs diplomatic successes, lower regional tensions, stable energy supplies and a foreign policy narrative demonstrating that American military power produces results.
Netanyahu must satisfy Israeli security concerns while managing a politically divided country and coalition pressures. What Washington sees as a necessary sequence towards ending the conflict may look in Jerusalem like an unacceptable gamble.
Iran benefits from every significant disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem. But this does not mean Tehran has somehow played Trump or Netanyahu; its advantage is structural. The longer a conflict continues, the more difficult it becomes for the US to reconcile military objectives with energy prices, military resources, regional stability and domestic politics.
Israel also benefits from continued American pressure on Iran: a weakened regime and degraded missile and nuclear capabilities reduce the threat to Israel, while the Gaza war keeps Hamas and other armed groups under pressure and diverts international attention away from settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Military success does not necessarily produce a political settlement. Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed out of existence; Hamas cannot simply be wished away; and Gaza cannot be reconstructed without resolving who governs it and who provides security.

Again Clive won the pond's heart ... what a program ...

Trump needs diplomatic successes, lower regional tensions, stable energy supplies and a foreign policy narrative demonstrating that American military power produces results.

He does realise mad king Donald is barking mad, clearly on the downhill slide mentally and physically, surrounded by yes men who don't have the first clue? Right?

No matter, time to terrify the hive mind ... Members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in Rafah, Gaza, last year.

In the end, Clive sounded a little despairing ...maybe there might be a few hurdles facing that ambitious program he assigned to mad king Donald ...

Destroying military capabilities is much easier than creating a durable political order.
One of the principal losers may therefore be American influence. Trump entered the conflict promising that American strength would produce decisive outcomes. Instead, he has found himself on the back foot negotiating with an Iranian regime that survived the initial assault while confronting an Israeli government that is unwilling to accept American proposals when they conflict with its own security calculations.
The US remains far more powerful than any individual regional actor. But power is not the same as control. Iran has demonstrated that it can endure American military pressure; Netanyahu has demonstrated that Israel will pursue its own interests even when Washington disagrees; and Trump is discovering that in the Middle East, even an American president cannot always dictate the end game.
The main beneficiaries of the conflict seem to be the American and Russian oil producers who are making up for the global shortfall in Middle East oil supplies.
Clive Williams is director of the Terrorism Research Centre and a former Australian Defence Intelligence officer clive.williams@terrint.org

What a relief to look away and enjoy the infallible Pope for the day ...

Not the bloody melons again!

Must it always be melons?

And forget the gambling. The reptiles love their gambling revenue.

Why can't there be talk of apples?

Yes, it's not just the ABC that can have a bit of DW filler, dealing with life under Vlad the sociopathic invader ...

What a reptile cavalcade, what a cornucopia ... Lloydie of the Amazon, the bromancer and Dame Groan (and the Caterist skulking at the bottom) ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:03:03 +0000

Talk about an overload. This day the reptiles went into overdrive, with many of the pond's favourites out and about, and the pond's chip fried, like a transistor radio left out too long in the Tamworth sun.

Luckily the top of the "news" story could be dismissed to the intermittent archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
Wear something ‘really f—able’: nasty side of Atlassian’s ‘assassins’
Atlassian has for years trumpeted its industry-leading culture. But a new book reveals startling tensions over the official company narrative.
By Perry Williams and John Stensholt

It's news that Faux Noise's devotion to sexy blonde attire is shared by tech bros?

So too could the bouffant one, nobly pursuing the 'melongate' jihad ...especially as the brave warrior could only wring a two minute read out of the crisis.

PM’s ‘melons’ gaffe was bad – Plibersek’s defence is worse
Self-described women’s rights advocate has refused to criticise PM’s crass remarks about Kylie Minogue and a female foreign leader.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

But still that left the bromancer, the quarry-whispering Caterist, Dame Groan and Lloydie of the Amazon.

Where to start, what to do?

The reptiles made a big splash for Lloydie, featuring a gif that showed the reef moving from dismal desert to triumphant blooming flower ...

Besides, the pond rarely hears from Lloydie of late, and had been unduly disturbed by all that idle talk of droughts, wildfires, and sundry other climate disasters.

What the pond needed was reassuring words, with Lloydie of the Amazon and the Riddster triumphant ...

The header: Great Resilient Reef: reports of wonder’s death have been wildly exaggerated; New data have revealed Great Barrier Reef coral cover has rebounded to near-record levels across all three regions following a recent mass bleaching event.

The caption for the lead still, which disappointingly didn't replicate the grand animated gif on the main digital page: Coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is at near-record levels across its 2300km length from Cape York to Bundaberg. Picture: The Australian Institute of Marine Science

It was time to put all those doomsayers and neighsayers in their place, and the Riddster was the perfect guide ...

Despite decades of scientific consensus that it is facing a catastrophic climate change triggered demise, the Great Barrier Reef is refusing to die.
The latest results from the Australian Institution of Marine Science shows that coral cover on the reef has bounced back from mass bleaching in 2025 and early 2026 and remains at near record levels across its 2300km length from Cape York to Bundaberg.
The AIMS long-term monitoring program confirms the GBR maintains its resilience and ability to recover from disturbance, saying coral cover across all three regions of the reef, the northern, central and southern GBR, increased slightly or remained at similar levels to those recorded last year.
AIMS does not report a combined figure for total reef cover but marine physicist Peter Ridd said the results showed that for all of the past five years, the raw cover on the reef had been higher than in any of the previous 35 years.
He said five bleaching events – in 2016, 17, 20, 22 and 24 – had not produced a major drop in coral cover.
Dr Ridd said the AIMS data showed that the major cause of temporary coral loss over the decades had been from cyclones and crown of thorns starfish plagues, both of which were entirely natural. “There is no evidence that these are any worse than in the distant past,” he said.

Everything's fine, everything's hunky dory, the planet's never been in better shape, and there were graphs ...

Some might think that Lloydie and the Riddster were in the grip of a heady triumphalism, but after all those slings and arrows from "experts", it was time for them to strut in the tropical sun ...

The results follow a major global study by Macquarie University that used machine learning to evaluate decades of real-world observations to identify 165,992sq km of potentially climate-resilient reef locations spanning 71 countries and 100 territories and jurisdictions.
About one-third of the Great Barrier Reef was judged to be resilient to the impacts of climate change.
According to the latest AIMS survey, an annual snapshot of coral cover on the reef showed that in the northern region from Cape York to Cooktown, it had increased by 16.7 per cent relative to 2025 levels (from 30 per cent to 35.1 per cent).
The central region from Cooktown to Proserpine increased by 10.2 per cent relative to its 2025 levels.

However you cut it, it was good times for reefs and planet ...

As for those bloody useless neighsayers ...

The southern region from Proserpine to Gladstone decreased by 2 per cent from 26.9 per cent to 26.4 per cent, which is within the margin of error. Announcing the results, AIMS said the GBR was in a comparatively better condition than many reef systems worldwide, which had been heavily impacted by the fourth global bleaching event and other pressures.
“However, the increased frequency and extent of bleaching events in the last decade are unprecedented,” AIMS said. “Climate change remains the greatest threat to the reef, along with other pressures from more localised sources.”
Scientists have been warning about a collapse for decades.
In 2007 they warned that under conditions expected in the 21st century, corals would become increasingly rare on reef systems.
A 2024 paper in Nature, Benjamin et al, said climate model analysis confirmed that human influence on the climate system was responsible for the rapid warming in recent decades.

Nonsense, climate science is just a cult, the sort of secular replacement for declining belief in old fashioned religions. Time to put those preachers in their place ...

Did silly cultists hearken to these fools? Hear thou the words of Lloydie and the Riddster...

“This attribution, together with the recent ocean temperature extremes, post-1900 warming trend and observed mass coral bleaching, shows that the existential threat to the GBR ecosystem from anthropogenic climate change is now realised,” it said.
A 2026 paper in Nature communications, Eakin et al, said the impacts of ocean warming on coral reefs were accelerating, with the “near certainty that ongoing warming will cause large-scale, possibly irreversible, degradation of these essential ecosystems.”
“With heat stress levels during this event surpassing those observed previously, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration developed more extreme Bleaching Alert levels that are now being used during the ongoing Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event,” the paper said.
After UNESCO declined to put the reef on the World Heritage “in danger” list last month, Greenpeace said “the reality is that this global icon is still in deep danger from runaway climate heating, coral-killing deforestation run-off, ocean acidification and coral bleaching”.

What would those greenies know, with their minds full of climate science?

Why with a bit of luck, Australia will be blessed with a stupendous bushfire season this summer, so that the bush can be cleansed and made right, just like the reef ...

And so to the final part of the homily, with all shipshape, present and correct, and the Riddster singing his sweet song of reef joys...

“With these compounding pressures and a record El Nino around the corner, action to protect the reef has never been more urgent,” it said.
Releasing the latest data, AIMS said the findings showed many reefs retained the capacity to begin recovery after major coral loss, when given the opportunity. “Unlike the impact of the 2024 mass bleaching event, the 2025 mass bleaching event resulted in limited coral loss,” AIMS said.
“This likely reflects its lower intensity and shorter duration, highlighting that bleaching events do not always have the same consequences.”
AIMS Long-Term Monitoring Program leader Mike Emslie said the reef had experienced a summer of above-average sea temperatures, but the late summer monsoon activity, which increased cloud cover and reduced sea temperatures, likely limited the severity and extent of bleaching in the 2025-26 summer.
The reef faced other impacts from flooding and two tropical cyclones, including Narelle, but most of the surveys for the latest report were completed before its passage as a category 5 system over the northern region in March.AIMS does not give a reef-wide average for coral cover because Dr Emslie said it would be an “overgeneralisation of what is going on on the reef”.
“Our view is we should be looking at things on a smaller scale to get an appraisal of how different parts of the reef are fairing,” he said.
Dr Ridd said the latest data on the GBR indicated it was in good shape.
“It happens to have a great deal of coral in 2026 because there have been few major mortality events over the last five to 10 years,” he said.
“The five bleaching events since 2016, which have been widely reported in the media, could not have killed much coral otherwise the 2022-26 statistics would not be so good.
“The data since 1986 shows every region, every sector and most reefs have had periods of very low coral cover. This is entirely natural. The data collected by AIMS shows that the GBR is a robust system with rapidly fluctuating coral cover.
“We must expect that sometime in the future, a sequence of events will cause the coral cover to halve, as it did by 2011. We must then remember that this is almost certainly natural.”
Dr Ridd said recent bleaching events had killed very little coral, and that the institutions had been exaggerating the impact of those events.

What a relief, and with the reef never having been in better shape, the pond could quickly move on to the salvation of the country.

The pond skipped past Ben, packing it in his usual way ...

EXCLUSIVE
Marles’ missile boast slammed as ‘performative procurement’
The Albanese government is claiming credit for buying air-to-air missiles that are yet to enter service and aren’t due to be delivered to Australia for years.
By Ben Packham

A teaser trailer would suffice because there was only one important note in the piece ...

The pond had been operating on the notion that there'd be a war with China by Xmas, but it seems that the war will now take place in 2027 ... and with war just around the corner, who better to show the way than our very own Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches?

The header: US nuclear-armed boats based in WA will make us more secure; The US plan to send 2300 personnel and up to four submarines at a time to Perth is the best news Australia has had in defence for decades.

The caption for a stern-looking loser: Defence Minister Richard Marles at the 50th National Labor Conference in Adelaide Picture: NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

After mad king Donald's stunning defeat of Iran, his splendid peace initiative for Gaza, and his incredibly able repelling of Vlad the impaler, is it any wonder that the bromancer would seek shelter in those broad, if somewhat bruised, arms?

The revelation that the US plans to send 2300 personnel to Perth to support its Submarine Rotational Force, that it could rotate up to four submarines at a time through Perth and that the length of these rotations will be entirely up to Washington, is the best news Australia has had in defence for decades.
Frankly, I’d much rather entrust Australia’s security to the US Navy than to the Albanese government. Indeed, the only part of the entire defence and national security portfolio the government has handled really well has been developing the relationship with the Pentagon.
Defence Minister Richard Marles is good at defence diplomacy. He’s terrible at everything else.
The areas where he has demonstrably failed are legion – delivering capability, delivering budget resources, addressing urgent deficiencies, producing a coherent sense of what ADF operations may look like, producing budget transparency and coherence, meaningfully reforming procurement, injecting urgency into the bureaucracy or the military. Unauthorised drones penetrating our undefended air force bases is a classic illustration of our unpreparedness across every domain. On all that, he’s a dismal failure. But on the critical question of US alliance management, he has done quite well.
And he’s better than Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy. The sheer size of US resources to be deployed in Perth makes Conroy’s wacko comment that nuclear weapons in US subs after 2032 would not be a problem because the sub rotations would come to an end in 2032, which comments he had to recant a few days later, even more mystically indecipherable. If there are to be tactical nuclear weapons on some US subs, we should welcome this.

Indeed, indeed, let's nuke Perth, heck let's nuke the country, and why not think big and nuke the world?A US nuclear submarine during military exercises in the Atlantic Ocean in 2022.

Where once the bromancer was inclined to be malcontent, this day he was super content and happy ... a realist ready to blow up the planet if that's what it took ...

We actively and happily shelter under the US extended nuclear umbrella. Occasionally we have to face reality.
There has been much talk about whether the US subs in Perth will constitute an American base. ALP policy is against foreign military bases during times of peace. But as a simple matter of fact, US subs and their supporting structures won’t become a formal base. In reality, the status of a US base would make no real difference to Australian control anyway. Host governments have full knowledge and concurrence. A number of European US NATO allies prevented Washington using its own bases in those countries to prosecute war in Iran.
However, if the US has two or three submarines in Perth at any time, that’s a formidable force and they’re not just there to train Australians. As usual, the Albanese government is utterly incoherent.
Occasionally Marles talks about Australia participating in US-led deterrence. Very occasionally, Foreign Minister Penny Wong says something similar. Mostly she talks about strategic equilibrium which implies deterrence, which implies US and Australian forces acting together. Anthony Albanese almost never talks of deterrence, and never allied deterrence.
Unlike US NATO allies, Australia has no common battle plans with the US, though it’s widely reported the Trump administration, particularly Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon leaders, want such plans. These would not remotely compromise Australian sovereignty. Any nation can decide to join, or stay out of, any military action, whatever contingency plans exist.
But if the US and Australia are to mount joint deterrence they ought to plan how they might work together in the event of conflict. Obviously the only candidate for adversary in such a conflict is China. But it’s the beginning of wisdom to recognise that effective deterrence is the most likely way to avoid military conflict.
Within the government, Marles would be the most likely to want to develop such plans. He has sometimes spoken of the role Australian geography plays in US military planning. But Albanese, and presumably Wong, would be against such joint planning as it might provoke the Labor Left and activist base. Naturally Marles would be unable to deliver.
In the meantime the left’s critique of AUKUS is even more barmy than the government’s constipated, spasmodic AUKUS defence. Gareth Evans’s contribution to Peter Garrett’s AUKUS inquiry is a classic.

Why not get on board with Kegsbreath? His incredible performance in Iran is just the sort of thing to create confidence when we go up against China in 2027.

Talk about the joys of AUKUS ... Former foreign minister Gareth Evans. Picture: AAP

Now in the past the bromancer has been pretty gloomy about AUKUS.

Here's one example from quite a few:

AUK-ward truth: the sinking feeling behind our subs pact, Australia has paid the US another billion dollars for submarine manufacturing capability despite AUKUS facing production delays and Britain’s naval crisis threatening the entire partnership.

But all that's forgiven and forgotten ...

Evans was a fine foreign minister but, like many good Labor ministers, out of office he has drifted ever leftward. He advances four propositions common in the left’s attack on AUKUS that are laughably wrong.
One, he repeats the claim that eight Australian nuclear submarines would make no difference to the military balance. That’s rubbish. The US has about 55 nuclear attack subs it must deploy all over the world. Eight is a significant difference. If you have eight you can reliably deploy only two or three. If you have 55 at best you can deploy 15 or 20. The problem is not the number of our subs but that they will take so long to arrive.
He argues that the only strategic purpose of our nuclear subs would be to track and attack Chinese ballistic missile nuclear weapons-carrying subs.

And what's wrong with a war on China, as if they had any sort of kit that would match the skills of Pete Kegsbreath and his incredible ability to stash away missiles for future use ... People walk past an illustration of a Chinese nuclear submarine at the Military Museum in Beijing in 2024. Picture: Greg Baker / AFP

Let's hear it for the subs...

That’s completely bonkers. Submarines are one of the most versatile military platforms. It’s true the best counter-submarine force is submarines, but they are critical in a thousand other contexts.
As Julia Gillard once explained, despite their expense subs have an asymmetric quality in that they can attack so many different military assets in so many different locations that they’re very hard to defend against.
Evans asserts that beyond Taiwan, China would never mount territorial aggression against anyone else. That’s ludicrous. Evans seems to contradict, or be unaware of, the statements of China’s President Xi Jinping, who routinely tells his own troops that they must prepare for war. Beijing’s pattern of aggression in the South China Sea and north Asia, its grey-zone conflict, its cyber attacks, its political interference campaigns, its descent into one-man dictatorship, its massive armament-building, all apparently convince Evans there’s no realistic chance of Beijing engaging in military aggression.
It’s possible to argue Chinese military attack on another nation is unlikely, but it’s not so unlikely that it shouldn’t influence military planning.
And then he rejoices in the fact that ANZUS does not automatically commit the US to military action in defence of Australia. As Evans surely knows, no military alliance is legally enforceable. The depth of the US-Australia alliance and the presence of US forces in Australia make mutual assistance much likelier.
Alliances are two-way streets. We get enormous benefit from the US alliance. We need to contribute as well.

It was a great relief that the bromancer had been distracted, and so was Dame Groan, and so there'd be no reptile squawking about gambling ads, what with the News Corp tabloids reliant on footy, and footy in love with gambling, and Labor in love with the whole damn thing ...

And so to the ancient Groaner, and no matter the length of this post already, including Dame Groan was obligatory.

There was no way the pond could disappoint her massive fan base:

The header: Labor must bite the bullet on its immigration mess; The Albanese government declared Australia’s migration system ‘broken’ nearly two years ago, but is yet to fix it, with temporary migrant numbers now approaching 10 per cent of the population.

The caption for the snap of a grinning deviant sent to torment the old biddy: Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship Tony Burke MP Picture: Richard Dobson

Sure it's just more of the same, bees buzzing in the old biddy's noggin about the dangers of all those furriners ruining her lunch, but it's important to be aware of the cumulative impact of incessant repetition on the hive mind:

There was a great deal of information in last week’s decision by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to cancel his speech at the National Press Club. It was widely anticipated that he would announce a series of changes to the migration settings that would have the effect of lowering the migrant intake. The Albanese government’s migration policy is in disarray, it would seem.
We had already learnt that Burke had instructed his department to prioritise onshore over offshore applicants for permanent residence, thereby reducing the observed figure on Net Overseas Migration, the difference between long-term arrivals and long-term departure.
Recall here that the Albanese government has consistently failed to meet the NOM targets set down in each budget, overshooting them in each case.
In the 2022 October budget, it was stated that “NOM is assumed to continue in line with pre-pandemic trends at 235,000 from 2022-23.” The actual figure for 2022-23 was 536,000.
This financial year, the NOM target as set down in the budget is 245,000, with the most recent NOM figure coming in at 306,000. A lot of work will be required to achieve this outcome as well as the target of 225,000 for the following financial year.
The fact is that both Burke and the previous minister, Clare O’Neil, have been aware of the weaknesses in the migration policy settings for a very long time. The increasing irrelevance of the permanent migration program has been apparent to everyone. Demand-driven temporary visas are the main source of new migrants and many of them seek to game the system to prolong their stay in the country.
The point we have reached is that there are nearly three million temporary migrants in Australia, although we should probably subtract New Zealanders who have a legal right to come here. Even so, temporary migrants make up close to 10 per cent of the population, an all-time high.
O’Neil had gone to the trouble of commissioning a former senior bureaucrat, Martin Parkinson, to write a report on the migration challenges. In March 2023, she declared “Australia’s migration system is broken, it is unstrategic, it is complex, expensive, it’s slow … it’s not delivering for the nation.”

She allows Kiwis to stay?

That's mighty big of her, even if they can't talk English, what with blather about fush and chups, and here's a snap designed to send Dame Groan right off ... Clare O'Neil MP, then Home Affairs minister, addressing the National Press Club in Canberra in 2023 Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Dame Groan was sounding just like Alice, falling beneath a pack of furrin cards ...

These were strong words but were never followed up with practical solutions. The most telling indication of our broken system is the alarming rise in the number of people on bridging visas. Prior to the pandemic, there were around 100,000 people living in Australia on bridging visas. In March of this year, the number was 432,000. This was an increase of 14 per cent on the previous year.
The flood of international students, a proportion of whom are not motivated by receiving an education but obtaining permanent residence, has been one of the main reasons for the surge in migration.
This trend had become apparent prior to the pandemic but, even so, the numbers have continued to rise. There were more than 600,000 student visas in March this year, compared with 460,000 in December 2019. Associated with these numbers has been the rapid increase in the numbers on temporary graduate visas, which now number around 260,000.
Less widely recognised is the surging number of Working Holiday Makers, with current numbers around 237,000, a rise of 6 per cent over the previous year. Special concessions for UK citizens have contributed to this trend.

At this point, some might be wondering if anyone could or should be let in.

The pond is glad you asked, because the reptiles provided a snap of the right sort of furriner, British visitors dress up for Australia Day celebrations around Sydney Harbour.

You see? They're just visitors, they can turn up and drop some cash, and then they can bugger off home ...while Dame Groan must grapple with the way we'll all be rooned by Xmas (and not just from China bunging on a do, but because all those bloody Chinese keep turning up):

The number of temporary resident (skilled employment) has also been rising strongly, currently numbering around 256,000, an increase of a quarter over the previous year.
The overall picture is of a program that lacks proper controls and is driving excessively high intakes while dissuading departures. The proliferation of migration agents with detailed knowledge of the legal provisions of the visa system has led to many migrants stringing out their stay in the country while bringing in potential partners on tourist visas who then apply for bridging visas. Bridging visas entitle holders to access Medicare.
Without the benefit of Tony Burke’s speech, we can only speculate on what policy changes he would have outlined to reduce the net flow of migrants. Three have been mentioned: swifter action on onshore asylum-seekers; reduced residence times for WHMs; and offshore application for family visas.
In terms of asylum-seekers, it’s worth quoting former immigration official Abul Rivzi: “The total number of asylum-seekers in Australia under Labor increased from about 94,000 in May 2022 to 121,000 in February 2025. The number of asylum-seekers refused at primary stage and still living in the community increased from 68,000 in May 2022 to 93,000 in February 2025.” A great many of them do not come from countries that would be deemed to be a risk to citizens – for example, Malaysia.
One approach is to classify countries according to this risk and to create a fast-track means of dealing with those from safe countries. This would involve rapid enforced departure.
One proposal for dealing with WHMs is to introduce a lottery for extended stays. There is also a case for removing the preferential treatment for UK citizens, although there may be some impediment to doing so because of the intergovernmental agreement struck some years ago.
The final method of insisting on offshore application for family visas may seem harsh, but bear in mind that most migrants, permanent and temporary, are currently entitled to bring secondary applicants, which covers spouses and children. In the UK, undergraduate international students are not entitled to bring partners with them, a restriction that doesn’t apply here. Any change must be seen in an overall context.
The real conundrum is why the Labor government has taken so long to clean up the migration program and to ensure the NOM settles at a manageable (and politically acceptable) level. There is no doubt that pressures from the education sector, parts of the business community, property developers, even state governments have weighed on the decisions made or not made by the government.
The Treasury has also been playing a role in providing misleading figures on the fiscal costs of reducing the NOM, as well as overstating the economic and budgetary benefits of high migrant intakes. Even on Treasury’s own figures, the only two types of migrants to make a positive lifetime fiscal contribution are employer-sponsored skilled and independent skilled migrants. All others generate a drain. In turn, these two groups make up a small proportion of the total intake.
With productivity and real wages essentially stagnant and voters feeling cost-of-living pressures, the political climate that is conducive to high rates of immigration simply no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for quite some time.
The Albanese government has finally woken up to this fact, but it will be a difficult road to achieve effective adjustments. Targeting a precise NOM figure is difficult enough but dealing with the massive number of temporary migrants living in the country is an even greater challenge.

Is there no end to the old biddy's suffering?

Finally, the pond must confess to being more than usually irritated and miffed by the late arrival of the Caterist.

He missed his Monday deadline, where there was plenty of room to indulge him in a seemly style, and then he turns up the next day and expects to be included in the host of reptile luminaries strutting their stuff?

The pond decided to reduce him to an intermittent archive link. Intergenerational bargain broken in name of fairness

Anyone wanting to do a copy and paste of his verbiage would have go go there, leaving the pond able to dispose of him with a few screen caps ...

So there's nothing to see there, at least for those who think that the Caterist thinking he understands the laws of economics is as risible as the notion that he understands the movement of flood waters in quarries...

The next gobbet was just as silly, with the Caterist getting into Labor mythology as a way of celebrating the joys of feral capitalism in the 1890s ... because this British black sheep loves his jumbucks ...

Indeed, indeed, Gina'spet is all the fault of the Labor party, though there was something about her glowering presence that the Caterist seemed to envy.

Perhaps he should get out a suitable hair dye?

There was only one bit of the entire text the pond deemed worthy of mention and it came in that final gobbet...

Angus Taylor has elevated raising productivity as the nation’s primary lever for raising living standards and highlighted the folly of using immigration as a Band-Aid for deeper problems.
The seemingly inevitable decline in household living standards under Labor is likely to move the debate in his favour before the next election. The challenge of conducting a serious conversation above the noise, however, is not inconsiderable.
In the event that Albanese wins a third term, Labor will own this decade.

The Caterist just ran up the white flag, surrendered the next election in a massive sulk?

Albo will likely own the decade, and the jig is already up, and that leaves the poor old beefy boofhead to stare into the immortal Rowe's mirror...

Friends of Dame Groan at play ...

In which Lord Downer and simplistic Simon escape the pond's listicle of reptile reprobates...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 22:00:28 +0000

The pond recently re-watched David O. Russell's American Hustle, which for those who've yet to see this American satirical comedy, began with Christian Bale's character Irving performing an elaborate and excruciating comb over.

Great cast, great movie, but the pond is haunted by what it implies about mad King Donald, narcissist, hustler grifter and comb over artiste supreme.

There's something vaguely indecent about the speculation that has resulted, Trump Goons Reveal Trick Behind His Fluffy New Hair, at a time when the country is at war, and the mad king is plunging the American and world economy into an abyss.

But here we are, and here the lizard Oz is on a Monday, discreetly walking by ... just as any sane person might want to walk past JD ...

(Vance recounted an experience) ... 'recalling how “a glass fell off the wall” while he was attending a conference with a friend and talking about Christianity.
“You know, I think an atheist would dismiss that as, ‘Oh, who cares? A glass fell off the wall,’” he said, adding that to him, “it felt like God trying to send me a message.”'

No wonder couches aren't safe in his presence, but you have to admire god, because She finds some incredible ways to pass on Her messages ...

Meanwhile, in actual news, Benji has told mad king Donald to get lost, he'll go on fighting as long as he likes, because you know, ethnic cleansing, greater Israel; the mad mullahs of Iran have told the mad king he must come to heel, and until then we'll continue in dire straits; and a desperate Vlad the sociopath has cranked up the heat on Ukraine, and might be dragging even more North Koreans deep into the fray.

So what do the reptiles of the lizard Oz do?

Walk on by, and better still, devise a new jihad ...with Ben packing it in an allegedly EXCLUSIVE way...

EXCLUSIVE
Albanese in denial over Japanese PM ‘melons’ joke as ex-envoy warns of fallout
Anthony Albanese denies he made a crude joke out of Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi’s ‘melons’
Tokyo’s former ambassador in Canberra warns the ‘insulting’ comment has damaged Anthony Albanese’s standing in Japan. But he is denying he made a crude joke at all.

It wasn't a lizard Oz EXCLUSIVE, this hare has been running for some considerable time.

See for example a column in the Japan Times back on 27th July, Sanae Takaichi: The prime minister nobody defended.

Surprisingly it took some considerable time to bubble to the surface in the lizard Oz, but the wrinkle was to drag in an indignant columnist over on the extreme far right ...

PM’s sexist melon joke was not only ungracious, it betrayed the close bond of our two nations
We are living in an increasingly dangerous world. So please, Prime Minister, enjoy Japan’s sweet melons and focus on what our two countries must do together.
By Shingo Yamagami

Contributor

Close on the heels of this melongate came another attack angle ... drag up Juliar and fling her into the fray, what with her still living rent free in the hive mind, and so always available to reference, what with chaff bags at the ready ...

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: Bleak winter for PM as Labor plummets to a Gillard low
Anthony Albanese’s popularity remains at near-record low levels, as One Nation maintains its dominance over the Coalition in the latest Newspoll.
Geoff Chambers

As always in these yarns, the double barrelled Chambers let off his other chamber, because one good blast deserves another ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Everything’s coming up Julia for PM
The Prime Minister and his government are entering a polling twilight zone many Labor MPs haven’t encountered since the bad old days.

One thing the reptiles left out of the splash header?

Everything’s coming up Julia for Anthony Albanese amid Newspoll blues, but the Coalition’s vote is just diabolical

Diabolism is a reptile speciality, just don't mention the diabolical coalition.

While doing a listicle of the things the pond consigned to the intermittent archive, this was a no brainer.

EXCLUSIVE
Shock at Bondi royal commission’s Frydenberg snub
Josh Frydenberg – the highest-ranking Jewish Australian government minister in history – has not been invited to appear at the final hearing block in Sydney.
By Geoff Chambers and Noah Yim

Nobody wants to hear from yesterday's man, a man notorious for lacking ticker?

Shocking, but the reptiles were quick to remedy that and provided the loser with a platform...

COMMENTARY by JOSH FRYDENBERG
What we must do now to save our nation
The royal commission must be the circuit breaker
If the royal commission is to effectively bring the hate and violence to an end, it must do two things.

As soon as the pond hears a man with no ticker insisting on "must", and he thinks it's all about "saving the nation" - no one at the lizard Oz has any interest in saving Gaza - the pond turns off, tunes out and drops out.

Sorry Josh, if you think you can help with the solution, the problem's likely beyond us ...

The pond also had no interest in pandering to Major Mitchell, pandering to Pearson ...

Noel Pearson’s reset puts politicians in their place, and offers fresh hope for nation
Following the defeat of the Voice referendum in 2023, media coverage of Aboriginal affairs fell away. But in truth, it wasn’t the media’s fault. Others were to blame, writes Chris Mitchell.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

What's that? It's suddenly become the Voice again?

Fear not, the reptiles apparently just made a typo boo boo in that sub-header, and the opening line in the Major's piece reverted to reptile voice form...

Asked during a panel discussion at Garma in Arnhem Land on Saturday, August 1, whether the media had dropped the ball on Aboriginal affairs since the defeat of the voice referendum in October 2023, this column steered moderator Sally Warhaft’s tricky question down leg side.

The Major is routinely tiresome but pretending the lizard Oz is in any way cared about Aboriginal Voices is tiresome beyond belief, especially as the Major ended with a major suck ...

As the founder of this newspaper and this company, Rupert Murdoch, wrote to Djawa Yunupingu – the Gumatj clan leader today – in 2013 when he visited Arnhem Land in a private capacity: “To all my Australian brothers we have a responsibility to make our great country even greater.”
It won’t be the voice but a deal will come.

Really? MAGA in 2013?

Is there an upchuck bucket handy?

But if this listicle of losers and dropkicks suggests the pond had run out of reptiles, fear not, because - to carry on a Major metaphor - plucky Lord Downer stepped up to the crease ...

The header: How the Liberals can counter Labor’s latest cunning play; The latest tactic from the progressive left – pinched from British Labour – is to bombard voters with the idea the Liberals will form a pact with One Nation.

The caption for the snap of the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way looking like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights: If the Liberals and Nationals want to win back the sorts of voters they have lost in teal and other metropolitan seats, then a sure way of failing to do that is to talk of an alliance with One Nation.

Lord Downer offered a standard four minute reptile ramble, but at least he took in British politics, though the pond must fault him for excluding Count Binface from the conversation.

For that aspect, you'll have to head off to another place, where the cawing Crowe is keen to help out ... Alien space warrior v right-wing populist: The UK election that is beyond a joke (*intermittent archive link)

His Lordship isn't famous for his sensa huma, and that form continued today as he dropped solemnity bomb after bomb, in an astonishing way ...

It’s quite astonishing how similar British and Australian politics are.
For a start, we both have Labour governments, and they apply exactly the same formula to governing. They like to tax savings and investment. They spend eye-watering sums of money on windmills and welfare. They run up ever-increasing levels of government debt, and they get the same results.
Both countries have anaemic rates of economic growth and declining productivity. Both countries suffer from declining real per capita GDP and sticky inflation. There’s no surprise here. The same policies give you the same results.
So poorly has British Labour been polling that it has recently changed its leader from Sir Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham. Australian Labor is not about to change it leader; however, its polling has dropped below 30 per cent.
Then there is the similarity of the opposition parties. The Conservative Party in the UK is polling around 20 per cent. Yet, just over two years ago, it was the government. Its counterpart in Australia is polling at a similar level, and it too was the government, albeit four years ago.
The insurgent parties – Reform in the UK, led by Nigel Farage, and One Nation here, led by Pauline Hanson – are polling in the mid-20s. In both cases, the traditional centre-right parties disappointed their voters, and some of their voters have switched to the insurgent parties. Both Reform and One Nation have also attracted a slice of Labour voters who are sick of the woke cultural agenda and their associated denigration of national achievements.
But that’s not the end of the similarities between the UK and Australia.

Nor is it the end of Lord Downer making tedious and meaningless comparisons, with only the odd illustration to serve as a distraction ... Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer … Labour’s claim that the Conservative Party could return to government only if it were in an alliance of some kind with Reform is lethal to both conservative parties.

On and on he rambled, in the smug, sanctimonious way he made famous as foreign minister ...

Both Labour parties are making extravagant speeches claiming, in the case of the UK, that the Conservative Party could return to government only if it were in an alliance of some kind with Reform. More than that, British Labour leaders argue that Reform is the real opposition.
No sooner had the British Labour Party been running this line, and, hey presto, up popped its Australian counterpart making exactly the same arguments about the federal Coalition and One Nation. Anthony Albanese and his team say One Nation are the real enemy and that the Coalition could govern only in an alliance with One Nation. Gone are the days when Labor leaders such as Paul Keating denigrated their opponents for tugging the forelock to the British. When it comes to politics, Australian Labor is British to its boot heels!
There is a very crafty electoral rationale behind British Labour’s argument. Australian Labor has cracked on to that. In the UK, Labour judges that if the Conservatives and Reform went into some sort of alliance, then erstwhile Labour voters wouldn’t switch to Reform because of their hatred of the Conservatives. Added to that, right-wing Labour voters who might, in normal circumstances, switch to the Conservatives out of disillusionment with the performance of the Labour government would hesitate to do so because the Conservatives would be in league with Reform.
The judgment is that even if people become disillusioned with Labour, enough of them will think Labour is a better and more stable option than some sort of alliance between the Conservatives and the more right-wing Reform party. I think this judgment is right. The split in the opposition parties in the UK is manna from heaven for Labour.
The same logic applies in Australia. Even if more right-wing Labor voters become disillusioned with the performance of the Albanese government, they would hesitate to vote for the Liberals or the Nationals if they thought they were going to form some sort of governing alliance with One Nation.
Equally, some hitherto Labor voters who are more attracted to One Nation would hesitate to vote for One Nation if they thought they were going to do some kind of electoral deal with the dreaded Liberals. On that basis, they would stick with Labor.
So, whichever way you look at it, be it in the UK or in Australia, for the two Labour parties, it’s a very cunning plan. The question is: How do centre-right opposition parties deal with this?

Lord Downer's answer? Cower at the sight of Nigel making plans, and whatever you do, don't point out he's a 'leet goose on the five million pound take ... Tory attacks on Nigel Farage will only reinforce support for his argument that the old parties are scared of him. Picture: Getty Images

His Lordship reeled away in fear ...

In the UK, there has been intense analysis within the Conservative Party to find the answer to this question. It has come up with two conclusions. The first is that personal attacks on Nigel Farage will only reinforce support for his argument that the old parties are scared of him and giving him the oxygen of more publicity. So from time to time, the Conservatives think they should attack Reform as a party over proposals they have that are unworkable or damaging to the country, but attacking Farage himself is seen as counterproductive. Secondly, they make it clear that under no circumstances would they go into coalition or some sort of electoral alliance with Reform.

There came a final image ... Kemi Badenoch would be wise not to speculate on what happens if there is a hung parliament in Britain. Picture: Getty Images

All that did was remind the pond how it had watched on YouTube The Rest is History mob do over Enoch Powell's infamous Rivers of Blood speech, (it's 74 minutes long so that's the day taken care off), wherein the former University of Sydney classics prof moved on to a form of racist bigotry that would have seen Kemi kicked out of the country

Then it was on to the final burble of Lord Downer, and how proud the pond had felt not to indulge in its usual visual slander ...

Sorry, but not really sorry, what with His Lordship not acknowledging Count Binface ...

Kemi Badenoch and her team know they have a huge task to win back sufficient support to win an election, but they have to campaign to achieve that, not speculate on what would happen in a hung parliament. Or worse still, to talk of forming some kind of electoral pact or even a coalition with Reform. The Conservatives know that is a path to disaster. For its part, Reform talks of eliminating the Conservatives from the electoral map, so it too can see the dangers of talking of an alliance with the Conservatives.
There’s a lesson here for the Liberal and National parties in Australia. If they want to win back the sorts of voters they have lost in teal and other metropolitan seats, then a sure way of failing to do that, and losing even more soft centre-right voters, is to talk of an alliance with One Nation. On the other hand, to win over working-class voters who might be planning to abandon Labor and vote for One Nation, those people might stick with Labor rather than vote for One Nation if they think One Nation is to form an alliance with the dreaded Liberals.
The challenge for the Coalition is simple. It needs to define its objectives for the country and explain the policies it will pursue to achieve those objectives, and, having done that, not waver in the teeth of attacks from the so-called progressive left. Be bold and be brave.

All that meant the pond couldn't talk about another movie it saw over the weekend, perhaps the most terrifying show it's seen since Weapons...

And now because so many had been ignored by the pond and the Caterist had last been sighted burbling away on 27th July, ‘Progressive’ Labor ditches workers for social moralising, the pond decided on a rare offering of simpleton Simon, though he's always keen to help ...

The header: Victoria is first true test of Liberals in the post-1925 One Nation world; Rarely, if ever, has the outcome of a state election been so critical to the fortunes of the federal Coalition. That is how grave things are for Angus Taylor.

The caption for a collage which saw copycat Emilia repeating her homework with a beyond predictable outing: Anthony Albanese, Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson have much riding on November’s Victorian election. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

Simplistic Simon took a dire and tedious four minutes to say his piece, but the pond was intrigued.

What on earth was a post-1925 One Nation world?

What did 1925 have to do with anything?

Talk about a hook, talk about a way to create a sense of deep intrigue ...

Rarely, if ever, has the outcome of a state election been so critical to the fortunes of the federal Coalition.
That is how grave it is for Angus Taylor. He is relying on Victorians to reinsure the future prospects of a national brand.
If the state Liberal Party can’t win Victoria, against inarguably the worst government in Australia, the obvious question arises: Where exactly is the pathway back to federal government for the Coalition?
The search for an answer, should Jess Wilson fail, will inevitably land on Taylor’s desk.
It is hard to know just yet how much the replacement of a deeply unpopular Labor leader with an unknown in Ben Carroll affects the equation.
But the outcome is not just about the future of Victoria. The consequences of a defeat could be significant for Taylor as well on a number of levels, including a renewal of factional blame.
A failure to perform in Victoria would deliver a significant psychological blow to the federal Liberals, not to mention a denial of potential political infrastructure delivered through a local party being in government in the second-most populous state.

Once again the reptiles interrupted to show the beefy boofhead still looking like a startled rabbit, Mr Taylor needs to see that the Liberals can prevail against the populist tide.

Or should that be a startled 'roo, because simple Simon seemed to think he might be close to becoming some form of roadkill ...

Spoiler alert. That's the last you'll be hearing about 1925, somehow it had become a post-2025 world (AI, are you there AI?) but credit where credit is due, simplistic Simon managed to scribble this whole piece with just one mention of comrade Dan, which came in this gobbet ...

The party is already denuded of this sort of ballast in South Australia and Western Australia, and is facing another term in opposition in NSW after next year’s March election, which leaves it with Queensland and the Northern Territory as the only Liberal parties in government in mainland Australia – and one is a country party and the other a hybrid.
So Victoria provides the first useful electoral test of whether the Liberal Party at any level can survive in a post-2025 world with One Nation.
While the South Australian election demonstrated the level of threat posed by Pauline Hanson, where a sitting Labor government was never under threat, Victoria will reveal whether the Liberals have an answer to this in a contest where a Labor government is deeply unpopular.
South Australia proved the One Nation phenomenon was real rather than a vestige of polling. Its primary vote was higher than the Liberals and it took four lower house seats off the party in an environment made for a conservative protest vote. The Liberals lost 11 seats in total, finishing with just five seats, one more than One Nation.
Victoria will tell us something even more compelling. As a forerunner of what we might expect in the federal campaign, this is it.
The principal question is whether One Nation can actually prevent the Coalition winning government when Labor should otherwise be unelectable.
A Liberal win is far from assured. The swing required is about 6 per cent and there is a mountain of seats the opposition must win.
While the change of leadership from Jacinta Allan to Carroll may assist Labor, there is no sense yet this will make a difference in washing away the Andrews-Allan decay.
And anyone trying to make predictions about what might happen based on the polls needs to do so with caution. According to Liberals in Victoria, this election will be a case of a very different story in each seat, with the effect of One Nation unknown. Some recent polls predicting a swag of One Nation wins across the state have as few as three voters per seat in their sample sizes.
The most recent Newspoll has One Nation coming off the boil in Victoria, and if this continues to happen, the Coalition will be in with a good shot. As The Australian’s Anthony Galloway reported last week, this is what a consequential vote looks like in a poll with an election looming.

How the reptiles are rooting for Jess to win, because if that happens might not the beefy boofhead dare to dream?

Another collection of figures did little to relieve simplistic Simon of his sense of impending doom, Pauline Hanson, Jess Wilson and Ben Carroll are all vying to make an impact in the Victorian election.

Were all those simple Simon signs of a nervous tic wrong?

Were the tea leaves not falling into the right patterns to sweep away the suppurating decay? Could the runes provide at least a sign of some hope?

Simpleton Simon knew how to do a Tarot reading and send the hive mind home happy ...

Does this suggest some tactical thinking among conservative voters? This theme will no doubt start to feature in the Coalition messaging over coming months; a vote for One Nation is a vote for a continuation of Labor in government.
And this is where there may be some hope for Taylor.
A win in Victoria, or close enough to it, will afford Taylor the benefit of being able to argue that it is possible for a federal Coalition to win government too against a rising tide of populism. Anything less than this, and the implications for Taylor and the federal Coalition become dire.
With the polls calculating two-party, or two-candidate, preferred results with the Coalition in front, expectations are now being set. A failure to convert this would make it impossible for the federal party to dismiss Victoria as simply an unwinnable state using the well-worn political artefact that there is no crossover when it comes to state and federal elections.
This becomes harder to sustain if One Nation performs well, considering it has next to no local policies.
Victoria is particularly important because of how the metropolitan seats will play out. This is where the implications for Taylor become more interesting than the headline result.
Victoria is a critical piece of the jigsaw if the road to recovery for Taylor runs through the outer suburbs of the east coast capitals. A state Liberal campaign that can start to win back outer-suburban electorates would give Taylor and the federal party machine some sort of template from which to work.
While a narrow loss might avoid a deeper angst among federal colleagues, if the Victorians are deemed to have underperformed – by whatever measure they might choose – it will simply emphasise what is probably true anyway: the Liberals have lost their persuasive ability to channel anger at a Labor government into forming one themselves.
Victoria will be the first major test of whether the Liberal brand can recover outside Canberra but will also provide a road map as to how it might recover nationally.
Either that, or it will reveal how structurally broken the Liberal and Nationals parties truly are.

Oh dear, it seemed so strong, and then he had to fling in a dire billy goat butt of the "it will reveal how" kind, with talk of the beefy boofhead's team being structurally broken?

That uncertainty, that doubt, that lingering fear isn't the reptile way.

Cheer up, it could be worse ...

And as Lord Downer talked of England, how's Old Blighty going?

Beware, the dog botherer is infatuated with Gina's pet, and Polonius succumbs to comrade Dan syndrome ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

The trouble with being inundated, completely saturated by the lizards of Oz, as the pond was yesterday, is that the pond is unable to draw attention to positive, upbeat, uplifting news ...

Extreme heat breaks temperature records in central and eastern Europe

Slovakia reaches new high of 42C as authorities in Poland forced to shut down Kozienice and Połaniec power plants

Wow, all the fun of the climate science denialist fair. Talk about bringing joy to reptile hearts.

Could there be anything more exhilarating and exciting? Just like that extended drought in Puerto Rica. Has somebody got a bunch of toilet rolls handy?

And yet sadly early in this weekend the pond couldn't sight hyde nor hare (hair only reminds the pond of mad king Donald's latest styling) of a standard bout of reptile denialism.

Instead there was the usual bingeing on catastrophism, as with this reheated serve of gloom from Dame Groan ...

There was the usual awesome and utterly meaningless graph gesturing downwards, and the pond only offers an intermittent archive link because it's aware there are dedicated Groaners always searching for a fix.

Labor lobs an economic time bomb into the market
Real estate prices are falling, investors are fleeing and many first-home buyers remain locked out. It’s a correction more damaging than Labor wants to admit.

The old biddy offered what she seemed to think was a rousing finale ...

...In the meantime, investors are fleeing from the housing market, with the withdrawal of self-managed superannuants adding to the retreat. One effect is already showing up in the form of higher rents as investors try to adjust to the less favourable tax regime as well as higher interest rates.
For those tenants affected by crippling rents, the dream of home ownership may be further in the distance. Government meddling in the market has this habit of harming those who should benefit.
Rising house prices may create some political problems but falling house prices are potentially toxic. If there are significant negative effects on the wider economy and unemployment rises, the Albanese government’s salad days will be truly over.

Why did the old biddy revert to an "If"?

Why isn't she bold and bloody? Why does she only hint? Why not "there will be significant negative effects", and "the salad days are truly over", and we'll all be rooned by Xmas, and there will be blood.

And speaking of that movie, will the pond ever see Dame Groan embark on a lyrical triumphalism?

Offer her version of salad days? Celebrate what the beefy boofhead down Goulburn way might offer the masses ...

...Now something else, uh... and please don't be insulted if I speak about this - bread. Let's talk about bread. Now to my mind, uh, it's an abomination to consider that any man, woman or child in this magnificent country of ours should have to look upon a loaf of bread as a luxury. We're gonna dig water wells here and, uh, water wells means irrigation. Irrigation means cultivation. We're gonna raise crops here where before it just simply wasn't impossible. You're going to have more grain than you know what to do with. Bread will be coming right out of your ears, ma'am. New roads, agriculture, employment, education - these are just a few of the things we can offer you, and I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that if we do find oil here - and I think there's a very good chance that we will - this community of yours will not only survive, it will flourish.

All done without a furriner in sight. (So they say).

Nah, have a 'toon to celebrate the information future, with the Emeritus Chairman holding his own:

Moving right along, and right in to the middle of a bog standard pond dilemma.

The pond has already passed on sundry weekend reptile offerings, and that left very little left in the larder, and for reasons which will become obvious down below, the pond felt compelled to demote Polonius to last cab on the rank.

And that's how the pond ended up with the dog botherer talking of Gina's pampered pet, as the pair went to and fro.

The header: Democracy under siege as ugly protests force candidates into a security bubble; I wonder if our politicians and activists have learned much at all since the initial rise of ‘Hansonism’ in the late 1990s.

The caption for the stirring image: Little has changed since demonstrators vented their spleen at Pauline Hanson in Adelaide in June 1997.

The dog botherer thankfully was only rated a five minute read, but the pond was also keen to provide evidence for a theory the pond has been thinking of turning into a thesis.

The pond has long contended that the lizard Oz reptiles are deeply sympathetic to Pauline, and if she hadn't come along, they likely would have had to invent here.

Not so deep down - right there on the surface really - the dog botherer is keen on Pauline and hot to trot a ways down the garden path with her.

Please allow the pond to provide the evidence:

As I walked away from Pauline Hanson’s event at a Hawthorn pub in Melbourne on Monday night, the remnants of a rowdy protest mob were hanging around behind police lines despite the drizzling rain.
“Make sure you don’t bump into any black or brown people, racist,” yelled one woman.
It gave me pause for thought, much pause, as it turned out, as I didn’t flinch or turn but pondered as I kept walking.
Across the 30 years since Hanson first burst on to the scene, through some tumultuous times and challenges, I had at least learned a few useful lessons. One was not to respond to feral public abuse. I remembered how as a television reporter in Adelaide in 1996 I was standing on the roof of a TV broadcast truck doing live crosses from outside a Hanson event where the protesters seemed to outnumber the attendees.
At that time, I was pretty appalled by Hanson’s rhetoric, but I too was a hate figure for the political left because my reporting had exposed the fabrication of the so-called secret women’s business of Hindmarsh Island.
When a couple of thugs from the crowd below yelled abuse at me, I snapped back, and the technician running the TV equipment counselled me with some wise advice about how things would get ugly if I didn’t learn to let such barbs go.
He was right (thanks, Wayne), so 30 years later that approach has become second nature.

You see? Once upon a time he was appalled by Hanson's rhetoric, but then he realised he was just like her.

It's straight out of cornball movie lines... "We're Not So Different, You And I"

Put it another way:

If you prick me and Paline, do we not bleed? Possibly a greenish acid in the veins, but if was good enough for predators and aliens. If you tickle us in a woke way, do we not scowl? If you poison us with talk of multiculturalism, do we not die? Or at least blather endlessly about monocultures. And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? Ah, yes, revenge, always the revenge.

And once that notion's established, it's easy to share the humanity ... oh the humanity ...The lessons learnt from the early days of Pauline Hanson in the mid-1990s remain to this day. Picture: Brenton Edwards

This is the way a reptile bonds with Gina's pet ...

I walked quietly from the event amazed that Hanson was back, bigger than ever, stirring up the same antagonism, and I smiled to myself about the ignorance of the protesters as I considered how avoiding people of colour would up-end my social life, family relationships and my marriage.
Hatred and division are back in what is left of the public square and it seems more worrisome than ever. I wonder if our politicians and activists have learned much at all since the initial rise of “Hansonism” in the late 1990s.
Earlier on Monday Hanson held a media conference to launch One Nation’s first batch of Victorian state election candidates at a hotel near Spencer Street station.
Melbourne’s CBD has been hollowed out, to be sure, but still it was surprising to see police officers outnumbering pedestrians on the block surrounding the venue and there were another dozen or more police officers inside.
Across 40 years or more I have been caught up in protests, emergencies and security scares as a journalist, political operative and citizen, and the level of security at Hanson’s Melbourne events was noteworthy. It suggests police intelligence considered there was the risk not only of protesters but also of violence.
For the evening event in Hawthorn, two streets and a major intersection were blocked to traffic so no vehicles could drive on either side of the venue. The main group of protesters was kept 30m from the hotel entrance behind temporary barricades.

After all, if the reptiles stir fear and loathing, it's just the same as Pauline's suffering, which roughly approximates to the treatment doled out to Jeanne d'Arc...Police monitor the anger surrounding Ms Hanson's Adelaide launch of One Nation in June 1997.

From such dire treatment a phoenix rose from the ashes, and conquered reptile hearts, and moved the dog botherer to a weird empathy.

It's because Pauline espouses the approved lizard Oz policies on all sorts of matters, and she offers the chance to once again deny any ethnic cleansing is taking place in Gaza...

This is a new era for Australian politics with a highly polarised political debate playing out after almost three years of hateful pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests. We have had ugly attacks and protests launched by the far left and far right, and Victoria’s state election in November will be the first post-Bondi election campaign on the east coast – it already looks tense.
Hanson told me Melbourne was the only place in Australia where she did not feel safe walking the streets. She feels comfortable in regional Victoria.

Could it be a reptile piece without a "whatever", because it's not about the policies, it's a chance to feel the vibe and celebrate Gina's pet as a political force ...

Whatever your views about One Nation and its policies, this does not bode well for our democracy. Here is the leader of a party that leads national opinion polls, has outpolled the Coalition in the South Australian election and the Farrer federal by-election, and is polling above 20 per cent in Victoria, yet she is forced to campaign behind a security force-field. Just how Victorian police will deal with this through to November will be an enormous challenge, with implications for the other parties too. This is a state with an unprecedented crime crisis, yet it must devote vast resources now to political protection. Police and political leaders in NSW (where there is an election next March) and federally will be watching closely. Threats have been reported and prosecuted against the Prime Minister and others in recent times.
When I joined Hanson and her SA leader Cory Bernardi for an impromptu street walk in Adelaide’s CBD just days out from that state’s election in March this year, the reaction from the public was positive and there were no security issues.
But when we stopped for a coffee afterwards a group of socialist protesters turned up to chant abuse at Hanson, and Bernardi and I had to shepherd her safely into a car.
Just how One Nation candidates can press the flesh in the Victorian election campaign will be anybody’s guess, and the way NSW and Victorian authorities have failed to curtail hateful pro-Palestinian protests during the past three years does not inspire confidence. This chilling of democratic campaigning and debate is bound to hinder the Coalition and Labor too, although probably to a lesser degree.
The vitriol directed at Hanson and her team will not harm her politically; the more she is subjected to unreasonable attacks, the more some voters see her as their champion challenging the establishment.

Indeed, and the more she's subjected to devotional texts from devoted reptiles who never question her policies - "whatever" - and who willingly pander to her and parade about with her in the streets, sharing her perils, the more she'll be seen as an approved member of the reptile establishment ...A wall of police hold back protesters outside Newcastle's Civic Theatre during Ms Hanson's rally for One Nation supporters in May 1997.

It is, of course, all the fault of the ABC. Some ruffians insist that she should engage with all the media, but that's not the reptile way ...provided they have access, who cares about the cardigan wearers and the Graudian.

That's not the real story, the real story is that she's a reptile-approved winner, and all she's doing is conducting dinkum vigorous debate (and any furriner who disagrees can just get the hell out of here):

Yet aside from being totally intolerant of intimidation and threats of violence, most of us, I presume, do not want politicians campaigning from within a security bubble – we want them to be accessible and directly accountable to the public.
In Melbourne this week most of the media focus was on Hanson banning the ABC from her events. The real story was that the party shaking up the looming election contest was doing so within a security cocoon normally required only for a visiting (and controversial) head of state.
It must be said that the ABC’s demonisation of Hanson and its habitual normalisation of violent imagery against right-of-centre figures (Gina Rinehart being the latest example) does nothing to defuse a toxic situation. Its commentators have suggested that One Nation is immoral and illegitimate, which only fuels the nutters, just as its demonisation of Israel throws fuel on the fire of antisemitism.
The secret of democracy is that it has enabled vigorous debate and respectful disagreement to replace physical combat. Conducted properly, democracy allows ideas and advocacy to replace swords and guns.
I guess it follows then that when debate is curtailed and political correctness conspires to shut out some voices and demonise others, hot tempers can replace hot takes.

Indeed, indeed, who wouldn't want to replace swords and guns with democratic ways ...

The reptiles ran an AV distraction featuring the suffering of Gina's pet, almost as bad as the arrows that pierced St Sebastian: Pauline Hanson has been met with protesters as she arrived at the Tower Hotel in Hawthorn

How dare that unruly mob think that protesting a politician is unseemly and wrong?

Don't they realise they should sit down and shut up, and take whatever swill they're offered? Reptiles at the lizard Oz do, and they're like hogs in high heaven...

In an increasingly polarised political and media environment, I fear we are losing the benefits of a robust public square as the pressure valve that a free society needs.
On my television program I love discussing issues with people I disagree with, even if sometimes my audience objects. But it has become almost impossible to get Labor, Greens or teal politicians on to the program unless it is to discuss a point of mutual agreement.
They know I will not shout at them or harangue them, but it seems they would just rather not have their views challenged. I guess there is no need.

There's no need because changing the dog botherer's far right mind on anything is a task beyond Hercules or Sisyphus ...

And now for the moment of conversion, the epiphany ...

When I first had the chance to enlist Hanson as a regular guest I baulked at it because I disagree with some of her ideas and believe her rhetoric has been too harsh and intolerant on some issues. Besides, One Nation had become largely a fringe player.
But now I am glad to have been convinced because while we have agreed and disagreed on air, the discussions have been worthwhile.
And if 20 to 30 per cent of the population agrees with her, then a democratic society should hear and test her views.
Those who demonise and physically intimidate Hanson and One Nation have failed to learn the lessons over the years and are delivering two detrimental outcomes. First, their tactics only boost her momentum, which is the opposite of their intent; and second, they are undercutting our democracy by making political engagement more risky and remote.

The pond has a fair idea of who's undercutting democracy, and it isn't those who've wandered into Pauline's camp and discovered that her ideas have been poached from the lizard Oz.

Golding summed up pretty much where the dog botherer's line about fair and reasonable arguments took him, and while the pond has run it once, there's no harm running it again:

And so to Polonius, and it will be clear from the get go why the pond shunted him down to the bottom of the page:

The header: How 40 years of Labor has damaged the Garden State; When I left Melbourne in 1984, Victoria was known as the Garden State. Now the appropriate number plate slogan might be the pothole state.

The caption for the snap that explained everything: Then Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews with his deputy Jacinta Allan after being re-elected in November 2022. Picture: Ian Currie

Polonius had succumbed to comrade Dan syndrome, a very common reptile ailment, and even worse it had happened on a weekend when most of the reptiles were in recovery from the condition, but that often happens with Polonius, because he's routinely late to the scene:

Every Australian has a vested interest in the economic and social success of Victoria, our second most populous state.
When I left Melbourne for Sydney in early 1984, Victoria was known as the Garden State. It appeared on vehicle number plates from 1977 when the Liberal Party was in office.
In 1985, under John Cain’s Labor government, the slogan was temporarily changed to Nuclear Free State. This move said much about the political direction of Victorian Labor governments. For the change was delusional, since anyone driving around Melbourne would pass a hospital that practised nuclear medicine.
There were various changes through the years. When Labor’s Daniel Andrews became premier in November 2014, Victoria became the Education State.
Following the legacy left by the Andrews and Jacinta Allan governments, the appropriate number plate slogan might be the pothole state. It is no exaggeration to say that those who live in or travel to Victoria constantly complain of dangerous potholes, even on main roads.
Labor prime minister Bob Hawke used to say, with respect to the Coalition, that “if you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the country”.
Today the opposition impressively led by Jess Wilson might say to new Premier Ben Carroll: “If you can’t fill in potholes you can’t govern the state.”

That's a laugh. When the pond regularly visited south Gippsland, the cockies kept on voting in useless National party dingbats, who did nothing about the parlous state of the potholed roads. It took them years and years to come up with a proposal to do something about it, and in the meantime, they kept on arguing with the likes of Moira Deeming about the meaning of headlocks.

With that sort of opposition, the cockies got the government they deserved ...Victorian Opposition Leader Jess Wilson has much to ask Labor about. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

At this point Polonius embarked on one of his notoriously one eyed histories ...

It used to be said that Victoria was the jewel in the Liberal Party’s crown. This was true at the federal level after Robert Menzies established the Liberal Party in late 1944.
At the state level, however, the political conservatives were divided while Labor was unsuccessful.
The first majority Labor government came to office under the leadership of John Cain Sr in December 1952. But it fell apart in mid-1955 following the split in the Labor Party. In the mid-1950s the breakaway Democratic Labor Party gave its preferences to the Coalition and Labor did not return to office until 1982 under John Cain Jr.
Between mid-1955 and early 1982, Victoria was governed well under Liberal Party premiers Henry Bolte and Rupert Hamer. But, over time, the party ran out of steam, particularly in the final year under Lindsay Thompson.
Then it was Labor’s turn. After a while the Cain Labor government lost touch. Cain stepped down for Joan Kirner, who lost the October 1992 election to a Coalition government led by Jeff Kennett.
The problem with the Cain-Kirner Labor government was that it spent and borrowed too much. The result was a financial disaster. Victoria was saved by the intervention of the Hawke Labor government with Paul Keating as treasurer. But the State Bank of Victoria was sold to the Commonwealth Bank in 1990 (before it was privatised). In other words, Keating’s intervention saved the Victorian economy but not its leadership.

Cue a snap embedded in the past ... much like Polonius, Victorian Premier John Cain with Bob Hawke in June 1985. The problem with the Cain-Kirner Labor government was that it spent and borrowed too much.

The pond let it pass, but then Jeff came into the picture ...

The Kennett-led Coalition won the October 1992 election but lost narrowly seven years later. The Kennett government restored Victoria as a strong economic performer. And number plate slogans changed to On the Move. The state certainly was.
Victoria continued to perform relatively well under the Labor governments led by Steve Bracks and John Brumby that followed.
The Coalition won office in November 2010 under the incipient leadership of Ted Baillieu. He was replaced before his first term ended by the non-charismatic Denis Napthine.
And then along came Daniel Andrews of Labor’s Socialist Left faction who led his party to big victories in 2014, 2018 and 2022 before he stepped down for Allan in September 2023. Alas, it was a throwback to the Cain-Kirner years, with the Andrews and Allan governments spending, taxing and borrowing to finance big projects and expand the public service.
Just as the failure of the Cain-Kirner governments in Victoria contributed significantly to Australia’s recession of 1991-92, so has the failure of the Andrews-Allan government contributed to the weakness in the national economy.
Moreover, Andrews’ obsession with his Big Build plan – the spending of large amounts of money on sometimes dubious projects while allowing the militant CFMEU trade union to control project sites – has had deleterious effects.

The reptiles reminded the pond of a premier best forgotten ... Jeff Kennett with his wife Felicity in October 1992. His government restored Victoria as a strong economic performer.

Jeff as the restorer of the state's fortunes?

Now it's true whenever the pond visits Melbourne that it's reminded of Jeff:

The Zipper is known by many names in Melbourne, most commonly The Cheesestick and The Carrot Patch. It is an artwork that adorns the CitiLink bypass from Tullamarine Airport to Melbourne which nods its head to two main sources of wealth and income for Victoria, gold (the big yellow pole) and wheat (the smaller red poles). When the tollway originally opened in 2000 the 70-metre ‘bar of gold’ and the 39-metre ‘wheat straws’ created the illusion of a zipper opening as you rounded a bend in the road and caught sight of the site.
So why do we hate it? Well, for one thing, many Melburnians have long forgotten what it represents or didn’t know/care to begin with. Another reason is that when soundproof walls were installed on either side of the road they removed the view of the moment when the zipper opens. Melburnians now loathe it so much that less friendly nicknames have been given to it such as eyesore, boom-gate and ribcage (which mostly refers to the sound tunnel adjoining the artwork). Our state Premier at the time when the road and artwork were built was Jeff Kennett, which has led to even less polite nicknames such as Jeff’s Erection (the yellow pole) and Jeff’s Condom (the sound tunnel). (here)

And there were reasons that Jeff was sent packing, as explained by Dr Paul Strangio: Jeff revisited: it was the best of times, the worst of times

...To some extent, Kennett became victim of his own success. As the economic clouds lifted in the second half of the 1990s, what the public had tolerated in a climate of crisis gradually became intolerable. In its second term the government did shift emphasis to metropolitan-focused infrastructure projects, albeit with the participation of private enterprise.
Yet Kennett's overbearing leadership was unreconstructed. He failed to appreciate that his modus operandi was growing out of tune with the return of benign times - or more likely he was incapable of changing his leadership spots.
Unbound leadership has a habit of ending in fatal overreach, and so it was at the 1999 election campaign. Kennett banned ministers from speaking on policy, inspiring a devastating Herald Sun front-page image of government members with mouths gagged, and he refused to answer questions during a testy appearance on Jon Faine's ABC morning radio program.
The Liberal Party campaign celebrated the ''cult of Jeff'': it launched a jeff.com website and commissioned a radio advertisement that featured a youthful male supporter exuberantly declaring, ''Jeff, yeah, he's a legend … Jeff f---ing rules!'' Little wonder the electorate - particularly neglected rural and regional voters - decided to cut the premier down to size.
Viewed against the long-run history of Victorian state politics, the Kennett era is an outlier. Its neo-liberal adventurism was alien to a state that had been the nursery ground for a tradition of (social) liberalism that supported a substantial role for government in economic and social life. Similarly, in a polity that at least since Henry Bolte's era has favoured moderate, consensual leadership, the swashbuckling Kennett stands out as an exotic.

He was a bully and a preening braggart, an upstart peacock who eventually had his feathers plucked, and he was the prime reason that the state went to Labor for such a long time - anything to avoid a repeat of the horrors - with only the unfortunate, hapless Ted Baillieu and the even more unfortunately comatose Napthine breaking the run.

Polonius then moved into a litany which luckily left the conservative free ABC off the hook:

Across the past 40 years Victoria has developed into Australia’s most left-wing state by far. In the process it has become a mendicant, being rewarded through the GST by receiving a greater amount of payments from the scheme than it would be entitled to if it were performing at the level of, say, NSW.
The continuation of a strong left-wing government and, until recently, a soft opposition, has led to hostility to mining as a means of raising revenue through excise and company taxes. Sure, Victoria has raised money through international students but its minerals, manufacturing and rural industries are relatively small. A state cannot live by education alone.
Then there are the all-pervasive regulations and high state taxes and charges along with an obsession to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 irrespective of the cost.
The Covid-19 pandemic restrictions hit especially hard in Victoria because of an obsessive desire of the Andrews government to lock up healthy adults and children. This was particularly harmful to lower socio-economic Victorians who lived in smaller homes with fewer amenities. The Andrews government even denied public play areas to children.
Four decades ago, the level of violent crime in Victoria would have been roughly the same as in other states, taking into account the different population in numbers. Not any more.

Really? Why do they keep grinding away on that old saw because the stats for 2024 shriek that the toads are worst of all ...

And more recent data shows that crime stats are whatever you want to make of them ...

Ebike thefts soar in NSW as Victoria’s crime rate drops for first time in four years
Theft rises in both states, even as Victoria’s crime rate decreases 1.9% on the year before

Victoria has recorded its first drop in crime in four years and fewer young people are offending, but a surge in theft is bucking the trend – mirroring concerns in New South Wales, where a sharp rise in ebike theft has helped drive stealing rates higher.

The Victorian Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) on Thursday released data for the 12 months to March 2026, which showed there were 625,426 criminal offences recorded in Victoria – a decrease of 1,524 or 0.2% on the previous 12 months.
The crime rate, which factors in population growth, also decreased by 1.9% compared with the previous 12 months. It marked the first drop in the crime rate since 2022...
...Meanwhile, data released on Thursday by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in NSW showed crime has mostly remained stable in the state over the past two years, with the exception of shoplifting and stealing offences.
The data showed shoplifting increased by 9.1% in the two years to March 2026 and other stealing offences increased by 3.1%.
The rise in shoplifting was driven by a 17% increase in the theft of clothing and footwear and a 13% increase in the theft of alcohol, while the rise in stealing was driven by a 27% increase in the theft of ebikes, which accounted for more than a third of the 2,080 incidents.
Meanwhile, the number of adults facing court in NSW increased by 10% in the two years to March 2026,
with a third of the growth related to domestic violence.
The data found the overall increase in charges resulted from greater police enforcement rather than a growth in offending.
This includes domestic violence, with the data showing charges for domestic violence assault increased by 13% over the two years despite the number of recorded incident remaining stable.
In recent months, the state’s prison system has broken numerous records, despite crime remaining relatively stable.
NSW’s total prison population is a record high, at more than 14,000 people in March. The most recent data from Bocsar also shows a record number of Indigenous adults in custody, and a record number of DV offenders, which now make up almost a third of the prison population. Last year, there was a record number of Indigenous deaths in custody

Any crime is crime too much, but superficial comparisons between states regarding crime never helps, not when it's just cheap point scoring.

There's damned lies and then there's Polonius's damned use of statistics.

All that was left was a Pellist bleat, and the notion that Victoria's justice system was now a swamp of Socialist Left thinking...

Also the Victorian legal system appears to have deteriorated over the decades. Take the case of Cardinal George Pell, for example. His convictions for historical child sexual abuse were quashed in a unanimous judgment of the High Court. In the proceedings, the Victorian prosecution failed to establish how the crime could have taken place.
In 1984 Victoria had a strong economy, a stable political system and a respected legal system. Moreover, Victorians could travel to Melbourne on weekends without having to confront militant intolerant protesters.
The harsh message is that Victoria has been damaged by the Socialist Left, which has been in office for a long time. New Premier Carroll was a key player in the Andrews and Allan incompetent governments. But at least he is not from the Socialist Left faction.

If comrade Dan was a leftist in government, then the pond doesn't have a clue what "leftist" means...

Just because someone makes a nod towards "socialism" doesn't mean they are that way inclined.

Take it from real lefties ...Andrews saved lives, but was no socialist

The likes of Andrew Bolt (and poor old copycat Polonius) ranted that Andrews was a “global warming extremist” and a member of the Socialist Left faction of the ALP. But despite a veneer of social progressiveness around issues such as abortion rights, gay conversion therapy and the decriminalisation of public drunkenness, Andrews was far from heading some left-wing, pro-worker government.
There is nothing in the least radical, let alone communist, about the ALP Socialist Left or Dan Andrews. The ideological differences between the Labor factions are virtually non-existent. Labor’s so-called left and right these days are simply rival machines fighting to carve up the spoils of office.
The supposed leftist Andrews worked very closely with billionaire property developers and with toll operator Transurban, awarding them lucrative contract after lucrative contract. Labor has also long been in bed with Crown Casino and the gambling industry.
Andrews is best mates with right-wing trucking magnate Lindsay Fox, one of only ten Australians who have appeared in every Financial Review Rich List, or its predecessor, the BRW Rich 200, since it was first published in 1984.
After former Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett ravaged vital public services, Andrews privatised virtually everything left standing, including public housing, the Port of Melbourne, VicRoads, disability services and the Public Records Office.
The Andrews government presided over the running down of the healthcare system and enforced a harsh wage cap that savaged the real wages of nurses, teachers and other public sector workers.
Andrews spent big on rail and road projects but also on prisons and police numbers. His law-and-order agenda of increased police powers and tougher bail laws led to a surge in prison numbers largely for very minor offences. For all the talk of Labor’s progressive approach to Aboriginal rights, it was disproportionally young Aboriginal people that were being locked up.

Well yes, but the point about this age-old socialist slur, as recycled by Polonius?

With a bit of mangling of words the pond can get there:

The ideological differences between the Liberal and Labor state factions are virtually non-existent. Sure they talk up the differences, but they end up sounding the same once their extreme elements settle down to enjoy the perks of the job. These days the reptiles deploy the notion of catastrophic differences so they can get behind the right kind of Liberal machine, fighting to carve up the spoils of office.

The pond has never seen a property developer or a gambling industry both the Liberal and the Labor parties can't love.

C.f. Wilcox:

And with that time to celebrate the many ways it could be worse ...

The usual debrief on the madness ...

Forget the facts, just the lies ma'am, and just the bromancer and "Ned" ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 22:26:54 +0000

The pond has taken to covering the lizard Oz's daily jihads as an entrée but there's nothing to whet the appetite in gossip about Mike Cannon-Brookes and a standard beat up about secret reports and Australian war crimes in Afghanistan - especially as the reptiles never look in the mirror and wonder about their many crimes in encouraging a war which resulted in such dismal outcomes for Afghani women.

On the upside, the reptiles had briefly forgotten their comrade Dan jihad.

But that was no consolation, so it was straight into the main courses, and who wouldn't salivate at yet another serve of the bromancer?

The header: Far left, far right: the Weimar Germany shadow looming over US politics; JD Vance’s friend, writer Rod Dreher, sees in the US the same crisis that characterised Weimar Germany when gangs of Nazis and communists did furious battle in the streets.

The caption for the collage so awful that no reptile put up their hand to claim it: The mood in the US is similar to that of the Weimar Republic period in Germany (background picture) in 1925 author Rod Dreher warns. Divisive figures in the US include far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, left, Israel-demonising Abdul El-Sayad, second left, antisemite Candace Owens, third left, and MAGA media darling Tucker Carlson, right. Pictures: Getty Images/AFP

This was a bromancer 9 minute read opus, wherein the bromancer tried to cope with all that Faux Noise has wrought on the American political and cultural landscape, though naturally without a single mention of Fox or the Emeritus Chairman.

Instead, as the header indicated, the bromancer did what comes naturally to reptiles down under - turn to a barking mad American fundamentalist as his guide.

Now there are many better guides to the American scene, in diverse American publications, and freely available on the intertubes, but please, indulge the bromancer in his ramblings ...

It is the season of hatred in the US. The rise of extremism, left and right, and the bitter polarisations in politics and society mean the threat of an American civil war is not entirely far-fetched.
Not a conflict ranging army against army but street-fighting thugs, murderous extremists, violently fixated individuals of the far left and the far right. The FBI has 10,000 open intelligence files on individuals who pose a potential threat to public figures.
The triumph of far left, Israel-demonising Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, following the example of far leftist New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, who recently made the top issue in New York his desire to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he passed through, shows the creeping takeover of the Democrats by dangerous ideological extremists. This is terrifying for many ordinary people. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the New York Board of Rabbis believes Mamdani’s relentless demonisation of Israel, Israelis and Zionists could well lead to mass casualty violence against Jews in New York.
But the same thing is happening on the American right. The same antisemitism is sprouting on the right as has long disfigured the left. It’s not just antisemitism, of course. It’s a whole swirl of identity politics hatreds, mimicking the identity politics of the left, and a degradation of the mind in thrall to a seemingly infinite online offering of conspiracy theories and violent enmities.

The solution?

Turn to a month old outing by Dreher in the both siderist NY Times, in consort with Ross Douthat, who has already scuttled off to CBS, as if that network wasn't already in freefall: No TV experience? At CBS News, that’s no problem

Here's the transcript in the intermittent archive:

‘ I’m Worried About Weimar America’
“It may not be Hitler 2.0. It may not be Stalin 2.0. It might be something all American, but it’s not going to be what we’re used to,” the author Rod Dreher argues.

In that outing a couple of useless Xians yammered on about Xianity, and naturally that appealed to the useless Xian side the bromancer routinely parades:

Rod Dreher, one of the most brilliant conservative Christian writers in the US, tells me that he sees in contemporary America the same social breakdown, the same crisis of meaning and purpose, the same rise of extremism especially among the young, especially among young men, as characterised Germany in the 1920s and 30s, in the decadent, corrupt, ineffective and tragic Weimar Republic.

The reptiles promptly posted a snap of Dreher that might be considered defamatory, considering it revealed the sort of company he likes to keep: Rod Dreher with US Vice President JD Vance. Picture: Supplied

What's comical about this? Well the bromancer via Dreher reverts to that hoary old device, that ancient metaphor, wheeling out Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, as a way of avoiding dealing with the madness already naked in the land, courtesy mad King Donald (aided and abetted by Faux Noise):

Dreher has been a close friend of US Vice-President JD Vance but now rebukes his friend for failing clearly to condemn the rise of antisemitism and broader extremism among substantial sections of the right. This includes the work of well-known American media figures such as Tucker Carson, who invites and respectfully interviews well-known antisemites on his programs, and Candace Owens, but also particularly in the horrible and obscene statements of perhaps the leading influencer and streamer of the far, far right, Nick Fuentes.
Far left and far right have become a grotesque mirror of each other in contemporary US politics.
Season of hate
Dreher, whom I’ve known for a decade and admire, tells me he fears his nation is becoming Weimar America. This doesn’t mean an inevitable rise of an American Adolf Hitler. It does mean a collapse of purpose and effectiveness in institutions and society.
One more note on the eerie similarity of the far left and far right. El-Sayed’s campaign was a classic “green-red alliance”; that is, a yoking together of left-wing activist critiques of the US and all its works, of campus radicalism, with an obsessive hatred of Israel and Zionism, which appealed to a sizeable chunk of Michigan’s Muslims.
A similar dynamic works on the right. The nativism inherent in “America First” becomes a hostility directed not at geo-strategic rivals such as China and Russia, or even Iran, but at Israel on the pretext that Israel and “the Jews” keep entangling an innocent but naive Washington into endless destructive wars. The appreciation of the role of Christianity in American history transmogrifies into a hatred of Judaism itself, drawing on medieval Christian prejudices, long repudiated by all decent Christians, to animate a deformed and hate-filled version of racist Christian nationalism.
Sometimes the parallels between far left and far right are eerie. El-Sayed enlisted one of the most influential far-left influencers and streamers, Hasan Piker, to help him connect to radical university audiences. He campaigned side by side with Piker. Among a torrent of obnoxious pronouncements, Piker has declared that America deserved the 9/11 terror attacks, that the terrorist group Hamas is a thousand times better than Israel and that the murderous dictator Chairman Mao Zedong was a great leader.

After that classic bout of both siderism, the reptiles flung in a snap of Nick: Nick Fuentes, the leader of a Christian-based extremist white nationalist group speaks to his followers, 'the Groypers'. Picture: Getty Images

Here's the problem. You don't have to look over there, you just have to look at the leader.

A few days ago BuzzFeed produced yet another collage:

16 Really, Really, Really Weird Things Donald Trump Posted This Weekend
I’m surprised no one has asked him about his Elvis thing yet.

Just a few samples:

That's just scratching the surface.

Those are just a few examples of the sort of visual pollution that streams out into the ether on an almost nightly basis, as the mad king stays awake and indulges in his meme fetish, yet no one notices or bothers to comment on the madness.

Deeply, deeply weird. It's as if they just want to ignore the crazy uncle in the attic, and sure enough the bromancer does ...

Compare Piker with Fuentes. Amid a blizzard of insanity, Fuentes has declared that “Adolf Hitler is f. king cool”. This was not some exercise in bad taste irony. Fuentes has repeatedly defended his statement, claiming Hitler represented a time “when white people didn’t give a f. k!”
You can see a similar idiocy, a similar quest for notoriety, for clicks, by saying the most offensive thing possible, in both men. What’s frightening in this moment is the wide following and influence both these extremists enjoy. Both far left and far right are consciously working, especially via social media, to bring ideas of hatred and countless old lies into the centre of the public square, to turn the crackpot into the mainstream.
Far left and far right get to their extremism by alternative roads, but, in Dreher’s analysis, the same social and cultural crisis gives rise to both.
First a word on Dreher. He is astonishingly prolific and influential in a way that is at first elusive. He worked for a decade for The American Conservative and Vance, in his recent spiritual memoir, Communion, attributes the take-off of his first book, Hillbilly Elegy, to an interview he did with Dreher.
The first of Dreher’s books to make a big splash, The Benedict Option, was a serious, intensely honest effort to come to grips with how Christians could sustain and renew their faith and their community in a hostile Western culture. One of its core messages was that Christians couldn’t profitably seek salvation in politics.
Another work, Live Not by Lies, examined the psychology of the “soft totalitarianism” embodied in woke orthodoxy. It did this in part by exploring the psychological strategies of Christian dissidents in the Soviet Union.

It wouldn't be a true comedy without Candace: Candace Owens speaks on a Conservative Political Action Conference in Washinton. Picture: Getty Images

The bromancer thought at last he should put in a minor billy goat butt:

His last book, Living in Wonder, explored the miraculous in everyday life and sought to redress the long cultural project of “disenchantment” in the West.
I greatly admire Dreher’s writings, but naturally I don’t share all his opinions.
His new and original analysis comparing the US cultural malaise to that of Weimar Germany is powerful and offers a coherent explanation for the rise of dangerous extremism on left and right.
The US crisis today has many dimensions, Dreher, these days based in Texas, tells me during a long telephone conversation: “There’s an economic crisis. Large numbers of young people can’t hope to own a house, hold down a stable job, form a family, all the normal parts of a middle-class life.

He's living in Texas?

But let's not ignore the way he found time to settle down in company with Viktor Orbán and the Danube Institute, home for lowlifes of the onion muncher kind, providing much fun to Reddit users: Rod Dreher decides he is bravely running away from Hungary! It’s the end of an era.

And so to the barking mad Xian bit ...

The loss of ‘logos’
“There’s also a crisis of social solidarity. There’s been talk of a generation gap since the 1960s. Now the generation gap’s a Grand Canyon. Baby Boomers and Generation X have so much difficulty understanding the world as seen through the eyes of young people.
“The different generations live in their different information silos. Young people have grown up in an environment where everything is fluid. They don’t believe in the traditions and institutions of their society. Because of artificial intelligence and the internet they may not even know what truth is. The core weakness of Weimar Germany was the loss of ‘logos’.”
This term logos deserves a little unpacking. It’s a Greek word meaning word or reason or structure. In Christianity, the person of Jesus himself is the logos, the plan of creation and salvation.
Dreher continues: “By logos here I don’t mean mainly a religious faith exactly but more a sense of the foundational reality on which the physical universe is built.”
Dreher seeks wisdom in the deepest insights of Hannah Arendt, the great scholar of totalitarianism, whose work focused in part on Weimar Germany. Dreher says: “Hannah Arendt says the biggest factor (predisposing a society to breakdown and extremism) is social atomisation. People attracted to extremism often don’t have close friends or family, or life partners, or attachment to any tradition like Christianity.
“They become free-floating particles with overwhelming existential anxieties.”
This leads, in Dreher’s view, to destructive mental compulsions, to “friend-enemy thinking” that divides the world into a small number of friends and a vast number of enemies. It leads, too, to conspiracy theory thinking.

Remember this is in the context of Dreher's own divorce, and then the bizarre news that he was off to Vienna to be close to his son ...

He supported Orbán? He sucked on Orbán's teat? That's an instant disqualification.

But then the onion muncher was a Franco admirer, just like his mentor B. A. Santamaria ... and here we are again ... Orthodox Christian, conservative author and journalist, Rod Dreher says the extreme left and extreme right actually resemble each other. Picture: Hollie Adams/The Australian

And not just Orbán, for a time it seemed that mad King Donald was the answer, because of a bizarre fear of the "woke" ..

So mad King Donald was the answer?

In distrusting all institutions, the isolated and most easily radicalised young people fall prey to belief in conspiracies, which abound online. And whether you’re a nutter on the left or a nutter on the right, when you embrace conspiracies you’ll ultimately embrace the scapegoating and hatred of Jews, if for no other reason than they have been at the centre of conspiracy theories for thousands of years.
This is one reason extreme left and right resemble each other so much.
“When Donald Trump was first elected many of us hoped this would be the end of wokeness, not only because Trump opposed it but because Democrats would see it was discredited,” Dreher reflects.

Sorry, the pond was triggered ...

And how did investing in mad King Donald go?

“It didn’t turn out like that. The Democratic Socialists of America are absolutely lunatic on identity politics and they’re winning Democratic primaries with the overwhelming support of young people on the left.” They don’t focus on material questions, Dreher says, as much as they do on identity politics. And of course, he might have added, the performative demonisation of Israel and scapegoating of Zionists, a thin disguise for rank, acrid antisemitism.
People caught up in such madness, Dreher suggests, “come to value transgression for its own sake. Fuentes revels in saying outrageous things.”

And heading off to Hungary to suck on the teat of an authoritarian wasn't outrageous?

Cue a snap designed to terrify the hive mind: Michigan Democratic Senate primary winner Abdul El-Sayed. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

More drivel followed:

All this takes place, Dreher argues, in a vacuum of meaning and authority in the lives of so many young people. The internet enables and accelerates this, as did the experience of Covid lockdowns and social isolation.
“What is happening on the right now is the same as what has been happening on the left for the past 10 or 15 years.”
Dreher has opposed identity politics for a long time: “At the time of (Barack) Obama’s rise I wrote that you can’t valourise identity politics for non-whites without calling forth identity politics for whites. You will call forth demons you can’t even imagine.”
In Dreher’s view, Republicans responded almost as poorly as Democrats: “The Republican Party did a very poor job of trying to understand and respond to the legitimate concerns of young people.” This failure was especially acute regarding young men: “They were told that all men were the problem. It’s impossible to over state how much that has contributed to the resentment of these men. The left presumed that all white men were as weak as the weak white men they saw on campus. They were wrong. They implemented anti-male and anti-white hiring policies.”
Genuine conservatives should never see people primarily in terms of race. But in the US, across the West, the left has succeeded in establishing a public discourse that focuses on features of identity and eliminates or diminishes individual human agency.
This easily leads to zero-sum contests among warring identity groups.
To some extent, this is what’s happening among a disturbingly large number of young conservative white men in the US. The defining quality on far left and far right today is anger, often irrational anger directed at scapegoats. That is very much a Weimar Germany quality, in which street gangs of Nazis and communists did frequent and furious battle. That disorder in the streets was the rationalisation many accepted for Hitler’s assumption of power.
Spectre of the Groypers
In November last year, Dreher was returning to Washington, from his then base in Europe, when a friend told him that perhaps 30 or 40 per cent of young conservative staffers and activists in Washington DC were so-called "groypers".
Groyper is one of the ugliest terms in modern politics. After Christian publicist and campaigner Charlie Kirk was murdered, his widow, Erika, said Kirk’s mission had been to “save the lost boys of the West”.
Fuentes and his ilk had universalised their dislike of Jews and also had come almost to a nihilist view of modern life and politics.
The New Yorker magazine earlier this year quoted a representative rave from a Fuentes follower: “I feel we’ve all been robbed of our innocence. All our buildings are these hideous rectangles. We’ve watched hundreds of hours of hardcore porn before we’ve had our first kiss. Why the f. k did that happen? Do our (Republican) leaders care?”
Fuentes, Owens and others popularised the bizarre idea that Israel had been behind Kirk’s murder. Some of their weirdest musings even implicated his widow. There is no limit to the derangement of this stuff.

Projection, but it always happens when the deranged speak of others being deranged.

Behind all this? The eternal refusal of the reptiles to acknowledge there's an ethnic cleansing going down in Gaza, with that broken clock at least right on that one point, Tucker Carlson with Nick Fuentes. Picture: Facebook

The bromancer seemed startled at just how mainstream all this had become, apparently not realising how loons are constantly attracted to Elvis impersonators:

Yet several years ago Fuentes was an honoured dinner guest with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. And Carlson last October gave Fuentes a respectful two-hour interview was ultimately seen by millions and millions of people. Vance won’t criticise Carlson for that interview or so many other similar performances. Vance, like Trump, seems to have a “no enemies on the right” disposition.
Fuentes and his followers named their Jew-focused group of campaigners Groypers, which they illustrated as a slug-like frog.
At first Dreher couldn’t believe the Groyper phenomenon was so widespread.
And of course it must be remembered that there is a great big mainstream in America, including vast numbers of Christians and many other folks of goodwill, who stoutly reject the extremism of left and right.
Finally Dreher asked: what do these Groypers actually want? The answer is they just want to blow everything up.
That’s nihilism. Without verballing Dreher, I think he is arguing that for nihilism to be replaced in the lives of young people it must be answered with the offer of authentic meaning. That’s one of the jobs ahead for our civilisation. Do we still have the resources we need to do this?

Authentic meaning? You won't find it here, and likely you won't find it in the sweet bye and bye ... but you will find evidence of what News Corp has wrought ...

It's easy to see why the pond gave up the entrees.

Nine bloody minutes of Xian-inflected drivel.

And as a result, there was no time for the likes of Rosemary, doing her own version of the bromancer's dance with Dreher ...

EXCLUSIVE
White, male, female, straight or city-based? You are privileged now
National arts body deems ‘whiteness’ and being male or female a privilege
Australia’s peak visual arts body also considers speaking English and not having caring responsibilities privileges under its taxpayer-subsidised ‘safer spaces’ policy.
By Rosemary Neill

The pond knew it was privileged from the get go by the way that Aboriginal people were sent off to get their education in portables across the oval, safely out of sight ...

But no time for that, and no time for Jennings of the fifth form, over on the far right, rabbiting on in his usual way ...

We need to act on growing threat from far-left extremism and its influence on young people
Australia’s domestic norm against the use of violence to achieve political objectives is eroding.
By Peter Jennings
Contributor

Sorry vulgar youff, you'll have to spend some quality time with your Jennings saviour on your own ...the pond doesn't even have time to expose you to far-right extremism of the Jennings kind.

The pond is loyal and had its "Ned" Everest to climb, and look this day, he was the third cab off the rank early in the morning ...

There are intermittent links for the first two, as the pond donned its snow boots and mittens and readied for the climb ...

The header: How Labor failures on immigration opened the door to Hanson; The Albanese government is scrambling for an immigration reset as social cohesion crumbles and One Nation’s populist campaign gains ground.

The caption for the wretched collage, with Emilia putting her hand up to cop the blame: Multiculturalism vs. monoculture is the debate tearing Australia apart, with from left, Pauline Hanson, Anthony Albanese, Tony Burke and John Howard all weighing in on an immigration crisis years in the making. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella. Sources: supplied and iStock.

Eleven minutes of "Ned"...after 9 minutes of bro!

That's 20 minutes down the drain, never to be recovered, as "Ned" attempted one of his grand "vision" thingies, edicts issued from on high, while the pond struggled to get past base camp in the climb ...

The Albanese government is belatedly attempting to address Australia’s immigration crisis that has been mounting for years – a crisis of numbers, skills, temporary migrants, overstayers and a decline in social cohesion – with Labor long mired in political and policy misjudgment and complacency.
There is one certainty – Labor’s reset won’t constitute an adequate response to the full scale of challenges and problems. That is almost certainly beyond Labor’s political vision. The government should have acted far earlier and is caught by underestimating the political reaction to the multiple defects in immigration policy.
With Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke being forced to delay his new immigration policy announcement amid concerns at the top of the government, Labor has intensified the pressure on itself as it tries to get greater control of the system, keep driving down net overseas migration numbers, tackle overstayers, eliminate abuses and inoculate itself against Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigration campaign now damaging the ALP vote.
The nation faces a dilemma about the basics of immigration policy and how Australians should live together. It comes amid justified alarm about the high intake, the transformation of the program into a temporary worker model, a decline in government control of the agenda and a deepening conflict over how Australia should successfully manage its exploding diversity – with political leaders sinking into dispute over this issue.

Marvel at the way that "Ned" manages to avoid mentioning how News Corp has spent the past decade or more demonising furriners and claiming assorted migrants were rooning the country, doing the spadework for Gina's pet ... Police monitor protesters outside a One Nation event attended by Senator Pauline Hanson in Melbourne on August 4. Picture: The Australian / Luis Enrique Ascui

"Ned's" institutional blindness was on parade ...

Labor now faces difficult competing agendas – business groups warning against damaging cuts to the program, a public hostile to the numbers and now sceptical of immigration at a time of prolonged cost-of-living and housing pressures, and the need to revise policy on temporary migration, visa hopping and appeal rights. Expect much of Labor’s focus to be on people exploiting the system.
Given that Anthony Albanese has recently shifted ground and taken the political offensive on taxation, negative gearing and management of artificial intelligence, the test on immigration is whether he opts merely for cosmetic incrementalism or backs significant policy change.
Don’t think this will deter Hanson. She will double down and exploit any Labor policy change.

‘We don’t need more Uber drivers’

We don't? But that's straight out of the Dame Groan playbook, as when she talked with the dog botherer on what was Sky Noise ...

The Australian Contributing Economics Editor Judith Sloan says “everyone,” including migrants, believes the rate of migrant intake has been “too high”.

Naturally Sky Noise down under, rebranded to steal the ABC's thunder, provides a ready home for that sort of carry on ...

Such actions will need to be balanced by Labor’s embedded political identity – the need to retain the voting support of ethnic communities, honour its pro-immigration progressive ideology and ensure that Labor retains the scope to repudiate Hanson.

Hanson wants to keep immigration as her spearhead issue, so expect a polarising contest. If Labor’s changes are seen as too modest, Hanson will say this confirms Labor is incapable of a genuine reset.

She can dial up the rhetoric with impunity; witness her remarks on News24: “We don’t need any more Uber drivers, nail technicians, dog walkers. These people – gone. Stop all that. There’s between 75,000 and I’ve heard 100,000 people that are in the country illegally at the moment … The taxpayers have had enough of this.”

One Nation’s immigration policy is one of its most radical and dangerous. The written policy involves capping visas at 130,000 – sure to throttle the economy – deport 75,000 illegal immigrants, withdraw from the UN Refugee Convention, impose an eight-year waiting period for citizenship and welfare, deny migrant entry from nations that promote extremist ideology, crack down on student visas and limit the powers of the Administrative Review Tribunal.

The orthodox pitch against Hanson – relying on the traditional support for an immigration program that has long worked in the national interest and enjoyed public support – is weaker than before because of Labor’s complacency. In truth, Labor’s policy failures have opened the door to Hanson.

It's Labor? Oh come on "Ned", credit your fellow reptiles because much credit is due ...Pauline Hanson has been met with protesters as she arrived at the Tower Hotel in Hawthorn

After that AV distraction, safely reduced to a cap, "Ned" got into extensive navel gazing, and the pond just let him rip and riff ...

During the 21st century Australia has conducted a near unprecedented bipartisan experiment in population growth driven by immigration. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show from 2000 to 2024 our population grew by 43 per cent, nearly three times the average growth of OECD industrial nations, with immigration contributing 60 to 70 per cent of total growth and peaking at more than 80 per cent during the post-pandemic surge.
With our 43 per cent growth running at around twice that of the US and Britain, this is the macro story atop a series of astonishing micro figures that suggest the only surprising feature of the current trauma is that it isn’t even more contentious. For instance, about 10 per cent of the nation’s population, or around 2.9 million people, are temporary migrants.
Immigration policy has been transformed in ways most people don’t understand but that only guarantee further division. The current permanent migration program set at 185,000 (roughly split 70-30 per cent between skilled and family reunion), with much of the intake coming from people already onshore, is sidelined by another model with temporary migrants now an indispensable part of our economy.
In the process immigration has becoming essential to our GDP growth since it substitutes for the absence of productivity, but at the moment we suffer from both weaker GDP growth and far weaker GDP per capita.
The critical emerging dilemma is the decline of social cohesion and the loss of confidence in Australia as a unified nation bonded with shared values. Labor and the progressive establishment have turned diversity into an unqualified good – almost a secular faith – seeding an inevitable collision between their ideology and a more balanced view of the national interest. Australia is now divided over what diversity means and how to manage it.
Who are we?
The standard refrain from diversity’s champions is best put by Albanese in his repudiation of Hanson, with the Prime Minister declaring that multiculturalism is “who we are”. That’s clear – multiculturalism is not just a policy, it’s an identity.
For Albanese, it’s also a badge of unity because, apart from the Indigenous peoples, “we’re all either migrants or descendants of migrants in some ways”. The message: in the past we had Ned Kelly, the First AIF, Don Bradman and Paul Hogan – but multiculturalism is forever. Got it?
Usually attacked for his lack of vision, Albanese was filled with vision on this issue: “I think we can be a microcosm for the world at our best, that shows that people of different ethnicities, different faiths, different backgrounds live overwhelming in harmony.” In short, Australia as a model for the world. Albanese happily declares that being multicultural means “we’re loyal to Australia”. That apparently defines the erosion of social cohesion out of existence.
Labor is kidding itself, deceived by its own propaganda.
Nobody has got this right
The current dispute – utterly futile – over whether Australia is a monocultural or a multicultural nation is a flawed debate in a country in danger of losing its way. Here is the grim conclusion: no leader and no party has got this response right.
Given a fertile field for her campaign, Hanson has provoked progressive rage with her declaration that Australia could not be a “multicultural society” but must instead be “monocultural” and live under “one umbrella”. What this means is imprecise, with Hanson later saying our diverse Socceroos team constituted her vision of a “monocultural Australia” with the players united under one nation and one flag.
But Hanson leaves no doubt about her real target: “One Nation is dedicated to fighting against radical Islam and the obvious threat it represents to the peace of our country” – a statement most Australians would endorse – while saying she seeks to prioritise traditions, the English language and the Judaeo-Christian heritage.

... which is exactly what the pond reads daily in the lizard Oz, you known endless interminable blather about prioritising traditions, the English language and the Judaeo-Christian heritage, to the point where the pond has had more than a gut full or three, but do go on, ...

The claims that Hanson hasn’t changed in 30 years miss the point. While still exposed to the accusation of racism, she now pitches to a country where social cohesion is declining and the reality of Islamist threats, intolerance and antisemitism create a mood more susceptible to her appeals.
‘Mr Practical’ joins the debate
This week John Howard entered the fray. He came as Mr Practical, saying the current debate was “pointless”. Howard said people didn’t really know what “monoculture” meant given our long accepted diverse immigration program, but he still felt the word “multicultural” had the uncomfortable connotation of “a nation of tribes”.
Howard conceded his government did not completely abandon its use by preferring the term “Australian multiculturalism”, saying this stressed “the unifying elements of Australian citizenship irrespective of ethnic origins”. In effect, this was a patch-up compromise that did the job. But it seems to have left the Liberal Party in a current state of equivocation when, given the contradictory boldness of Albanese and Hanson, conceptual clarity is needed from the Liberals on how Australians should live together.

The lying rodent has been reinvented as "Mr Practical"?

The man who lost not just government but his own seat, is now a font of wisdom? John Howard and Pauline Hanson. Howard says the current debate on multiculturalism is ‘pointless’.

Here's the real problem for the reptiles.

Labor might have had its problem, but Gina's pampered pet (nine hundred bucks for a hotel room) has stolen the beefy boofhead's thunder ...

Angus Taylor has pledged to cut numbers and lift standards to enforce Australian values. But the Opposition Leader faltered when pressed on Hanson’s assault on multiculturalism, initially refusing to support the concept much to the alarm of many Liberal MPs, before backing a “version of multiculturalism” but not Hanson’s monoculture. How the Liberals define and would enforce Australian values is not fully explained.
Deputy leader Jane Hume said Australia was already a multicultural society and took aim at the opposing sides: “I reject the politics of identity of the left on multiculturalism but, my goodness, I also reject the policy of cultural fear on the right.” It reminds of the middle position the Liberals must try to sell.
Labor’s inability to contain the number of arrivals has only accentuated the mono-multi misleading debate. The government keeps overshooting its targets – net overseas migration reached 538,340 and 429,000 in the two years post-Covid and Labor’s aim to cut the numbers to 225,000 still remains a forlorn goal.
One of multiculturalism’s principles – that the animosities of the originating nation cannot be transplanted to Australia – is trashed almost daily. The tensions from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are about identity, existence and religion and are being played out globally, including in Australia.
No respite from antisemitism
The breakdown of the social order reveals a changing Australia. The Bondi massacre with its 15 victims was the worse killing of Jews in any Western democracy since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the upshot being a royal commission to investigate antisemitism and its drivers, and to recommend on measures to counter rising ideological and religious extremism in Australia. But since Bondi there has been no respite from antisemitism, with its prevalence more apparent than ever across educational, cultural and community institutions.
Incredibly, it is still not recognised that antisemitism, while sui generis, is partly driven by a re-coding of progressive political morality that demonises Jews by falsely casting Israel as a white, racist, colonial-settler nation – and that similar ideological arguments are already invoked from within to undermine Australia’s legitimacy, self-identity and cultural unity.

Hang on, hang on, what about a respite from ethnic cleansing? C.f. Haaretz ...

Israel's 'Total Victory' Means Endless War
Faced with failure, Israel has embraced Vietnamization – entrenching itself in newly occupied territories and calling it victory
Zvi Bar'el

Inter alia ...

...Israel has taken control of about 600 square kilometers in Lebanon and another 235 square kilometers in Syria since the fall of the Bashar Assad regime. It occupies about 70 percent of the Gaza Strip and the entire West Bank is de facto occupied territory. This system has lengthened the country's borders and expanded and deepened the areas of friction and conflict with a hostile population, international organizations and foreign armies. It only creates the illusion that security is within reach.
The truth is this is neither the result of a military doctrine nor a temporary operation intended to ward off an immediate threat or as a step toward a diplomatic solution.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks about staying in Lebanon or Gaza "as long as needed," and Defense Minister Israel Katz "orders" the construction of a base in Lebanon "as if we're going to stay there for 50 years," they are formulating an ideology that reduces Israel to a logistical center whose purpose is to supply soldiers and maintain the occupied territories forever. That, in turn, is closely connected with another principle, which holds that the destruction of the foundations of democracy and the elimination of the political, economic and cultural horizon of its citizens are only collateral damage. After all, the state is the sum of its territories, not the sum of its citizens.

And again ...

A Year After a Settler Shot Awdah Hathaleen, His Village Still Can't Mourn in Peace
'Since Awdah was killed, there has been no place for joy in our lives. The joy in our hearts has gone out'
Abby Seitzand Nagham Zbeedat

Israeli army and police forces disrupted a memorial ceremony held in the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair on Tuesday to mark one year since Awdah Hathaleen, a 30-year-old father of three, was shot dead on the basketball court by an Israeli settler standing 30 meters away.
The Palestinian Bedouin village, located in the South Hebron Hills region, is familiar with being robbed of its ability to mourn. Last summer, more than 60 women from Umm al-Khair held an 11-day hunger strike to demand that Israel release Awdah's body for burial, which the state complied with – on the condition that the funeral be limited to 15 attendees and conducted at night away from the village.
The community of 200 people, roughly half of whom are children, this year intentionally planned a small ceremony, extending invitations to only a few dozen longtime friends of the village from Israel and abroad, out of the thousands of people who Awdah welcomed to visit the village over the years.
"Ultimately, we live under a brutal occupation that respects neither memorials nor death, loss or any human right, so we tried to keep it small," Awdah's cousin Tariq Hathaleen, 31, tells Haaretz.

And so on and on and on, but look at how "Ned" shamelessly skews it ...

The conflicts over antisemitism and Islamophobia are just related to the Jewish and Muslim communities. The issues at stake and the politics being deployed affect the entire Australian nation. This is not a story in isolation. It is revealing the inadequacy of our multiculturalism theory and practice. There is genuine public concern about a minority arriving hostile to Australian core values and living in religious tribes that are sceptical or hostile to such values.
The upshot is obvious: a schism in the country between ideological advocates of diversity and ideological fears that Australia’s character and values are being eroded.

Being troubled by meaningless deaths in Gaza, or by meaningless deaths in Bondi, is eroding Australia's character and values? Mourners lay flowers at Bondi Pavilion to honour the 15 victims of last Sunday's attack. Picture: Tom Parrish

And so to "Ned's" "solutions, and the pond again let him rant ...

Amid all these contentions, the shape of the fundamental reforms needed are not hard to discern.
Immigration urgently needs to be restored to the national interest in terms of lower numbers and priority skills; temporary migration demands better planning and revised policy; the “monoculture” slogan – never an accurate post-1788 label for this country – needs to be thrown into the bin; the reality of being a multicultural society is here to stay and efforts to cancel the concept won’t work; but champions of diversity for its own sake should grasp their driving ideology is flawed and will increasingly undermine Australia; and, above all, advocates of the status quo – strong immigration tied to multiculturalism – need to recognise this agenda works only when linked to promotion of a civic-minded Australian unity and patriotism that, these days, seems improbable given the embedded “black-armband” view of our history.
Unless it surprises, Labor seems hostage to progressive culture that prioritises diversity over unity and also hostage to ethnic support as pivotal to its election survival. As my colleague Henry Ergas has written, the forces in Australia promoting integration as opposed to separatism are now weaker than ever: “Thanks partly to the miracles of modern communications, it is now entirely possible to live in separate communities, completely immersed in one’s culture of origin and hostile to the culture of the country in which one has chosen to actually live.”
Ergas quoted the late, great American political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset identifying an eternal truth: “Wherever the social structure operates so as to isolate individuals or groups from contact with those who hold different views, the isolated individuals or groups tend to back political extremists.”
The Scanlon Foundation 2025 Mapping Social Cohesion report, based on 8000 interviews, found strong support for multiculturalism at 83 per cent, with 67 per cent saying accepting migrants from many countries made Australian stronger. But attitudes varied according to the religion of migrants. A total of 35 per cent had negative attitudes towards Muslim migration as opposed to only 16 per cent being positive. In relation to Christian migrants 38 per cent were positive and 18 per cent negative.
National pride’s retreat
Significantly, people don’t want official support to help migrants maintain their original culture, with only 33 per cent agreeing with this idea. The conclusion: the public expects migrants to accept the norms of Australian life. Herein is the problem with multiculturalism: it has been relentlessly recast over the years to legitimise diversity over unity, raising the danger of Australia becoming a nation of subcultures.
National pride in Australia is in distinct retreat. The survey showed only 46 per cent of people felt a strong sense of belonging in Australia, with only 34 per cent taking pride in the Australian way of life and culture. These numbers have fallen sharply across the past five years. Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) with a strong sense of belonging fell from 64 per cent across 2010-12 to 34 per cent in 2025.
One of the most penetrating surveys on attitudes towards migrants was published in 2025 by John Burn-Murdoch in the Financial Times, finding that politicians “have become misaligned from the public on immigration and integration”. On the question “immigrants should be required to adapt to the customs of this country”, public agreement ran at 87 per cent in Britain, 75 per cent in Germany, 74 per cent in the Netherlands and 61 per cent in Sweden. Yet the numbers for politicians on the same question were respectively 47 per cent, 33 per cent, 43 per cent and 34 per cent.
The Gulf between the political class and the public in Australia is probably not as large – but the gulf is still real. Australia has long been a standout for acceptance of large-scale immigration based on legal entry. As an island nation Australia, unlike most developed nations, can impose border controls, thereby avoiding the current plight of Britain facing mass illegal arrivals by boat. Yet Australia, dealing only with legal migration, has still managed to leave itself exposed in economic and social terms.
Politics in the coming decade will see strong populist forces on both the right and left with immigration policy often trapped in the middle. The future will also be shaped by how Muslim political identify will evolve both inside and outside the established parties.
As astute politicians, Labor leaders would know there is a rising tide for national identity. It is driven by a more dangerous world, the emphasis on state power and citizenship, higher defence spending, a priority on national security, a rising mood of patriotism and the realisation that a civic culture bonded by share values is an essential condition for a nation’s success. Thinking diversity is enough and an unqualified virtue won’t work in this world.

The pond's sense of national pride was soiled the moment that the Emeritus Chairman took the title of The Australian and used it as a home for a bunch of far right ratbags, endlessly rabbiting on about a faux kind of patriotism which promoted division and discrimination, down there with the likes of Viktor...

To be fair, there were others who helped the reptiles in that mission, and isn't karma a fine thing ...

Elbows up Canada, as the pond calls it a Sharri day ...