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 ...
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.
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”.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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 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 ...
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 ...
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?
