In which the pond does an extensive (archival) survey of the Oz hive mind, before settling on Ancient Troy's Ming the Merciless and a Dame's overly familiar groaning ...

 

If only Sam Johnson had said "patriotism is the first and last refuge of the unprincipled scoundrel", he might have been hailed as a Nostradamus, foreseeing the appearance of the cranky Caterist in the lizard Oz yesterday ...

As it is, the pond will merely note that the careening Caterist was blessed with the sort of flag-waving snap you might expect in one of the more pathetic marketing catalogues for a supermarket chain...(yes, Aldi)

Put it another way ...

More than enough already. 

It's bad enough that the Poms already still occupy far too much of that flag's space. Having a third rate black sheep lecture vulgar youff on the need to bray about the country is too much.

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori. (in full here). 

Off to the intermittent archive with him...

A new wave of patriotism is on the rise among Australia’s youngest generation
A shared national story begins with pride, not perfection, yet patriotism is an emotion with which intellectuals struggle. For them, history is a burden, not an inheritance

By Nick Cater

The pond has done its duty and can do no more, though it confesses it should hae done its duty yesterday ...

And having done that and the doing feeling good, the pond can also consign the wretched, beyond the valley of the readable, Dame Slap to the same distant cornfield ...

#MeToo zealots keep betraying two good women
Many Australians will no doubt wish, as we do, that this rotten saga was over. But if we let the egregious wrongs done to Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown continue unchallenged, it will never end.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

For some bizarre reason she was briefly top of the reptile world, ma, this morning ...

The pond is so far over the perils of being Linda that no light emanates from the pond's fundament, but the pond will note one moment of low comedy, dubbed a reptile EXCLUSIVE, once again featuring Dame Slap...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Truth matters’: Reynolds threatens legal action over film with Higgins focus
Linda Reynolds warns film producers on ‘Brittany silenced’ claims
Former minister Linda Reynolds warns she will sue documentary producers if their Sundance Film Festival premiere suggests she tried to ‘silence’ Brittany Higgins.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice

Sublime, if a tad far-fetched for a movie plot.

Good old Linda proposes legal action to silence film-makers for suggesting she tried to (scare quotes if you please) 'silence' Brittany. 

Shades of Melania and Michael Wolff (as the pond breathlessly waits for Melania's opus).

Will there be no end to Dame Slap rabbiting on about this matter and its many spin-offs? 

The pond will also note the astonishing number of reptiles who gathered to scribble this nonsensical hysteria about invasion day ...

Day of stark contrasts
Traitors versus the true: our values under siege on Australia Day
A celebration meant to unite the nation has descended into chaos as competing rallies feature antisemitic tirades, violent clashes and a crude bomb thrown into crowds.
By Anthony Galloway, Joanna Panagopoulos, Mohammad Alfares and Euan Kennedy

The true? 

George would truly be proud ...

Amazingly this meretricious tripe was still up this morning, long after it was needed as an assault on the pond's tired eyes ...

The pond will also note the reptiles attempting to keep up to date with the latest fascist regime to disgrace the planet ...

ICE ANGER
Trump to send border tsar to Minnesota after Walz call
Trump eyes reducing number of federal agents in Minnesota, sends border tsar Tom Homan
Donald Trump has agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota after a ‘productive’ call with Minnesota governor Tim Walz.
By Agencies

The chairman decided to use one of his rags to voice his displeasure, though in the sycophantic way you might expect of toads  ...

His tragic mistake was to haul out his phone and record fascists at work? Or was it carrying a gun like a true 2nd Amendment patriot, only to discover guns were useless up against baddies with guns?

(in full at the intermittent archive here)

... while his hacks at Faux Noise keep on with the money-making machine's propaganda ...

Fox News pundit falsely accuses Alex Pretti of ‘literally’ pulling gun on ICE after claiming Walz and Frey are ‘gaslighting’ public
Fox News’ Joe Concha raged about Minnesota Democrats “gaslighting” the public about the recent ICE shootings in Minneapolis before making a false claim about the Alex Pretti killing.

Such a contemptible corporation. 

Here no true, no true here. Just damned lies and Murdochians ...

The rogue, clearly losing his marbles, deeply demented king's cavortings continue to sent shock waves ... and all the Murdochians can do is marvel at the slouching beast they helped bring into the world ...

EXCLUSIVE
Rattled by Trump, Taiwan debates whether to fight or surrender to Xi’s China
Behind closed doors in Taipei, conversations have not been this gloomy since Richard Nixon went to China more than 50 years ago, as The Australian found on a recent reporting trip.
By Will Glasgow

The pond baulked at one of those hideous uncredited reptile collages and at spending seven minutes in Will's company, but did wonder what the bromancer might make of it all, and what it might mean for his war on China, fading yet again over the horizon as King Donald looks to selling out every ally in sight.

The reptiles were so alarmed that they doubled down ...

Disappearing act by Xi leaves world – and Taiwan – on edge

Xi Jinping’s ‘untouchable’ general purged in shock military investigation
China’s military suffers leadership void as Xi Jinping purges ‘untouchable’ general
The disappearance of Zhang Youxia, who was expected to lead any war against Taiwan, leaves a large void in the PLA amid questions over Beijing’s ambitions for reunification.
By North Asia Correspondent Yoni Bashan

Sad, and apparently no room at the reptile inn for the mad king's best joke of all ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles were back on an old, favourite jihad that took the pond back to the days when they routinely featured dashing Donners ...

EXCLUSIVE
Unis reveal public is revolting against activism, poor teaching
Universities have launched a campaign to weaken government control over the proposed education watchdog despite some vice-chancellors acknowledging public cynicism about teaching standards.
By Natasha Bita

Sadly Natasha is no Kev, and even a bit of her biting couldn't attract the pond, not even the line that the "public is revolting."

The public is not nearly as revolting as the hive mind at the lizard Oz, trying to head back to the good old days of the mutton Dutton's crusading.

Having sent so many reptiles packing, the pond had to find some pleasure, and ancient Troy was just the tonic, with his piece answering the question WWMMD? (For those unfamiliar with reptile speak, What would Ming the Merciless do?).

The header: How the Liberal Party forgot the lessons of its founder, Robert Menzies; Robert Menzies would be dismayed at the Liberal Party’s decline and rupture of the ‘fruitful alliance’ with the National Party that he said was among his greatest achievements.

The caption for yet another of those hideous uncredited collages atop a hive mind story:  Sussan Ley and David Littleproud

The reptiles only interrupted ancient Troy's four minutes of nostalgia with a couple of worshipful snaps of Ming the Merciless in his hey day, and the pond will follow in their footsteps ...

At Robert Menzies farewell press conference after announcing his resignation as prime minister on January 20, 1966, he said his “most lasting achievement” after 16 years in office was establishing the Liberal Party and the “fruitful and constant alliance” with the Country Party.
Sixty years later, the Coalition has fractured and the Liberal Party is existentially challenged, having lost safe seats, bled voter support and alienated women and young people, its purpose and philosophy confused, and members deserting in droves.
The centre-right is rupturing with profound implications. The far-right One Nation is winning more support than the Liberals or Nationals. The Coalition that united and stabilised the centre-right, a landmark achievement of Menzies, is broken and its future uncertain.
How Menzies led his party and the Coalition could not be more relevant. This colossus of Australian politics, who towered over his contemporaries and set up a record 23 years in government (1949-72), would be dismayed at what has happened to the centre-right of politics.
The Coalition has split four times: after the 1972 election, when the parties led by Billy Snedden and Doug Anthony separated, in 1987, at the height of the comical push by Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen to become prime minister, and twice since the 2025 election.
David Littleproud said the Nationals would not be in coalition with Liberals led by Sussan Ley. Most observers seem to have forgotten it is not the first time this has happened. John McEwen vetoed deputy Liberal leader Billy McMahon succeeding Harold Holt in 1967. The fault lies with both Ley and Littleproud in not managing their differences to avoid a split.
Menzies prized the Coalition with Country Party leaders Arthur Fadden and McEwen. He worked cooperatively with them, respecting their views, ensuring disagreements on policy, strategy or appointments – which there were from time to time – were resolved without public squabbling. McEwen said “mutual respect” kept the Coalition together.

Come on down Ming, so the hive mind might worship, Robert G. Menzies arriving in New York from London today aboard the SS Queen Mary, July 27, 1950.

Menzies’ resignation took effect on Australia Day 1966. It was a watershed in Australian politics. He was the longest-serving prime minister, had led his party to power and won six further general elections, routing Labor again and again, and he left a significant policy and political legacy.
Tom Switzer (“Knowing when to go: could Albanese ever do a Menzies?”, January 22), said Menzies had given “no hint that retirement was imminent”. In fact, speculation was rife. It was joked about in parliament and various hints were reported, such as the purchase of a house in Malvern. Menzies told Labor leader Arthur Calwell in advance. Moreover, on January 19, Menzies informed the cabinet before his public announcement.
Menzies is the only prime minister to depart at a time of his own choosing in the post-war era. In the six decades since, all of his successors have either died in office, lost the support of their party, were defeated at an election or dismissed. (McEwen was a caretaker prime minister.)
But Menzies was not the only prime minister to retire on his own terms. Edmund Barton, Australia’s first prime minister, resigned to take up an appointment to the High Court in 1903. Andrew Fisher resigned in 1915 and became high commissioner to London.
No Liberal leader looms larger than Menzies in the modern party that he played the pivotal role in establishing at twin conferences in 1944 to unite the non-Labor forces in national politics. He is routinely invoked and interpreted because it bestows legitimacy on his successors.
A new book edited by Zachary Gorman, The Menzies Legacy (Melbourne University Publishing), is released on February 10. It is the concluding volume of a splendid four-part history initiated by the Robert Menzies Institute. It is highly recommended for anyone eager to analyse the Menzies era and offers a range of assessments.
Menzies was pleased to depart “under his own steam” rather than “somebody else’s steam”, as had happened when he lost the prime ministership in 1941 during World War II. Asked about policy achievements at his farewell press conference, he noted ANZUS and expanding universities. He also regarded the development of Canberra as a notable achievement.

Another bit of visual adoration to interrupt ancient Troy ... Tea and army cake with Robert Menzies, October 1939.

"Tea, tea! is that your answer to it all? Tea!"

The Menzies legacy, however, remains contested. ANZUS, universities, school funding and Canberra are significant achievements. He presided over the post-war boom with rising living standards and an expanding property-owning middle class. The commerce agreement with Japan was a boon for our economy. He was a safe, reassuring, respected prime minister.
But many of Menzies’ values and beliefs were frozen in another era. The Australian, like most newspapers, welcomed his departure. Polls showed a majority of voters thought he should retire. He was the last prime minister born in the 19th century. He did not support ending the White Australia policy or the referendum to make laws for the benefit of Aboriginal Australians – two initiatives quickly embraced by Holt.
Well into the 1970s, he did not support diplomatic recognition of China, a relationship that is the foundation of our economic prosperity, and was also recognised by the US. He supported a high tariff wall, a controlled currency and regulated financial and labour markets, and last delivered a budget surplus in 1952-53. He took Australia into the disastrous Vietnam War.
Where Menzies’ legacy is contemporarily relevant is in politics rather than policy. Founding the Liberal Party is a milestone achievement. He was a brilliant orator and parliamentary debater, superb campaigner, astute manager of his party and cabinet, and the Coalition, and welcomed frank and fearless advice from public servants.
He spoke about the Liberal Party being positive, with clear values and vision. It should favour “political and economic progress” and not be “a party of reaction”. He insisted it be “pragmatic and not dogmatic”, and occupy the “middle of the road”. It is astonishing how many Liberals fail to really understand Menzies and what he stood for.
But Menzies’ Australia is not the Australia of today. Menzies personified the old era; Holt the new era. Liberals no longer believe in much of what Menzies believed. That is why Liberals are better off looking to how Menzies mastered politics, party management and governing. This is where his legacy is best heeded today.

All the way to get to that final astonishing insight?

Menzies’ Australia is not the Australia of today

Colour the pond astonished. 

Colour the pond justified in taking ancient Troy with a cuppa and a biccie.

Who'd have thunk it, who could have managed that level of stupendous awareness? 

And credit where credit and book plug is due ...

Troy Bramston is the author of Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics (Scribe). He is writing a biography of Harold Holt (HarperCollins), to be published in 2027.

And so to a now ancient and venerable pond tradition, which sees the pond publish the thoughts of Dame Groan, while leaving any response to the groaning to the pond's correspondents, who are devoted to her prognostications.

Once again the old biddy's dedication to the dismal science makes desiccated coconut seem positively wet.

The header: ‘Breathtakingly naive’: Why OECD advice on Australia’s economy is of little value; There is little value in the latest report on Australia by the world’s most influential economic club, even if it gives an unjustified pat on the back to our Treasurer.

The caption for that vulgar man daring to smile and display his set of choppers: Treasurer Jim Chalmers immediately claimed the OECD report as ‘a powerful endorsement of Labor’s economic management and reform agenda’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Whatever Jimbo is for, Dame Groan is automatically agin, and it took the old biddy a good five minutes of hers and her readers' time to do a Perth Scorchers and smash them all into the bleachers.

As usual, she began with an astonishing insight ... as if the NRMA and similar organisations didn't have any work to do in ancient times ...

In the past, if your car conked out, you would typically take a look under the bonnet. These days, if your car conks out, you quickly call roadside assistance.
When it comes to economic reports, however, it’s still worth checking out what’s going on under the bonnet. In this way, the interpretation that should be placed on findings and recommendations can take on a different complexion than a superficial scan throws up.
Take the Economic Survey of Australia, recently released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (The OECD is a club of ostensibly democratic, developed economies based in a salubrious part of Paris. Former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann is the secretary-general. Stephen Jones, Labor’s former assistant treasurer, is the current Australian ambassador to the OECD.)
There is plenty of content in this report praising the Labor government for “Australia’s relative resilience to global economic shocks”. Evidently, “the economy is returning to its pre-pandemic growth trend”.

The reptiles interrupted the old chook as she was beginning to wind into her standard "we'll all be rooned err Xmas comes" routine ...

The latest employment numbers for December have been released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. According to the ABS, the unemployment rate fell from 4.3 per cent to 4.1 per cent. Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood analyses the latest employment numbers and how they could potentially affect the Reserve Bank’s next interest rate decision.

The rate fell? Time for a bigly Groan:

The OECD predicts that Australia’s GDP growth will pick up, that consumer price inflation will decline to 2.5 per cent in 2027, and the budget deficit will narrow (as a percentage of GDP) in 2026 and 2027. We also learn that “real wages are now recovering and consumption is picking up”.
Gosh, this report could have been written in the Treasurer’s office, with some additional assistance from the good folk in Treasury. Add in scrutiny of drafts by the Australian delegation to the OECD, and Bob’s your uncle.
Bear in mind here that the OECD staff responsible for writing these country economic surveys don’t necessarily know much about the country in question. They are principally guided by the material provided to them, mainly from the country’s public servants.
To be sure, the final report needs to broadly fit the OECD policy paradigm. But in this case, that is not a problem. The OECD these days is a left-leaning progressive organisation with a strong emphasis on net zero, plentiful social welfare spending, high taxation and a regulated labour market.
Unsurprisingly, the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, immediately claimed that the OECD report on Australia “is a powerful endorsement of Labor’s economic management and reform agenda”. No kidding, Sherlock.

Then came a snap of a man the pond could barely remember ... In September last year, OECD boss Mathias Cormann declared Australia must move on from the net-zero debate and figure out how to meet the 2050 emissions target in ‘the best possible way’.

It was past time to put that left-leaning progressive back in his box ... (the pond keeds, it really does keed) ...

To retain a degree of credibility, however, these reports will typically contain several suggestions for reform that relate to the report’s tepid criticisms of the country’s economic policy settings.
In this instance, there is some querying of fiscal sustainability as well as a weakening of competition over the past two decades.
Again, it’s hard to take any of this seriously, although many of the suggestions are firmly of the motherhood category. Hands up those who are against “improving spending efficiency” or “optimising tax revenues”?
The reasons for paying some attention to the report’s policy suggestions is that they often will be ones being workshopped by the key players of the country in question.
When there is a suggestion of negative gearing being phased out, for example, we should take this to mean that this is being seriously considered by the Treasurer. When there is a suggestion to introduce inheritance taxes, again there are reasons to think that this is up for discussion, at least.
Some of the other policy changes mentioned in the report include road user charges; reducing the capital gains tax discount; eliminating stamp duties while introducing property taxes; indexing income tax brackets; reducing superannuation tax concessions; introducing a broadbased resource rent tax, and; reforming the GST by increasing the rate and removing the exemptions.
If you think you have seen this sort of list before, you’re not wrong. Most of these ideas have been around for yonks. It just goes to show you that innovative thinking has clearly gone on holiday at the OECD.

Who to turn to? Why not a man who has shown the franchise way forward?

The millionaire Jim’s Mowing boss Jim Penman has launched a blistering attack on Australia’s government bureaucracy, urging it be cut down by two-thirds and how public service lacks accountability, efficiency and incentives for performance.

Put it another way ...

Iconic Aussie brand under fire

One of Australia’s most well recognised chain left one dad despairing as he’s been left in a mountain of debt. WARNING: DISTRESSING (warning, link to another Murdochian front).

Back to the old biddy, still ranting away ...

And just while you have a yawn, take this suggestion. “Enhanced taxation of resource rents could be combined with a reduction in the headline rate of corporate income tax, shifting some of the tax burden from mobile capital to immobile, land-based assets.”
I guess that’s why the previous attempt at imposing a mining super-profit (rent) tax went so well.
The naivety in this suggestion is breathtaking. Economists have long recognised that it is essentially impossible to identify economic rents as the basis for taxation.
And the idea that the mining industry is just made up of “immobile, land-based assets” indicates that the OECD staff really need to get out of the office more.
Mining is a highly resource-intensive and risky activity. By and large, the companies are price-takers, with commodity prices set on global markets.
Many of the companies are multinational and there is a vicious international competition for capital within these corporate groups. Any detriment to the post-tax returns that can be secured from mining in a particular country is likely to lead to lower investment, certainly in the medium term.

Dame Groan saw sinister types, treasury ghouls behind it all ... The influence of Treasury Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh is evident in the OECD’s ‘weird’ emphasis on the issue of competition. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And after that Stephen Miller/Nosferatu look alike contest, enough to terrify any old chook caught out in the dark, the old biddy wrapped up proceedings ...

Inheritance taxes have always been favoured by the OECD, although many members do not have them and, in other cases, relatively little revenue is raised from their imposition. The UK has certainly been experimenting with imposing higher inheritance taxes, which now affect the middle class as well as farmers.
But it has not gone well, with the Starmer Labour government forced to tweak the new arrangements. There has also been a noticeable departure of citizens who might have been caught in the snare of the higher inheritance tax net. If promoting higher saving and investment is an aim of government policy – and it should be – then death duties is one of the last options that should be considered.
The OECD report weirdly emphasises the issue of competition, claiming without any convincing evidence that “competition has weakened over the past two decades, pointing to the need for more robust enforcement of competition law”. It’s reasonably easy to detect the influence here of Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury. Competition is one of his obsessions.
But let’s be serious. Making it easier for a hairdresser to relocate from Western Australia to Victoria is hardly likely to move the dial on productivity. Occupational registration can work against productivity, but it can also underpin consumer safety. It exists in all countries.
Giving more power to the regulatory authorities to enforce competition is also no guarantee of better outcomes for the economy. After adding in the massive compliance costs and the scope for agencies to make mistakes, it’s not clear that stronger competition policy should be a first-order policy priority for the government.
There is little value in this latest OECD report, even if it gives an unjustified pat on the back to our Treasurer.
When it comes to improving the economic policy environment in Australia to generate higher per capita income, you won’t find the answers in these predictable pieces of advice.

Splendid stuff, and yet apparently only the pond's correspondents pay attention to the old biddy's relentless groaning and endless warnings...

And so to end in the usual way with the immortal Rowe ...

In which the pond celebrates invasion day with the reptiles, but fails the onion muncher test ... (but does do Cantarctica edibles) ...

 

This sort of headline shows exactly why the pond disdains the NY Times and its kind.

Videos Appear to Contradict Federal Accounts of Fatal Shooting

Appear? 

Only fascists and those under the Orwellian spell of King Donald would think that these videos "appear". 

Why not just the naked truth? Why not a simple "Videos Contradict Federal Accounts?" Per the Graudian, Video contradicts Trump's claim.

It's that accursed, wimpy, snowflake both siderist routine at work again. Though the pond can access the rag, the pond refuses to bother with this nonsense, even when it's free.

And while in the mood, before beginning this day's reptile survey, the pond would like to note a story in The New Yorker:

Tucker Carlson’s Nationalist Crusade
The pundit’s contrarianism has swerved into openly racist and antisemitic tropes. What does his rise mean for the future of MAGA media? (*archive link)
By Jason Zengerle

It's a long read, and there's no need to go into all the horrifying, sordid and ugly details expertly covered by Zengerie.

The text the pond would like to consider is this ...

...by 2016 Carlson’s thinking had begun to evolve. Part of the change was a result of his usual contrarianism. “On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump,” he wrote in Politico during the campaign. “Idi Amin would get a warmer reception in our dog park.” Carlson believed it was his long-established role in the city’s political and media ecosystem to defy that consensus. But there was a deeper, more substantive reason for the shift in his attitude. Six years earlier, Carlson and Patel, who’d served as a chief policy adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney, had launched the Daily Caller, a news website that they vowed would be the conservative answer to the Huffington Post; instead, in pursuit of clicks, the site found itself competing with Breitbart News to produce increasingly inflammatory takes on immigration, race, and gender. Carlson had immersed himself in the site’s web-traffic metrics, which served as an early-warning system of where the conservative base was headed.
This insight made Carlson unusual at Fox. In 2014, Ivanka Trump had arranged a lunch with her father and Murdoch, according to the journalist Joshua Green’s book “Devil’s Bargain.” “My father has something big to tell you,” she announced at the lunch. “What’s that?” Murdoch asked. “He’s going to run for president,” she replied. Murdoch did not even bother to look up from his soup. “He’s not running for president,” he said. Murdoch and Trump had been friendly for decades, and they travelled in some of the same New York social circles, but Murdoch did not take Trump seriously—not as a person, not as a businessman, and certainly not as a Presidential candidate.
Neither did the pundits at Murdoch’s cable-news channel. “Even among conservatives at Fox, there was the view that Trump’s an idiot, he’s not a serious person, that there wasn’t a chance of him winning,” Ken LaCorte, a former Fox News executive, recalled. This posed a problem for Fox, especially since Ailes knew that covering Trump was good for ratings; to make for compelling television, the channel needed to put people on air who wouldn’t simply dismiss Trump out of hand. “The project at Fox of trying to find normal-seeming, television-camera-ready human beings who would make a sensible case for Donald Trump was no small lift,” a former Fox producer said.
Enter Carlson. Fox producers had taken notice of the heterodox views about Trump that he was offering on “Fox & Friends Weekend.” Soon, he was appearing with increasing regularity on “Special Report,” whose All-Star Panel had become something of a Never Trump redoubt. A few days after Trump officially announced his candidacy, Charles Krauthammer, the panel’s most esteemed member, hailed Jeb Bush’s official campaign announcement as “the biggest news” of the race. Carlson countered that Trump’s entry would significantly complicate Bush’s bid for the Republican nomination. Trump was “filling the role” of the candidate who “has his opinions,” Carlson said. “Some of them are kind of interesting. Some of them are right, by the way. He can say exactly what he wants. I think it could potentially be a problem.”
Going into 2016, Murdoch and Ailes believed that Fox had the power to pick the G.O.P.’s nominee. But as the campaign went on and Trump’s hold on the Republican primary electorate became clear, Murdoch and Ailes recognized that Trump had the power to topple Fox. Before long, O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and even Megyn Kelly—who had famously clashed with Trump during the first G.O.P. debate—were boosting him on their shows. In September, two months before the general election, Hannity filmed a testimonial for Trump that was featured in a campaign video. Carlson never went that far, but Murdoch didn’t forget his prescience. In the summer of 2016, after more than twenty women at Fox News alleged that Ailes had sexually harassed them, Murdoch forced Ailes to resign and took control of the news channel, appointing himself as its interim C.E.O. Murdoch sought to stabilize Fox but also to plot a course for its future—a future that, no matter what happened on Election Day, would have to take into account a viewing audience that had been deeply affected by, and was now extremely loyal to, Donald Trump. In November, five days before the election, Murdoch made his first big move: Fox News announced that its new 7 P.M. show was “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

In short, for the sake of cash in the paw, Chairman Rupert made a devil's bargain and helped make King Donald and Tucker, all for the sake of his bottom line.

There's a lot more - for example, how Tucker turned to anti-Semitism for the views, and Chairman Rupert went along, because think of the bottom line ...

...In 2019, Carlson devoted an eleven-minute monologue to the woes of Sidney, Nebraska, which had once thrived as the headquarters of the sporting-goods chain Cabela’s. After Cabela’s merged with Bass Pro Shops, the headquarters was closed, costing a town of six thousand people more than two thousand jobs. The merger, Carlson explained, was done at the behest of a hedge fund run by the billionaire Republican megadonor and Jewish philanthropist Paul Singer, which had taken an ownership stake in Cabela’s and netted nearly ninety million dollars after the merger drove up the retailer’s short-term share prices. This sort of “vulture capitalism,” Carlson told his viewers, “bears no resemblance whatsoever to the capitalism we were promised in school. It creates nothing. It destroys entire cities. It couldn’t be uglier or more destructive. So why is it still allowed in the United States? The short answer: because people like Paul Singer have tremendous influence over our political process.”
Mike Enoch, a prominent white supremacist, shouted out Carlson’s remarks about Singer on his podcast, “The Daily Shoah,” noting that Carlson had begun the segment by describing how the notoriously antisemitic Henry Ford once raised the wages of his workers. “If you didn’t catch the German-shepherd whistles where he praised Henry Ford and then went into a diatribe of a Jewish financier,” Enoch said approvingly, “I don’t know what universe you’re existing in.”
Blake Neff, the head writer at “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” was responsible for many of the words that came out of Carlson’s mouth. As he once boasted to Dartmouth’s alumni magazine, “Anything he’s reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me.” The anti-immigrant and racist sentiments that dominated the show came naturally to Neff. At the same time that Neff was writing for Carlson—first as a reporter at the Daily Caller and then as a staffer on “Tucker Carlson Tonight”—he was also writing posts on a racist and sexist message board called AutoAdmit. Posting under the username CharlesXII, the eighteenth-century Swedish warrior king who later became an icon for Swedish neo-Nazis, Neff joked about “foodie faggots” and proposed an “Urban business idea: He Didn’t Do Muffin!,” which would sell “Sandra Bland’s Sugar-free Shortbreads!”—a reference to the twenty-eight-year-old Black woman who, in 2015, was taken into custody by a Texas state trooper after a traffic stop and was later found dead in her jail cell, becoming an early symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement.

And so on, and so on to Nick Fuentes, and the pond can't stop chortling at the way that the local reptiles at the lizard Oz have badged the rag as the Australian Daily Zionist News - with its Jewish readers all in on the brand - while the mother ship has helped enable the anti-Semitism which is now a major feature of the extreme right in the United States.

For reptile watchers it's an eye-opening read, part of the ongoing campaign by the Murdochians to ruin at least three countries - Oz, the UK and the USA - though some might find it too painful - the pond's partner decided to take a shower.

As for the locals, they were at it again this Monday ...

Lord Downer strutted around in his high heels with his usual sense of self-importance ...

Bondi is a stain the left can’t wash away
If I were in the opposition these days I would be railing against the behaviour of the left-wing Albanese government over the past two years, saying they are substantially responsible for allowing anti-Jewish sentiment to rise in Australia.
By Alexander Downer
Contributor

Blaming an amorphous "left" is a kind of reflexive action for a particularly stupid politician long out of the game,.

Readers of other rags could turn to Malware (provided their NBN was working):

Partisan politics after Bondi sowed seeds of Coalition’s demise

Right at the heart of the Coalition’s current problems lies the very regrettable partisan approach the Liberal Party’s leaders took following the Bondi terror attacks on December 14. They were joined by several retired politicians and much of the media.
Accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being responsible for the attacks was not just wrong, it was reckless, because it served to divide Australia right at the time we needed to pull together.

And again ...

...The Liberals and Nationals need to be back in coalition to win government. But more importantly they need to be focused on the matters of concern to most Australians – the cost of living, housing affordability, the state of the environment, health and education. They could even talk about how Australia should adapt to the dramatically altered strategic environment where the US president is threatening to annex the territory of NATO allies.
But instead, their constant focus is on culture war issues that “throw red meat to the base” by which is meant the devoted viewers of Sky News and similar right-wing media outlets. This angry, dwindling minority may loom large at party branch meetings but is miles away from the concerns of most Australians.
The Liberals, and Nationals, should realise they cannot “out-Hanson” Pauline Hanson. Australian politics is decided in the centre. That is the great benefit of compulsory preferential voting.
Our democracy needs a strong viable opposition – without that governments get complacent, lazy and worse.
Right now, the chaos in the political rabble formerly known as the Coalition is leaving the Labor Party, alone, unchallenged at the centre of Australian politics.

Lordy, long absent lordy, fancy the pond preferring to quote Malware over Lord Downer.

What a strange, eerie invasion day.

Meanwhile noted Zionist Major Mitchell carried on the now aging jihad

The home truths about Gaza for Abdel-Fattah
A defamation case could expose the truth behind activist claims about Israel if the Palestinian-Australian writer goes ahead with legal action against South Australia’s Premier.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

The Major's opening flourish established what a dedicated Zionist he is.

What about Palestinians?

The Major's got that covered. He can distort history the way the Crusaders distorted Xian behaviour ...

Many who call themselves Palestinians today would have once been called Arab Muslims and were themselves settler colonialists from the Arabian peninsular – most in the late 1800s when the land was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. Judaism predates Islam by 2500 years.
And while many Jews who had been driven from their lands by the Romans 2000 years ago did return from Europe after the Holocaust, other Jews stayed on – both in what is today Israel and in the major cities of the Middle East.
While Palestinians today mourn the 1948 Nakbah when some lost their land, UN Resolution 181 had offered them all the land east of the so-called Green Line to Jordan. When the Arabs were defeated after the new Jewish state was invaded by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, most Jews were expelled from these countries. While 700,000 Muslims became refugees from Israel, neighbouring Arab countries drove out 800,000 Jews.
In Israel, Arabs who stayed, Druze and Christians all get to vote alongside Jews and can elect members to the Knesset.
Just as in 1936-38 when offered their own Muslim territory by the Peel Commission into what was then British Mandate Palestine and in 1994 after Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat shared a Nobel prize for their planned two state solution, Palestine’s Arab leaders could not deliver a deal when offered one by the UN in 1947.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, spent much of World War II in Berlin working for Adolph Hitler. A renowned Jew hater and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, he bequeathed his people a legacy of failure driven by paranoid antisemitism.

If you're going to do history, try the wiki listing for the history of Palestine...

And if you want more bigoted partisan bias, revert to the Major in the intermittent archive.

As the Major had mentioned that legal action, the pond thought it might head off to Crikey for an update on that action ...

The inside story of Randa Abdel-Fattah’s legal action against South Australia’s premier
For all the glorious efforts of the Murdoch media to lay the blame for the destruction of Adelaide Writers’ Week on director Louise Adler and Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, nobody has bought that narrative.

Sorry, it's behind a paywall, and for the pond the Crikey paywall is a continuing trial, because for each article the pond has to re-enter name and password, a double tap so to speak, which is tedious beyond measure.

All the same, the pond is a sucker for inside stories, even if the pond might pre-empt the closing remarks ...

That brings us up to the minute. For all the glorious efforts of the Murdoch media to lay the blame for the destruction of Adelaide Writers’ Week on Adler and Abdel-Fattah, nobody’s buying that narrative. One man was at the centre of it: Premier Malinauskas. Only he can say why — and whether, for the brownie points or whatever else his actions have bought him with the pro-Israel lobby and Murdoch empire, it was worth it. 

Well yes, any sensible person wouldn't buy a used sock puppet from the Murdochians, or Major Mitchell, Zionist extraordinaire, in particular.

As for Malinauskas, once again, they always disappoint...

What else on this invasion day? 

Well there was a warm-hearted message from comrade chairman Albo to the faithful who had forked over their shekels to the Murdochians..,

It’s the shared bonds that are our nation’s greatest strength
Let us look to the year ahead united by pride in our country, faith in each other and optimism for the future we can build together.

Why do they always think that the hive mind will melt with their honied words, and head off to a honey-laden paradise? 

It's not as if he's facing a hard game in hot weather (sssh, don't mention climate change)...

Off to the intermittent archive for him ...

But perhaps as a result, Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, was in an unusual and forgiving mood for a reptile ...

Apolitical clean skin is an inspired choice to consolidate bilateral relationship
Professional public servant Greg Moriarty is one of the strongest, most sensible and safest choices to serve as Australia’s next ambassador to the US.
By Joe Kelly

Only a reptile could want to cuddle up to mad King Donald and his bunch of sociopathic minions, still murdering people in the street?

Why would anyone think that shovelling billions down King Donald's throat would provide a sense of security, let alone a few subs?

With those mysteries not answered, the latest madness continued apace ...

EXCLUSIVE
Family gives Hastie blessing to enter the Liberal leadership race
Andrew Hastie has secured his wife’s backing to challenge Sussan Ley for the Liberal leadership, with conservative powerbrokers suggesting the WA MP has significant support.
By Sarah Ison

It looks like the reptiles are all in for the hastie creationist young earth born and bred pastie, and have given the boofhead from down Goulburn way the flick ...

Just look at the happy family in Sarah's deeply devoted EXCLUSIVE ...

For balance the pond turned to this Commentary by Simon Benson

The pond rarely bothers with the capital, but this foam-flecked rant was a delight ... (also placed in the intermittent archive for those who care).

The header: Coalition with the Greens? Just the latest act of Liberal madness; The ACT Liberals, having lived in the political wilderness for more than two decades, have gone to the other extreme and have been talking seriously about forming a coalition with the local Greens

The caption: Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce soar in a One Nation rocket as Sussan Ley and David Littleproud watch from below. Artwork: Frank Ling

It seems the reptiles so loved Frank's artwork that they decided to give it one more run, but disappointingly the rocket no longer zoomed across the page behind the feuding pair.

Instead there was just a still frame from that illustration which would have made a ten year old doing a class assignment enormously proud. Rockets! At a time when astronauts were also a thing!

Simplistic Simon was conducting war by proxy, and giving those Liberal wets in Cantarctica a good thrashing:

It seems the Liberal Party is looking for brand damage anywhere they can find it. If the federal Coalition split isn’t the first sign of madness for the conservative parties then surely the antics at a provincial level in the ACT must qualify.
The ACT Liberals, having lived in the political wilderness for more than two decades, have gone to the other extreme and have been talking seriously about forming a coalition with the local Greens.
Imagine it: the first Greens-led government in the country.
There has been furious denial publicly from both sides about any such deal, designed primarily to end what many Canberrans think is the tyrannical reign of Labor Chief Minister Andrew Barr. But this column is reliably informed that such discussions have indeed taken place and there are even conservative Liberals who think it’s a good idea. Two Saturdays ago a series of meetings was held, according to one Liberal Party source, between the Liberal members of the ACT Legislative Assembly and those of the Greens. The discussions were about a possible deal to form a Liberals-Greens minority government based on the Irish system. Both parties see this as the only way to get rid of a Labor government that has ruled the capital since 2001.
Barr, Chief Minister since 2014, was re-elected in 2024 but is leading a minority Labor government that must rely on the Greens and a couple of independents.

The reptiles interrupted by showing assorted players whom the pond didn't know, and didn't care about ... ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr speaks at the Labor campaign launch in Canberra in September 2024. Picture: Martin Ollman

Why did the pond go down this road? 

Well there were truly wretched horrors the pond wanted to avoid and there was some fun in watching Simpleton Simon blow his stack ...

You can see the attraction in a deal with the Liberals for Greens leader Shane Rattenbury. He would become chief minister despite his party having only four spots in the unicameral parliament of 25 MLAs.
The Liberals, who have nine seats, get their hands on the levers of power, sort of, for the first time in more than two decades. Their MLAs also get to become ministers, which none of them has ever been, and get paid a lot more money. The motivation for this lot is obvious.
The idea, nutted out at the Saturday meeting, was to put up a motion of no confidence in the Barr government in the first week of February and throw it out in favour of a new coalition that would command 13 seats of the 25.
The deal, as it is understood, is that the Greens would get three ministerial spots and the Liberals five. Considering Rattenbury is the only MLA to have ever served in a ministerial position, having also been the first Greens Speaker of any parliament in Australia, he would get first go at being chief minister.
New Liberal leader Mark Parton then gets a turn. Apparently the Liberals signed off on this. The Greens were ready to but Rattenbury had to iron out some concerns among colleagues. What these are is a mystery.
The latest news is that just as the Coalition was unravelling in Canberra, Rattenbury’s colleagues began to get cold feet. The deal is still on the table, but apparently it’s on ice for the moment.

There came another parochial snap, ACT Liberals leader Mark Parton. Picture: Julia Kanapathippillai

Oh dear, the pond realises it shouldn't judge pollies by gormless, nerdy appearances ...(so that's what a town council leader looks like in the city of little consequences and street mazes?)

“It was definitely on,” one senior Liberal told this column. “Negotiations were well advanced.”
When word first started to leak out last week, both Parton and Rattenbury issued statements that they were involved only in policy discussions. But this is not the first time this sort of thing has been considered in the ACT.
Previous Liberal leader Leanne Castley, who resigned last year, rolled the Liberal leader before her for trying to do a similar thing.
As one Liberal suggested: “Perhaps they just try and win some more seats rather than concern themselves with stupid ideas like this.” Sure, it’s the ACT, and who cares? It’s not like this sort of arrangement would ever be considered at a state level anywhere else, would it?
The ACT is a special case in Australia, owing to the dominance of the Australian Public Service to groupthink outcomes. It is a unique jurisdiction. But that’s not to say that such a deal wouldn’t reverberate nationally.
The broader brand damage for the Liberals, even if it succeeded in Canberra, could be disastrous for it elsewhere. Federal Coalition conservatives who know about it are beside themselves about how it looks when the Liberals are struggling for relevance everywhere.
Considering how hard-line the Greens have become federally, they are unlikely to be too pleased either. Consider this also. Should such a deal ever be realised, the Greens would have a seat at the national cabinet, alongside Anthony Albanese and the premiers. Not that there isn’t some merit to such a deal if you consider the Barr government is one of the most dictatorial hard-left governments in the country.

There came a last snap of a player, Greens leader Shane Rattenbury. Picture: Martin Ollman

That sent simplistic Simon right off ...

The starting point from an ideological position is that such a union is absurd. But when you accept that most of the social policy agendas that the Greens and Labor have pursued in the capital, the most recent being the legalisation of mind-bending drugs for everyone, then there isn’t much left to be done. There isn’t much left to fight over.
This is the justification the Liberals use. And they wouldn’t seek to repeal any of the utopian policies already in place. Presumably the Liberals have said they will leave the social stuff alone as long as the Greens didn’t pursue any more crazy ideas, and the Greens would let the Liberals manage the economic agenda, including easing rates and business taxes for Canberrans who already live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
At a practical level, could a Liberals-Greens government be any worse? This may sound like lunacy to anyone living outside the ACT and it would be the last thing the federal Liberals would need, considering the optics of its current implosion.
One can only imagine how much fun Albanese would have in parliament with this.

Sheesh, and there ws the pond hoping that edibles for oldies would be a major part of the reptile platform going forward.

But really, why did the pond bother to go there?

Well it was avoiding the worst of the worst, with the pond saving a little of that wurst for last ...

While there had been a lot of the usual guff in the lizard Oz about gong winners this invasion day,  the mad monk was also out and about, and the pond flinched at this opening flourish:

They had to go back to 2015 to show the desperate narcissist, always seeking attention, on parade?

The pond felt inclined to dismiss the outing entirely, and send it off to the intermittent archive.

It’s time for some home truths this Australia Day
Yes, Australia remains as free, fair and prosperous as any comparable country. Yet we are changing fast and not always for the better.
By Tony Abbott

Home truths? How the onion muncher is devoted to his mindless clichés.

Spend time with a devoted fan of authoritarians of the Hungarian kind? What a wretched way to waste invasion day.

The pond confesses it could only take so much of the mad monk at any time, but a rant on invasion day is particularly tough... but ghe pond knew that correspondents would want at least a little red meat ...

...As Monday’s “invasion day” protest will doubtless show, there’s now a toxic alliance between the anti-Israel activists and the anti-Australian ones.
Multiculturalism was originally pitched as a way of making migrants from diverse backgrounds feel welcome but it has become a mechanism for changing our country by stealth.
At its best, multiculturalism has meant reassuring new migrants that they could become Australian in their own way and at their own pace. In its more strident forms, institutionalised through a plethora of grants to ethnic community groups, as Geoffrey Blainey foresaw, it has fostered a “nation of tribes”; or as Noel Pearson has just described it, “plural monoculturalism”.
The vast majority of migrants don’t come to Australia to change us but to join us. It’s hardly a favour to them, therefore, to change the country they’ve joined to make it more resemble the countries they’ve left.
Unsurprisingly, the chief advocates of multiculturalism – other than activists on government grants – have rarely been the most recent migrants themselves, who invariably have been keen to become Australian as quickly as possible.
Multiculturalism’s champions have mostly been left-wing academics with a grudge against our supposedly sterile Anglo-Celtic core culture and our supposedly oppressive Judaeo-Christian ethos.
The problem is not that we are in fact multiethnic, because that has been the case since the beginning of modern Australia. The problem is the ideology of multiculturalism that so emphasises difference that there’s nothing left to bind Australians together other than carrying the same passport and vacuous slogans such as “our strength is our diversity”.
The First Fleet brought to Australia the antagonisms of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as Jews and black people. Yet the need to pull together in a strange land steadily dissolved old distinctions.
When a group of convicts rebelled at Castle Hill, in 1804, it was an Irish Catholic priest who tried to persuade them to stand down. The 12 Eureka rebels put on trial in 1855 included five Irish, two Dutch, a Scot, an Italian, an African American and an Afro-Briton, yet the local jury refused to convict on the grounds of justified grievance against oppressive government.
Plainly, modern Australia has not been free of prejudice and racism, especially against the original inhabitants. Yet there’s no doubt that, as much as anywhere in the world, a fair go has been extended to everyone prepared to have a go in a country that has always sought ways for its people to be more free and for its society to be more fair.
“White Australia” notwithstanding, a Chinese gold digger, Lowe Kong Meng, became one of Melbourne’s most respected businessmen; senator Thomas Bakhap served in our early parliaments; and sniper Billy Sing was one of our most celebrated Great War soldiers.
We were benignly multicultural long before the multiculturalism that has ended up inhibiting the vigorous action that should have been taken against the un-Australian excesses on display since the October 7 atrocity.

What an offensive man he is.

No wonder he gets on well with the likes of Viktor Orbán.

But why did the pond flinch? 

After all, pace the cratering Caterist, it's just another grim Pom denouncing furriners, an example of a sterile Anglo cultural mania at work (as if poor old Faraged England was an inspiration to anyone except Graudian writers seeking another outrage) ...

Here's the real reason.

Just look at the snap the reptiles offered up ... Former prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: Sky News Australia

It was a flag-waving bridge too far, so pompous, so grim, such a wank, such a yearning for full fascism (they love their blacks and the Riefenstahl up angle), that the pond struggled to make it to the end ...

Harden the f up pond, you can do it ...

It’s a craven multiculturalism, incapable of asserting Australian values, wrongly asserting that all cultures are equal, that’s prevented governments deporting hate preachers, prosecuting hate marchers and banning hate groups; without yet more legislation that could end up being used against everything but the radical Islamism that left 15 innocents dead at Bondi Beach.
It was our best Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, who declared on our Bicentenary Day, January 26, 1988, that in this country there must be “no hierarchy of descent” and “no privilege of origin”. It’s a deep and abiding instinc­tual commitment to Australia, he said (admittedly easier in the days before cheap international travel and the internet made it possible to operate in two countries at once), that’s “the one thing needful to be a true Australian”.
For decades now, every new Australian has been required to pledge allegiance to “Australia and its people whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey”.
But it’s not enough simply to say the words; they have to be meant and lived.
Our immigration rules should never discriminate on the basis of race but should discriminate on the basis of values if the citizenship pledge is to be more than window-dressing. Apart from substantially scaling back the rate of migration, at least until housing starts and infrastructure can catch up and social cohesion can rebuild, what’s needed are more background checks on long-term entrants to Australia, a more searching citizenship test and a longer pre-citizenship probationary period here in Australia.
This Australia Day, our resolution should be to keep Australia Australian; to rediscover and celebrate what made this country the envy of the earth.
Let’s have less stress on our diversity and far more on our unity so that our wonderful country can remain its best self.

Isn't there some way we can deport him back to the mother country? Or perhaps arrange an extradition treaty with Viktor?

The pond apologises for failing the test, for cutting the onion muncher short, but there's only so much the pond can take on invasion day, and besides, he's there in full in the archive for anyone wanting to inspect him inspecting the troops.

Instead for a closer, how could the pond go past this Graudian headline?

Science teachers from Queensland Open Brethren schools told to teach students about vegetarian dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark
Teachers who attended ‘compulsory’ creationist conference run by US-based fundamentalist group told radiometric dating techniques were flawed

Well done Ben Smee, Queensland state correspondent.

Veggie dinos on the Ark.

The pond rolled that one around on the tongue so much that the pond's partner shrieked for the pond to stop.

The pond would like to think it only applied to the deep north, but in fact the CCM runs a number of schools in the state.

And with thoughts of vegetarian dinosaurs living in harmony on Noah's Ark, time to remember that there are actual flesh eating raptors stalking the earth... no thanks to Chairman Rupert, himself pretty much in the T-Rex class ...

In which the pond serves up a cold cut of prattling Polonius, accompanied by a sumptuous spread of garrulous Gemma ...

 

The pond blames the reptiles for turning the pond into a fussy eater this weekend.

At first the pond worried if it was turning anorexic, but it was simply an aversion to the food on offer.

The menu was extremely limited. 

The pond couldn't find anything much about King Donald insulting NATO troops (that got the UK agitated), nor anything about him withdrawing his invite to Canada to join his "peace board" in a massive sulk of mean spite, (elbows up Canada), nor his sending an armada to Iran ... (though no doubt the bromancer will turn up in exultant war monger mode in the near future).

Instead there was a lot of local fluff-gathering and navel-gazing...

Take Noel, for instance ...

We need a layer of unity that binds us all

We must defend multiculturalism from rising tide of nativism
The Australian achievement of multiculturalism will come under increasing attack if we do not answer its weakness.
By Noel Pearson

He's scribbling this for the reptiles? Home to nativists of the Caterist kind? (Which is to say Pom blathering about migrants).

He's forgotten that the lizard of Oz campaigned against the Voice, and yet here he is supporting their desperate paywall model attempt at survival?

He's gone all Tolkien?

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of News Corp where the Shadows lie.

Off to the intermittent archive with him.

Similarly the pond could only take a peck at the craven Craven.

Usually when a craven Craven turns up the pond would feast, gorge, almost like that portly man in Monty Python wanting a final dinner mint.

And yet the pond baulked:

Reality of armed, vicious, racist, homicidal internal threat calls for new legal weapons to fight back
We must adopt extraordinary legal powers as a matter of defence against worse attacks.
By Greg Craven

The closing sermon helps explain why the pond could only pick at the serving ...

...In the context of violent antisemitism, this is what Anthony Albanese is attempting. The half-hearted response of the opposition led by Sussan Ley is a shame on it and the country.
Certainly, we will have to exercise vigilance over these extraordinary powers. This will put our constitutional system to the test, as did other defence crises.
Parliament already seems to be playing its role, forcing amendments to the legislation. A free press is scrutinising and reporting avidly on its contents.
The legislation certainly will be challenged in the High Court, which will determine its fate. Lesser but always independent judges will have to apply the law as cases come before them, remembering that penal legislation has to be applied carefully. The executive, from ministers down to office boys, will need to be restrained in its use of the laws.
In other words, our constitutional system will have to live up to the praises heaped on it by its defenders, including me.
These are not Cromwellian edicts striking at the heart of our system of government. They are laws necessary for the defence of our country against a vicious, racist and homicidal internal threat.
Greg Craven is former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.

The pond simply can't see how the new laws will tackle the internal threat posed by foreign owned News Corp.

It being invasion day season, the reptiles trotted out a little Liddle ...but the pond couldn't get past the headline:

More than ever, Australia Day is worth celebrating
Our national day is not a day for protest, nor a day to amplify and glorify division or discourse.
By Kerrynne Liddle

Say what?

Not a day to amplify and glorify discourse?

What's wrong with discourse?

Oh sure it's inclined to waffle and abstraction ...

Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. Following work by Michel Foucault, these fields view discourse as a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our world experience. Since control of discourse amounts to control of how the world is perceived, social theory often studies discourse as a window into power. Within theoretical linguistics, discourse is understood more narrowly as linguistic information exchange and was one of the major motivations for the framework of dynamic semantics. In these expressions, denotations are equated with their ability to update a discourse context. (The word even has its own wiki)

But then Liddle's own discourse was inclined to abstraction and pious waffle. 

Off to the intermittent archive with her.

The pond knew that it would suffer a severe bout of indigestion if it swallowed what prattling Polonius had cooked up, but what to do?

The pond had boxed itself into a corner, and anyway Sydney Institute is a kind of nativist Taco Bell ...

The header: For racist colonial project, we’ve rubbed along OK; As polling support for January 26 hardens, protests intensify. This paradox exposes a widening cultural divide over history, identity and whether Australia should celebrate or condemn itself.

The caption for the snap: Invasion day protest in Melbourne CBD on Australia Day in 2025. Picture: David Crosling

What was remarkable was that was the sole visual distraction, which allowed the pond to swallow the entirety of the prattle in one gulp ...

It’s a paradox, for sure. As support for the celebration of Australia Day on January 26 increases, so does the intensity of “invasion day” demonstrations.
The recently published Roy Morgan Poll asked this question: “On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip landed at Sydney Cove. In your opinion, should January 26 be known as Australia Day or Invasion Day?” Seventy-two per cent of those polled took the Australia Day option. As to whether the date of Australia Day should be altered, 60.5 per cent did not want it changed – up slightly from when last polled in 2024.
It’s much the same with the recent poll commissioned by the Institute of Public Affairs. Seventy-six per cent of respondents supported the January 26 option.
On the evening of January 21, ideologically motivated vandals destroyed or damaged two historical statues in Melbourne’s Flagstaff Gardens. The Pioneer Monument was erected in 1871 to commemorate the settlement of Melbourne. It was sprayed with an inverted red triangle, the symbol of the radical Islamist terrorist organisation Hamas, and the words “Land Back” were written near the inscription. The nearby Separation Monument suffered a similar fate. It was erected in 1950 to celebrate the centenary of the separation of the colony of Victoria from the colony of NSW.
To complete the sense of alienation, the words “Death to Australia” were written on the base of the Pioneer Monument. Clearly, the vandals favour the destruction of contemporary Australia – one of the freest and most prosperous nations on earth.
In a completely unrelated event, January 21 marked the launch of what the ABC calls its “new sharp satirical special Always Was Tonight” presented by Tony Armstrong, who is described as a Gamilaroi man. According to the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster’s media centre, the program brings “a fearless First Nations lens to the stories that are shaping the country”.
This is mere spin. It is false to imply that there is “a First Nations lens” on any matter. Like other Australians, Indigenous Australians do not have a single view on anything. The format of the show is essentially that of ABC TV’s The Weekly, with Armstrong filling the role of Charlie Pickering.
The jokes are of the usual fashionable leftist kind with political conservatives the targets and the focus on Aboriginal issues. Presenter Brooke Blurton (who identifies as Indigenous) has this to say at one part of the program: “Sky News will announce a competitor to Triple J called Triple K. They will celebrate Australia Day by taking the hood to the hood with the hottest of 100 crosses.” Here a logo is shown featuring a Ku Klux Klan hood. How funny is that?

Okay, okay, the pond is sure that Polonius would love himself some Melania. 

How funny is she? 

Polonius kept on with his tut-tutting and clucking ...

Always Was Tonight concludes on a serious note about Indigenous children in prisons and a call for all Australian governments to raise the minimum age for criminal responsibility to 14. But its essential message is that Australia is racist.
Sky News’ The Bolt Report on January 21 ran a clip of Armstrong’s appearance on Network Ten’s The Project where he said: “This country still can’t accept that it’s a racist country … that it’s built off the back of slavery … of dispossession. It’s built on the back of rape and pillage of Indigenous people.”
The first sketch presented by Armstrong centres on the claim that the early settlers intentionally infected Aboriginal people with smallpox. No evidence is presented for this most serious allegation.
For an Indigenous Australian in an allegedly racist nation, Armstrong has done remarkably well in sport at the highest level and in the media. He was reported in the Daily Mail in June 2022 as saying that he was raised by his white single mother and does not know his Indigenous father.
Armstrong was educated at Assumption College in the Victorian town of Kilmore, which was founded by the Catholic Marist Brothers. Armstrong’s single mother managed to pay the school fees and her son completed year 12.
After that, there has followed a brilliant career. Yet the host of Always Was Tonight reckons he lives in a racist country built on the back of dispossession. But there’s the difficult point. Without colonisation, which Armstrong states led to dispossession, he would not have been born.
Addressing The Sydney Institute in February 2017, Stan Grant said: “I am drawn from the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi of NSW, my story also comes from the green fields of Tipperary.” He spoke of an academic of Indigenous-Anglo-Asian heritage who saw himself as both “coloniser and colonised; black and consummately white”.
Any Indigenous Australian with non-Indigenous ancestors owes his or her existence to, yes, colonisation. When former Greens and now independent Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe, who identifies as Indigenous Australian, said on October 2023 “we’re in a war” with non-Indigenous Australia, she was talking about going to war with herself.
Certainly, in the decades after 1788, the Indigenous population suffered grievously from imported diseases and frontier violence as settlers moved away from the centres of colonial government.

Don't you just love that "certainly"?

But wait, there was happiness and bliss, and never mind the occasional massacre ...

But there was also co-operation between settlers and the Aboriginal people and many partnerships, even marriages, occurred.
But all that is now long gone and the British, for all their faults, were perhaps the best colonisers.

Oh indeed, indeed, it's all long gone, all off in the distance, and life has never been better for Aboriginal Australians.

There's nothing like being ravaged and pillaged by the Poms, and didn't they leave the world, and especially the Middle East, in fine shape?

The pond was tempted to slip in another 'toon, but decided that it was best to get it over with ...

The evidence suggests that majority support for maintaining Australia Day – and not introducing “invasion day” – is at least steady and probably slightly increasing. Australia Day is opposed by some Aboriginal people, alienated leftists, radical Islamists and more besides. This group is not going away.
But neither is the group – consisting of diverse backgrounds – that likes Australia. I would make Australia Day the last Monday in January, as it was before 1990, but I acknowledge that this is not the majority view.
On Australia Day this year, I will be reading parts of the recently released Commemorative Book to Mark 50 Years of Vietnamese Refugee Settlement in Australia. It was very much influenced by former South Vietnamese diplomat in Australia Tuong Quang Luu, who became a refugee.
The cover contains a photo of four Vietnamese women carrying a placard declaring “Thank You! Australia” who are followed by the NSW Police band. That’s a good reason to celebrate January 26, in a paradoxical way.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

In a paradoxical way?

The pond will settle for a plain way ....

Such was the pond's desperation, the need to take a bite of something, anything, the pond decided to swallow a chunk of grating Gemma ...

It's been a long between drinks with garrulous Gemma ...

The header: Fed-up voters seek political home in rising One Nation; One Nation has surged to 22 per cent, leaping over the Coalition by addressing issues the main parties dismiss at their peril: cost of living, immigration, and for many, Bondi.

Not really a caption for the rocket, but it'll have to do: January feels like a long year already. Can I get a witness? How many of us limped across the line at the end of 2025? The year of the snake carried an almighty sting in its tail.

The real reason the pond went with Gemma?

Unfortunately the intermittent archive doesn't capture the hoot of seeing that rocket flash across the background in a truly tragic gif ... but the pond did want to celebrate how this header ...

One Nation’s rocket-fuelled rise shows voters are looking for a new home

... got turned into a literal rocket, like a ten year old illustrating a class assignment.

But at least the pond could note it, even if the price was a five minute soundscape of Gemma grinding away ...

Gloomy Gemma was, like all the other reptiles, oblivious to the way that the lizard Oz had helped make the current mess ...

As a nation, we were traumatised by the massacre of 15 innocents at Bondi Beach, gunned down by hate-filled terrorists who police say were inspired by Jew-hating ideology that is maniacal and foreign to who we are.
Australia never used to be a place where support for terror groups such as Islamic State could incubate in secret. Neither was it a place where Jewish teenagers were chased through the streets by brazen thugs shouting Nazi slogans, as if it were the days of the Weimar Republic.
This whole time, our Prime Minister hasn’t put a foot right. Anthony Albanese is unwilling or unable to lead; who knows? Either way, it was no surprise that he and his government were punished in opinion polls published this week. They got told, but that’s not even the main event.
The main game has shifted, and it’s now the rocket-fuelled rise of One Nation in the polls. It would seem that Barnaby Joyce played a blinder; from mainstream outcast to political heir apparent in a few scant months.
When Joyce and Pauline Hanson finally confirmed the news, there were obviously many questions. How does one cook a steak in a sandwich press? And: why? How long had this political courtship been in play? Was it a bolt from the political blue or just two old colleagues who, after many years, realised they had more in common than the fact they were both flaming redheads and decided to make each other honest.

The other reason the pond was drawn to this gruesome Gemma feast?

Good old Barners, Tamworth's eternal shame, was on the menu, while Pauline whipped up a meal like the good hausfrau she is ... Hanson preparing a wagyu steak on a sandwich press; Pauline Hanson dines with Barnaby Joyce.

Charming and with a level of devotion you won't find many other places, though there are some ...

Gloomy Gemma watched it all from the stalls ...

The mind boggles. As most of you would know, I’m not part of the political machine. Not a member of any party. I’ve no dog in the fight, in the sense that I’ve no interest in preselection. Don’t need a favour from anyone. I am just a humble observer, friends. A frustrated taxpayer who swings between rage and resignation at the idiocy of those in charge, both of the government and what’s left of the opposition.
Which brings me back to the most recent published polls, which has One Nation leaping over the federal Coalition like high-jumper Nicola Olyslagers but with less of a joyously radiant smile.
One Nation surged to a whopping 22 per cent primary vote in Newspoll, a jump of seven points across the past two months. Others will go into the minutia of that, which way the sexes are skewed, the demographic according to location, occupation and earning capacity. There will be many an autopsy on that data.
My take is from the cheap seats in real life. It’s not empirical data but if there’s one skill I think I’ve refined in the past few years it’s being a pretty solid listener to the world around me.
I know many people who have joined One Nation in the past six months. And they’re normal folk in a range of professions, ages, men and women, single and in relationships. At first it felt a little bit like Fight Club in that the rule seemed to be that if you’d joined, you certainly didn’t talk about it.
Not any more. Conversations I’m hearing are out and proud. Loud and defiant. The reasons are all fairly unremarkable. Frustration with a terrible government and a useless opposition. Cost of living, unvetted mass immigration. One person told me they’d never been a member of a political party before and that Bondi was the breaking point for them, the proverbial last straw along with issues such as stagnant productivity, bloated government and social engineering. This person is not alone.
Objectively, and because I’m old enough to remember, the party and its eponymous leader are not the same as they were when One Nation burst on to the scene in 1998. They have changed. The country has changed, and not for the better in my view. Watching and listening, I see middle Australians being talked down to, by my own side and by the elitists on the left. Is it any wonder voters are looking for a new home?

The reptiles couldn't get enough of the new, if slightly odd, couple, Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson at the Bondi Pavilion. Picture: Daily Telegraph / Monique Harmer

      

Despondent, downhearted, disconsolate, melancholic Gemma kept quietly weeping ...

No, wait a second, she's been tempted by Tamworth's shame, and never mind his drinking to excess or his womanising.

He's just a good old Tamworth boy, and he's found a new disciple ...      

Whether or not you agree with me is irrelevant. Numbers don’t lie. What people are seeing in One Nation is simple. It doesn’t seem to hate Australia or systemically seek to undermine Australian values. It is not afraid to raise uncomfortable issues even if the methods can be a bit crude. It wants to revive the economy and reduce government spending. There is a pride in Australia, an imperfect country that hasn’t always got it right but once was the envy of the world. The truth is, everyone knows what this team stands for and that is a rare thing indeed. The Liberal Party continues to break my heart, like an old flame that descends into addiction or can’t seem to ditch the booze and ciggies. You have affection for the person they were, try to remember when they were young, fit and healthy, but seeing them in this state is just painful. They couldn’t organise an intimate encounter in a house of ill-repute.
Waking up this week to news that the leadership of the NSW division of the Liberal Party is backing a radical plan to exclude men from some preselections, among other things, proves my point. That’s not policy. That’s revenge. Excluding men does not make up for the many years in which women were kept out and it reduces us to the sum total of our reproductive organs. Show me one place, one jurisdiction, in which this kind of strategy has worked.
Of all the wins I’ve been blessed with in my career, not one has been because capable men were excluded.
Being a woman doesn’t make you a better leader any more than being a man does. Putting purpose over preference, being able to draw disparate parties into unity, having an authority that commands respect, doing what you say: these make a leader.

Quick reptiles, save Gemma from her gloom, another snap of the happy couple if you please... One Nation surged to a whopping 22 per cent primary vote in Newspoll. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Poor Gemma, despite her yearning she really couldn't go all the way there, and yet for some strange, perverse reason, watching her struggle and cry out to the existential void, caused the pond's own gloom to lift.

Perhaps the pond could take a final bite and at last enjoy the feast ...

This plan is just the politics of exclusion in reverse. There is nothing bright or innovative or compelling about it – the same of which can be said for the Liberals’ current policy offering, in fairness.
My kingdom for a policy platform. A policy milk crate. Just imagine if the Coalition could nail the childcare brief. It would be unstoppable. This government has removed choice and agency from parents, making institutionalised care the only option. It ignores best practice data from around the world about the involvement of close family members such as grandparents for those who have that option. Imagine developing a policy that says to parents: you get to choose what’s best for your child. Be still, my giddy aunt.
As the Coalition imploded again this week, we voters remain short-changed. While the Liberal Party obsesses about gender quotas and implodes with factional infighting, the worst government in a generation gets to act with impunity.
As I said to someone the other day, I want to be part of the solution on the conservative side, but I don’t know how. I’m certainly not going to run for parliament, and let me let you in on a little secret: They wouldn’t want me. I’m not known for being compliant in the face of foolishness. Will I join One Nation? Nope, I don’t think so. I can’t really articulate why. Perhaps it’s because, true to form, I have hope that things will turn around for the once great Liberal-National Coalition. That said, I think it’s best I don’t hold my breath.

Go on, hold your breath, and enjoy the fun ...

And so to a few odds and sods for the weekend stocking, provided by the lizard Oz editorialist ...

There was a reason the pond ran with that one. It's been a while since the pond gave this Godwin Law an airing ...

Speaking of woke declining globally, what a triumph that has been ...

But wait, there's more lizard Oz editorialist, offering fresh pasture, or at least a ley, to Ley ...

Well played reptiles ...

When Sussan Ley chose to politicise the Bondi atrocity to damage Anthony Albanese’s political dominance, and News Corp and the Nine newspapers egged her on in the hope of either doing the same or achieving some form of regime change, some outcomes could have been predicted.

Yes, not a single reptile, and especially the lizard Oz editorialist, would have the first clue about what the keen Keane was on about ... 

And yet, with the leadership in chaos and confusion, now apparently is the time to get into "policy action".

So it continued to the bitter end ...

They want to balance the books?

They can't even balance an egg for a leadership egg and spoon race ...

On the upside, News Corp might have helped the opposition shoot itself in the foot, but it's a flesh wound compared to the way that Faux Noise has helped shoot the United States in the head ...

Elbows up Canada ...

Consternation for Brits and Canucks ...