In which the reptiles are all over the salacious shop, but the bouffant one and "Ned" eventually restore terminal boredom...

 

Sadly, the attempt by the UK government and others to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing currently going down in the West Bank (not to mention Gaza or southern Lebanon) is too little, too late - the government of Israel has doomed any notion of a two state solution - and what to make of the complete nihilism and destructiveness of the current tariff-driven trade war, instituted by a mad king rapidly descending into dementia?

The pond woke to a string of lies on the Beeb emanating from the mouth of a Benji hack - it was just a hundred and fifty troubled vulgar youffs - apparently those disturbed younglings were in charge of the open tender for some 1,200 settlement homes.

On and on he whined and moaned - what about all that Palestinian violence the Beeb never talks about? - and that UN court finding is an irrelevance, and so forth and genocidal etc. 

Sadly Palestine has never been the same since the days the British empire stuffed it up.

The only thing certain is that if you read the lizard Oz, those sorts of observations are simply not on, most unsporting, wot wot.

The UK's decision was effectively ghosted, piked if you will, and it was Israel's bullying response that was featured way down the page...

Israeli ambassador warns broad sanctions on settlements would be a ‘deep mistake’
Israel’s ambassador to Australia has urged the Albanese government against following Britain in introducing broad export sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
By Elizabeth Pike

Bullies and liars, and the task won't be done until there's a greater Israel from the river to the sea.

"Brainwashed?" 

Just to make sure the hive mind got the message, that double down was tag teamed with the bromancer's outing ...

Albanese government’s Israel policy risks fuelling ‘sickening’ antisemitism crisis
The Albanese government has sanctioned Israel’s West Bank settlers while rewarding a Palestinian Authority it once demanded reform from – and Australians are paying the price.
By Greg Sheridan

The work of the Australian Daily Zionist News is never done.

Meanwhile, the crusading, eternally cranky Cranston has returned to the top of the digital page to resume his jihad  ...

The pond took one look at those illustrations and knew the reptiles were on song ... those deviants were guilty as hell ...

EXCLUSIVE
Secret birth tax revealed in Labor’s trust reforms
Labor’s trust tax reform creates ‘newborn tax’
Families will be forced to choose between including newborns in trusts or a 47 per cent tax penalty.
By Matthew Cranston

The reptiles decided that cornball collage in the splash wasn't strong  enough, so they reverted to an old favourite, showing the Satanic Jimbo in his proper, deeply evil light ...

How good is this new cranky Cranston angle? 

After weeks of rabbiting on about death taxes, now it's a "newborn" tax. 

Get 'em going, get 'em coming ... but disappointingly the artwork at the head of the piece was downright banal, with Satan's helper just looking bemused ...

As that's in the archive, a teaser trailer will suffice, because the pond has to note that the tale sent Dame Slap right off, as she came down from her land above the Faraway Tree in a blind, epic fury ...

COMMENTARY by JANET ALBRECHTSEN
Labor’s class-war tax plan is an act of blind ideology
For Labor, shooting the messengers is more palatable than admitting the messengers may be on to something.

What's amusing? It's not the stodgy "artwork" by Katie, a descriptor only the reptiles could use (a new name to the pond, with her work true to the sense that interns are the go), but the way that the radically ideological Dame Slap starts off her piece: "Radical ideologues can rarely hide their zeal."

Oh sainted aunt of projection, how little these reptiles know themselves.

Oh sublime god of mirthless irony.

The pond saved her offering to the archive and so only proffers a teaser trailer...

It was the invocation of Edmund Burke that got the pond. 

All it did was remind the pond of Hegelian wisdom: 

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, and readers of lizard Oz hacks of the Dame Slap kind, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, - that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present. Looked at in this light, nothing can be shallower than the oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French Revolution. Nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and that of our times.

Why, when reading this kind of Dame Slap jihad drivel, is the pond reminded of those ancient lyrics - a day old at least - to that haunting tune Hotel Vomitoria?

"Welcome to the Reptile Vomitoria
Such an ugly place - such a loathsome space
Making up news at the Reptile Vomitoria
That is why we’re here - spewing lies and fear!”

Welcome indeed, with the full lyrics at the bottom of the page...

Enough already with Dame Slap, off to the archive with her.

Who else is putting out the 'welcome to the vomitoria' mat today?

It would remiss of the pond not to note the other jihad that's out and about, and featured a whole team, a veritable horde of reptiles, getting down and dirty on One Nation ...

'NO ANGEL'
One Nation’s liar for hire: aspiring premier now admits drug use past
One Nation’s Victorian leader Warren Pickering has admitted to past amphetamine use, drink driving and ‘sexual deviance’ but will remain the party’s state election frontman.
By Jamie Walker, Lily McCaffrey, Liam Mendes and Anthony Galloway

The archived version is a little stale, and was saved under the header One Nation leader Warren Pickering’s drink-driving record revealed, The man leading One Nation into Victoria’s November election has faced courts in two states over drink-driving, careless driving and two orders of imprisonment in lieu of unpaid fines.

Perforce the pond had to pick up the archive slack by cherry picking a little

The reptile jihadists had a victory, forcing a confession ...

Dirt got the splash treatment ...

Dirt got deep ...

Dirt got Barners and Gina's pampered pet dragged into the scandal du jour ...

Will he survive? Will the reptiles give up on their jihad? Especially when there's lots of salacious juice, and the reptiles can rediscover their tabloid souls?

The pond fancies this horse will gallop on to election day, and regrets that this distraction waylaid coverage of other reptiles ...but on the other hand, Rowan had to be ruled out on the basis of the headline ...

Beijing’s formula: A long march through multilateral institutions
Those organisations seeking consensus on every major issue before proceeding are vulnerable to Beijing’s formula for success.
By Rowan Callick
Contributor

Sorry, the war with China by Xmas at the latest is strictly bromancer turf ...

The pond is already filthy rich from earning a shilling each time the reptiles mention "the long march through the institutions", and adding "multilateral" isn't a clever enough variation to warrant attention outside the archive ...

Sadly the old routine about Beijing violating UN conventions - as if Israel cared about UN conventions or courts - has been made doubly redundant by the behaviour of the mad king, as he eyes off Greenland and sends in an oil drilling team...

Speaking of the mad king, the bouffant one was out and about, also subbing for the bromancer ...

Alliance bolstered at a time of terror being tested again
Although the US-Australia alliance still lives and grows under the AUKUS nuclear submarine program, there is a host of new threats and uncertainties a quarter century after 9/11.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

The bouffant one managed just a morsel, a two minute read, which by this point was all the pond felt like ...

The reptiles must have felt indifferent, judging by that excruciating collage deployed at the top of the yarn ... and things got worse from there, as the bouffant one went full on anniversary ...

On September 11, 2001, the terror attacks on New York and Washington upturned the world order, changed strategic priorities and ended the unipolar world position of the United States.
An unending war of terror and an unending war on terror began.
Coincidentally on the ground in Washington within sight of the stricken Pentagon, John Howard forged a unique bond with George W. Bush, which in turn founded a new, revived era for the US-Australia alliance and relationship.
Over the next three years the Australian prime minister and the US president would commit troops to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, seal a momentous US-Australia free-trade agreement eliminating most tariffs and commit to a joint venture to welcome China into the international order.

The reptiles shoved a couple of snaps in, much as you might stuff a chook with bread crumbs, in the hope of making it look like there was some substance to the yarn ... Then Chinese president Hu Jintao after addressing a joint sitting at Parliament House in Canberra in 2003. Picture: AP; A different geopolitical climate now with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

 

The bouffant one was gloomy:

The US, Australia and Japan were on strong terms and a less threatening China under Hu Jintao, who both Howard and Bush were keen to support, was admitted to the WTO.
Twenty-five later that world order has turned again: the Middle East is in conflict again with Australian support for the US in the Straits of Hormuz; Donald Trump has reintroduced tariffs, even on his closest ally; and a more aggressive, more repressive China asserts its power in the Pacific.
Although the US-Australia alliance still lives and grows under the AUKUS nuclear submarine program, the privileges of close alliance are being shunned, Trump’s erratic tariffs damage trade and create uncertainty, while Chinese influence and security threats grow in the Pacific.

Now desperate for a boost, the reptiles flung in a snap of the lying rodent, co-joined with a snap of 9/11: Former prime minister John Howard talks to News24 about his recollection of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

He's well on the way to mythical Ming the Merciless status in the hive mind.

The bouffant one hesitantly noted that the mad king might be a bit of a worry ...

Trump has so far proven impervious to Anthony Albanese’s appeal to recognise Australia’s long friendship and creates concern that even with AUKUS he will turn away from the Pacific and not pursue due deterrence against China.
Certainly the two ambassadorial point men at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Tom Schieffer in Washington and Michael Thawley in Canberra, are both concerned the alliance high point, post-2001, has passed and is under threat from Trump’s leadership style, and frayed defence and economic links, despite underlying strengths, and an unrestrained China which is becoming hostile towards Japan.
Thawley warns that the real strategic threat in the Pacific now is not the obvious pressure on Taiwan from China but the involvement of Japan in the support or defence of Taiwan.
“Then the issue for the United States won’t be does it abandon Taiwan. But, it’s going to be is it going to support Japan or not?” he told The Australian.
For Schieffer the change has been the change of direction under Xi Jinping after the decline of Hu.
As the focus returns to the 9/11 terror attacks 25 years on, there is a host of new threats and uncertainties in the US-Australia alliance.

True enough ...

The only droll touch came at the very bottom, as the reptiles hastily tried to make things good ...

The comedy? 

That was a link to an ancient Killer Creighton yarn from way back in 2020...

Democracy’s just fine, says Michael Thawley
Former ambassador to the US Michael Thawley has rejected ‘hysterical talk’ of a crisis in American democracy.
By Adam Creighton

That's what "full coverage" gets you? That's getting the "full story"?

Ancient Hegelian history from 2020, when there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then ... though it does prove the piquant stupidity of reptile hagiography.

So many detours, but eventually the pond had to get around to the "Ned" Everest ...

The header:  Pauline Hanson’s super gambit is loaded with dangers; Pauline Hanson has eaten the Liberals lunch, yet again.

No credit for the cornball collage: Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson.

"Ned" was mired in deep gloom, which might explain why he could only manage a five minute read, base camp to his usual Everest climbs...

Pauline Hanson has played her big gun and it is loaded with risk. Declaring “this is the people’s money”, Hanson has opened the door to an assault on national superannuation while she has created a shocking dilemma for the Liberal Party – how do they position against Hanson?
With this decision Hanson defines the contest between One Nation and Albanese Labor – this is short-term financial populism versus a long-run, compulsory saving, retirement policy. For every young voter Hanson wins she will lose other voters who distrust “robbing the future” by tampering with the system.
Hanson’s model is danger zone central. It is the last thing the Liberals wanted to see at this point: Hanson running policy on the right. Contrary to her claims, One Nation’s position will accentuate inflation, increase pressures for higher interest rates and diminish the value of retirement incomes. That’s a troika of losses.
She perpetuates the economic folly of putting more money into people’s pockets, bidding up demand when housing supply remains too weak. It is riddled with implementation and anomaly problems from tax to eligibility.
But Hanson and her Treasury spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, will offer a seductive bargain in a climate where cost-of-living pressures are set to intensify. The more people feel household financial pain, the more they will be attracted by Hanson’s “cash now” offer, a pitch that is simple and, to many people, too good to resist. Hanson says seven million people will be eligible, the criteria being mortgage holders and renters.
Superannuation is now guaranteed to become a frontline contested policy at the 2028 election. Both One Nation and the Labor government have willed this battle. Hanson has acted as predicted, seeing the pool of locked-up super funds as too enticing not to raid while Jim Chalmers has almost provoked the contest, declaring Hanson seeks “to end superannuation as we know it”, that she will leave workers with “less economic security, lower wages and less super” – and that the next election will be a referendum on super.

Sorry, "Ned", it's simple enough ...

There came a snap of Barners, Tamworth's never-ending shame, showing how to measure it out ... Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce during a press conference in the Senate courtyard. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

"Ned" took fresh fright ...

The Treasurer’s pitch is that being anti-super is being anti-worker. Labor’s tactic is to paint Hanson as the enemy of compulsory national superannuation, a system that enjoys strong and wide public support. Hanson knows this and was on the defensive, saying: “I’m not intending to shut super down.” That is technically correct, but the political campaign she has initiated has a much wider potential.
With the super contribution rate now at 12 per cent of income, Hanson and Joyce propose that workers be eligible to have up to 3 per cent redirected by their super fund to their bank account over the next three years, but taxed not at the marginal rate but at the concessional 15 per cent rate. That is surely a dubious proposition.
They say for a couple earning $168,000 the policy could deliver $4300 a year after tax and for an individual on $90,000 the benefit could be an extra $2300 annually after tax. Joyce summarised the selling point saying people won’t be better off in retirement if they can’t afford the mortgage or the rent. Chalmers replies that for every $1 taken out of super now, that means $3 less at retirement.
If Labor persuades a majority of people that Hanson wants to undermine or wreck the super system the government wins this contest big time. That is why the government is likely to announce another round of personal income tax cuts in the prelude to the election, the purpose being to show it cares about workers now and about their retirement income in the future.
Where are the Liberals? Hanson has eaten their lunch, yet again. Hanson recently beat the Liberals to the punch by announcing a 75 per cent cut in the tobacco excise, with Angus Taylor then announcing an 80 per cent cut to break criminal control of the illegal market in cigarettes. The Liberals have suspected a leak from their own ranks to Hanson’s party. Those fears are now deepened because the party under Taylor and former leader Sussan Ley has been considering its own opt-out from super.
The Liberals should have been leading this contest. For months they have boasted their economic credentials against Hanson. Yet reports in the Financial Review and The Australian reveal that the Liberals and the Coalition had an ambitious policy under Ley that involved allowing uncapped access to 3 per cent of superannuation annually with higher wages taxed at the marginal rate and the extra revenue being used to finance a personal income tax cut package.

Hang on "Ned", it's simple enough ...

Speak of beefy boofhead himself, who should turn up in the next snap? Angus Taylor during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

By golly, even by the reptile rule of selecting off snaps, that makes him look like a gormless mug of the first water ...

The pond plunged back into the "Ned" gloom pool ...

Whether the Liberals under Taylor keep the essentials of this package or modify it remains to be seen. Yet as long as the Liberals don’t release a policy, they guarantee that Hanson runs the super agenda from the right. In this situation it is Hanson, not Taylor, who sets the pace – and the obvious flaws in her policy and its selling won’t help the Liberals.
They can’t bring down a withdrawal policy weaker than Hanson’s because that surrenders the contest to Hanson, but if they bring down a more ambitious policy that contains its own political risks in an intensified attack from Labor.
The apparent certainty is that Anthony Albanese and Chalmers have their political onslaught sorted out – they lump One Nation and the Liberals together as constituting the right-wing assault on compulsory superannuation, even though the Liberals haven’t yet announced a policy.
Branding the One Nation policy “completely bonkers”, Chalmers told parliament on Tuesday of the Liberals: “They don’t want to reject it, they want to replicate it.”
Seeing the Liberals are being traduced for their unannounced position, logic would suggest sorting it and releasing it.
Prolonged silence seems a guaranteed negative. While there are similarities between One Nation’s policy and the reported Liberal position, there are also significant differences.
In public the Liberal response to Hanson’s policy has been equivocal. Taylor lamented its lack of detail. Housing spokesman Andrew Bragg called Hanson’s policy “a start” but a “sugar hit”. He said a “long-term” approach was needed and the task was to “best calibrate the retirement system and the housing system”. His implication: the Liberals must get more ambitious in redesigning super policy.
The Liberals badly need a breakout tactic.
They cannot allow Hanson to drive the narrative. That gives her more political oxygen as principal opponent to Albanese.

What? Pinching Pauline's "smoke more fags and die" policy, and her "burn a dinkum flag and die" policy isn't enough?

And is Bill, looking way the worse for wear, any solution? Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty.

Perhaps lay off the long lunches Bill?

In his final gobbet, "Ned" was forced into an awkward admission ...

The Liberal Party has long criticised Labor’s super policy that originated in the 1980s and 90s negotiations between Paul Keating and Bill Kelty, but they have singularly failed to devise a tenable revision. Having taken policies at the last two federal elections to allow withdrawals from super for housing needs, the Liberals can scarcely retreat now. But whether they have the conviction to bring down a policy that is both attractive and constitutes a workable modification to the current scheme is a herculean challenge for the party.
Superannuation is one of Labor’s deepest commitments and would be defended in an election campaign by the government, the union movement, the industry super funds and much of the economic establishment, let alone retirees.
But Labor needs to be wary of political overkill. The populist pitch hinges on the “your money” slogan that, by itself, opens the door to potentially bigger changes. Labor is vulnerable when it talks about super as a “national asset” that it can redirect, the rhetoric that can fuel a populist drive.

The pond will settle for that line: they have singularly failed to devise a tenable revision. 

Until they revise the singular notion that the beefy boofhead is a leader, they'll wallow in Barners' - Tamworth's enduring shame - and Pauline's wake ...

As for the full lyrics to that ancient song ...

Reptile Vomitoria (*copyright to Kez)

Down a Surry Hills laneway
Foul wind in my hair
Raw smell of vomítus
Contaminating the air
Up ahead in the distance
Appears a sickening sight
I feel unsteady as the lights grow dim
I want to stop out of fright

But I stand at the doorway
And press the ringer bell
I am wondering to myself
If I will ever come out of this well
As I turn the doorhandle
And step inside the hallway
All the lizards at their terminals
Look up at me and say…

"Welcome to the Reptile Vomitoria
Such an ugly place - such a loathsome space
Making up news at the Reptile Vomitoria
That is why we’re here - spewing lies and fear!”

It tickled the pond's fancy, even if it means that the tune for Hotel California has been stuck in the old noggin for hours. (Actually make that decades).

And now this, a double barrelled 'toon closer, on a matter studiously ignored by the lizard Oz..

And now this, because where would we be without a trolling loon of the first water?

The bromancer and Dame Groan firing from the hip, could the far right ask for more?

 

Why does the pond always put the tastiest reptiles last? Why do correspondents always have to wade through a turgid reptile stew to get to the dessert? Not today ...

The bromancer on Pauline and her consort, Tamworth's ineradicable, execrable shame? Straight to the top of the digital world ma ...

The header: A lesson from Germany: Demonising populist parties won’t improve mainstream politics; One Nation’s weakness isn’t extremism but lack of experience in government, lack of policy bandwidth and the tendency of its elected representatives to defect.

The caption for the clowns: One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson and MP Barnaby Joyce during a press conference in the Senate courtyard. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There might be a few stray readers who think the bromancer might be shocked at the triumph of far right, neo-Nazis in Germany.

Foolish readers. The bromancer is on a crusade to give far right extremists and populists a break ...

The slashing victory for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in the German state election in Saxony-Anhalt shows the utter folly of mainstream politics trying to demonise and exclude populist parties. This is true for One Nation in Australia.
German politics has been rendered disfigured and dysfunctional by its long and unsuccessful effort to demonise AfD. It has made the once fringe party stronger while depriving it of the experience of government that would make it more moderate.
Similar dynamics apply here. One Nation’s candidate won the recent Secret Harbour by-election with 39 per cent primary vote. It’s leading national polls across Australia.
All parties should be held accountable for their choice of personnel and policies. But there’s no Australian electorate where 39 per cent of Australians are extremists. It would be insane for the Liberal and National parties to put One Nation last on preferences. If One Nation retaliated, that would be a recipe for Labor to win almost every seat in the country. That’s not democratic
If One Nation were Nazis, there would be no choice but to do that anyway. But they’re not Nazis. There’s nothing at all in Pauline Hanson or Barnaby Joyce that justifies the tag “extreme right wing”.

Indeed, indeed. They are perfect warriors for the lizard Oz's ideological positions. 

How could any of that be extreme right wing? From a fear and loathing of furriners and Islamics to full blown climate science denialism, they're a perfectly rational and reasonable bunch ... if you happen to live in a hive mind.

The reptiles followed up with a snap of Ulrich ... Ulrich Siegmund, lead candidate of AfD, gestures on stage after initial results give the party 44.8 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt state elections. Picture: Sean Gallup / Getty Images

That prompted the pond to look up a profile of Ulrich and his chums ... Ulrich Siegmund, the smiling ‘popular kid’ who propelled the far right to victory in eastern Germany

...The politician advocates, among other things, for a much more restrictive immigration policy, increased deportations and a fundamental shift in state policy. Among his close associates are individuals who were actively involved in the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (HDJ), an organization banned in 2009 for its “affinity with National Socialism.” The group sought to raise children as “National Socialist freedom fighters” and taught minors what it called “racial science.” One of them is Patrick Harr, the parliamentary group’s press spokesman and Siegmund’s right-hand man. For Siegmund, however, these were merely “youthful mistakes” that have long since been consigned to the past.
The politician has also spoken positively about YouTuber Matthäus Westfal, known online as Aktivist-Mann. “There are a lot of good people providing information,” he said. Siegmund appears untroubled by the fact that the livestreamer was on the front lines during the attempted storming of the German parliament in 2020 amid mass protests against Covid-19 restrictions, and is known for his ties to Holocaust deniers.
Then there is Sebastian Schmidtke, a former federal vice-chair of the NPD, now known as Die Heimat, who has also reinvented himself as a livestreamer and was accredited at an AfD federal party conference. Siegmund appears to have a cordial relationship with the convicted neo-Nazi. Moreover, when asked how he personally views National Socialism and the Holocaust, and whether he would describe the years from 1933 to 1945 as “the greatest crime against humanity,” Siegmund responded evasively: “I do not dare to judge it. Because I cannot take the measure of all humanity.”

Exactly. Who could dare to judge a holocaust, especially one that might not have happened?

How could any reader of the Australian Daily Zionist News take offence at that? 

The pond could spot only one minor blemish ... In 2017, Siegmund left the Catholic Church. He has said that he still carries its values “in his heart,” but rejects the German institution that represents them.

That's okay. You can take the tyke out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the tyke, and in much the same way, you can take the alleged neo-Nazis out of the AdF but you can't take the AdF out of your alleged neo-Nazis. Or some such ...

What we need is better, more dinkum populism and extremism down under. Hearken unto the bromancer ...

Australia needs the best One Nation party it can get, just as it needs the best Liberal, National, Labor and Greens parties.

Precisely. In much the same way that the Weimar republic needed the very best Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei:

One Nation’s weakness isn’t extremism but lack of experience in government, lack of policy bandwidth and the tendency of its elected representatives to defect.
This is where Joyce is critical. He gives One Nation daily political presence. David Farley has the ability to make a big contribution from Farrer but has sent out disturbing, egocentric signs that he doesn’t want to be a team player. If he defects from One Nation, sooner or later, he will have hurt Australian politics, not helped it.

Come on chaps. Pull together. If you want to truly stuff the country in a coherent, organised way, you need to be bigots working together, or perhaps dip in for a share of a magic pud..

Hearken unto the bro:

In Europe, most right-wing populist parties have moderated considerably while retaining core commitments on touchstone issues such as reducing immigration. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is the leading stateswoman of Europe. No one could describe her as extreme right. Nigel Farage in the UK has recruited figures who would make a Reform government credible. Farage still has many problems and establishment efforts to keep him out of office are huge. But he’s not remotely an extremist.
In France, Marine Le Pen is leading national polls. The AfD is Europe’s most problematic case. They are also leading national polls and form the official opposition nationally. But all the other German political parties except one are committed to a strategy of the so-called firewall. This means they will not form a coalition at state or federal level with AfD and will not accept its votes in parliaments, determining always to construct parliamentary majorities without AfD.

Talk about great advice, and of course the reptiles had to feature Nigel, no doubt busy making plans to score more billionaire funding ... Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage addresses delegates during day two of the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham. Picture: Anthony Devlin / Getty Images

There's a 'toon to go with that ...

Why is anyone surprised? Back in his early days, the bromancer was a disciple of Santa, and that led to some peculiar ideas.

The pond rarely quotes Phillip Adams, but there he was back in 2015 in the lizard Oz... 

Santamaria’s back in the news. As well as being hero and mentor to a younger Gerard (Polonius that is) he remains an inspiration to Tony Abbott, while journalist Greg Sheridan is also sharing memories...
...Gerard made much of Franco declaring Spain “neutral” during World War II. (What kind of Fascist would do that?) The truth is that, after a meeting in France, Hitler refused to accept Franco’s terms for full membership of the Axis — which included Spanish control of French North Africa. Another problem was a profoundly different view of Catholicism. Nonetheless Spain’s “Blue Division” would help Hitler in his war on the Soviets while Franco offered Hitler naval facilities for warships and U-boats. Franco also supplied Himmler with a list of 6000 Jews for the Final Solution, though he did not hand them over. (It should be acknowledged that some Spanish embassies in Europe provided some Jews with diplomatic protection.) And he considered blocking Allied access to the Mediterranean by seizing Gibraltar. What kind of neutral would do that?
Franco’s influence lived on in other totalitarian thugs — one who attended his funeral was his biggest fan, General Pinochet.
I’ll concede that Santa wasn’t alone in his support for Franco. So for a while was Churchill. And the western democracies kissed and made up during the Cold War, with Eisenhower visiting the Caudillo de España in 1953.
Franco a fascist? Never.

Of course he wasn't, at least in the bromancer's formative years, and thus black can be made white, and a bashing of furriners, in the manner of Herr Adolf's rise to power, can be made to seem perfectly normal ...

This policy has been an unmitigated disaster for Germany and a blessing for AfD in every way. As AfD support has grown, the great natural opponents in German politics, the Christian Democrat conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats, have had to form deeply unnatural coalition governments just to secure a parliamentary majority.
This has rendered German politics completely incoherent. Parties with directly contradictory platforms must, post-election, form compromise coalitions, time after time. This alienates voters who can’t get any change by opting for any mainstream party. And it reinforces the AfD message that all the other parties are the same, the “uniparty”, only in it for themselves and completely indifferent to voters’ wishes.

Carry on in a far right way and you can end up with a better kind of uniparty ...

How soon before the beefy boofhead steals all One Nation's policies in his quest for a uniparty?

What the bromancer wants is an experienced, able, competent party of extremists ...

There were times when the centre right could have taken AfD in as a junior coalition partner in some states or at least a party on whose votes it was willing to rely for what we call confidence and supply. This would have made AfD take responsibility for some mainstream decisions. It almost certainly would have domesticated AfD to some extent, meaning AfD got used to horse-trading within a semi-coherent centre right tradition.
The same thing happened on the other side with the German Greens. It’s hard to believe, but once the German Greens were almost as bad as Australia’s Greens are today. They were effectively domesticated by the responsibilities of government. They now support NATO, support Ukraine, as well as supporting the environment.
AfD has been allowed to maintain the purity of the impotent, as Gough Whitlam once described it. That means their support has steadily grown. Their signature issue is immigration. They hate the size and scale of the immigration Germany has experienced, especially from North Africa and the Middle East.

Is there anything more problematic to a lizard Oz journalist than a black or brown person? Not really ... Marine Le Pen

Colour the bromancer Marine adjacent, AfD curious ...

A fear of black people is perfectly reasonable, and it's one of the great policy failures of Australia that Aboriginal people weren't "bred out" or assimilated, or just made to go away somehow, or so the hive mind might think, and then there are those bloody tolerant loons who want to ruin the country's whiteness:

That’s not a Nazi position. The failure of mainstream German parties to deal with immigration has fed directly into AfD’s rise. AfD wants to deport people who are in Germany illegally and force other asylum-seekers who are in Germany legally to work for welfare benefits. These too are not Nazi positions and it’s mad to demonise them.

They're just your average hive mind readers of the lizard Oz. Now let's hear some more tolerance for bigotry ...

AfD wants to do a lot of culture wars stuff, some of it a bit nutty. It wants to remove gay pride flags from public schools. It’s a good thing that democracies are tolerant of everybody’s sexuality. But it is not a necessary condition of democracy that gay pride flags must fly from all public schools.

Get lost gay people, with your moaning and whining, but is there anything at all that troubles the bromancer? There was one minor billy goat butt, an awkward affinity for a sociopathic invader intent on resurrecting an empire ...

There are, certainly, elements of the AfD identity that give rise to legitimate concern. One of their worst features is their sympathy for Russia and Vladimir Putin. 

Steady, there's a billy goat butt for that ...

But the European establishment drove some right-wingers into Russian arms. 

And there's your standard defence. The left, or the centre, made me do it. I didn't want to be a fascist, but what's all this nonsense about having to get along with the gays next door?

Mainstream banks for a time wouldn’t deal with Le Pen’s movement in France, and Farage was briefly de-banked in Britain. Le Pen’s movement thus went to Russian banks. But banks should not have this absurd political censorship role in any democracy. Behaviour like that is a good argument for renationalising banks or regulating them to prevent such nonsense, just as so many Australian banks won’t finance fossil fuel projects. Who voted for the banks?

Indeed, it's not just a wrecking of the country, but the ruination of the entire planet by refusing to accept the science of climate change. Where's the harm in that ... Pauline Hanson speaks to the media in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

There's a 'toon for that ...

Once a Franco apologist, always a Franco apologist ...

The same dynamics that operate in Europe operate in Australia, though less intensely. The obscene Bondi massacre led to a huge rise in One Nation’s support. At first this seems strange. What’s the connection?
The Bondi massacre convinced many voters that the two major parties had both made a mess of the nation. Look what you’ve done to my country, was voters’ agonised cry. And the one figure in Australian politics who has stood most strongly against unregulated immigration from the Middle East, and from South Asian nations with strong Islamist traditions, is Hanson. Her position may have been right or wrong but it has been clear. Immigration populists are reshaping Western politics. That represents historic failure by mainstream parties. Shooting the messenger is no solution.

Um, perhaps the bromancer shouldn't raise the spectre of Bondi and get the AdF started on the subject of the Jews ...

The spectacular electoral victory of the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt represents a threat to both Germany and Europe, reminding us that antisemitism is on the rise again in Europe. “AfD often employs camouflaged antisemitic ideas and slogans or tolerates antisemitism in its midst, but at times it also disseminates overt antisemitic propaganda,” notes a Report from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) by Lars Rensmann.
“AfD’s election win in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt marks a grim milestone: The party is now within reach of forming Germany’s first far-right state government since the Nazi era,” AJC posted on X on 6 September. The AJC “has been sounding the alarm on the AfD’s rampant, intrinsic, and foundational antisemitism that is deeply embedded in its authoritarian-nationalist politics. The AfD’s rise remains a threat to German democracy and the future of Europe.”
Similar concerns are advanced by Yonathan Arfi, President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF).
“The AfD, a shadow over German democracy, a threat to Jews! The AfD is a party with neo-Nazi undertones, which claims, among other things, to put an end to “the teaching of guilt for the Shoah,” Arfi posted on X, highlighting that those in France who rejoice at the AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt cannot claim to fight  antisemitism in France. (here)

And why does the pond usually place the immortal Rowe down the bottom? Not today, not when he's featuring the bromancer's friends ...

And now the reptile hits, the top of the reptile charts, keep coming...bring on the groaner for a groaning ...

The header: Working from home is no way to revive our dismal economy; Is there a correlation between the decline in the quality of policy advice from the public service and the prevalence of WFH?

The caption for that splendid, uncredited collage of a Victorian fiend, and a stock shot of a young missy hunched over a computer ... ‘The harmful impact of the WFH legislation on private sector employment and investment is still dismissed by the Carroll Labor government home laws,’ writes Judith Sloan.

What's the bet that Dame Groan pounded out this column while working from home? It's a stretch to substitute her for the female figure in the collage, but work hard, and it can be done.

Sure, she could have hopped into a cab and headed into a News Corp office and pounded away.

Or she could have sensibly saved the cab fare (is she a tram person?), and wrote her yarn in the comfort of her home, filing it via the full to overflowing intertubes, pausing only to make herself a coffee at her own expense, so she could get fired up in a caffeine way ...

But then the reptiles always follow the chant "what's right for me is certainly not right for thee":

Working from home is very popular among workers. Forget the grind of the daily commute; fit in a Pilates class, grab a coffee from the local cafe, pick up the kids from school. How good is WFH?
But just because something is popular doesn’t mean governments should impose an obligation on employers to offer WFH. This is a message that sits uncomfortably with most Labor governments.
In the case of Victoria, the Allan Labor government thought it should take it a step further and impose a statutory right of WFH for workers – a minimum of two days a week for full-time workers and a pro-rata number for part-time workers.
Under the legislation – which is dubiously based on anti-discrimination laws – employers would be required to foot the bill for any set-up costs for those employees working from home as well as any ongoing costs. Liability for any occupational health and safety mishaps would vest with the employer. Employers who could demonstrate the unworkability of employees working from home could seek an exemption, but the default position would be the minimum WFH entitlement.
Any dispute would be sorted by an administrative tribunal, with employers required to establish their case that workers attend the workplace – a clear reversal of the onus of proof. One can only imagine the queue that will quickly form for adjudication of disputes about WFH.
Notwithstanding the economically beleaguered position of Victoria, the former premier could see only the political benefits of mandating WFH. The fact the Liberal Party was wedged by the proposal was simply icing on the cake.

On the upside, if Dame Groan did write this at home, she wouldn't have been confronted by the deplorable sight of furriners littering the streets, always distressing to her and the rest of the hive mind, and so she wasn't provoked into another diatribe about how furriners are ruining the country.

This was a more modest explanation of how the Labor party was ruining Victoria. Remember Jacinta (so sorry, no room for comrade Dan) ... Jacinta Allan resigns at a press conference. Picture: Jason Edwards

How all the reptiles yearn for a golden age, a time when everybody could congregate in offices, and indulge in the classic political games that made certain TV comedies great hits ...(looking at you Gervais and Merchant):

It is worth recalling where the WFH debate began. Before Covid, WFH was rare. At the time of the 2016 census only 2 per cent of workers worked from home on the record date.
Just before the onset of the pandemic about 10 per cent of workers worked at least one day a week at home. This percentage is now closer to 40 per cent. In the public service the proportion is higher again, close to two-thirds.
In the offices of some government departments and agencies, a cat can be safely swung and not crash into any workers. Junior workers may decide to go into the office for a bit of mentoring only to find the supervisory staff are all working from home.
There are of course some jobs that are more amenable to WFH. Clerical, repetitive tasks where external monitoring is possible and inexpensive often can be undertaken at home. But if the task can be done in Balwyn, it can probably be done in Bangalore.
By contrast, there are plenty of jobs that simply can’t be done from home, including those requiring contiguity between worker and client/patient as well as manual work in general. Surgeons can’t work from home; neither can bricklayers.
By favouring those workers who can work from home, there is a danger that resentment builds among those who can’t.
Working from home also doesn’t encourage teamwork and informal training; Zoom meetings are no substitute for face-to-face contact. Is there a correlation between the decline in the quality of policy advice from the public service and the prevalence of WFH?
The impact of WFH on productivity is a complicated story, although the avoidance of the daily commute has an upside. But if we consider what has happened to productivity since WFH has skyrocketed, it’s hard to make the case that it has been a boon at the macro level.

The avoidance of the daily commute has an upside?

So she did write this piece at home?

Quick, an AV distraction ... Victoria’s working from home legislation debate has been delayed as businesses pile on Premier Ben Carroll to scrap the laws entirely.

Some might be wondering why this old biddy still tenaciously holds onto a place in the pantheon of lizard Oz columnists, instead of some early career hiring to take a fresh look at life. 

Blame WFH ...

A recent large-scale study examined the combined impact of artificial intelligence and WFH on junior workers. The hypothesis is that these are the two factors that may damage the job prospects of young people. Using data from the US, Britain, Canada and Australia, the conclusion is that “WFH is a robust predictor of the decline in early-career hiring”.
So, what’s the situation in Victoria? If Jacinta Allan had her way, the legislation would’ve passed and come into effect this month. She was never keen on consulting with employers, regarding them as self-serving and irrelevant. Their many complaints landed on deaf ears, notwithstanding some convincing campaigning headed by the resuscitated HR Nicholls Society.
Allan’s replacement as Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, has been prepared to meet employers and has noted their suggestions for several amendments to the bill. While he has pushed the start date to July 1, the legislation has still been put to the parliament. It has passed the lower house and is awaiting consideration by the Legislative Council. There is a motion that the bill be the subject of an inquiry but it’s not clear this motion will be passed.
Time is running out before parliament rises and we are in election campaigning season. Labor’s political objective was to force the hand of the Liberal Party to vote against the bill, thus revealing to the electorate its refusal to meet the preferences of workers while siding with employers.
The clumsy handling of the WFH issue by the federal Coalition at the last election campaign has partly guided its thinking. The harmful impact of the WFH legislation on private sector employment and investment is still dismissed by the Carroll Labor government or seen as unimportant. It would be just another state government intervention that has damaged the economic prospects of the state while sending its fiscal position into dangerous territory. The ratings agencies are watching anxiously.

Great news, the HR Nicholls Society has been resuscitated! Watch out Albo ...Anthony Albanese during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And now a final gobbet from the groaner, with the pond still wondering if she actually stayed at home to scribble this offering ...

In case you think this is just a Victorian folly, the reality is that a statutory obligation to provide WFH would likely flow on to other states, in part because of national employers as well as unions keen to spread this entitlement.
The most economically efficient WFH outcome is when employers can freely negotiate with workers to reach mutually beneficially arrangements. This will generally take the form of hybrid work, where workers work some of the week at home but the rest is undertaken in the workplace.
Any outside imposition of WFH entitlements will undermine the right of employers to insist on workers coming into the office. Victorian Libs don’t need to object to WFH; they need to oppose statutory mandating.
When the Prime Minister rattles off a range of workplace perquisites – WFH; the right to disconnect; elimination of junior rates of pay; same job, same pay; and the list goes on – there is an implicit assumption that these conditions can simply be mandated at no cost to employers or the economy. If he understood markets and how the economy works, he would know this is not the case.
Our dismal record on productivity and falling living standards tells us otherwise.

And so another reptile has enhanced the country's productivity by spending an entire column bleating into an uncaring universe about the unfairness of it all. As for helping living standards, if you buy a copy of the tree killer edition, you can use it as mulch and grow your own vegies.

Relax, the pond didn't forget the lizard Oz headlines ...

How they love that snap of Barners eyes wide shut.

This day the reptiles were valiantly fighting a rearguard action, against the best advice of the bromancer ...

EXCLUSIVE
Spotlight on taxpayer grant as Hanson insists ice allegations a ‘personal matter’
Pauline Hanson’s hand-picked Victorian frontman faces mounting scrutiny over a $13,500 first home owner grant debt and explosive drug and conduct allegations from his former partner.
By Jamie Walker, Rosie Lewis and Elizabeth Pike

A teaser trailer ...

There's more at the archive, but sadly the archive refuses to save the best bits ... so here they are ...

And it would be remiss to ignore Jamie's contribution, though it might have compounded the bromancer's horror at the cruel way that One Nation is sometimes treated ...

COMMENTARY by JAMIE WALKER
Pickering’s past should have raised red flag for leader
Pauline Hanson claims Warren Pickering’s past was none of her business: the long-suffering voters of Victoria might disagree.

If Jamie keeps on rabbiting on like this, the bromancer will have to have words with him...

And so on, and now to celebrate Dame Groan and the bromancer a little more. 

Release the 'roos!

Another mob the bromancer needs to get behind (there are English subtitles available):

His Lordship's on parade and Killer Creighton is too, but will correspondents show up for the lizard Oz circus?

 

The pond has decided to describe Major Mitchell as unreadable, indefensible and irredeemable.

Setting aside his usual bout of Zionism, this day the Major decided to go down the Fauci rabbit hole, and there was no way the pond was going with him ...

Fauci deceit doesn’t fit the ABC narrative
Anthony Fauci’s diary reveals he privately doubted the wet-market Covid origin story in January 2020 – yet the ABC continues to defend him.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

The pond should have added tiresome. What next? A treatise on how mad King Donald actually won that election?

State regime media Faux Noise and Sharri - full disrespect - routinely go down the Fauci rabbit hole, but that way lies madness.

Speaking of the mad king, luckily there were other reptiles eager to step forward, and who better to show the way than Lord Downer?

The header: Yes, America is unreliable but we still need it to lead. No one else will; Some politicians and academics say we should have an independent security and foreign policy. I’m not sure what planet they’re living on.

The caption for the snap of a downcast mad king, setting the tone for His Lordship's work: Donald Trump disembarks Air Force One at Morristown Airport. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photo

Lord Downer spends a bigly four minutes in fulsome praise of the United States, if the pond might take the Miriam-Webster definitions "characterized by abundance", though "generous in amount, extent or spirit" or "exceeding the bounds of good taste" or "excessively complimentary or flattering" or "aesthetically, morally or generally offensive", as in the Congreve sense that His Lordship is inclined to fulsome lies and nauseous flattery ...(here) 

This month is the 75th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty and the 25th anniversary of the one time Australia has invoked the treaty. It’s served us well. But we should be clear-eyed about America. It is the indispensable power but it is unreliable.
Let’s look at the Americans’ unreliability: they turned up three years late to the First World War. They turned up two years too late to the Second World War. They sided with Nasser against their allies, Britain and France, when they tried to resist the illegal nationalisation of the Suez Canal. They refused to help their close allies during confrontation with Indonesia. They abandoned their allies, the South Vietnamese, in 1975.
They threatened to punish president Bashar al-Assad if he used chemical weapons, then did nothing about it when he did. They did nothing about Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, and more recently they abandoned their allies in Afghanistan, handing the whole country over to the bloodthirsty, extremist and totalitarian Taliban.
Since then, they have imposed tariffs on all of their allies, being particularly vicious towards the Canadians, and they even threatened to invade Greenland.
So yes, the Americans can be unreliable, and expect them to be unreliable in the future. They, after all, have their own political cycles and challenges. What’s more, they have their own social and political culture, which is starkly different in many ways from our own.

Don't be fooled by His Lordship's deployment of a warm wet lettuce leaf in that mild spanking. There was a billy goat butt coming, and here it came...

But for a century or more, the US has been indispensable. Since 1941, it has been the bulwark against extremist totalitarian ideologies. It was central to the defeat of Nazism and fascism in Europe and Japan. More than any other power, the US held back the tide of the equally cruel, illiberal and totalitarian ideology of communism during the Cold War, and finally, it was the Americans, more than anyone else, who liberated Eastern Europe and freed much of the world from the scourge of communism.

His Lordship was so desperate, he had to reach back to that notorious socialistic commie pinko prevert FDR, notorious for thinking the government had a role in governing ... President Franklin D Roosevelt prepares for a radio address. Picture: Supplied FDR Library

It's been a long time since any politician has promised and delivered a new deal, let alone a offer re-burnishing of that old deal (damn you intrusive AI, the pond didn't mean a refurnishing), but time moves on ...

In our own part of the world, it was American intervention and indeed sacrifices that saved South Korea. Although the Americans didn’t save Indo-China from communism, for 10 years they bought the rest of Southeast Asia time to assemble the anti-communist coalition known as ASEAN.
For all its faults and mistakes, America led the world on behalf of liberal democratic societies against extremism and ideology.

At this point His Lordship delivered a classic billy goat ...

But what of today?

Indeed, indeed, and as the talk is of the works of the warrior class, there might be many answers, all of them positive and full of hope for America's role in the world, as envisioned by a part time Faux Noise host, Colonel Vodka...

His Lordship turned to wrestling with Vlad the sociopathic invader:

The great existential struggle against Soviet-led communism has been replaced by a more complex series of threats. They are threefold. First, there is Russia’s attempt to re-establish as much of the Soviet Union as it can, starting with the illegal invasion of Ukraine.
If Russia successfully takes Ukraine, then it will almost certainly move on to other former Soviet republics, particularly in Central Asia. More than that, if it wasn’t for the Americans underpinning NATO, then Russia would almost certainly claim back the three Baltic republics. There is only one country that has the capacity to stop them, and that is the US.
If the US retreated altogether into itself, Russia would prevail. The Europeans have helped the Ukrainians, of course, but because they pocketed a peace dividend after the end of the Cold War and spent their money instead on welfare and windmills, they need America to underwrite their effort.
Russia would not dare attack any NATO country because Vladimir Putin knows only too well that would lead to an earth-shattering reply from the US.
Although Russia is a nuclear power, Putin knows from the Americans that if he were to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, then the Americans would simply devastate Russian forces in and around the periphery of Ukraine.

The pond is always charmed by the notion of "tactical nuclear weapons", but would mad King Donald actually respond to his best buddy, or would General Bonespurs do yet another TACO, and leave the devastated ruins to his best buddy?

Hopefully no-one will have to answer that question ...Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping inspect an honour guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Picture: Alexander Kazakov / AFP

Having finished with Vlad, His Lordship turned to other matters...

Second, there is Iran’s persistent determination not just to become the dominant power in the Middle East, suppressing its Sunni Arab neighbours, but to complete the elimination of the state of Israel. Without the Americans, Iran would achieve its objectives. Since 1948, the Americans have given the Israelis the wherewithal to survive. More than that, the American umbrella has allowed the Gulf states to develop not just their oil and gas reserves, but build modern economies.
Third, there’s China’s determination to rewrite the rules-based international system and reduce the countries of the Indo-Pacific region to little more than tribute states. China claims the whole of the South China Sea and Taiwan. All that stands between China’s ambitions and an independent, open Indo-Pacific region governed by international law is the regional balance of power, and that can only be maintained with the presence of the US.
Go almost anywhere in the ASEAN countries and ask thoughtful people in their foreign ministries or in think tanks whether the region would benefit from the withdrawal of the US from its alliances with Japan, Australia and The Philippines, and closing its bases. They will all tell you they want America to continue to provide the balance of power the region desperately needs. Russia, Iran and China may be very different countries with divergent interests, but they are all supporting each other. Russia and Iran are heavily dependent on the Chinese market for their hydrocarbon exports. They are what finance their war efforts. China is, in effect, the ATM to these countries.

At last His Lordship turned to the elephant in his room:

Much of the antipathy towards America is driven by a dislike of Donald Trump. It would be a major mistake for our country to confuse the personality of the current President with the geopolitical importance of maintaining a strong alliance with the US. President Trump is not the cause of a changing America. He is a symptom of a changing America.

What a relief to Canadians and Mexicans. 

Elbows up Canucks, rest in peace knowing he's just a symptom rather than the actual disease, as the reptiles delivered a most poetic distraction ... Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photo

His Lordship ended with a flourish ...

During the Cold War, liberal democratic America and its allies faced literally an existential challenge from the communist world. Having prevailed in the Cold War, the US faces no existential threats at all. Consequently, it’s going to be harder to keep it engaged in world affairs, but we, as America’s ally, should do all we can to make sure it remains engaged.
Some politicians and academics mouth a phrase that Australia should have an independent security and foreign policy. Well, I’m not sure what planet they’re living on, but we live in a very tightly interlinked world.
Liberal democracy may not be as threatened as it was during the Cold War, but it still has to be prepared with endurance, patience, courage and perseverance to confront the enemies of freedom. We still need America to lead the way. No one else will. And reflect on the consequences of that.

The pond isn't inclined to reflect, but as the immortal Rowe notes, Ukraine might need to reflect on the consequences of the current administration "leading the way" (and so might anyone being ethnically cleansed from Gaza, the West Bank or southern Lebanon) ...

Before moving to the bonus, the pond should note that the reptiles have at last taken off the gloves.

While the desperate, craven and pathetic Liberal mob led by the beefy boofhead spend their days filching One Nation policies - Coalition denies flag-burning ban an attempt to undercut One Nation as Labor says push has ‘element of desperation’ -  the reptiles have gone on the offensive:

Juicy stuff, more than enough to stir the loins of the hive mind...

The pond will leave the rest to the archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Drugs, deviance’: Questions One Nation frontman will not answer about his past
Warren Pickering rejects explosive historical allegations from his former partner – supported by his own handwritten letters – just weeks before Victoria’s state election.
By Jamie Walker

But the pond does regret that the archive unhappily failed to save a couple of graphic inserts which show the lizard Oz graphics department at its finest ...

The lizard Oz goes full tabloid dirt disher!

The pond should also give an honourable mention to simplistic Simon:

How ‘bond vigiliantes’ have put profligate Canberra on notice
An interest rate freight train is hurtling towards the federal government.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

Just because the pond has assigned the bulk of him to the archive doesn't mean the pond wasn't impressed by that recycling of that classic Jimbo collage at the top of his piece...

What a classic it is, up there with Albo looking uncertain, hesitant ...

If you can't remember seeing that in the pond, you've been a derelict herpetology student.

And with jihad awards done, the pond could move on to Killer Creighton of the IPA.

Rather than his usual beat - how strange he didn't match the Major on misrepresenting Fauci - Killer this day tried his hand at economics, with a standard visual atop his piece ...

Some might find the tendency of the lazy reptiles to repeat themselves endlessly a tad unnerving...

... but the pond thinks its exactly what the hive mind wants. Mindless repetition ...

Hey nonny no, on with Killer:

The header: Why GDP is no longer an accurate measure of living standards; GDP evolved from one useful measure of largely private sector economic production into economics’ universal scoreboard.

The caption for the artwork which made the pond wonder if Frank got residuals, because he frankly should: Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers. Sources: iStock and Supplied. Artwork by Frank Ling.

Killer could only manage three minutes of actual economics, which some might find a relief ...

With the budget well in the rear-view mirror, Jim Chalmers has increasingly become chief putter of lipstick on the Australian economic pig. The Treasurer and his small army of media and political advisers – and perhaps the bulk of his 1600-odd staff at the Treasury – must dread the drip feed of conventional economic statistics. And so it was last week when the latest national accounts showed gross domestic product grew 0.4 per cent in the three months to the end of June, to finish the full financial year up 2.1 per cent.
According to the Treasurer, this demonstrated the economy’s robustness and resilience, as every set of figures always has for every treasurer. But they were a dismal set of results. The quarterly “growth” was propped up by government spending while private investment didn’t increase at all. Per-person output barely rose and it is still lower than in June 2022, having shrunk in 10 of the past 16 quarters.
But the bigger problem is the ongoing obsessive focus on GDP. Twelve years ago I wrote GDP was “a harmless artefact of a bygone era and at worst a ruse underpinning the fallacy that bureaucrats can measure and politicians can control economic activity”. People cite GDP, which is increasingly made up of government spending, without even understanding it; and its shortcomings have become even more glaring as a measure of anything useful.
GDP has evolved from one useful measure of economic production decades ago into the universal yardstick against which almost everything else is judged: debt, greenhouse emissions, productivity and even sharemarket and housing values.
I’m not the only sceptic. Barely a day goes by when some politician or analyst decries the relentless increase in debt to GDP somewhere in the world. “We’re becoming Argentina” is the warning.
It’s a funny claim given Argentina defaulted in 2001 when its debt to GDP was about 60 per cent. Meanwhile, Japan’s ratio now exceeds 250 per cent and America’s 100 per cent. Britain’s debt-to-GDP ratio has roughly doubled over the past 40 years to around 95 per cent.
This all sounds rather scary but using government interest repayments as a share of GDP or national financial wealth paints a dramatically less alarming picture, according to economists Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen in their recent paper, Why Care About Debt to GDP?
“While the debt-to-GDP ratio has recently surpassed levels of indebtedness not seen since World War II, the interest-to-GDP ratio reached comparable levels during the 1985-1995 period. Most strikingly, the debt-to-equity ratio appears to show no clear trend and, if anything, has recently fallen to below-average levels,” they write.

In classic reptile fashion, while Killer was busy invoking his 12 year old thoughts, the reptiles didn't bother with a link, though it was easy enough to find, and it showed how true Killer has stayed true to his past ...

And while the reptiles did provide a link to the lizard Oz editorialist blathering on and sounding just like Killer ...

... the reptiles studiously avoided the obvious link.

The one thing they didn't provide a link to?

That paper by Berk and van Binsbergen, Why Care About Debt-to-GDP?, which is easy to find in pdf form...

The reptiles' resolute refusal to allow anyone trapped in the hive mind to actually leave is irritating on many levels, not least because it always brings the lyrics of Hotel California to mind (no need to expand the suffering by repeating them) ...

There came a final image, with a caption suggesting that Jimbo was working harder with lipstick than mad King Donald, and the likes of Scott Bessent, Kevin Hassett and Howard Lutnick glossing up the American economic pig ... Jim Chalmers has increasingly become chief putter of lipstick on the Australian economic pig. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP Image

Could it have been a story featuring Jimbo without a snap showing him downcast, defeated and gloomy?

More to the point, is it the job of the Treasurer to talk down the Australian economy? The pond supposes that at some points it might be handy to label Australia a banana republic, but these days that's what lizard Oz columnists are for ...

Different measures produce very different narratives. In another recent study, When GDP Misleads, released in June, Stanford economist Charles Jones and Philip Trammell argue against using real GDP per person as a proxy for living standards.

How hard would it have been for the reptiles to provide, or for Killer to insist on, a link showing his source, especially as it's easy to find in pdf outside any paywall, When GDP Misleads: Inferring Living Standards from the Value of a Statistical Life.

If the pond had shown this sort of carelessness as a first year university student, it would have flunked out even more than it did ...

And so to a final bout of GDP bashing, with the pond leaving it to correspondents to judge this bee buzzing in Killer's noggin - what a relief it isn't vaccines, face masks or Fauci:

GDP per capita has been used to show how Europeans’ living standards have shrunk below even those of Alabama, the poorest US state. Yet if your chosen measure implies life in impoverished, fentanyl-riddled Mobile is superior to that in Barcelona, it tells us more about the statistical poverty of GDP per capita than living standards.
Using a broader method of analysis related to the value of a statistical life, based on individuals’ willingness to pay for a small reduction in mortality risk, the two economists find that lifetime welfare in the US has increased more than fivefold since 1940. Conventional GDP-based measures, by contrast, imply living standards have around doubled since then.
Their assessment suggests conventional GDP-style measures may have massively understated improvements in living standards.
Remember, more purchases of goods and services is “good for GDP”. Yet the modern smartphone has replaced the camera, video recorder, encyclopaedia, street directory, calculator, music player, alarm clock, torch, diary, newspaper and countless other devices that previous generations purchased separately. Free digital services that millions of people now use every day generate no economic output at all. “A natural implication of this structural transformation (toward such services) is that measured GDP would likely be substantially higher if we had never made the structural transformation.”
This should be the death knell of GDP as a measure of living standards. And that’s before we even consider the rapid march of artificial intelligence through the economy. Jones, one of the world’s top economic historians, argues AI is likely to become the most transformative technology of the modern era, but it won’t appear in GDP per capita.
Technological capability can advance at breathtaking speed while measured productivity and GDP rise only gradually. Artificial intelligence seems likely to magnify that phenomenon.
Imagine if every household has access to a highly capable AI tutor, accountant, software engineer, travel agent, translator and preliminary medical adviser at little or no cost.
Perhaps GDP has gradually become something it was never intended to be. It has evolved from one useful measure of largely private sector economic production into economics’ universal scoreboard, a statistic expected simultaneously to measure output, prosperity, living standards and even social progress. There are far better measures for all those other things.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute for Public Affairs.

There are better measures?

On those Killer was silent, but the pond can think of a few...there'll be much social progress for the bots ...

Steve takes to the piano again, as you might be inclined to do when living in Vlad the sociopath's Russia ...