In which the pond descends into a craven swamp, and no amount of other distractions can remove the stench of deep regret ...

 

Amazing really that a feature film about Nuremberg, featuring Rusty, should be slated for release, while at the same time the disunited states are trying to revive the defence of "just following orders" as a valid way to justify war crimes...

At least it allowed the pond to kickstart this dismal Thursday outing with a 'toon:

So many things to thank News Corp for, but the pond must draw the line at petulant Peta, always a blight on Thursday.

The petulant one was trying to dash the lettuce's hopes ...

Bowen’s a gift but Libs have to get house in order
Nothing unites a political party more than the sense that it’s now in a fight with the other side rather than within itself.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

Sure, there's a rich irony in the way that the onion muncher's puppet master can entirely forget her dismal, thankfully brief, rule ... but it wasn't enough for the pond to go there, with just enough strength left to summon up a sample ...

...Within the partyroom there’s also a disagreement over tactics based on different understandings of political dynamics. The Liberal Left thinks the overall Liberal vote is maximised by being Labor-lite because more conservative Liberals have “nowhere else to go”, they argue, so their votes will nearly always come back via preferences; at the same time, they argue, they can win over Labor voters on the basis that the Liberals can better implement leftist policies. But this ignores the Liberal Party’s entire history showing that the way to come back from opposition – witness the success of Robert Menzies in 1949, Malcolm Fraser in 1975, Howard in 1996, and Tony Abbott in 2013 – is to be a strong and clear alternative to a failing government.
Compare the Howard-era Liberal frontbench with its current successor. For all their occasional disagreements over policy and differences of outlook, the likes of Peter Costello, Abbott, Peter Reith, John Fahey, David Kemp, Nick Minchin, Philip Ruddock and even Amanda Vanstone, and of course Howard himself, were all very substantial public figures.
Even allowing for the nostalgia factor, it’s hard to see comparable talent today. Yet much the same could be said of Labor, whose own historically dismal primary vote is masked by reliable Greens’ preferences. Where are the latter-day Labor equivalents of Paul Keating, Gareth Evans, Peter Walsh, Lionel Bowen, John Button and Graham Richardson, let alone Bob Hawke?
While neither main political party is getting the same calibre of person into public life, that’s more of a problem for the Liberals because they’re currently out of office in almost every jurisdiction in the country and suffering near-terminal decline at a party organisational level due to the protection racket run to protect insiders rather than attract real talent.
In the 1960s, when Australia had half its current population, the NSW division of the Liberal Party had 50,000 members. When Howard won the Bennelong preselection in 1974, there were 22 other candidates; yet when Joe Hockey vacated the once-safe Liberal seat of North Sydney in 2015, there were just three candidates to be the next Liberal MP. Today, the NSW and Victorian divisions each claim about 10,000 members but less than half would be sufficiently active to turn up at events, let alone actively campaign. By contrast the Canadian Conservative Party has more than 400,000 members, meaning that on a proportionate basis the Australian Liberals should have 250,000 members – at least four times the claimed national membership.
In most states, the organisational party tends to be under the thumb of a state parliamentary leadership that’s usually more interested in a quiet life than attracting new members, encouraging policy ideas or vigorous campaigning. In NSW, especially, there are personality-based factions more interested in preserving their own fiefdoms than winning elections, as last year’s debacle over local government preselections shows
While creating a political contest based on strong alternative policies is the parliamentary leadership’s main job, revitalising the organisation and dramatically boosting the party’s membership can’t be neglected if the Coalition is to make a fight of the next election.

What a relief that these days the pond can palm her off to an (intermittent) archive and correspondents can take their pleasure, or not, as the case may be, and the pond thanks them for their attention to this matter ...

Stay strong, lettuce, that word salad must surely help your chances ...

Meanwhile, there came a tasteless headline conjunction ...

Commentary by Geoff Chambers
It’s Jim versus the ‘inflation dragon’ as Labor battles to put out fires
The Treasurer is facing a make-or-break year in 2026, as his ‘inflation dragon’ threatens to torch Labor’s economic agenda.

That reference to putting out fires was immediately followed by news of a real and death-dealing fire ...

DEADLY FIRE
Dozens dead, hundreds missing as blaze ravages Hong Kong high-rises
Almost 300 people are missing and at least 36 dead after bamboo scaffolding caught fire and consumed a Hong Kong apartment complex.

Marvel at the juxtaposition, as the reptiles ripped into Jimbo with one of their classic visual montages ... and yes, to add to the dissonance, they had to throw "heat" into the opening header ...

Really reptiles? 

Dozens dead, and all you can do is joke about "heat" and "putting out fires"?

Besides, if the pond wanted to send up Jimbo, it would turn to the immortal Rowe, master of the dragon arts ...

Meanwhile, and as usual, the Australian Daily Zionist News managed to feature stories distracting from the dismal fate of the West Bank and Gaza ...

BOOK LAUNCH
‘We saw evil, we didn’t turn away … and we will never stop the fight’
Stamp out the ‘poison’ of anti-Semitism: Australia a 'different country' since October 7, Premier warns at book launch
NSW Premier Chris Minns has called for governments to eliminate anti-Semitism’s ‘poison’ while launching a book documenting The Australian’s coverage of the October 7 Hamas attacks.
By Liam Mendes

A nation of shadows: Australia’s Jewish crisis
'An attack on everyone': NSW Premier Chris Minns joins push to defend Australia's Jewish community
Jewish children now walk to school under armed guard in Australia. Is this the country we want to be?
By Caroline Overington
Literary Editor

It's a pond obligation at such moments to draw attention to the latest crisis in Israel, courtesy Haaretz ...

Netanyahu's Lingering Grip on Power Hinges on Delegitimizing Israel's Arab Voters and Their Leaders
The chances that the prime minister will manage to outlaw the United Arab List are slim, but his government will wage a smear campaign against a bloc that could be a major obstacle to victory in the election. As a bonus, this would also hamstring the opposition (*archive link)

While at Haaretz enjoy the live updates, including but not limited to ...

And with  its contractual duties done, the pond could turn to the craven Craven, recycling the "Mean Girls" slur in a way only a craven man could ...

The pond realises that this breaks a long standing rule of not featuring anything to do with the latest spin off on the Lehrmann original - sequels rarely appeal - but in the pond's defence (a) it's not by Dame Slap and (b) by ruling out everybody and everything else, the pond was left with diddly squat and craven contemplations ...

The header: Mean Girls remake is coming to political theatre near you, It is bad enough that Larissa Waters and Zali Steggall’s words are consciously cruel and calculated to cause maximum hurt. But when you add chronic stupidity, you enter the world of the schoolyard bully who always comes bottom of the class.

The caption: Zali Steggall MP holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

That doesn't mean the pond has to like it. 

The pond applied peg to nose, put on a face mask sure to rouse Killer of the IPA's ire, and used a pair of tongs to pick up the dung for inspection.

It is, according to the reptiles, a 5 minute wallow, and the pond held breath and plunged in:

Australian politics is often like one of those loathsome, slimy, multi-eyed sludge-creatures that live in the lightless depths of ocean trenches. No matter how low it goes, there’s always some deeper, more odorous pit in which it can wallow.
Greens leader Larissa Waters made this quite clear this week when she demanded former Liberal minister Linda Reynolds and Reynolds’s former chief of staff Fiona Brown donate to charity any damages awarded to them in the litigation avalanche around the Brittany Higgins saga.
Naturally, teal Zali Steggall sashayed into the cesspit, claiming scrutiny over claims of unfair treatment by Reynolds and Brown amounted to the continued harassment of rape victims.
Who said an Olympic skier who soared all the way to a bronze medal – the sports equivalent of the “conscientious student” award in grade three – could not aspire to a Nobel Peace Prize?
Reynolds has already won her libel case against Higgins and Higgins’s serially invisible husband, David Sharaz. She has been awarded large damages and costs in a court of law.
Reynolds’s political career is over and she has developed serious heart issues, but now she should donate her damages to some support group for victims of violence, presumably one approved by Waters. Seemingly, the wages of comprehensive judicial vindication are politically directed bankruptcy.

What to say, except that the pond has nothing to say, except to propose that this is perhaps the most tiresome reptile jihad in recent times, unrelenting and distracting, as the reptiles' in their jihad frenzy rehashed tired, ancient images, Brittany Higgins (C) leaves the ACT Magistrates Court with members of her legal team in Canberra, October 2022.

The pond felt soiled and immediately repented, but was now in blood stepped so far that, should the pond wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er ...

The case of Brown, however, is much worse. Found to be utterly faultless by Justice Michael Lee in the world’s most ludicrous libel action brought on by Bruce Lehrmann, she lost not only her career but also came close to losing her life. Shattered and out of work, she was shunned by colleagues and former friends. She became the leper. By her own admission, she contemplated suicide.
It is hard to think the saccharine venom of Waters and Steggall will improve her condition. Or that they care. It is bad enough that their words are consciously cruel and calculated to cause maximum hurt. But when you add chronic stupidity, you enter the world of the schoolyard bully who always comes bottom of the class.
The claims of Reynolds and Brown have nothing to do with sexual violence, rape victims or any crime committed against Higgins herself.
The core of Reynolds’s case is that Higgins defamed her on several occasions by claiming, untruthfully, that Reynolds was part of a political conspiracy to cover up what happened on that fateful night at Parliament House. Both Justice Lee in the Lehrmann case and the Supreme Court of Western Australia came to the same conclusion.
What in the name of Perry Mason has this got to do with harassment of rape victims or sexual violence? It is a case about someone being falsely accused of something she never did by someone who ignored several judicial warnings to stay away from defamation and contempt of court. Brown is not even suing Higgins. She is going after the commonwealth for its dismal failure to protect her – faultless as she was – in the maelstrom following Higgins’s disclosures and allegations of political conspiracy.

So many things going on in the world ...

...and yet this is the best the reptiles can manage? Senator Linda Reynolds leaves court with her lawyer Martin Bennett. Picture: Colin Murty

Talk about deeply depressing ...

Her claim has as much to do with victims of sexual violence as it has with the war in Gaza.
Indeed, it is grimly amusing to imagine Waters applying her own compensatory logic to herself. Perhaps, with Reynolds in mind, she could consider donating her salary, in the best feminist manner, to sister politicians who have been cynically pulped by the political process? She might go further and even establish her own charity for the support of women whose mental health has been destroyed as a casual victim of political violence.
This whole gruesome saga entered Australia’s unwilling consciousness as the Mean Girls affair. This was a nod to the 2004 Lindsay Lohan film about a school that specialised in the production not of good citizens but of seasoned tormentors.
It seems to have been compulsory viewing for female members of the Labor caucus. At least the Hollywood teenage title watered down what was actually going on, but there were no “mean girls” involved in this drama with the conno­tation of adolescent immaturity. Instead, there were seasoned female ministers of the crown, bent not on meanness but nuclear-scale nastiness.
The original cast of the Canberra revival of the Lohan classic were Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Both savaged Reynolds over the non-existent political conspiracy to silence Higgins.

On and on he blathered, on and on came the snaps, Fiona Brown (c) with her barrister Dominique Hogan-Doran (r). Picture: John Feder

The pond has learned its lesson, as the craven Craven droned on ...

Unsurprisingly, there was suspicion they had been forewarned and pre-armed with inside information from those around Higgins. Each denied it with the hauteur of a Spanish duchess ejecting a polecat from her farthingale. Gallagher did so inside parliament.
But it quickly emerged that both had at least some general knowledge of the brewing cataclysm, and though they denied weaponising it, Reynolds was still hit by numerous Exocets launched from their direction.
As their level of knowledge crystallised, there were the inevitable claims they had misled parliament, Gallagher in the chamber itself.
Naturally, the Albanese government constituted a privileges committee to consider the activities of Gallagher. Or not. Four years after Higgins made her first formal complaint, Gallagher sails on, untroubled, still Finance Minister and kicking heads.
But the worst thing to emerge from the Higgins fiasco – apart from the assault itself – has been the utter perversion of the legal process by a supposedly neutral commonwealth.
For Reynolds, it was the bizarre action of the law officers of the crown effectively taking over her defence against the Higgins compensation claims, hijacking her lawyers and settling the matter for $2.4m, with the unavoidable public implication that Reynolds was a lowdown conspirator. Of course, the actual payment to Higgins was authorised by the omnipresent Gallagher.
But what was done to Reynolds was just an entree to the legal dissection in store for Brown, the unarmed civilian trapped in political warfare.
Remember that the commonwealth is meant to be a model litigant. It does not take unfair advantage of its resources. It does not pound opponents into submission. It does not flood litigation with taxpayers’ money or string things out so that litigation becomes a noose for its opponent.

At last there was a final snap, Minister for Finance Katy Gallagher

And a final gobbet ...

In accordance with this solemn undertaking, the commonwealth is bludgeoning Brown with a legal cricket bat. It has several vastly expensive KCs all over the case like fleas. It has managed to spin out the case until 2027.
Presumably it hopes that by then Brown will settle for a handful of beans. Or perhaps just give up under the weight of unbearable mental stress. These filthy tactics give cynicism a bad name.
The real lesson is what happens when politics becomes just a game of ego, to triumphantly win or savagely lose, like a Roman gladiatorial spectacle or a fight between mangy dogs.
When that happens, people cease to be people and become simply objects or numbers, to be assailed and disposed of according to the political advantage of the moment. Looking at the whole sorry tale, it is hard to believe Reynolds and Brown were ever seen as more than inanimate pawns, to be moved and sacrificed as desired.
The truly awful thing is that Higgins herself almost certainly was in the same category: useful but ultimately disposable. Apparently the political microcosm that is Canberra is not merely mean. To mangle Hobbes, it really is nasty and brutal, and on decency, it is very, very short.
Greg Craven is former vice-chancellor of Australian Catholic University.

Never again. 

That reference to Hobbes at the very end, and tawdry references to such matters as Roman gladiators and mangy dogs, made Our Henry look like a master of classical invective.

The pond feels extremely soiled, and repeats that promise.

Never, ever again, not even if it's to highlight the barking mad musings of a fundamentalist tyke...

As for the bonus? 

What else litters the Augean stables?

When egos come before patient need, something is very wrong
The reasons behind Queensland’s heart transplant service shunning the world-leading technology researchers within its own hospital developed is a sorry tale of deep dysfunction.
by Natasha Robinson ...

Nah, just a two minute bleat mainly of interest to those living in the deep north ...

What else?

Robert Irwin is conserving nature and revolutionising masculinity
Winning moves of Robert Irwin, Travis Head revolutionising masculinity
The Crocodile Hunter’s son is cha cha-ing onto the world stage and Travis Head is batting his way into the history books, but their success is nothing compared to how they are helping men.
By Jenna Clarke
Culture Writer

Well, at least it's possible to see why the pond ended up with that mangy craven hound.

Cricket passes as culture in the lizard Oz? 

Well, it's probably more entertaining than The Crocodile Hunter was, a movie which the pond once briefly collided with, only to be reminded that working actors like Magda Szubanski and David Wenham would pretty much turn up for anything ...

That left the bouffant one as the very short 2 minute bonus ...

The header: The Coalition want to paint the Energy Minister and COP negotiator as ‘Blackout Bowen’, Chris Bowen – ‘El Presidente’ of COP31 and tagged ‘part-time minister and Blackout Bowen’ – was left adrift and in the dark when the lights failed during the Parliamentary question time on Wednesday.

The caption for the comical snap of cavorting clowns: Members of the Opposition turn on their phone lights after some of the lights in the chamber turned off during question time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House on Wednesday. Picture: AAP

The result was pretty thin gruel, but then it's been a dismal day ...

Chris Bowen – “el Presidente” of COP31 and tagged a “part-time minister and Blackout Bowen” – was left adrift and in the dark when the lights failed during the Parliamentary question time on Wednesday.
While the political spotlight has suddenly switched to the economy as inflation soared to 3.8 per cent, Bowen remained centre stage because the highest level of inflation in 16 months was a result of a 37 per cent increase in electricity prices.
Unfortunately for Bowen, tagged “Blackout Bowen”, even the weather gods – or perhaps foreign hackers – continued to give the embattled Sussan Ley political gifts and blacked out the lights and left the Energy Minister in the dark.
After missing Monday’s House of Representatives question time while in transit from the UN climate change COP30 summit in Brazil, Bowen tried on Tuesday to deflect claims his appointment as the COP31 president meant he was only a “part-time minister because he was a full-time president”.

The reptiles provided only one distracting snap, a cute attempt to make Sauron's helper look as deaf as a beatle ... Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during question time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire

But if the pond wanted to send up that mob, it would turn to the infallible Pope ...

Sadly the bouffant one was a wit-free void ...

On Wednesday, while Jim Chalmers faced the economic music and households who are unlikely to get any further mortgage rate relief, it was Bowen who was grilled over power prices.
The Treasurer was able to soften the blow ahead of the jump in inflation by warning people of an “uptick” in the Consumer Price Index as power subsidies are withdrawn, but Bowen can’t soften the blow as energy prices continue to rise.
Asked repeatedly about when energy prices will fall, Bowen has been unable to answer for the simple reason there is no likelihood of them falling in the foreseeable future.
The jump in inflation is a big hit on Labor’s economic management, with the expectation the next movement of interest rates will be up. But it is also a big hit on Labor’s underlying energy and climate change policies.
What’s worse for Bowen is the conflict between his role as Energy Minister and the COP global negotiating president goes beyond the simple question of time devoted to each job and to the central aims of the COP31 over the next 12 months.
Bowen’s signing of Australia on to the Colombian-led Belem Declaration group with 23 other nations on the weekend pits him and Australia against the final communique of COP30 in Brazil, with a specific commitment to phase out – not transition – all fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas.
This commitment means Bowen is on a path to go down a more radical path for a fossil fuel-free future in 2026 and in direct contrast to Anthony Albanese’s emphatic declaration Australia needs gas for “transition” decades ahead and there will be no change to coal exports.
Although Bowen will not personally attend the first Belem Declaration group meeting in Colombia next year – being held at a coal-exporting port as a symbol of opposition – as he tries to maximise time in Australia, the principle remains in place.
He also faces calls from climate change activists on one side to ensure Australia adheres to the more radical aims of the Belem Declaration and criticism from Coalition energy spokesman Dan Tehan, who has declared: “Bowen is now completely conflicted.”
As the parliamentary year draws to a close, it’s clear Labor wants to get to the Christmas break and start its planned assault on the Coalition’s dumping of the 2050 net zero carbon emissions target in the new parliamentary year after hitting a Bowen-block this year.

And what of the lettuce and its chances?

How is lactuca sativa going to perform in the New Year? Will it take Susssan down?

And what of the comedy abroad? 

Where's the bromancer when he's badly needed?

Trump, 79, Has Baffling Plan to Rename the Republican Party After Himself (*archive link)

Meanwhile, how to speak with forked tongue ...

‘Traitor’: US representatives call for Trump envoy Witkoff to be fired after leaked Kremlin call

Republicans and Democrats warn Witkoff ‘cannot be trusted’ after reportedly advising officials on peace plan

In a recording obtained by Bloomberg of a 14 October phone call between Witkoff and Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Witkoff said peace would require Moscow gaining control of Donetsk and potentially additional Ukrainian territory.

“Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere,” Witkoff said, according to Bloomberg’s transcript. “But I’m saying instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here.”

Witkoff also gave Ushakov tactical advice, including how the Russian leader should approach the issue with Trump. It included suggestions about scheduling a Trump-Putin phone call before the planned visit of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to the White House.

On Wednesday, Ushakov appeared to confirm the call’s authenticity to Russian state television, suggesting the leak was meant to “hinder” negotiations. During the conversation, Ushakov said Putin would congratulate Trump and call him “a real peace man”.

As the pond tried to pucker up, hapless Wilcox arrived to remind the pond of notions that must remain unmentionable in reptile company ...

In which the bromancer tracks the war with China, and "Ned" natters about the battle between Susssan and the lettuce ...

Some days the pond knows exactly the feeling recorded by George Packer in his review of Laura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right for The Atlantic:

...The author’s background perfectly positions her to deliver this lively, devastating taxonomy and critique of MAGA’s ideologues. She was originally trained in Straussian scholarship—a reading of classical political thought that criticizes the modern turn away from the sources of moral authority toward liberalism and, in Strauss’s view, nihilism. His approach has had a deep influence on leading conservative American intellectuals of the past half century, including Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa, the godfather of the Claremont Institute. Nearly a decade in these academic circles makes Field a knowledgeable guide to a subject she takes seriously. She’s also a Canadian woman, a double identity that puts her at a skeptical distance from the more and more extreme world of the American right.
Her exodus, as she tells it, began in 2010, when she was a fifth-year graduate student, during a lavish banquet at the University of Virginia where she was seated next to an important member of the host organization’s staff, who described meeting First Lady Michelle Obama: “Very tall, very impressive. I’d really like to f*ck her.” Field excused herself to go to the restroom. Gazing in the mirror, she wondered: “What on earth am I doing here?”

Reading the lizard Oz some days, descending into a maelstrom roughly equivalent to Dante's hell, the pond is inclined to phrase it a little more strongly: "What the f*ck am I doing here?" (*blogger bot approved)

Wednesdays always brings the pond closer to this feeling of fraught existential alienation from the hive mind ...and so it came to pass this day ...

There doesn't seem to be any sign of the latest reptile jihad ending, with Rice on the boil with an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
Legal fee secrecy in Higgins fallout as Labor wheels out top silks
Labor’s legal fee secrecy in Brittany Higgins case fallout
Heavy-hitting barristers commanding up to $25,000 a day have been hired to fight Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown – but the Albanese government won’t say what it’s paying them.
By Stephen Rice

Luckily the pond's rice cooker has an auto switch, though it did mean that Dame Slap was able to take a break - so much jihadism, so little time - and indulge in her usual favourite sport, a bit of black bashing ...

The hustle for special rights is a hoax
The Victorian Treaty is evidence of a wider trend where race alone becomes a reason to treat people differently.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Even luckier for the pond, there was no need to go there, because the war with China by Xmas had suddenly heated up, with the chance of King Donald selling the hive mind down the river causing the reptiles grave anxiety...

Ben was packing it ...

DIPLOMACY
PM has a secret China chat, as Xi’s Trump call sparks Taiwan fears
Anthony Albanese has refused to reveal details of secret talks with China’s No. 3 leader as Xi Jinping positioned Taiwan as central to relations with Donald Trump.
By Ben Packham

Young Will of Glasgow was on the case ...

How worried should we be about Xi’s call to Trump?
The US president has given American allies and partners much to fear as he goes over their heads to deal with China’s leader. For Beijing, it is a dream scenario.
By Will Glasgow
North Asia Correspondent

Why were they worried? All was well ...

As always, the pond knew that the bromancer would have the right advice, the correct insight, but alas, this day he confessed to being in the dark ...

Luckily - it was a day for pond luck - his befuddlement and confusion only took 3 minutes without illustrations, save the opening flourish of the deviant conspirators in action ...

The header for the darkness in the morning story: Stakes are high, but we’re left in the dark on Australia-China talks, Anthony Albanese has refused to reveal what he discussed with China's third most senior leader, prompting opposition claims his government is Australia's ‘least transparent’ in history.

The caption for the deviants hiding in plain sight: Anthony Albanese with Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress chairman Zhao Leji at Parliament House on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

The bromancer immediately jumped into bewildered high gear:

Anthony Albanese doesn’t think the Australian people have any business knowing, even in the broadest sense, what topics he discussed with China’s third most ­senior leader, Zhao Leji.
His disdain for public scrutiny is perhaps less Donald Trump and more Joh Bjelke-Petersen – “don’t you worry about that”.
Trump for his part doesn’t think American voters, or indeed anyone else, should know that he had a substantial discussion with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the future of Taiwan, which Xi has repeatedly threatened to take control of by force. Xi announced that discussion, while Trump was silent.
Sussan Ley is surely right to label the Albanese government “the least transparent” in Australian history. It offends democracy that the Prime Minister engages in substantial talks with a political leader at the very top of the Chinese system and doesn’t think we have any business knowing what they discussed.
That’s the way dictatorships ­behave. It’s not the way of democracies, although it’s certainly Beijing’s preference: government to government deals without the pesky business of public disclosure or democratic debate.
The world must also now wait with some apprehension to see what Trump may have conceded to Xi on Taiwan.
In the week when Trump has tried to betray Ukraine with a proposed peace deal that is effectively a surrender to Vladimir Putin and a de facto invitation to Moscow to complete its invasion of Ukraine at a later date, Trump has now won warm words from Xi after a secret discussion on Taiwan.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not necessarily a good thing either.
Taiwan may be the one issue on which Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, was much stronger than Trump himself. Biden so often declared the US would defend Taiwan if Beijing attacked it – breaching the official US doctrine of strategic ambiguity on that precise question – that it can only be that Biden was internationally sending a message to Beijing. That message was one of deterrence. The whole US system, the Pentagon, the State Department, overwhelming congressional opinion, is committed to keeping peace in the Taiwan Strait by maintaining a stable system of US-led military deterrence against China.
On the very rare occasions when the Albanese government has a spasm of strategic honesty, it has sometimes said the same thing (though generally without mentioning China). Indeed, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has declared Canberra’s commitment to a system of deterrence.
For those connoisseurs of strategic irony, even Zhao’s visit to Parliament House was enough to spark a warning to MPs and others to keep their mobile phones switched off, because of the heightened danger of Chinese cyber hacking occasioned by the visit.

After that ferocious foray, the bromancer revealed he'd been reading the wrong sort of people, dastardly wretches likely to undermine his undying loyalty and fealty to King Donald, what with bolting down a little too much Bolton.

Thanks to King Donald, the world knows he's a real sort of lowlife, a sleazebag, a very dumb person, and a victim of TDS, but the bromancer seemed to take him seriously:

But back to America. The effort of the US system to maintain deterrence is always at risk of being undermined by Trump, who is happy to do personal deals that contradict the thrust of US policy, as we have seen in his grotesque accomm­odation of Putin.
John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser in his first administration, recounts in his memoir Trump comparing Taiwan to the tip of a felt pen while China in contrast was the entire Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Bolton wrote: “As I left the White House, there was speculation about who Trump might abandon next. Taiwan was right near the top of that list.”

What next? Will the bro bolt and go full Bolton, and explain how King Donald is stunningly uninformed and easily manipulated by foreign adversaries, and is completely unfit for office, without the competence to carry out the job, a man running a retribution presidency?

Trump has said he’s unlikely to defend Taiwan militarily in the event of aggressive Chinese actions but would use economic sanctions, although he’s confident Beijing won’t act militarily.
Yet the sanctions Trump has used against Russia have been wholly ineffective.
Xi sometimes flatters Trump and sometimes intimidates him – as Beijing’s rare earths embargo, since lifted, illustrates.
Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, has been blasted by Beijing because she said Japan would help defend Taiwan militarily if necessary. She, like Australia traditionally, wants to support and strengthen US-led deterrence – for Beijing’s conquest of Taiwan would be strategically disastrous for Japan, Australia and, ultimately, America itself.
But does Trump believe in this deterrence? Alas, we know as little about this as we know of Albanese’s discussions with Zhao.

He knows so little, even less than he usually knows before flying off into a bout of paranoia and hysteria?

Talk about unenlightening, talk about disappointing. 

When the bromancer's lost for words, a little gloom comes into the pond's world ...

Luckily the immortal Rowe and Wilcox managed a little light on a matter that the reptiles had skirted around...

But on the upside the bromancer had contained his anxiety to a bare 3 minutes, thereby creating space for "Ned" to natter on, as he weighed in on the fierce contest between lettuce and Susssan ...

The header: Liberals’ act of self-harm risks party’s extinction, How bizarre is it that conservatives rail against the folly of being Labor-lite but seem happy about being Hanson-lite? How does that work for the Liberals? (*Ned in the archive for anyone wanting to follow the links)

The caption for brave Susssan stealing a march on the lettuce: Question time in the House of Representatives as Opposition Leader Sussan Ley speaks. Her media performances selling an energy policy she didn’t want have been impressive. She has been aggressive in outlining an economic policy agenda, loaded with dangerous ambition. It is extraordinary this has been virtually ignored. Picture: NewsWire / David Beach

"Ned" was gloomy, in a way that both the pond and the lettuce found peculiarly satisfying:

It is all self-inflicted. As the year ends the Coalition sits on 24 per cent of the primary vote – the lowest in Newspoll history – pointing, without recovery, to extinction as a governing party with the senior partner, the Liberal Party, burdened by a leadership crisis, also self-inflicted.
Revival to achieve a competitive position is not impossible but hardly likely. The Liberals are guilty of the deepest self-harm displayed by an election-defeated party over the past half-century. In truth, the party is clueless about how to extricate itself from the identity crisis it has engineered.
That crisis was revealed at the May 2025 election defeat. It is far deeper today, as documented by the polling slide. Its origins lie in the emotional and intellectual agitation of the Australian centre-right in response to the election humiliation and, above all, the conservative breakout to remake Liberal identity.
The triumph of the conservatives has been stunning – they carried the Coalition and the Liberal Party room to declare political war on net zero at 2050; they subverted reducing emissions as a mechanism to combat climate change; their purpose is to limit renewables and promote fossil fuels; they champion a large-scale reduction in immigration; their tactics helped to ferment a divided and disrupted party over the past several months; the upshot was to discredit in the public’s mind the already vulnerable first female leader of the party, Sussan Ley; and with the enthusiastic backing of most of the conservative media Ley has been reduced to an interim status, awaiting her political execution sometime next year at the hands of a conservative successor.

The reptiles paused to insert a gallery of rogues: Arriving at the Liberal party room: Senator Jessica Collins, left facing the camera, Angus Taylor, Senator Sarah Henderson, Andrew Hastie and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

That sighting seemed to trigger "Ned":

Many conservatives are pleased, believing this is progress. It is trite to state the obvious: none of this needed to happen. What comes next? When Ley narrowly defeated Angus Taylor 29-25 as leader, future rivalry was assured. But instead of offering a nominal veil of unity, the party, assisted by Ley’s own mistakes, chose the option of massive ill-discipline triggering a collapse in Liberal Party standing only to find that neither of the potential challengers, Taylor and Andrew Hastie, actually wanted the political odium of doing the deed at year’s end.
So the Liberals stagger onwards. Much of the party along with the media won’t let the leadership issue die. But this ugly inheritance raises only more ugly issues. The conservatives calculate they need to wait longer until the party’s fortunes are so dire that even the moderates are conscripted to eliminate Ley.

That line, Much of the party along with the media won’t let the leadership issue die, inspired the lettuce.

If not by Xmas, then surely in the New Year?

As if to ram that hope home, the reptiles featured Susssan herself, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley slams Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for promising Australians that electricity and energy costs would come down, despite them increasing by 40 per cent. “Australians deserve affordable energy and responsible emissions reduction,” Ms Ley said during a press conference on Monday. “The Coalition knows that you can’t have both, but we will prioritise affordable energy.”

"Ned" stayed resolute, standing tall with plucky Susssan:

But Ley won’t surrender easily. Her media performances over the past fortnight selling an energy policy she didn’t want have been impressive. Who, pray, would be a better salesperson? The Liberals have no John Howard or Tony Abbott available to take command. Any newly elected conservative leader in 2026, after liquidating Ley, will face a herculean job achieving a united party and persuading the public the Coalition is a viable alternative.
As these events unfolded, the structural woes of the re-elected Albanese government deepened dramatically. Australia is locked on a low-growth path, apparently unable to resurrect productivity, facing meagre gains in living standards, the cycle of interest rate cuts over or nearly over and Labor’s energy transition discredited by rising power prices, uncompetitive industry and unachievable emission reduction targets.

Focus on the enemy! 

"Ned" was going so well, then for some unearthly reason, the reptiles felt the need to go full irrelevance, by dragging in the narcissistic onion muncher, always wanting to get all the attention for himself, Then Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott speaks during question time at Parliament House in Canberra.

"Ned" did his best to ignore jibber-jabbering, gesticulating man:

It offers a golden opportunity for a credible opposition. The Liberals need to decide their core purpose. Is it to wage an ideological battle within the centre-right to convert the party into a legion of conservative crusaders or is it to appeal to the Middle Australia voters they have so spectacularly lost?
If the answer is the former then the Liberals are effectively finished over time as a majority governing party. But they will have some compensation: their depiction as heroes by the pro-Trump populist conservative media that believes Australia must find its own way to bottle the spirit of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. It is time to say again: that doesn’t work in Australia’s preferential voting system, something Labor understands perfectly.
This type of conservative cultural mentality has two consequences. First, it makes Pauline Hanson more acceptable to conservative voters as she campaigns against net zero and immigration. How bizarre is it that conservatives rail against the folly of being Labor-lite but seem happy about being Hanson-lite? How does that work for the Liberals? The symbolism of Barnaby Joyce’s expected defection to Hanson will only encourage voter defection from Coalition to One Nation.
Second, the conservative decision that policy action on climate change must be reversed or limited is already unleashing a populist hostility towards much of mainstream Australia’s concern that climate change is real and needs to be met with meaningful action. Just six months after the 2025 election it seems a forlorn prospect that the Liberals will win back any of the currently held teal seats at the next election. How smart is this tactic? It has the fatal consequence of allowing the teals to prevail at a third election with the risk of the permanent loss of these seats. And it invites the teals and their backers such as Simon Holmes a Court to look to fresh acquisitions.

Poor "Ned", still tormented by the way his American-owned company pays homage to assorted populists, US President Donald Trump listens as Nigel Farage speaks during a Make America Great Again rally in Phoenix in 2020. Picture: AFP

Great, an excuse to slip in a Luckovich, showing Donald with his real bestie:

"Ned" looked to the future, a new zeitgeist:

The future of the Liberals was defined recently in speeches by two conservatives, Taylor and James Paterson, both saying the indispensable need for the party was to represent and uphold its two traditions – classical liberalism and conservative faiths. Saying the Liberals must retain both traditions, Taylor told the author: “It’s not the Liberal Party if we don’t.” Precisely.
Their message: there is no alternative. Paterson rejected any UK type Farage-lite populist identity. On economic policy, Paterson said the Liberals must stand by free markets, and on cultural policy they must champion conservative faiths. These are the conservative realists. Taylor and Paterson repudiate wild recent talk about a split in the party.
Obviously, that would consign the country to the Labor Party for the duration. While nothing short of madness, it typifies an aberrant populist view in some quarters that a new zeitgeist beacons and that the Liberals must rededicate themselves and polarise the nation in the noble cause of fighting the tyranny of the left. That misreads Australia and is their path to doom.
Provided the Liberals can get the balance right between strong alternatives to Labor – as distinct from stances that unnerve the voting public – they have a chance to recover. That means a credible energy policy, a reduced but responsible immigration intake, an economic policy based on spending restraint, enhanced productivity and tax relief, and a cultural agenda anchored in patriotism and social cohesion.

The reptiles kept all the hits rolling, though the pond must fault them for not dragging in a snap of the lying Bennelong rodent, preferring instead Peter Dutton from the deep north...

Must we be reminded?

Peter Dutton was the least popular leader at a federal election in four decades
Peter Dutton was the least popular leader to go to a federal election in at least four decades, a long-standing survey of voting trends has revealed, with women in particular turned off by him and the Coalition’s policy offerings.

"Ned" wrapped up proceedings by talking of cults, apparently unaware that he himself was in a hive mind cult:

While Ley was too passive during the internal energy debate, she has been aggressive in outlining an economic policy agenda, loaded with dangerous ambition. It is extraordinary this has been virtually ignored. In her economic speeches, Ley has pledged a personal income tax cut at the next election, a pledge Abbott avoided when he won in 2013. (Abbott actually increased personal tax in his first budget.)
She put industrial relations back on the agenda, an option Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton all refused to do. And Ley signalled in her commitment to small government and spending restraint she would welcome and defy the inevitable Labor scare campaign triggered by her fiscal responsibility pledge.
These high-risk in-principle economic pledges are far more substantial than the net-zero debate that has gobsmacked the nation for months. What is going on in this crazy country? Our politics seem driven by cults – if the cult is that Ley stands for nothing then the cult must prevail over the reality that contradicts it. Will a new leader stand by Ley’s economic promises or chicken out? Or maybe in the current situation of the Liberals it doesn’t even matter.

How weird did this outing get?

In his very last sentence, "Ned" provided a link to an earlier 9 minute ramble by himself, proving that navel gazing and fluff gathering remains the way forward in the lizard Oz hive mind...Angus Taylor and James Paterson have emerged as voices of clarity amid Liberal Party turmoil, delivering a unified vision

If that beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, shown gazing off into the ether, is the future, then it's a fair bet the lettuce will have a new rival in the future.

You see, for all "Ned's" kind words, hopes and dreams, Geoff was chambering an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
Vision and drinks: McIntosh woos Liberal MPs looking for leadership
Amid ongoing speculation about Sussan Ley’s leadership, Melissa McIntosh hosted up to 40 Coalition colleagues for drinks, not far from the Opposition Leader’s Christmas media reception.
By Geoff Chambers

Still trouble at mill, or at least at scheming drinkie poohs ...elbows up lettuce!

To be fair, the pond should have noted the story that was top of the reptile digital world early in the morning (and sill running strong at time of writing)...

It was the lead EXCLUSIVE in a proud day of reptile EXCLUSIVES ...

EXCLUSIVE
COP president in residence: Bowen 747 faces delay
COP president in residence: Chris Bowen faces delay to climate summit
Chris Bowen’s international climate role has sparked a dramatic parliamentary showdown that forced the minister to abandon plans for a crucial April summit in Colombia.
By Sarah Ison and Dennis Shanahan

On the other hand, the pond only copped to that story so it could segue to the immortal Pope 'toon for the day ...

And so to an early morning after dark segment.

The pond hopes that vulgar youff left the site long ago because the pond wanted to pay homage to the poetical skills (allegedly) of Robert Kennedy ...RFK Jr.’s Sex Poetry Is Sophomoric Cringe: Author (*archive link):

Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest. 

Drink from me Love. 

I mean to squeeze your cheeks 

to force open your mouth. 

I’ll hold your nose 

as you look up at me 

to encourage you to swallow. 

‘Dont spill a drop.’ 

I am a river. 

You are my canyon. 

I mean to flow through you. 

I mean to subdue and tame you. 

My Love.

What to say? What could possibly be said? 

Best instead to link to a profile by Michael Scherer in The Atlantic, Why Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So Convinced He’s Right? How an outsider, once ignored by the public-health establishment, became the most powerful man in science

Scherer ended up sounding baffled, which is pretty much how any outsider feels contemplating King Donald's court and his assorted minions ...

...as we sat in his living room, I realized that Kennedy was making an argument I had not previously understood—a policy claim, not a factual one. He was saying that regardless of the lives saved by vaccines, it was irresponsible for the government to recommend them without first comprehensively ruling out all hidden dangers. He believes that only a few vaccines, including the tuberculosis vaccine, have been studied enough to clear this bar. Kennedy had slashed the budget of his own department. But now, he says, he plans to spend billions of dollars on hundreds of studies investigating vaccines’ potential ties to chronic diseases. “The default setting in medicine is ‘Do no harm,’ ” he said, as we talked about the COVID-vaccine boosters. “You never do an intervention—particularly with a healthy human being—unless you know that it’s safe and effective. And we don’t know if it’s safe and effective.”

What if you are wrong about vaccines? I asked. Six former surgeons general, most vaccine experts, and almost the entire scientific establishment believes he is. What if, over time, the evidence shows that his actions lowered vaccination rates with no reduction in chronic diseases, but with an increase in suffering and death from viruses and bacteria? How would he respond?

“I mean, we would listen,” Kennedy said. It was the answer I wanted to hear. But then he listed, once again, the reasons he would not be wrong: He spoke about the chronic diseases that appear as potential adverse reactions on the manufacturers’ label for vaccines; the evidence that death rates from the diseases that vaccines inoculate against were already declining before the vaccines materialized; and America’s poor policy decisions and high mortality rates during the COVID years. “You know, we have all kinds of interventions,” he said. “Good health does not just come in a syringe.” The trial lawyer was still laboring to connect the dots that led to his preferred verdict, the orphaned child of American royalty, back from hell, still fighting to fulfill his birthright.

One of many startling dangers, not just to the disunited states, but to the world ...

In which the bromancer and ancient Troy do their best for the lettuce ...

The pond had promised itself the luxury of running screaming from the room if Dame Slap and Linda Reynolds featured yet again in a big splash in the lizard Oz. Sure enough ...

EXCLUSIVE
Donate your compensation, Greens leader tells Brown and Reynolds
Larissa Waters demands the pair donate any compensation from their court battles with the commonwealth, as Zali Steggall describes scrutiny over their unfair treatment as ‘continued harassment’ of rape victims.
By Elizabeth Pike and Sarah Ison

COMMENTARY by JANET ALBRECHTSEN
Hypocrisy rules in Canberra Bubble
The leader of the Greens and the country’s most prominent teal politician claim to wear the mantle of accountability and integrity. That mantle is an illusion.

(The archive seems to have saved an earlier version, or Dame Slap did an entire rewrite, but whatever, any Dame Slap offering a storm of irrelevance can be safely avoided).

It took some considerable coaxing and persuasion to get the pond back out of hiding and contemplate the wreckage which some mistakenly call a newspaper...

The trick that did it was the promise of the bromancer doing his best to help the lettuce ...

The header: Hastie knows Libs could die if they lose this fight, While the Coalition must win fights on net zero and immigration levels, it would be suicide to alienate voters of ethnic backgrounds, who are natural conservative voters. (*archive link for those interested in the bromancer's hive mind references)

The caption for a man resembling a startled lemur who's just seen a red bellied black snake: Like a good military commander, Andrew Hastie displays ‘situational awareness’.

That's a joke right? That blather about "situational awareness" beneath a snap of the man looking like he'd spotted a man with a prosthetic leg fresh from the Roberts-Smith court case?

Jokes aside, it was, as promised, a distilled 5 minutes essence of bromancer.

Some might quibble. 

What about the attention-seeking burqa stunt, admittedly deeply lame and pathetic, but posing questions for Barners, Tamworth's eternal shame?

And what about hapless Lindsey Halligan being thrown under the bus? Can the lickspittle Supreme Court save her?

What about King Donald's desperate attempt to sell off Ukraine to Vlad the sociopath?

Sorry, the pond is designed only for students of herpetology, from those entering the course at the 101 level to those long standing observers who have reached post-doctorate level.

If events escape the blindfolded reptiles, the pond can't do anything to restore their vision.

Besides, think of the way that every time a reptile scribbles yet again about the leadership, the lettuce is empowered, gains strength, and hovers like a rapidly building cyclone ...

Could the Liberal Party actually go out of business, be replaced as our main centre-right party?
Andrew Hastie thinks it’s possible. He tells Niki Savva, in her absorbing new book, Earthquake, that without change “we should expect to become extinct at some point”. He admits the Liberal Party is very old, in its membership base and its voter base.

Hastie’s comments are paradoxically encouraging. Like a good military commander, he displays “situational awareness”; that is, he’s dealing with reality. His policy moves, repudiating net zero to concentrate on energy security and price, plus a tougher line on cutting the size of the immigration program, are designed not only as good policy but approaches that a smart, energised Coalition could sell to voters of all ages. And his own emphasis on social media is long overdue for his side of politics.
But if they don’t sell their new approach successfully, could the Liberals really disappear? Common wisdom says no. Compulsory voting, preferential voting and the substantial benefits accruing to existing parties with existing politicians, namely funding, staffers, offices etc, all make it very difficult to dislodge one of the main parties.
But it’s not impossible. The last great realignment in Australia was when Robert Menzies transformed the United Australia Party and founded the Liberal Party. The UAP was a strange beast, more an association of politicians who liked getting elected than a fully formed political party.

An extinction level event, just like the dinosaurs in a Disney wildlife porn film? Sure enough, the reptiles offered a trio of dinosaurs, rapidly approaching extinction level: Dan Tehan, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor during Question Time at Parliament in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There's nothing to say about any of this, it's all in the savouring, with the bromancer turning to Ming the Merciless and the Mad Monk for wisdom and guidance ...

Menzies founded the Libs in 1944 and by 1949 won government, never to lose again while he was leader (he retired in 1966). He created it as a non-sectional party, not beholden to a single institution as Labor was to the unions.
There was even a tinge of anti-rich populism in his famous words: “I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of organised masses.”
I take that quote from Tony Abbott’s Australia: A History. Abbott emphasises that even with Menzies’ giant personality, and existing UAP MPs, it was a slow, tortuous business building the Liberal Party. It drew on a wide, rich life of civic organisations, among them the Australian Women’s National League.
There has been no fundamental realignment since then. Splits in parties sometimes provoke the possibility. In the 1950s the ALP suffered a devastating split, with the most dedicated anti-communists forming the Democratic Labor Party. It elected a lot of senators and had a huge influence, keeping Labor out of office federally for nearly 20 years, but it never supplanted the ALP.
In 1977, former Liberal cabinet minister Don Chipp broke away to amalgamate a couple of minor existing groups and form the Australian Democrats. They, too, won a lot of senators and lasted three decades but never looked like supplanting the Liberals.
Oddly, a more relevant example might come from 100 years ago in Britain, as the Labour Party pushed aside the Liberal Party as the alternative to the Conservatives. There was massive social change in 19th-century Britain. A true middle class developed as well as an authentic working class. The Conservatives represented the middle class, Labour the working class. The British Labour Party split in a big way in 1981. Its leading moderates founded the Social Democratic Party. It won nearly as many votes as British Labour but didn’t win many seats and faded fairly quickly.
Politics now is more fluid and unpredictable than ever. Centre-right politics around the Western world has been in flux. A new approach, focused on national sovereignty more than free-market dogma, has gained traction, especially around issues like immigration, the operation of markets and the failures of globalisation.

It's impossible to capture the delight the lettuce feels at the burbling bromancer, the sly shake of the leaf, the pleasure of a little moistening before serving, with the presence of the Bolter an additional, possibly orgasmic treat ...Writer and broadcaster Esther Krakue says Reform UK’s lead in the polls is “basically calcified”. “I think Reform are so ahead in the polls that it’s basically calcified, it’s now a given that Reform is somewhat double in the polls at any given moment,” Ms Krakue told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “She’s [Shabana Mahmood] also going to announce a visa ban, apparently, on countries that refuse to take back asylum seekers.”

The more the bromancer brooded, the stronger the lettuce felt ... even as the bro headed OS to drag in irrelevant comparisons ...

This can be wholesome or it can be toxic. In some nations the traditional centre-right party has reacted to these new social and political dynamics and become more populist to survive. The textbook example is Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s populist-right party supplanted the old Christian Democrats and now governs the country. In France, Marine Le Pen’s outfit supplanted the Gaullists. It doesn’t govern but it is the main party of opposition. In Germany the Alternative for Germany challenges, but has not supplanted, the Christian Democrats. But the Christian Democrats are forced to govern in an incoherent and unsustainable coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats.
In Britain, a recent Ipsos poll discloses extraordinary results. Nigel Farage’s Reform registers 33 per cent, Labour 18, Conservatives 16, Greens 15 and Liberal Democrats 12. That is a fractured polity, something like ours and almost ubiquitous today, but an extraordinary level of support for Farage. At the next election, Farage could win government or displace the Conservatives as the main party of opposition.
It’s tempting to interpret the teal electoral success as a de facto split in the Liberal Party. It represents the social class of climate true believers in urban seats, and cleverly uses preferential and compulsory voting to get across the line. It’s also the case that the teal juggernaut represents one of the most brutal exercises in massive corporate power in Australian politics.
Defeated Liberals were often outspent by teals to the tune of $1m or more. There are enormous government subsidies and rents more generally coming out of the net-zero agenda and a new class of corporate money will readily support teal candidates.

The reptiles ignored the OS rabble, and offered a snap of Susssan.

She was in a most unlettuce pose, looking like she was wilting from the heat, Sussan Ley

The pond is delighted to encourage this useless never-ending reptile speculation, especially when the bromancer sets ridiculous challenges ...

The teals have been much less effective in state politics, where their funding options are more limited and the shallowness of their real community support evident. But Liberals must understand the ideological fight over net zero is existential. They have to discredit the concept of Labor’s net zero or they’re very unlikely to win back teal seats.
In many ways the internal fight for the Liberals over net zero was a decision about whether to fight with an uncertain chance of victory or to surrender in the hope of generous treatment by the victors.
Two final points. Four Liberal opposition leaders have become prime minister in Australian history – Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, John Howard and Abbott. Each came from the party’s right, the conservative end. Each was written off as too conservative and unelectable. Indeed Billy Snedden, who unsuccessfully led the Libs before Fraser, fatuously described himself as “on the wavelength of my generation”. Menzies, Fraser, Howard and Abbott all fought huge political battles to become prime minister – stop the boats, ditch the tax etc.
Finally, the next battle is immigration. Everyone agrees numbers are way too high. But in fighting this battle, the conservatives must not give the impression they are suspicious of or hostile to Australians of Indian, Chinese, Filipino etc backgrounds. All these folks are natural conservative voters if Liberals have the energy and capability of talking to them. Alienating them, in our compulsory voting system, would certainly be electoral suicide.

Oh Susssan, you must bash immigration, but you can't bash your natural migrant constituents ...

Good luck with that one, but please, follow the bromancer's advice. 

Here's another suggestion.

Have you ever considered donning a nun's penguin outfit and wearing it in parliament to draw attention to the outlandish garb some women are forced to wear?

Meanwhile, have a 'toon celebrating matters left unexplored and unnoted by the bromancer ...

What else? Well the lizard Oz editorialist turned up to bash the hapless BoM ...

BOM badly needs a change in its own cultural climate
A $100m cost blowout for a new website isn’t the only concern with what is perhaps the nation’s most high-profile government entity.

The pond isn't going to die on that indefensible hill, but does note that the reptiles have used the folly for a conspiratorial aside ...

...The high stakes involved in getting accurate and easily accessible data on unfolding weather events such as floods and bushfires are easy to understand. So, too, is the fact advice given on possible future climate change trends will have a big impact on government policy and ultimately costs to ordinary Australians.

Always ready to produce a note of uncertainty in relation to climate change.

The real point is the singular way that governments of every stripe insist on shoving cash down the throats of inept consultants ...in this case Accenture and Deloitte.

Remarkably the reptiles played this down, with Accenture scoring just one mention and Deloitte none at all - and yet Accenture went from $31 million to $78 million and Deloitte from $11 million to $35 million. (numbers from the Graudian)

No wonder they can afford butlers to serve morning coffee ... (true story, the pond's partner once briefly worked in one of the big consultancies and was always startled when a butler hovered into view. It was way better than the ancient tea trolley that once used to serve up delicacies to cardigan wearers).

What else?

Well the bouffant one was on hand to valiantly defend Susssan from the threatening lettuce ...

This was Ley’s most important QT performance
Sussan Ley delivers her most important question time performance
The parliamentary atmosphere has changed. Sussan Ley has probably guaranteed her survival into next year.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

Egad sir, the pond won't hear a word about the lettuce's chances (and unfortunately the story was archived in an earlier iteration which featured a Leak cartoon, and so is beyond the pale).

Cam was also out and about celebrating the deeds of a mass murdering government ...

Why Israel is stepping up strikes on Hezbollah
The assassination of a key Hezbollah leader is a blunt warning from Israel that it won’t tolerate the growing push by the terror group to rearm itself.
By Cameron Stewart

But then King Donald is inclined to murder on the high seas, so nothing to see there ...random assassinations in another country are apparently par for the course ...

The pond best leave all that to TT ...

But there had to be a bonus, there's always a bonus.

The pond ran screaming from the room at ancient Troy's mention of Ming the Merciless, but was reluctantly dragged back in ... for the sake of the bonus for the day ...

The header: What today’s Libs get wrong about Menzies’ legacy, Some Liberals are so despondent about their party’s crisis they are talking about forming a new political grouping. But what would founder Robert Menzies do?

Oh you consumable delicacies, you ancient cats and dogs, not another snap of Ming the merciless: Australian prime minister Sir Robert Gordon Menzies in 1966, before his retirement from Parliament.

It turned out that featuring Ming the merciless was a ruse, a feint, and it was really all about assessing the lettuce's chances.

Ming might lead, but ancient Troy had more modern fish to fry, and so there was a goodly four minute outing, in which yet another reptile was determined to help the lettuce by featuring a bout of navel-gazing and fluff-gathering:

As the Liberal Party is beset by rumours of an imminent leadership challenge, disagreements on fundamental policies and values, the loss of heartland seats and a generation of voters, and declining membership, there is persistent internal talk of a formal split between the party’s liberal and conservative wings.
This may or may not happen but there is no doubt discussions are under way within the parliamentary party, among the organisation and members, and Liberal elders. In the Nationals, too. Most say the trigger point is likely to be after the next election, in anticipation of losing more seats or not regaining many. The talk is gathering pace.
It would not be the first time a major party, on the centre-right or centre-left, has divided with members breaking off to form new or join other parties. The centre-right has been fragmenting for years, with votes peeling off to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party rebrand and the Liberal Democrats.
A formal split would be something entirely different, though.
The last major party split at the national level – there have been breakaways such as Steele Hall’s Liberal Movement in South Australia and Don Chipp’s Australian Democrats – was the Labor Party in 1955.

So far, so good, with the reptiles seizing the chance to slip in a snap of the hapless Susssan ...The decision to walk away from net zero – a goal that Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, among others, defended at the past two elections – will do significant damage. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond wondered if it would be too cruel to remind correspondents of the contest, and of the unwilting strength of the challenger ...

What the heck, it was just the right sort of mood setter for ancient Troy ...

The Liberal Party, of course, was formed from the ashes of the United Australia Party in 1944.
The public response to the decision by the Liberal Party to abandon a commitment to the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is in.
Newspoll, published on Monday, shows the Coalition’s primary vote remains at its lowest in the poll – a dismal 24 per cent. Labor has skyrocketed to a two-party lead of 58 per cent to 42 per cent.
If anyone in Liberal ranks gets out the calculator to translate this to an election – let’s do it for them – it means that it is unlikely the party would hold any seats in metropolitan Australia. It would be all but wiped out. The party would be a veritable parliamentary rump, having lost even more seats to Labor, Greens and teals.
The decision to walk away from net zero – a goal that Sussan Ley, Ted O’Brien, Angus Taylor and David Littleproud advocated and defended at the past two elections – will do significant damage because it signals the party is not serious about tackling climate change. This, as I have argued, is the entry price for credibility in politics.
Not only do business and farming groups – traditional Coalition constituencies – support the goal of net zero with a policy pathway to achieve it by 2050, so does every state Liberal or Liberal-National Party leader. Why? They understand the politics of climate change and public demand to find workable policies to achieve it.
The Liberal Party too, under Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg as leader and deputy leader, recognised the science, accepted the net zero by 2050 goal and argued Australia’s share of global trade and investment would be at risk if it were seen to be out of step with global acceptance of it and concerted action to meet it.
It is telling that when NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman resigned before he could be toppled last week, he cited “brand damage” done to his state party by federal counterparts.
With elections due next year in South Australia (March) and Victoria (November), and NSW in March 2027, state Liberals worry the party’s federal woes will poison their chances.
The Liberal Party’s challenge is much deeper than its backflips, contradictions and incoherence on climate change and energy policy or its anxiety over leadership, with several ambitious men eyeing the top job. The challenge is existential. This has long been denied by party leaders and elders even though it was starkly evident after the 2022 election and underscored by the 2025 election.

The reptiles were decidedly short on visual distractions, with Little to be Proud of the last interruption, National Party leader David Littleproud during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Couldn't the reptiles have somehow worked in a reference to Tamworth's enduring shame?

No? Never mind, the pond did it for them ... as ancient Troy eventually managed to work in a little self-promotion ...

The party has almost entirely lost its suburban heartland. Seats the party held since the 1940s and 50s have been lost at recent elections. I’ve noted that seats held by every former Liberal leader other than Morrison’s Cook and Malcolm Fraser’s Wannon have been lost, illustrating the decline. Most Liberal members live in seats the party does not hold.
The earthquake through the party’s electoral geography was carved by teal MPs. All held their seats apart from Zoe Daniel, who lost to lucky Tim Wilson in Goldstein. The party cannot regain government without regaining teal seats yet it has done nothing to woo these voters back to the fold. Indeed, as a result, more seats could fall to teals, Labor and Greens.
This penetrates to a bigger problem: a demographic tidal wave heading for the party. The federal party’s past two election reviews have noted the loss of younger voters – millennials and Gen Z – along with women and migrants. The party resembles an old white man’s conservative party. But even those voters are shifting to the far-right One Nation, which is surging in the polls.
All of this – policy, ideology, constituency, members, strategy and leadership – has encouraged discussion about dividing into liberal and conservative parties, leaving open a three-way Coalition with the Nationals. There are fundamental differences about whether the Liberal Party should seek to occupy the centre ground, remaining a broad church, or move further to the right chasing One Nation.
The Labor Party is no stranger to splits, divisions and rats. The party, formed in 1891, officially split in 1916 over conscription during World War I, in 1931 over the policy response to the Depression and in 1955 over communist infiltration in its ranks. Leadership coupled with organisational and policy renewal were keys to its survival.

Oh sheesh, oh wretched boredom. 

If we must saunter through history, here's a map of the city of Sydney in September 1888 ...

Click on it to enlarge, study it well, use it to assess Susssan's chances of defeating the lettuce and staying in the leadership, or perhaps just finish up ancient Troy's ongoing blather about Ming the Meerciless, naturally with a plug for his skills as a biographer ...

When Robert Menzies toiled to form the Liberal Party in 1944 from other parties and organisations, he emphasised that it be a “nationwide movement” with mass membership that supported “progress” and championed “great ideas”. He said it could not be “subservient” to the Country Party or merely a party of “reaction” pursuing policies of “negation”.
When I was writing a biography of Menzies a few years ago, I was struck by how long and hard it was to bring about a new party. Others tried and failed. It required all of Menzies’ talents of hard work, determination, conviction, advocacy and compromise.
Above all, Menzies argued, the party had to be “middle of the road” and “pragmatic and not dogmatic” to succeed.
It is a lesson Liberals should heed.

The more the reptiles rabbit on, the stronger the powers of the lettuce grows, until one day it will smote and smite hapless Susssan ...

And so, with the help of the immortal Rowe, to wrap up the day's play by mentioning events involving the exceptionally handy use of the dove of peace ... another great Munich moment: