In which "Ned" at last returns for a natter, and Dame Groan demolishes the sparrows of the south ...

 

It's been a considerable time since the pond heard from "Ned", and frankly the pond hasn't much missed his patented bland of pomposity and the borrowing of the thoughts of others.

He was last sighted way back on 27th March offering Burn-down-the-house mentality that has splintered the right is coming for the left too; Establishment politics is under massive assault in a nation that is losing its way — but don’t be misled by Hanson’s ‘consistency’ myth. (*intermittent archive link).

That was an interminable ten minutes of humbuggery, but on his return "Ned" could only manage a more seemly five minutes of his natter.

All the same, climbing any "Ned" Everest is part of any sensible herpetology student's warm up routine, so it was off to base camp:

The header, which immediately made the pond wonder why anyone in their right minds would want to keep up with King Donald: Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have remade the world - can Australia keep up? Whether the nation possesses the political and bureaucratic brain power to create a new economic model remains in grave doubt.

The caption for the collage which was unwisely given a credit. (Sometimes, Frank, discretion is the better part of AI slop valour): Artwork depicting Xi Jinping alongside Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump. Artwork by Frank Ling.

"Ned" has some bizarre ideas about "transforming the world".

Neither role model on offer seemed particularly beguiling, but remember this is "Ned", so he's determined to compete, bung on a do, and in the process, it won't belong before the borrowings start to appear:

Two men have transformed the world. China’s Xi Jinping and America’s Donald Trump in their global rivalry have created a new world that affects every democracy and feeds into the challenges and policies that Jim Chalmers will unveil next week.
Strategic competition now spills into economic and technological warfare. It is all-encompassing. In their relentless competition Xi and Trump have retreated from the era of market-based interdependence – the age of globalisation and liberal free trade – and embraced a fusion of economics and security, creating what many call the “economic security state”.
This trend has been on display for a decade. As China expert Elizabeth Economy has identified, Xi has repudiated liberal reforms in favour of supply-side controls, maximising security capabilities, huge government subsidies and promoting a fusion between the civilian economy and military prowess. Beijing runs the globe’s most ambitious industry policy.
In the US, Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have rejected the previous “neoliberal economic philosophy of the past 40 years” – to quote former national security adviser Jake Sullivan – with Trump using tariffs as a strategic weapon and deploying protection, reindustrialisation, support for hi-tech and artificial intelligence in an economic and security rivalry with China set to last for decades.

The pond does appreciate the way that "Ned"conformed to GOP talking points and dragged poor old Scranton Joe into the current mess, and the reptiles helped him out with a snap... Joe Biden speaks at the International African American museum, January 2025.

Jake Sullivan?

He's certainly one of the worst of the Biden era for entirely missing the point:

In May 2024, Sullivan expressed concern at the Irish, Norwegian, and Spanish recognition of Palestine and Israel's growing diplomatic isolation, saying that "we certainly have seen a growing chorus of voices, including voices that had previously been in support of Israel, drift in another direction. That is of concern to us because we do not believe that that contributes to Israel's long-term security or vitality."

And that fog of words could be found in a Foreign Affairs piece...

History is again knocking. The growing competition with China and shifts in the international political and economic order should provoke a similar instinct within the contemporary foreign-policy establishment. Today’s national security experts need to move beyond the prevailing neoliberal economic philosophy of the past 40 years. This philosophy can be summarized as reflexive confidence in competitive markets as the surest route to maximizing both individual liberty and economic growth and a corresponding belief that the role of government is best confined to securing those competitive markets through enforcing property rights, only intervening in the supposedly rare instance of market failure.
The foreign-policy establishment need not come up with the next economic philosophy; the task is more limited—to contribute a geopolitical perspective to the unfolding debate on what should follow neoliberalism and then to make the national security case for a new approach as it emerges.

That ship has sailed, or perhaps not, just sat somewhere in the strait of Hormuz ...

But the pond digresses, because it was then on to the gnashing of teeth and wailing into the ether, and running about clucking that the sky was falling down, a genre in which "Ned" is as adept as Dame Groan is in her "we'll all be rooned" carry ons ...

Australia has no option but to live in the world being created by Xi and Trump. But that’s a more complex, dangerous and uncertain world – like other nations, we struggle to grasp what it means. There are two certainties – the vast prosperity Australia enjoyed from the age of globalisation won’t be repeated, and whether the nation possesses the political and bureaucratic brain power to create a new economic model remains in grave doubt.
In this new world false prophets and fraudulent ideas are everywhere. The most penetrating analysis of the epic challenge facing this country comes from John Kunkel in his monograph for the United States Studies Centre titled Paradigm Shift: The End of the Washington Consensus and the Future of Australian Economic Statecraft.

Yet again the reptiles shamelessly refused to provide a link to "Ned's" borrowings, but anyone wanting the original Kunkel can head here.

Others will have to be content with "Ned's" shameless borrowings as he attempts to come up with his own version of a paradigm shift:

Kunkel says: “In the coming years, whether willingly or not, Australia will be forced to construct our own variant of an economic security state. This will be a demanding task. It will require enhanced state capacity to distinguish between essential economic security needs and non-strategic transactions.” The Albanese government now wrestles with this task – beneath the politically driven cost-of-living issue in the budget, it constitutes the long-run foundational challenge for policymakers that will run for decades.
Recently Anthony Albanese has become far more open about the sweeping strategic change in Labor’s framework, telling the National Press Club we cannot “continue to rely on an economic model designed in a different time and built for a more predictable world”. His message: the nation must become “more self-sufficient and less vulnerable”.
The Prime Minister pledges to deploy state power to make Australia “more resilient” because in the new world “economic policy and national security are bound together”. He says global supply chains are now “instruments of economic power and strategic competition”. The Iran war reinforces the message, with Albanese desperate to secure vital fuel supplies, the lesson being that we cannot rely on “somewhere else because it’s cheaper” – a direct repudiation of the economic law of the globalised age that helped to make Australia a rich, high-income country.

Actually there are some countries, European ones and Asian ones too, that still cling to the notions of a globalised world, what with it bleeding obvious that we're all in the mess together, and must cope with rogue nations of the King Donald kind by forming new alliances.

Never mind, have a snap of Jimbo ...Treasurer Jim Chalmers addresses the media at Parliament House. Picture: Martin Ollman

Stuck back in Hawke/Keating and fossil fuels days, "Ned" was startled by the shock of direct repudiation.

He didn't seem to know where local oil might be coming from, though his fellow reptiles had suggested down under was rich in oil just waiting to flow.

Perhaps there might have to be an appeal to globalised sources ...

While he respected the reforms of the Hawke and Keating governments, Albanese said we now live in “a very different world”. He said “building and strengthening” national resilience will be a “key focus” of the budget – think prioritising fuel supply, strengthening supply chains and making more things in Australia.
But the sobering insight has been the government’s estimate that providing 90 days’ fuel supply would cost $20bn or $230 per adult a year or nearly $500 annually for an average family. And that’s just the fuel supply story.
Herein lies the hard truth: resilience comes at a higher cost. The Australian people will pay more for having to inject the security paradigm into economic policy, just as the people of China and the US will pay. The revolution in global economic policy may sound thrilling, but it comes with a hefty price tag.

Um, don't blame the world for this "revolution". 

Perhaps instead blame the Emeritus Chairman and his Faux Noise chums, who helped guide the United States into rogue banana republic status?

The Treasurer says the budget is about reform and resilience. That’s a sound message, but how does it play out? Our efforts so far are weak on reform-based productivity to deliver a more competitive economic and our promotion of resilience is burdened by truckloads of defects.
Albanese boasts about his government’s new agenda; witness its Future Made in Australia policy, its National Reconstruction Fund, its Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve, its strengthening of defence manufacturing and its 82 per cent renewables target by 2030 – some are justified and worthwhile but many of these state-driven investments and subsidies are flawed and highly dubious; witness the serial bailing out of smelters.
Productivity Commission chief Danielle Wood, in The Australian Financial Review, has delivered a lethal warning about the pitfalls of resilience, saying our politicians and advisers must separate the support that makes our economy stronger from those “costly follies for taxpayers and consumers”.
Wood said that while insuring for essential products made sense, beware falling for local production as the default position since co-operative deals with trading partners might be more cost-effective. She warned of the latest political con job: “old-fashioned industry assistance arguments for bailouts of copper and aluminium smelters dressed up in shiny supply chain security and economic sovereignty wrappers”.

Once again the pond had to check out the source of "Ned's" borrowings, and luckily Wood could be found in the intermittent archive.

But by this point the pond hadn't a clue what "Ned" was on about. 

He seemed to start off in the resilience camp, and then he ended up suggesting that reverting to co-operative deals in a still globalised economy might be a better bet.

The reptiles didn't help out by throwing in a snap of comrade Ablo, Anthony Albanese holds a press conference at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

"Ned" kept up his borrowings, and then emerged triumphantly to blame the victims:

Wood then delivered the killer blow: scattergun industry policy actually reduces resilience. Think about that message. It goes to the heart of Australia’s policy reset. Wood captured its essence: “any productivity package in the budget is also a resilience package”. But such truism is not accepted by much of the political class, both Labor and Coalition, now resurrecting the failed ghosts of our protectionist past with a new rhetorical spin.
Kunkel said: “Australia’s economic policy settings remain ill-prepared for this new era. The task of making our economy more resilient is multidimensional, necessarily bound up, for example, with fostering economic growth, improving budget discipline and pursuing pro-productivity structural reform. Resources will remain scarce and Australian governments will need to set priorities in a way that is both uncomfortable and outside current policy mindsets.”
He said the task ahead is the “need to forge a new marriage between economic rationalism and state capacity” that equips Australia to succeed in the “more fractured and contested world” bequeathed by Xi and Trump.
Conceptually, this is new territory. Yet our efforts so far seem uncoordinated, piecemeal, a mishmash of different initiatives largely driven by politics. Who in the Albanese government is supposed to be devising what constitutes a new economic model for Australia? Do we have these days a political and bureaucratic class capable of meeting the challenge? Not on the evidence so far. We await a judgment on the budget.

Is anyone capable of meeting the challenge of mad King Donald and his mob of minions? Is it possible to reverse the damage done by the Emeritus Chairman in his lust for money and power?

Perhaps we need to retreat to a bunker until the storm blows over, or somehow works out how to do better potty training for dragons ...

The pond always gets a tad disturbed when the immortal Rowe goes into anal mode, but that 'Trump in Iran' turd is a pretty big one.

As usual there were any number of reptiles the pond chose to overlook this day, but the pond did personally supervise their storage in the intermittent archive, so those who might care could check them out. 

Amongst them ...

From Omelas to Alice: this is our cruel bargain
Without major changes, the country will find itself repeating this trauma and too many of our children will remain powerless.
By Denise Bowden

The cranky Cranston was bold enough to support the RBA - as big a reptile heresy as going the round - but the pond made sure he was in the intermittent archive for anyone who might care:

Tough news but Bullock had integrity to deliver it
Michele Bullock makes the right rate call for the nation
The two things might have sent a shiver down the spine of consumers and businesses on Tuesday were the effectiveness of interest rates and the brief talk of the ‘r’ word.
By Matthew Cranston
Economics Correspondent

The pond routinely ignores the lizard Oz's pearls of wisdom, on the basis of predictability, and there was no sign in the header that things would be different this day:

Bullock sends Jim a message – but Labor’s budget will undo the work
The budget the Treasurer is set to deliver next week is likely to deepen, not lessen, our economic predicament.
By David Pearl

The indefatigable Geoff was also at it (the pond is tired of joking about him chambering another round, yet this day more shots were heard, with an exceptionally inflamed header):

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Budget bonfire as inflation inferno engulfs Reserve Bank
A week out from Jim Chalmers handing down his fifth budget, RBA governor Michele Bullock stated the bleeding obvious in warning governments (again) to stop spending and driving up demand.

Dimitri also lurked below the fold, but why settle for a B lister, when you can have a main woman to do the hatchet job ...

Victoria is the sick man of the Anti­podes – and the disease is advanced
Jacinta Allan’s sleight-of-hand budget ‘surplus’ is just the latest deception from Victorian Labor.
By Dimitri Burshtein

That should keep herpetology students busy, but f the pond wanted a 'toon to summarise the reptiles in a budget frenzy, this one by Fiona K. seemed to do the job ...

Speaking of a main woman, the pond had to abandon all those reptiles because in a rare outing Dame Groan immediately followed news of the scuppering of a rail link to nowhere:

The pond couldn't immediately see a connection, but ignoring a Dame Groan offering would be like rejecting some of St Paul's letters because they were written by someone else. 

They're all infused by the holy spirit, right, and so infallibly correct ...(cf. Adam Gopnink in The New Yorker on St Paul)

Similarly groaning must always command the pond's attention, because Dame Groan cultists salivate at any sighting of her.

The header: Fiscal fiction: Why Victoria’s economy is basically buggered; The rate of deterioration in Victoria’s fiscal position is quite extraordinary. It is the nation’s biggest basket-case state.

The caption for what looks like a rare find, an actual reptile visual gotcha: Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on state budget day. Picture: NewsWire / David Crosling

It was only a three minute excursion, but this time Dame Groan did for Jacinta what she'd usually do to Jimbo:

Victoria is Australia’s worst fiscal basket case. The state of its public finances is shambolic even though the economically naive Premier Jacinta Allan and Treasurer Jaclyn Symes are trying to convince the voters this is not the case.
Michael Brennan, the CEO of e61 Institute, has described Victoria’s budget position as “boxed in”. I wouldn’t be as kind: it’s basically buggered.
For those who don’t live in Victoria, you might think this doesn’t matter. But at the end of the day, the commonwealth will make sure the state doesn’t become insolvent. Short of the big bailout, the feds will play a role in funnelling additional grants and more GST payments to the state – it has already begun this – to keep it afloat.

There was only one AV distraction for the excursion, which named and shamed Jacinta, but on the evidence, it seemed to point the finger at that arch villain, comrade Dan, though the framing was so weird and wild, who can say? Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan will try to sell a budget littered with billions of dollars in extra spending.

What a reprehensible way to treat an always recurring reptile shibboleth.

As usual, just as Dame Groan refuses to make any allowance for the current dire straits the world is in, this time the steely Groaner refused to allow any attempt to buck pass on Covid.

If you can't handle the plague and emerge with a booming economy, you must be in charge of a cruise liner suffused with rats ...

While putting Victoria on watch, the ratings agencies clearly believe the commonwealth would rescue any state in dire circumstances. This partly explains why the yields on government bonds don’t vary a great deal between the states – say, Victoria versus NSW.
Let’s be clear here: the Victorian public finances began to deteriorate before Covid. To be sure, spending went through the roof during Covid, in part because of the excessive periods of lockdown the state endured.
The rate of deterioration in Victoria’s fiscal position is quite extraordinary. When Dan Andrews came to power in December 2014, the state’s net debt was a tad over $20bn. It is now heading towards $200bn at the end of the decade.
(The quoted figure in the budget of $199bn in net debt for 2029-30 is essentially fictitious, made to come in under $200bn for political reasons. It’s what economists call spurious precision.)
It’s worth recalling here that state budgets are divided into two parts: the recurrent and the capital. Typically, but not always, states will run a net operating surplus while accounting for capital spending in the other account. (The Victorian government will run a trivial operating surplus of $1bn next financial year.)
But there is some fudging that can go on in relation to the operating balance. Grants are part of the revenue recorded for the operating balance, but some of these are essentially for capital purposes. Some grants from the federal government are routed through the recurrent account and recorded there, but they are just capital spending.
Allan and Symes have been making a great deal of the possibility that the ratio of net debt to gross state product may fall over the forward estimates. Again, this is a contrived figure made up of overly optimistic forecasts of GSP as well as an underestimation of future expenses.
Real GSP growth is expected to be 2.5 per cent in 2027-28, for instance. These forecasts contrast with the more sombre (but more accurate) ones of the Reserve Bank.

Dame Groan was feeling her oats, with a b*gger here, and a b*llocks there ...

It’s also bollocks that the only thing that counts is the ratio of debt to GSP. The servicing costs relate to the total size of the debt, and these costs have been rising substantially. They are about to jump sharply as the cheap debt, secured during Covid and before, expires, and the debt needs to be rolled over. You can see this in the budget figures on interest expense. Last financial year, interest expenses were $7.7bn; in 2029-30, the figure is expected to be nearly $12bn.
The fact is that over the course of the past decade or so in Victoria, state government spending has ratcheted up by around two percentage points of GSP and there is no indication the Allan government is capable of – or is of a mind to – reducing this proportion. The Victorian Labor government has a lot in common with the Albanese government in this respect.
Unsurprisingly in an election year, the Allan government is looking to offer up some sweeteners notwithstanding the fact that the budgetary position should prevent it from doing so. Free public transport, discounted motor registration, meeting the teachers’ pay demand to avoid strikes, additional healthcare services – and this is just for starters.
The argument is that these benefits will simply be paid for by transferring some of the future operating surpluses to 2026-27 and there will be no net change in the budget settings. The trouble with this argument is that when those future years come around, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make those savings.
There is no indication in this state budget that the political leaders are prepared to acknowledge the fiscal hole they have dug or to think about means of paying down debt. It will probably blow up at some stage, but Jacinta Allan is likely to be gone by then, sitting on a few well-paid government boards.

Ah, the bitterness. 

What chance of a place for Dame Groan these days on a well-paid government board? Instead she must pocket a few pitiful shekels from the Emeritus Chairman for her regular "we'll all be rooned" groans...

Meanwhile, back in that notorious banana republic and speaking of dragons ...

And this is for those who've heard of Alex Jones or InfoWars or The Onion. 

Perhaps skip to the last four minutes, wherein there's a little transubstantiation involving human blood?

In which the bromancer goes gaga over Takaichi and correspondents in the cult can line up for a serve of the Tuesday groaning ...

 

The news that the world continues in dire straits made the pond want to pull up the covers and do an ostrich routine.

The next best thing was to plunge into the hive mind, where the only fear to be found was in the form of the federal Labor government.

Luckily the bromancer was to hand to provide that kind of distraction, coupled with a remarkable infatuation for the Japanese PM:

The header: Japan’s ‘Iron Lady’ shows up our feeble PM; Mark Carney was treated as though he were a world statesman. Yet Japan’s dazzling new PM has been treated in a very low-key manner. Only a nation as dumb as us could fail to fully see her significance.

The caption for a snap ruined by that preening mug standing alongside her: Prime Minister of Japan, Her Excellency Ms Sanae Takaichi, visits the Canberra Nara Peace Park at Lennox Gardens alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Of course the bromancer has been infatuated with Japan before.

Remember this?

Japan building Australian submarines is a match made in heaven

The pond couldn't resist a plunge back into ancient times, and besides inducting the piece into the intermittent archive, decided to offer a teaser trailer reminder of the good old days ...

What glory days there could have been. 

Instead the bromancer cheered on AUKUS, and the nuking of the submarines, a phenomenon never to be seen in the pond's lifetime, and now here we are.

But the bromancer has always been fickle, moody, changeable, and with the memory and consistency of a gnat.

It's way too late to revive any thoughts of what might have been, and instead we have the spectacle of the bromancer dissing the Canadians to creepily crawl up to Takaichi:

If you want to get a glimpse of just how badly Australian intellectual life, and very often the Albanese government, exist in a foreign policy make-believe land, consider this astounding contrast.
Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, a figure of almost no consequence to Australia at all, and whose international policy proposals are based on bad analysis and would generally be disastrous for Australia, was an honoured guest, as though he were a world statesman, and gave an address to a joint sitting of the Australian parliament in March.
Yet Japan’s dazzling new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, who has recently won a landslide election victory in her nation, was given no such honour in her visit to Australia, and in fact has been treated in a very low-key manner by the Albanese government.
Takaichi recently won a huge super majority in Japan’s parliament. She stands in the tradition of strong Japanese leaders like Yasuhiro Nakasone, Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe. Only a nation as dumb as us could fail to fully see her significance.
The visit is good and useful. No international visitor today could be more important. But this should be a very big deal in our national life, not a minor bit of routine Canberra falderal.
The visit’s formal agreements – on economic security, critical minerals and defence co-operation – were good, marginal, incremental steps on existing agreements many times announced and rehearsed previously. Agreements with Japan tend to be substantial. Japan is the only one of our many critical minerals partners that really seems to want things to happen in a relevant time frame.

Elbows up Canada, because this is the only flourish you'll get: Canada’s Mark Carney listens to Anthony Albanese speak during a press conference at Parliament House. Picture: David Gray / AFP

The bromancer carried on with his almost uxorious scribbling, and never mind the way that the Japanese currently make a motza out of onselling Australian gas purloined from the rubes down under.

Instead, inevitably, the bromancer reverted to his war with China, possibly in alliance with Japan, and hopefully by Xmas:

For reasons of Japanese politics and protocol, visits by Japan’s PM to Australia are rare. It’s in our interest to make them big. Abe in 2014 was the only Japanese PM ever to address the Australian parliament. I covered that speech and wrote then that it was one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in our parliament.
That happened when Tony Abbott was PM, and was the high point of Australia-Japan relations.
Parliament’s not sitting this week. The government should have recalled it for a day to hear from Japan’s first female leader. Takaichi is the most popular political leader in Asia (except in China). The China dimension probably explains why Albanese took such a lame, low-key approach to what should have been an important national moment.
Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, after the US and China. It’s a member of the G7. It’s America’s most important ally in Asia. US Studies Centre polling two years ago showed 60 per cent of Australians would like a formal defence treaty with Japan. Tokyo is now more forward-leaning on this than Canberra.
Japan’s Sanae Takaichi has won a resounding victory in Sunday’s snap election
Tokyo is doubling and more its defence budget. It remains, with South Korea, one of few US allies that is still a huge manufacturing power. It operates at the highest level of technology. Increasingly it’s investing in defence technology and, in a development of profound historic consequence, becoming a defence exporter.
The Albanese government’s decision to buy Japan’s advanced Mogami general purpose frigate for our navy, and to get the first few built in Japan, may be the single best decision (to be frank, there aren’t many) it’s made in defence.
In the Japanese parliament some months ago, Takaichi was asked if a Chinese military attack on Taiwan would endanger Japan. At its closest point, Taiwan is only 100km from Japanese territory, so the answer is, naturally, yes. Nonetheless, many national leaders would have fudged an answer to such a question. Albanese surely would have done so in similar circumstances. Takaichi answered the obvious truth; yes, it would be a danger to Japan.
This is important because the designation of such danger would trigger the legal justification for Japan to engage in collective defence efforts. As a result, Beijing went bananas in trying to intimidate Japan, and Takaichi specifically. One Chinese diplomat in Japan crudely said Takaichi should have her head cut off. Beijing imposed coercive trade embargoes on Japan.

The reptiles decided it was time for the bromancer's heroine to feature, though sadly with that disgrace by her side: Sanae Takaichi, visits the Canberra Nara Peace Park at Lennox Gardens alongside Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

The bromancer continued his rant, determined to find a conspiracy of cowardice in the matter of his war with China:

But Takaichi is a tough woman. She didn’t fold. She made some mollifying remarks but neither retracted nor apologised for her answer.
Here’s another curious element to the Albanese government’s management of her visit. The two prime ministers made joint remarks, but there was no joint press conference. The Canberra press gallery was led to believe this was because Canberra didn’t want to answer questions about gas.
But the Albanese government has decided not to impose any new taxes on gas exports. This is in part to avoid sovereign risk and to underline our reliability as a supplier, and because at a time when the world desperately needs more fossil fuels of all kinds, it would be barking mad, an act of grievous national self-harm, to put new disincentives on production. It’s such a ridiculous proposal that naturally the Greens and some crossbenchers are all in favour of it.
But that may not have been the problem with a joint press conference at all. Had the two PMs held a press conference, Albanese would have been asked about Taiwan and Beijing’s crude efforts to bully and coerce Takaichi and Japan. He would have had no alternative but to express solidarity with Japan. But Albanese doesn’t much do that sort of thing. Defence Minister Richard Marles has a mandate to say, two or three times a year, mildly disobliging things about China. The rest of the government has the courage of a sleeping kitten with a bad valium habit. Albanese never says boo to a goose on Beijing’s behaviour.

At this point the reptiles decided to provide yet further visual evidence of the pond's thesis that the reptiles are determined to live in some ancient glorious past, at least until the current mob are swept aside by the reptiles' never-ending jihad. 

How else to explain the return of the onion muncher, from 2014? Tony Abbott and Shinzo Abe shake hands during a trilateral meeting at the G20 Summit on November 16, 2014 in Brisbane, Australia. Picture: Ian Waldie / Getty Images

Why do they do it? Why do they dwell so much in the past?

It turns out it's much like the bromancer's memory of the past:

Takaichi is visiting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic post-war trade treaty the Menzies government signed with Japan. Like most big Australian moves into Asia, this was carried out by a Coalition government with the support of Washington. The Coalition has an infinitely better record than Labor on both the Japan and India relationships, but is strangely incapable of telling this story.
Albanese seems so attached to the narrative that he’s stabilised relations with Beijing that it puts a severe political limit on what he does with Japan, and to some extent India. One tragic lost opportunity was when internal Liberal Party instability prevented Tony Abbott from going ahead with a submarine deal with Japan. We would now probably have the first Japanese sub and it would be world class. This would have solidified a quasi alliance between us, and deepened the strategic intimacy of both nations with Washington.
But as a nation, we seldom miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, as now.

Say what?

The Coalition has an infinitely better record than Labor on both the Japan and India relationships...

Oh then the first of those Japanese submarines, spawn of the bromancer-Japan alliance, should be arriving in Sydney by Xmas. 

Or is that why the bromancer is strangely incapable of telling this story.

To be fair, that outing has to be worth a couple of Goldings ...

Or perhaps an ancient Wilcox?

And so to other reptile contributors, assigned by the pond to the intermittent archive.

There was John Curtin's shame, at last acknowledging Pauline's problem:

Billionaires or the battlers? Pauline Hanson’s dilemma
One Nation: a populist movement railing against elites, financed by the country’s wealthiest individual
Precisely when One Nation is becoming the vehicle for battlers, it is becoming something else: the beneficiary of a growing network of elite patronage.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor

That has to be worth at least one Golding ...

And early on the budget was top of the lizard Oz:

The reptiles have a remarkable capacity for showing meaningless graphs, with snaps showing Jimbo looking like a smirking, gibbering idiot, and this was peak reptile graphics department (there was no credit for the image, which perhaps was just as well).

Following on, the remarkably diligent Geoff chambered yet another round ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Labor ignores Reserve Bank warnings to deliver a multi-billion-dollar cash splash
At a time of soaring inflation, higher interest rates and increasing housing market pressures, the lures of populist tax changes and cost-of-living sweeteners appear to have won the day.

The pond consigned him to the archive with a note that it much preferred the earlier original headline, preserved in the archive: 2026 budget: Armed and dangerous: ‘hunting’ squad to fire populist scattergun

Now that's a pack of metaphors, but why this cruel despatch of Geoff?

Regular correspondents know the reason: this is Dame Groan day, and what a groaning and a sighing and a grieving and beating of breasts there was to be seen:

The header: The budget myth Labor is using for its big tax grab; Don’t believe the Treasurer’s untested platitudes when mooted tax changes use disputed claims about intergenerational inequity and ignore overseas failures on similar reforms.

The caption for that pair of misery makers, the ruination of Dame Groan's life: Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, ‘who is very good at rattling off unbelievable cliches in the hope they make sense’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Correspondents in the Dame Groan cult - you know who you are - already know the format.

"We'll all be rooned", in a four minute read, with the only interest the way that the attack is launched.

You have to hand it to the Albanese government: ministers don’t bother to let facts get in the way of their arguments. This is particularly the case for Jim Chalmers, who is very good at rattling off unbelievable cliches in the hope they make sense.
We hear a lot about intergenerational inequity as a rationale for policy changes even though all the serious analysis suggests there is no such thing. Older people have always held more wealth than younger folk. It has always been the case, and it will be in the future.
But identity politics is a potent force. Suggest that Baby Boomers had it easy and are now ripping off their children and grandchildren, and an argument is made that the privileges the Baby Boomers have enjoyed over their lives – forget the hard work and sacrifices – need to be pared back.
Wrap the argument in terms of the difficulty of home ownership and Chalmers suddenly becomes confident that the major tax changes to be announced in the budget are saleable. The press gallery will love them.

So far so good, but at this point, the lizard Oz graphics department decided to make it deeply weird:  ‘Older people will rightly feel some of the wealth accumulated from years of hard work and saving will be confiscated, simply to be thrown on to the bonfire of wasteful spending.’

It turns out that this was an image culled from one of those wretched stock footage libraries, though these days it might also be a form of AI slop that litters the full to overflowing interubes and can be found with an image search. (Click on to enlarge, the pond doesn't mean to insult eyeballs).

Why do the reptiles do it?

Because they're cheap as, and they need to shove some form of visual distraction into the groaning as a way of breaking up the indigestible crap.

Why was the pond distracted?

Well it already knows the main message, we'll all be rooned before the year is out ...

It’s worth summarising the analysis undertaken by e61 Institute on the issue of intergenerational inequity. The argument made is that we have “a fiscal system that was designed for a higher productivity growth economy than the one we are in”.
“Seen this way, many of the issues look less like an intergenerational divide and more like two different problems: a system that is front-loading costs on to young people’s lowest-earning years, and a windfall that will largely flow to those who inherit.”
Without productivity growth – something the Boomer generation enjoyed for several decades during their working lives – the economic compact is beginning to disintegrate. Excessive government spending has meant that bracket creep is the only reliable way to increase revenue, leaving aside the lucky break of high commodity prices. The effect has been to increase the proportion of total government revenue derived from income tax. This has a much bigger impact on those who are working rather than the retired.
There is also the issue that an impost of a 12 per cent superannuation contribution charge on younger people is far too high when lifetime earnings and needs are considered. It’s impossible to see a Labor government deciding to reduce this figure for younger folk, even if this makes perfect sense. When you are in your 20s and 30s, buying a home is a much bigger imperative than saving for retirement. Mind you, if the younger generation does have a legitimate beef about anything, it’s the run-up in government debt that they will have to pay off down the track. That’s real intergenerational inequity.

The reptiles decided at this point that they needed a Little Sir Echo, so they sent in Freedumb boy, but all that did was remind the pond that Sky Noise down under still hadn't undergone a rebrand: Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson claims the Labor government is pouring “debt petrol on the inflation fire”. “They’ve decided to continue pouring debt petrol on the inflation fire,” Mr Wilson told Sky News Australia. “Australians will continue to pay a price for that.”

What an odd way to talk about petrol in these straitened times.

And why was Jimbo featured in the thumb? Sure, he looked suitably sly and sinister, but what have the reptiles got against Freedumb boy?

No matter, back to the 'rooning ... which began to take on the eerily prophetic tone of a shining ...

So, what are the likely contents in the budget that will be justified by intergenerational inequity? One of the most likely candidates for change is capital gains tax. There is leaked chatter about moving back to the indexation method implemented by Paul Keating, which was replaced in 1999 with the far simpler 50 per cent discount rule.
What is not frequently mentioned is the scope to average capital gains over five years under the Keating method, which can significantly reduce the amount of tax payable. This facet of the arrangement is not expected to be part of the new package.
While there is some vague reference to grandfathering the new policy, this is not locked in. There is also talk of partial grandfathering, a concept that defies both logic and practical implementation. For instance, there are currently 2.5 million investment properties. The very idea they would all have to be revalued on a particular date is fanciful.

At this point the reptiles decided to really lower the visual bar: It’s not clear how a minimum rate of tax on trusts would impact on intergenerational inequity because many beneficiaries of trust income are young people.

It's not clear? What's clear is that these days the reptiles have entirely given up on the graphics game and much prefer the sort of slop that can be found all over the place:

Hey, AI, show cash and locks and coins, we need some slop to fill up the hive mind trough.

As for Dame Groan, why was the pond surprised to find she was a lover of trusts? (Truth to tell, the pond wasn't that surprised):

It’s interesting to observe what has happened recently in Canada under the normally canny Prime Minister, Mark Carney. A decision was taken to reduce the capital gains tax discount, and a date was set for the changeover. Bedlam descended because of the sheer impracticality of the proposal and the flood of assets on the market seeking liquidation before the cut-off date. In the end, the Canadian Liberal government – read Labor – was forced to back down and the change has been put on hold.
There is also a great deal of chatter here about imposing a minimum rate of tax on trusts, although there is likely to be an exemption for farmers. It’s not entirely clear how this would impact on intergenerational inequity because many beneficiaries of trust income are young people.
There is also a great deal of misinformation about trusts, with comparisons made with salary income splitting. In most cases, trust income must be distributed annually to the beneficiaries who then pay income tax at their top marginal rates. For the wealthiest, this change will not affect them. And note that trusts are, in part, a device to preserve assets.

At this point, the pond couldn't be bothered pointing out the banality of the farm illustration: Farmers are demanding the nation’s 80,000 family farms be exempt from any capital gains tax changes.

What would the world do without a drone POV?

And that led to the final gobbet of the current 'rooning ...

Having said this, many small businesses are set up as trusts and this change could adversely affect many owners who are struggling to survive in the current environment. Negative gearing has been part of the tax code for over a century. Being able to deduct the cost of investment from tax payable is a completely unexceptional feature of the tax system. It’s also impossible to sustain the argument that negative gearing (and capital gains tax) is to blame for recent high house prices since the former arrangements have not changed.
Again, it’s worth looking at what has been done on this front overseas. Several countries have pared back the generosity of negative gearing – it’s not called that in other countries. Both the UK and New Zealand changed their rules to reduce house prices and to widen the scope for home ownership.
The short- to medium-term impacts were extremely modest, with a multitude of other interventions creating chaotic housing markets – very much like here.
So, my advice as always is to hang on to your hat. Don’t believe the untested platitudes of the Treasurer or have any confidence in the advice being given to him by the commercially naive Treasury officials. Older people will rightly feel that some of the wealth they have accumulated from years of hard work and saving will be confiscated, simply to be thrown on to the bonfire of wasteful spending. But the government is not seeking their approval or their votes.
It’s all about the vibe.

That's the best Dame Groan could do for a closer? A reference to The Castle?

The pond would prefer to drag in a Wilcox ...

As for the rest, the pond will leave that to correspondents embedded in the cult, pausing only to note the singular way that Dame Groan manages to think it's all business as usual, and that a bit of demonising Jimbo and his mob is more than enough.

The world is in dire straits, and it's getting direr by the day, and yet there's no reptile in the lizard Oz willing to tackle the enormity of what mad King Donald and the mad Mullahs are managing to do to the world economy each day.

There was only one decent point to be made in favour of a war - that it might provide some relief for the Iranian people from a cruel regime.

That was never likely, it was more just an excuse dreamt up by the sociopathic Benji to sell King Donald on the war ...

Meanwhile, the sociopathy never seems to end...

Israeli minister served golden death penalty noose birthday cake

It's not just the Iranian regime that specialises in cruelty.

And so to a note from the fringes as the both siderist NY Times decided that Tucker needed help with his platform ...

In which the intermittent archive does the reptile heavy lifting, while the pond indulges Lord Downer and Major Mitchell...

 

The pond can't live by bread or reptiles alone, and so recently enjoyed a two part documentary about the 1950s Suez crisis.

It won't be for everyone. Filmmaker Chris Holt seemed to think he was doing a Christopher Nolan, and so the timeline swings wildly all over the shop.

And like many documentaries, there's only so much room, so there's no mention of the Hungarian uprising happening around the same time, nor of minor players in the folly. 

Our own Ming the Foolish's role in the folly isn't mentioned. For any of that you need the wiki at a minimum. (Ming travelled to London and "became an informal member of the British cabinet discussing the issue").

But what the pond did enjoy was the way a team of experts wolves were let loose to ravage Britain, France, and Israel, and the delusional Anthony Eden, who presided over the end of Britain as empire (though there was a twitch in the old lion's tail in the Falklands, and the likes of Tony Bleagh kept living the delusion).

Much was made of the enormity of the folly, and there are obvious echoes in King Donald's current "excursion", with the show suggesting that history rhymes, repeats and resonates.

The show also reminded the pond that stupidity is endless, and Lord Downer was on hand in today's reptile display to prove the point yet again ...

The header: Energy policy has turned this country into a land of nonsense; In 50 years, historians will look back at what we were doing during the 2010s and 20s and think we had gone slightly mad.

The caption for a standard demonising collage featuring Satan's little helper, for which Sean unwisely took a credit, thereby revealing himself to be a pathetic hack of the lower kind: Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Artwork: Sean Callinan

The pond has been here before with the reptiles and will doubtless be here again, but there's something additionally poignant about Lord Downer harumphing away about being a child of the Victorian era: 

When I was a child, my father used to read me limericks from Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense. I used to love them. They were nonsense.
I’m reminded of this book whenever I contemplate Australian public policy because Australia has descended into the land of nonsense. We’ve been through a few years when the government has been telling us we have to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. We have to invest in renewables. We have to increase the price of fossil fuels to make them less attractive and cross-subsidise investment in windmills.
We’ve been told that for years, and many people have been persuaded that by doing this we’ll somehow change the weather. What’s more, we are told we have to move away from carbon-emitting industries because that, too, will change the weather. So instead of emitting carbon dioxide from our own industries, we have moved to importing products that in their production are high carbon emitters.
Since global warming is a global phenomenon, how does that make sense? We produce only between 1 and 1.3 per cent of global emissions. Nothing we do is going to make the slightest difference to the global climate. Sure, we should make a contribution to a global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but not a disproportionate effort that will be all costs and no benefit.

The pond always likes to take its victories where it can when confronted by this form of apologetics, and here it came with Lord Downer's startling admission: global warming is a global phenomenon.

That's almost enough to get him drummed out of the reptile school of climate science denialism for heresy.

Of course Lord Downer doesn't actually believe that, he's just using the notion of "why bother, it's all futile and meaningless" to cudgel his enemies...Anthony Albanese with Chris Bowen during a press conference following National Cabinet on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

It's the inanity that gets the pond. Every so often the pond likes to joke about the "windmills" down the beefy boofhead's Goulburn way, but actually we're talking about wind turbines. 

Does Lord Downer catch the difference? Nah ...

What is incredible is so many people believe that by building more windmills and solar panels we will stop bushfires and floods. And, quite apart from anything else, we believe by doubling up on our energy production and thereby reducing productivity in the electricity sector this would somehow bring prices down. That’s nonsense: using intermittent renewables, and having to back them up with coal and gas, has increased the price of electricity, not reduced it, and it’s obvious why. The renewables don’t give us 24/7 electricity.
We need to maintain coal and gas-fired generation to produce constant energy but we have reduced the output of those power stations. We have to run two energy systems where once we ran one. The government says we have a productivity problem in Australia. It’s the government that is causing it. Productivity in the electricity generation sector has declined by 30 per cent across the past 20 years. You see what I mean by nonsense.
Then the Iran war came and we saw more nonsense. Once upon a time, Anthony Albanese was running around the world telling everyone we had to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Now he’s climbing on board his fossil-fuel driven aircraft and flying from country to country, begging them to maintain supplies. Yes, you guessed it, supplies of fossil fuels.
At home we’re told we need to move to electric cars, and the government has been subsidising electric vehicles in many ways to make them cost competitive with petrol and diesel cars. While there are heavy excises on petrol and diesel, EVs are free of that impost. What has happened in the past few weeks? The government has reduced the tax on petrol and diesel, but surely an increase in the price of petrol and diesel will encourage people to move towards EVs. Introducing subsidies now for all forms of transport is just nonsense.
Then there are the steelworks and the smelters in South Australia and Tasmania. By increasing the price of electricity – and steelworks and smelters need electricity – these fossil-fuel dependent industries have become decreasingly competitive.
Surely that’s good. That’s what the government wants: to get rid of industries that are big carbon dioxide emitters. These industries are subject to the so-called safeguard mechanism that limits their carbon emissions. If they exceed those emissions, they pay a penalty.
Once these industries struggled financially, what does the federal government do? It introduces subsidies for these industries to keep them going.

The pond bit its tongue about EVs, no point in arguing with the clueless, as yet again the reptiles reminded the hive mind of the real point of the exercise ...demonising: Anthony Albanese meeting works at the Whyalla steelworks. Picture: Supplied

It was a relief to reach the final gobbet, with Lord Downer intent on showing the Eden spirit never really died in the Adelaide hills...

The government and its counterpart government in South Australia are spending around $2bn to keep the Whyalla steelworks going. Subsidies also are being poured into smelters.
In the world of nonsense, no one does a cost-benefit analysis before spending money. Take Snowy 2.0. It’s now estimated the total cost of the project could be as much as $40bn. That is just a staggering amount of money, which even a wealthy country such as Australia can ill afford. Snowy 2.0 is essentially an electricity storage system, like a huge battery. That’s fine, but at $40bn it’s just a staggering waste of money.
Not surprisingly, much of the world thinks Australian energy policies are just nonsense. How is it that a country so rich in coal, gas and uranium has its Prime Minister flying around begging for energy from neighbouring countries? Australia has substantial reserves of oil as well, but they’re not being exploited.
The Dorado field off the coast of Western Australia is said to contain 155 million barrels of oil. Because the federal government is against fossil fuels (or it used to be anyway), that oilfield is lying fallow. And when it comes to gas, we are one of the world’s two biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas. But our governments, state and federal, have been restricting the exploitation of gas. Victoria, which has huge reserves of gas underground, is building an LNG receival terminal. That’s just nonsense.
Finally, there is uranium. We export uranium and we have the world’s largest exploitable reserves of it. However, uranium mining is apparently controversial. But it’s fine to export it from designated places. We’re happy to provide fuel for nuclear power stations abroad but opposed to nuclear power stations at home. Our government is happy to have nuclear reactors in submarines but it thinks nuclear power is too dangerous as a source of electricity.
You see what I mean? It’s another example of a country that is descending into nonsense. In 50 years, historians will look back at what we were doing during the 2010s and 2020s and think we had gone slightly mad. I think they will be right.

"I think"? What an abuse of the word, and what a feeble rhetorical flourish for a closer.

Did we really need 50 years to realise what a gormless waste of space Lord Downer was as a politician?

And as for Lear being mere nonsense ... why Ellen Vrana even manages to drag in Camus when considering the meaning of his work.

Why, consider the ways that birds can talk and act ...

And now thanks to the intermittent archive still working, the pond felt comfortable assigning a number of items to that cornfield, if only because there's going to be much budget blather in the next few weeks and the pond only takes its advice from Dame Groan.

Geoff was a very busy reptile this morning and chambered many EXCLUSIVE rounds ...

EXCLUSIVE
Bosses plead with PM, Chalmers: get a grip on debt
Business chiefs to PM and Jim: It’s time to stop the spending
Australia’s biggest employers are pushing Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers to impose strict limits on spending, debt levels and the tax-to-GDP ratio, as the Treasurer promises to save more than he spends in next week’s budget.
By Geoff Chambers

EXCLUSIVE
Push to keep young in work, especially men, as welfare recipients near 1.4m
Despite relatively low unemployment and near-record participation rates, an additional 122,000 people aged under 34 have moved on to welfare payments since the 2022 election.
By Geoff Chambers

And he even found the time to put it in a column form as well:

Watch for devil in budget detail, as business finds voice
Australia’s business leaders are finding their voice after keeping quiet for most of 2025 following Labor’s emphatic federal election victory.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

For some reason, the reptiles had marked down the Caterist early in the morning but one look at the headline explained why ...

He helped create the problem, now Jim wants you to pay
The sin taxes on thrift Jim Chalmers is about to impose are an act of desperation.
By Nick Cater

You can head off to the archive if you like, but the flood waters whisperer was sounding like Geoff in drag, or poor old oLord Downer whining about history ...

Future historians may look back on this blinkered, small-minded, economically ignorant government as the architect of a new era of intergenerational inequity. Ignorant of the lessons of history, it imagined taxes and transfers as the answer to every woe.

All that was missing was a petulant stamp of the foot, and perhaps a sulk in the corner.

Roll on Dame Groan ...

All that left the pond feeling quite exhausted and perhaps that explains why the pond also avoided this 'top of the Australian Daily Zionist News world ma' headline ...

EXCLUSIVE
First witness: ‘Give us justice for the dead and freedom from the worst of us’: Alex Ryvchin takes royal commission stand
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin will be the first community leader to take the stand at Virginia Bell’s inquiry into antisemitism on Monday, kicking off the royal commission’s first two weeks of public hearings.
By Richard Ferguson

This was by any standards a beat up because Ryvchin hadn't actually taken the stand, yet here he was being channeled by the reptiles. Talk about an inside job by the ADZN ...

The pond also skated by this effort from simpleton Simon ...

Forget ideology, anti-establishment sentiment is what counts
Trying to resolve unconventional problems with conventional politics just isn’t going to work anymore.
By Simon Benson

The pond did at least want to acknowledge the stunning opening artwork by Emilia ...a collage for the ages, and in such vibrant, vivacious colours too ...

Simon struggled to make sense of it all, so the pond doesn't mind skipping to his closer...

... Nepean shows the public polls are putting about 3 to 4 per cent more on the One Nation vote than what’s occurring at the ballot box. But assuming they are closer to being correct in Farrer, where one poll has One Nation leading on 30.8 per cent of the primary vote, then what other choice does the Coalition have but to be putting One Nation ahead of its traditional enemies?
And how is it any more controversial than the teals, Greens and Labor combining in some seats at the last election to the point where volunteers were swapping shirts and how to vote cards and Labor organisers were co-ordinating with all of them?
One Nation may end up being to the Coalition what the Greens are to Labor. The Coal­ition needs to fight One Nation but at the same time it will have to find an accommodation if it is to counter the left-wing alliance it is also up against.
For Labor, the danger is it seeks to indulge the myth that its election victory in 2025 reflected a more progressive Australia. All evidence points to the opposite.
The combined size of the primary vote on the centre right remains higher than that on the left in the current polls. A study by Advance Australia in November 2025 illuminated the contradiction. Whereas most people ended up putting their vote in the left-of-centre column, a significant ­majority identified as being politically right of centre.
If Labor wants to run the argument that the Coalition is preferencing a party of bigots, it will backfire on the basis that it will have fundamentally misunderstood what the anti-establishment movement represents and how much this is starting to eat into its own base.

Really? Of course the Coalition is preferencing a party of bigots, led by a bigot who got kicked out of the party for being a bigot ...but there's a simpler attack line, because it's also a party of bigots being sponsored by Gina, trying to do a Clive ...

Or as the immortal Rowe put it ...

Such a nicely demonic image.

And with that all done and dusted it was time to turn to the Monday Major ...

The header: Albo’s meagre reforms don’t amount to a hill of beans; Many journalists and politicians misunderstand the point of economic reform. It’s about making the country richer by working smarter.

The caption for the snap of the very naughty boy: Jim Chalmers must understand reform is not to help finance an endless expansion of public sector employment Picture: Liam Kidston

The Major spent a bigly five minutes channeling Rick and his hill of beans, and the pond only went there because he showed the inclination of the reptiles these days to live in the past.

The pond can understand why. The world is currently in dire Hormuz straits, and so it makes it much easier to brood about economic reform if you ignore the current situation and circumstances, and instead head back to ancient times for comforters...

Many journalists and politicians misunderstand the point of economic reform.
Reform should not be about fairness, intergenerational equity, social cohesion or getting back at “greedy multinationals”. All have been cited as reasons for changes to the capital gains tax discount, negative gearing and taxes on gas exporters.
Economic reform is about making the country richer by working smarter and improving incentives within the tax, welfare and industrial relations systems. It’s about making governments at all levels more efficient.
It’s not about a tax grab to help a lazy government pay off the nation’s debt, or to help finance an endless expansion of public sector employment.
The reforming Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s and ’90s told voters upfront that the world does not owe Australians a living.
Hawke and Keating floated the dollar, opened the economy to international competition, deregulated banking and industrial relations and, cut personal and company tax rates.
John Howard’s Coalition government introduced a GST and privatised lazy government-owned businesses.
These governments wanted Australia to be able to compete with the rapidly growing open economies of Asia.

Sure enough, the reptiles reinforced the Major's desire to live in the past... Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating exchange words in Parliament House in Canberra prior to delivering the federal budget in August 1986.

We could well be living in a very difficult world if the mad Mullahs and mad King Donald keep on carrying on, what with shipping still in peril, but the Major prefers to live in a void and howl about the way things were ...

Their reforms gave Australia 30 years of productivity improvements that underwrote growth and kept the nation out of recession.
Political wins today come from giving away free money on the national credit card.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won the May 2025 election with handouts to subsidise soaring power prices. He cancelled $16bn of student debt accumulated by people who would go on to become high-income earners.
He signalled subsidised childcare for families earning up to $530,000 a year and an $8bn boost to bulk billing that gave doctors $3 for every dollar saved by patients.
The only tough thing his government has promised since 2022 was last week’s decision to limit NDIS growth to 2 per cent a year and cut 160,000 people from the scheme. The big question is will it happen or is it just a number for the forward estimates when Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down the budget on May 12?
Albanese last Wednesday linked possible changes to the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount and to negative gearing to building national resilience. Seriously?
The PM believes populism is rising globally because people feel governments are not listening to them. Yet he thinks this can be solved with minor tinkering to taxes on investments.
Albanese and Chalmers say changes to the tax treatment of housing would deliver more “intergenerational equity”, yet they refuse to deal with the biggest threat to future generations – the $1 trillion national debt.
The Australian’s economics correspondent Matthew Cranston on April 25 reported Chalmers was likely to axe the 50 per cent tax discount introduced in 1999 for all assets held for more than 12 months, not just housing.
Tax will be paid on an inflation accounted basis, so only real gains will be taxed.
Cranston said negative gearing could also be axed for existing properties, but the change would be grandfathered. He reported on Wednesday that several within the government wanted revenue from the changes handed back as tax cuts, an idea the PM and Chalmers do not support.
Just as well, given the likely savings would be minimal, would not pay for meaningful PAYE tax cuts, and won’t even do much to boost housing supply for the young.
As this column pointed out on February 22, such changes will only increase rents as investors offset costs the only other way possible. The government seems unable to move the dial on housing supply, partly because it is also unable to control immigration.
Such tax changes will not improve productivity or increase incentives to work and save. Yet much of the media – especially the ABC, Guardian Australia and Nine’s city tabloids – has treated these meagre plans as serious reform.
Many journalists of the left never accepted voters were correct to reject these policies when they were put forward by then Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten in 2019.
Imagine how Australia would have been placed had Shorten’s huge spending program been met less than 12 months later by the Covid pandemic. Smart governments save in good times so they have the finances to handle bad times.
The best that can be said of the latest property plans is they won’t do much damage. But as a PhD student of Keating, Chalmers should know the last time Labor scrapped negative gearing in 1985 it had to reverse course 18 months later because investors stopped building homes.
More dangerous is the idea being floated by the anti-reform crowd at the Greens and their favourite think tank, the Australia Institute.

Institute boss Richard Denniss, the Greens and federal independent senator David Pocock have been pushing for a 25 per cent federal charge on all gas export revenue.
Senior journalists such as ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson and ABC Melbourne Radio’s Ali Moore have treated the proposal reverentially, apparently unaware Labor’s favourite post-war economist Ross Garnaut actually designed the much-maligned PRRT (Petroleum Resources Rent Tax).

Such ritual incantations, such railings, at such predictable foes ...

especially the ABC, Guardian Australia and Nine’s city tabloids 

the anti-reform crowd at the Greens and their favourite think tank, the Australia Institute.

Does the Major ever get tired of it? Is there another track, or will it always be a one-track mind?

It's certainly very tiring to read, especially when the reptiles conjure up an image designed to terrify the hive mind ... ABC's 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson appears in favour of a 25 per cent federal charge on all gas export revenue. Picture: ABC

The Major's a fossil fools sort of dude, and so he carries on in the Lord Downer way...

The PRRT is a virtual super profits tax payable once development costs of a project have been paid down. Today’s gas exporters will end up paying 60 per cent tax on all profits, not as high as Norway but Norwegian taxpayers are co-investors in big resources projects and Australians are not.
Resource operators here also pay state royalties for onshore gas plus payroll tax, so the idea we are giving our resources away for free is silly. Yet ABC online has run pieces making that claim. Journalists seem unable to understand most large gas export projects in Australia are relatively new and just at the start of their PRRT liabilities.
At least the Prime Minister ruled this out last week. A large new tax on projects that have cost more than $400bn since 2010 is precisely the wrong strategy during a global energy crisis as he tries to secure oil products from countries that buy our gas.
Journalists should apply scepticism to a resources tax proposal from a think tank that has long advocated against gas and all fossil fuels. Yet many reporters covering this story reserve their scepticism for critics of the tax plan, claiming arguments against it are “gas industry talking points”.
Moore, like the Greens-led Senate inquiry that took evidence over three days from April 21, even gave airtime to a social media activist, Punters Politics host Konrad Benjamin, to advocate for the tax idea.
Benjamin and Pocock have been claiming the gas industry pays in PRRT less than the annual excise on beer. The comparison does not account for the imminent ramp up of the PRRT. The gas industry last year paid $22bn in tax, and the PRRT will eventually be a multiple of that.

Could the Major's outing be complete without a truly terrifying image, designed to send the hive mind into panic mode ... Senator David Pocock claims the gas industry pays in PRRT less than the annual excise on beer. Picture: Martin Ollman

It seems to the pond  a pretty fair bet that neither federal nor state Labor will rock the fossil fuels boat, especially in these straitened times, but that won't stop the likes of the Major howling and whining into the ether ...

This is how far journalism has fallen. Journalists who can’t understand a 40-year-old tax think it’s OK to give airtime to social media activists with no tax or resources background.
Centre for Independent Studies boss and former editor of this newspaper and editor-in-chief of The Australian Financial Review Michael Stutchbury got it right in the AFR last Saturday week. Labor should use the energy crisis to give certainty to international investors so Australia can become the world’s leading gas exporter, he wrote.
That would be a reform to make our children wealthier. A retrospective 25 per cent tax based on revenue would ensure investors never put money into another gas project in Australia.

What makes this truly funny? 

It's the major railing at social media activists being given airtime, when there's absolutely no sign that the Major himself has any meaningful background in tax or resources ... unless you count ranting like a right wing ratbag in the lizard Oz in recent times, and before that making a name for himself and the Currish Snail by tracking down Order of Lenin medials.

On the other hand, the Major's desire to block or silence dissenting voices is very Soviet ...so perhaps there's some sort of consistency there.

And now to play fair with the immortal Rowe, the pond really should show the full cartoon from which that excerpt was taken, and if it's a repeat, it's because it's worth repeating ...

And finally a soupçon of social media, with Vlad the Sociopath's Russia always good for a laugh ...