The pond is so used to listening to the Beeb nightly on what's allegedly a local news radio station that calling in the Beeb to act as scabs and strike-breakers only made the pond wonder when there might come a campaign to replace the entire ABC with the Beeb.
What a refreshing diversion to be able to take in the Beeb's televisual news on News 24 without the usual local ambulance chasing.
Trust Jack the Insider to make the obvious jokes for the gloating reptiles ...
And so on ...
Sadly, with the intermittent archive still acting kinda funny, the pond has had to resort to teaser trailers again... and the odd relieving 'toon:
This is a taste of petulant Peta, in the same state angst-ridden, existential brooding about the perils of Pauline as all the other reptiles:
It must be terrifying for the reptiles to discover that One Nation has assiduously read them and taken on board their migrant and Islamophobia, and their climate denialism and love of coal and lust to nuke the country, not to save the planet, just to nuke it ...
Unfortunately there's no way to drag in some alternative to the reptiles.
The best way to deal with them is simply to avoid them, but that's not in the pond's job description.
And that's why the pond ended up yet again with Dame Groan, turning in her usual dinkum groaning, and for once she had something to groan about, or at least the good citizens of Wodonga did, with the pond yesterday observing this at a petrol station in Wodonga, while indulging in a relaxing EV charge ...
Once again the old groaner sought to blame local pollies for the mindless excursions of mad king Donald, deep into adventurist excursions...
The header: Australia supply chain crisis: The worst is yet to come; For a country that produces as much food as we do, why on earth are we facing shortages of products like this?
The caption for Frank's astonishing work: Higher fuel costs feed into so many other prices that impact inflation. Artwork: Frank Ling
It was only a three minute groaning, but the pond was exceptionally pleased, because you don't see the sort of artwork offered up by Frank as the key illustration every day of the week.
What an astonishing image erupting from the bowels of a graphics department at the top of its game, and as for the caption advising that higher fuel costs impacted other costs, it was the sort of economics lesson that can only be called visonary.
It inspired Dame Groan to even greater, 'we'll all be rooned' heights ...
The release of the February CPI figures showed that annual headline inflation rose by 3.7 per cent while the trimmed mean figure was 3.3 per cent. On the face of them, it looked as through inflation was stabilising, albeit at an unacceptably high figure. Both figures are essentially meaningless as they relate to a period before the conflict in the Middle East and the rapid escalation of the oil price, which is floating above and below the $US100 mark. It’s not just the higher price of fuel per se but the fact that this price feeds into so many other prices that makes it important. The Treasurer is canny enough to acknowledge that the February CPI figures are not indicative of what is to come. Addressing a large group of big business executives, he even talked about an inflation figure close to 7 per cent, with the impact of the current global uncertainty paralleling the global financial crisis. What these past two weeks or so have demonstrated to people is the importance of hydrocarbons in our daily lives. It’s not just the price and availability of fuel at the servo; it goes well beyond this. Diesel is more important than petrol in enabling the farmers and regional communities to continue their productive activities, including getting foodstuffs to market.
The pond must confess to also being bowled over by the illustration for the AV distraction ... Australia's headline inflation figure has fallen from 3.8 per cent to 3.7 per cent.
Once upon a time it used to be illegal to reproduce images of currency, but the pond likes to walk on the wild side ...
This is a graphics department that's on fire, and it produced an incendiary groaning ...
The scarcity and escalating price of urea is of particular concern as farmers prepare for winter planting. For a nation that makes enough food to feed around 70 to 80 million people, it is more than passing strange that we don’t produce urea locally. We could, but the combined cost of energy (particularly gas) and labour has made urea’s production uneconomic compared with importing this essential fertiliser. The price of oil feeds directly into construction costs, particularly through much more expensive PVC pipes. This couldn’t be happening at a worse time. There are also unexpected worries such as the shortage of helium – a by-product of gas processing – which is required for the operation of MRI machines. We can all live without party balloons; MRI machines are a different matter. For all the discussion of the problems of supply chain blockages during Covid and the need to be better prepared in the future, it’s not clear anything material has been done. The Productivity Commission prepared a useful report, Vulnerable Supply Chains, that was released in 2021. It turns out that businesses and people are inclined to underestimate the chance of adverse events occurring with substantial consequences. But we should expect the government to do a better job at this – to provide insurance where the actions of private businesses and individuals fail to do so. The government should be able to identify critical and essential import supply chains and assess the adequacy of their risk management. Some of the tools include stockpiling, long-term contracts and diversification of supply. Support for local production may be justified in some instances. The immediate economic future is highly uncertain and unlikely to be quickly resolved even if events in the Middle East calm down quickly. The damage to the large LNG plant in Qatar will take a long time to repair. The consequences for the global LNG market will be substantial, and Australia may be a net beneficiary. We may need to use the surety of our LNG supplies – don’t even think about imposing an export levy that would be passed on to customers – to secure guaranteed supplies of fuel, urea and other items we may need. With only a few weeks before the budget, Jim Chalmers is staying firm in his resolve to achieve several changes, including on spending restraint, taxation reform and productivity. If the Prime Minister stays true to form, his instinct will be to refrain from scaring the horses and apply a degree of pump-priming in the form of some cost-of-living measures. It will be interesting to watch this conflict play out. Whatever happens, the immediate economic outlook looks grim as people deal with the high degree of uncertainty and higher living expenses.
The pond was pleased to be reminded of one of the key reasons for this folly ... with Crikey taking up the story (sorry paywall)
Murdoch’s Fox News has been the loudest global advocate of the Iran War over the past 23 days, so it came as no surprise over the weekend to read reports claiming that the 95 year old “chairman emeritus” of News Corp and Fox Corp had personally urged Donald Trump on multiple occasions to join Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempted regime change war of choice against Iran.
And so on, and these days it's getting tough to sort out who's the biggest war criminal ...
It's a day of bits and pieces, so the pond should note that the bouffant one was also on hand to distract from the real criminals ....
Sadly he could be swallowed in one gobbet gulp ... but at least he provided an excuse for another 'toon ...
Carry on bleating ...
Uh huh ...and not a single mention of that first refuge for scoundrels, the lizard Oz and Faux Noise.
But staying in the bouffant spirit, why not a full blown DIY campaign?
The pond decided to make only a token note of Allegra's attempt to pander to Dame Groan ...
Pitiful ... but the pond guesses that indies must do whatever it takes to score a mention in the hive mind.
The pond was pleased however when the bouffant one took the pond back to the grand days when the lizard Oz was known as the Catholic News Daily (before it became the Daily Zionist News) ...
Excellent stuff and it gave the old Pellists a chance to trot out a snap of their wretched hero, together with another ... Late cardinal George Pell. Picture: Getty Images; Mykola Bychok, who was appointed by Pope Francis as a cardinal in 2024. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay
The bouffant one then wrapped up proceedings ... ite in pace ...
Finally, instead of the reptiles sending in the bromancer to fix the middle east, or serve up "Ned" sighing at clouds, or even the emeritus chairman explaining how the current excursion was anything but a wondrous folly designed to ruin the world, the reptiles decided to advice on strategies for impending war.
Given the aged Emeritus Chairman's inclination to war mongering, perhaps it was wise and necessary way forward.
Carry on Mick ...
Of course none of this will help fix the main problem - the rogue country at the source of all the recent excursions, which also happens to ber busy internally falling apart, and arranging for planes to crash into fire trucks...and who mentions the Trumpstein files these days?
Mick eventually caught up on the way that the rogue imperial adventurer has helped Vlad the Sociopath out of a pickle by giving his budget an oil bonus of a most unseemly kind, but whatever ... the pond reckons it's a certainty that Mick won't include King Donald's ramshackle, rogue authoritarian country in his list of authoritarian countries threatening the world order ...
At worst apparently the mad king might be deemed to be pursuing "not a good strategy" ...
What to do? Bring back the bromancer so the world can be truly stuffed, and we'll have a war with China by Xmas!
Mick, in his strategising, did leave out one thing that ordinary Australians might do to make the world a safer place. Not a dime, not a red cent, to war mongers of the Murdochian kind.
And while we're at it, perhaps best to avoid giving the mad king a sharpie ...
And so to a few visual distractions to wrap things up ...think of them as ABC radio in drag ...
What with King Donald promising boots on the ground in the form of thousands of paratroopers (so the reptiles said) and Jimbo warning of tough times ahead (so the reptiles reported), it was inevitable that the brave, bold, warrior known to intimates as the bromancer would duck for cover and decide to take it all out on the Europeans ...
The header: Anthony Albanese embraces his European ideals, glosses over the difference of a few billion between friends; Anthony Albanese has struck agreements with Europe that signal Australia’s dangerous drift toward the continent’s struggling economic and political model.
The caption for the snap of the dangerous duo: Anthony Albanese and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The bromancer could only summon up three minutes of copy to warn against this dangerous drift towards those wretched European types, what with their cheese-mongering and fancy plonk, but a careful reading could reveal his yearning for King Donald and his amazing excursions ...
Anthony Albanese loves Europe; he loves its politics, its leaders, its food and especially its failed social model, which he is now imposing on Australia. Nonetheless the Prime Minister is rightly happy about finally signing a free-trade agreement with the European Union, and a security agreement as well. FTAs are a good thing in principle, even limited ones like this, though they tend to be wildly over-boomed and never deliver anything like what is claimed for them. The FTA with Europe, Albanese tells us, will add $10bn a year to the Australian economy. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, at the same press conference, says it might add “almost $8bn” to the Australian economy. Nobody takes figures like this too seriously, so what’s a couple of billion dollars in the headline figure between friends? But these agreements do in fact reveal the growing intimacy between the Albanese government and the European leadership. Trade Minister Don Farrell has done a good job for the government. But Albanese is operating at an altogether deeper level. His government behaves very much like a European government. Australian politics is coming to resemble European politics, as Australian society itself looks increasingly European.
Shocking stuff.
Increasingly European? The pond almost fainted with fright ...and the reptiles compounded the fear with an AV distraction featuring a hideous creature that came to walk amongst us ...
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers a powerful address in the Australian parliament following the signing of a historic free trade agreement. “What we signed today will unleash a new era of economic and security partnership,” Ms von der Leyen said. “The distance has traditionally been a barrier to our relationship, but today geography is no more our destiny, and distance is no longer a protection or luxury.”
It turns out all that reptile blather about Western Civilisation, and the Judaeo-Xian heritage and such like counts for naught when it comes to the crunch, and what really matters is an unthinking embrace of King Donald's adventures.
Europe itself is a decadent cesspit ...
Once, when Europe embodied humane values, social compromise, hi-tech development and war-sobered democratic solidarity and national security responsibility, that might all have seemed a good thing. Now, not so much. Now, the European model embodies state incompetence, social stress and political fragmentation. Welcome aboard, Australia. Europe is addicted to massive universal welfare programs (whereas Australia once targeted welfare through means testing) and wildly inefficient transfer payments that ensure crippling tax levels, lack of incentive and chronic, structural budget deficits. They also routinely strangle business in byzantine regulation. Australia could be a leading member of the European All Stars on all these measures. Like Europe, Australia has burdened itself with a hugely costly, ultimately unworkable energy policy that makes energy prices uncompetitive with the rest of the world and ensures that reindustrialisation can only occur with massive and unsustainable government subsidies. The European elite has so consistently ignored the concerns of its people, especially on immigration, that the society has lost faith in normal democratic politics. The traditional political parties are losing support to new parties challenging on the populist right. Sound familiar? The official ideology of the EU essentially rejects mainstream European cultural heritage and instead of a self-confident historical narrative of achievement and imperfection, promotes the delegitimisation of its own traditions, along with endless identity politics and grievance. Any echoes there?
Just to remind the hive mind yet again of the treachery at work ...Von der Leyen in parliament on Tuesday. Picture: AAP
Talk about fraught times for bromancers, forced to seek out the ugly truth beneath the glittering surfaces ...
Now we have the military co-operation agreement between Australia and Europe. The Albanese government actually does defence diplomacy pretty well. The problem is it virtually doesn’t do defence in substance at all, a very European combination. Von der Leyen was an elegant, witty, respectful and positive presence in the national parliament. It was good that she spoke, and she spoke well. Yet it is still the case that, even after four years of Russian war in Ukraine, Europe’s leading nations have not produced military forces, military platforms or military ordnance on anything like the scale that their grave security situation requires. Their budgets are in constant deficit because of the ever increasing demand for universal welfare payments, and they thus cannot make the decision to resource their own defence properly, instead relying, as ever, on the Americans, even as Donald Trump routinely mocks them for their derelictions. However, compared with the Albanese government the Europeans look like Godzilla after a Red Bull overdose.
As if a couple of world wars had turned them into a bunch of pathetic wimps ... how the Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches yearned for a real man, doing manly things with his bone spurs ... US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP
Sorry, whenever King Donald appears, the pond is contractually required to celebrate with a worshipful cartoon ...
Ahh, you won't find any of that nonsense in Europe, unless you happen to visit Hungary with the bromancer's best buddy, the onion muncher ...
And so to the bromancer wrapping up his despair ...
Von der Leyen confirmed that European leaders had said they would send ships to help the US open the Strait of Hormuz. However, she added, this would only happen after hostilities had ceased. In other words, the Europeans would make a military contribution when there was no longer a military need. They would work to open up the Strait of Hormuz after it was already open. A very European military commitment. However, even that was more than Australia under Albanese would offer. When asked whether Australia would send a naval vessel to the Strait of Hormuz the Prime Minister simply dodged the question. That’s because, apart from the implausible case of the two air warfare destroyers currently notionally in service, the Australian navy possesses no ship that could realistically be sent to the Strait of Hormuz. The key to understanding the security agreement between Australia and Europe is that it can’t amount to much. European nations and their militaries can’t cope with Europe’s security challenges, much less make a big contribution in the Indo-Pacific. Australia has a tiny number of exquisitely complex defence platforms, so tiny in number that they cannot in themselves make any strategic contribution anywhere, even in the defence of Australia, much less the defence of Europe. Tokenism, speeches and symbolism on the other hand – the EU and the Albanese government do all that very well. Australia now rejoices in its participation in the Eurovision song contest. This surely makes the Albanese government yearn for more. How comfortable it would be in the European Union itself!
Indeed, indeed, how much better to dance along to the sounds of that ear worm YMCA ....
And now to an apology.
In recent times, the pond has taken to sending reptiles to the intermittent archive where correspondents can inspect them at their leisure, but for whatever reason, the archive hasn't been itself these last few days.
So the pond can only show its homework and show what it decided to miss out on.
First up was Dame Slap doing a standard bit of black bashing ...
That's more than enough black bashing.
The pond also decided to miss out on Mandy, even though she was talking about a matter and a country the reptiles have studiously ignored ...
Call the pond weird - many do - but the pond's taste runs to reptiles in full hysterical overload, cranked up to eleven ... and Monsieur Dupont was exactly what any loon doctor might order ...
Damn those 'leets.
Why every day the lizard Oz featured an attack on sociopathic Vlad the Impaler's excursion into Ukraine, and every day the pond kept blinking and missing it, but here he is, in the usual company ... Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arriving to a military parade in Beijing. Picture: AFP
It seems deeply unfair to avoid featuring the biggest war monger of them all at the moment - Cuba next? - but the pond will go with the flow, as Monsieur Dupont readies the country for war ...
Real-world events have shattered the illusion that the generational peace Australians have long enjoyed would continue indefinitely. Europeans who smugly proclaimed that war on their continent had been consigned to the dustbin of history received a rude shock in 2022 when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in pursuit of his imperial ambitions. This should have been a wake-up call that Pax Americana was fracturing and we needed to lift our game on defence. Again, nothing was done. While Europeans and pacifist Japan ramped up their defence spending, ours flatlined despite warnings from Defence Minister Richard Marles that our strategic circumstances are the most challenging and dangerous since the end of World War II. Putin’s invasion was followed in short order by the murderous Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 supported by Tehran and its proxies, igniting a series of linked conflicts across the Middle East leading to the current US-Israeli strike against Iran. Warning lights should have been flashing red in the National Security Committee of cabinet spurring serious attempts to immediately increase fuel reserves, identify supply chain risks, move from “just in time to just in case” planning and redouble efforts to make more of what we need in this country – otherwise known as sovereign capabilities. But apart from laudable efforts to support Australian critical minerals miners, the government hasn’t done nearly enough to build the resilience needed to mitigate rising geopolitical risk. We have wafer-thin petroleum reserves. Anthony Albanese hasn’t delivered on his promise to build a strategic merchant fleet that could carry oil and other essential commodities in emergencies. Perversely, he now appears to be considering higher taxes on gas exports when the world is facing a critical gas shortage, risking a collapse in new investment.
It's a long time since the pond has thought of Winston, but how splendid of Monsieur Dupont to look across the dutch for advice, New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Rt Hon Winston Peters. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Indeed, indeed, it's deeply alarming that the current leadership of the United States is united in its desire to unravel a rules-based order, but here we are ...
Ironically, it took a New Zealand foreign minister to bell the cat. Winston Peters has admitted his country and Australia ought to have been better prepared for the Iran war oil crisis and made “serious mistakes” in allowing fuel refineries to close because they were “too cocky” about the state of the world. It should have been obvious that an unusually peaceful period in world history has ended and we are returning to the historical norm. The respected Peace Research Institute Oslo reports that the world is experiencing a surge in violence not seen since World War II. Sixty-one conflicts were recorded across 36 countries in 2025. PRIO research director Siri Aas Rustad warned: “This is not just a spike – it’s a structural shift. The world today is far more violent, and far more fragmented, than it was a decade ago. “Conflicts are no longer isolated. They’re layered, transnational and increasingly difficult to end. It is a mistake to assume the world can look away.” And this may be only the beginning. The next decade could see escalating conflict around the world that will directly impact on Australia, the most serious of which would be a military confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan. To borrow from the late Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, that would be the “mother of all battles”, dwarfing the supply chain and geopolitical upheavals of recent weeks. It’s no surprise that revisionist powers China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are united in their desire to unravel a rules-based order crafted by the US and fellow democracies that has served Australia well. But few foresaw that an American president would actively participate in the dismantling of this order. Serial interventionist Donald Trump has led a revolution “against the very world that America made”, says Carnegie’s Stewart Patrick. If you think that’s a stretch, read the 2026 US National Defence Strategy. It dismisses “the rules-based international order” as a “cloud castle” abstraction.
Just the USA Monsieur Dupont?
Isn't the call coming from inside the house? You should really keep up ...
And so on, and oh dear, and the next snap is no consolation, Richard Marles
At that point, Monsieur Dupont spluttered out, but not before urging on the war with China, preferably by Xmas, as reptiles are wont to do at the drop of a war mongering excursion hat ...
Dispelling the false assumption that geography will continue to cushion us from overseas shocks is a task of government. But the message isn’t getting through often or sharply enough. When the Ukraine conflict first broke out, complacent elites, who should have known better, asserted that a conflict in distant Europe wouldn’t affect Australia. That was patently wrong. Global supplies of key agricultural products, energy and metals were severely disrupted. The drone war with Russia revealed a potentially fatal structural flaw in our defence force. We have no effective counter-drone capability. The same people continue to argue that we shouldn’t get involved in a Taiwan conflict because it’s far away and doesn’t concern us. That canard should be rebutted. Much of our trade and energy goes through the South China Sea. If simmering tensions over Taiwan erupt into military conflict, war will come to our shores whether we like it or not. Our geography won’t protect us. The question is: Does the Albanese government have workable contingency plans in place for such an eventuality?
Just one final flourish.
Monsieur Dupont warned the hive mind at the start about the dangers of leets and then signed himself off this way ...
Alan Dupont is chief executive of geopolitical risk consultancy The Cognoscenti Group and a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute.
The Cognoscenti Group?
Why that's up there with the Illuminati ... or perhaps the Rosicrucians ...
And so to "Ned", still in a state of hysteria about the croweaters ...
Poor "Ned", and yet the pond will always turn to him, even if he manages to drag some ancient toad relic out of the dustbin of collective memories... Peter Beattie inside Queensland Parliament, August 1998.
"Ned" was in a state of dire panic ... apparently forgetting that the readership of the lizard Oz had been trained for years to embrace the climate-denialist, Islamophobic, minority fearing and loathing, ways of the redhead's mob...
The SA result reflects the opinion poll trend across the nation: there is a massive vote transfer within the centre-right. It confirmed what we knew: that One Nation can ruin the Liberals, but it cannot win enough preferences to stop Labor being the net winner against a broken Liberal Party. The numbers are telling: the stronger the Hanson vote, the weaker the overall centre-right vote. Hanson isn’t interested in governing; her brief is sabotage, laying political landmines. If One Nation remains a strong force in future, the consequences are guaranteed. It will assist NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns to be re-elected in March 2027 and then assist the re-election of Anthony Albanese in 2028. Given that most One Nation voters loathe the Labor Party and the Albanese government, this suggests a disconnection between their emotional disposition and the consequences of their vote. (The qualification, of course, is that some One Nation voters just want to wreck the two-party system.) If One Nation succeeds in usurping the Liberals and the Coalition as the major party of the centre-right, that becomes a devastating event for Australia – Hansonism as the alternative to Labor. It would terminate centre-right politics as it has long been practised in this country. It is astonishing that the Liberal Party has been confused about whether One Nation is a friend or an enemy. Seeing Hanson openly seeks to destroy the Coalition vote, such confusion is inexcusable folly. The iron law that should govern Liberal Party attitudes towards One Nation is obvious: whatever maximises its vote against Labor, given the goal is to defeat Labor.
Can't we just nuke them? It's good enough for the country, so why not them? Or should we embrace dunderheads keen to destroy writers' festivals? Chris Minns; Peter Malinauskas
It turns out that "Ned", in his usual way, doesn't have much of a clue, might even be part of the problem ...
The Liberals, therefore, should strive to weaken Hanson’s primary vote and to maximise the flow of One Nation preferences to the Coalition. That’s both a primary and preference strategy. It rules out either simple-minded attacks on Hanson or alignments with her. The Liberals need to differentiate themselves from Hanson, avoid turning her into a defiant heroine but make preference decisions solely based on vote maximisation. More than 30 years ago, ANOP pollster Rod Cameron, who guided the Labor Party for so long, said Hanson thrived on criticism from elites, and “the more criticism she gets, the better she travels”. Too many people have forgotten this. The golden rules are: don’t criticise her personally, don’t call her a racist or a fascist – that just confirms the dogmatism of her supporters. Stress instead that she can never govern, she only sets one Australian against another Australian, and, as Matt Canavan said recently, she has never delivered anything worthwhile – not a “single dam, single road, single hospital”. A vote for Hanson is a wasted vote. The Liberals need to avoid a counter-productive binary debate about whether to move to the left or right to combat Hanson. They need, instead, to act as a governing party. That imposes two requirements. First, remember Hanson is your opponent. The Liberals are not in a team with Hanson, they are not in a coalition with her, and they will never seek to govern with her. Those conservatives who dream of a governing partnership – Liberals, One Nation, Nationals – are deluded since these three parties are too fundamentally different to form a troika. The Liberals who champion this approach risk killing their own party.
And what of the reptiles who joined in the cheerleading? The ones who did their very best to normalise the redhead?
Isn't the call coming from inside "Ned's" house? Didn't the reptiles celebrate the way the redhead had caught up with the right hive mind attitudes?
And so on and on, a heady reptile brew of immigration fear and loathing and climate science denialism.
The twin planks of the lizard Oz this past decade.
It doesn't leave much room for a beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, what with him coming to fame by shouting at windmills. Not much of a distinct brand there ... Leader of the Opposition Angus Taylor during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
All "Ned" had to offer him was the chance to sound like Pauline ...
Second, the Liberals need to show their cultural credentials as the party of tradition. Much of Hanson’s success lies in fighting the cultural hegemony of the progressive left in its commitment to identity politics, contemporary tribalism, excessive immigration, weakening Australian identity, and undermining national unity. Every position advanced by Hanson is tied to the pitch that “I’ll restore the country you are losing” and, in this sense, Hanson targets a genuine affliction in this country. The irony of election night is that Premier Peter Malinauskas in his victory speech invoked patriotism and the flag as the necessary virtues to stop Hanson’s inroads into the Labor vote. Targeting One Nation, he said pride in country can’t be co-opted by any single party. “The cultural question must be top of mind,” Malinauskas said. “It comes down to: are you for Australia?” He said One Nation must be met with two responses – economic gains and national pride. The Premier’s message was anathema to left-wing progressivism in this country, but as an election winner, he was beyond criticism. This was an invitation and a lesson for the Liberals. They need to stand up and present themselves as the party of flag, anthem, patriotism, duty, honour, family, personal responsibility, and unity in diversity. And if the moderate wing of the Liberals can’t abide this essential step to halt Hanson, then it also risks killing the party.
Say again?
They need to stand up and present themselves as the party of flag, anthem, patriotism, duty, honour, family, personal responsibility ...
They need to sound just like patriotic, flag-waving Pauline?
... and then throw in a token reference to "unity in diversity" as the only difference?
This on the very day that Dame Slap returned to her standard black bashing form?
Completely clueless ... please allow the infallible Pope ot help ...
And now, as everybody knows that Moby is a d*ckhead supreme, (*google bot aware), the pond felt inclined to celebrate ...
Naturally this coincided with news of a political party taking up the lizard Oz's position on climate science, coal, and nuking the country, in an EXCLUSIVE ...
Might as well now call the lizard Oz "Pauline's paper", so faithfully does she replicate all that the reptiles have pushed for over the years ...
It makes the sort of mealy-mouthed attempt by ancient Troy to swing back to the centre all the more insufferable ...
Really, ancient Troy, you lurk in a far right rag that's desperate to be populist, and urge a return to some mystical centre?
The pond would have sent him off to the intermittent archive forthwith, but it's being moody and downright unreachable this morning, and anyway, who cares for this sort of blather?
Apparently ancient Troy still hasn't worked out that the far-right, xenophobic, nativist and grievance-based lizard Oz has been a wrecking ball for decades.
And speaking of far right weirdos, the bromancer was in top form this day, which is to say sounding like a complete prat ...
The header: A nuclear Iran means Trump’s Mid-East war is a just one; Those who are reflexively anti-American have no appreciation for the moral good of American power.
The caption for the hair blowing in the wind: US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP
Ye ancient fraudulent Augustinian cats and howling fundamentalist tyke dogs, not this last refuge for the desperate ...
Though it may lurch into utter catastrophe – if Donald Trump destroys all of Iran’s energy infrastructure and the Iranians attack all Gulf Arab energy infrastructure and desalination plants that they can reach with their drones, remaining missiles and regional proxies – the US and Israel’s war against Iran nonetheless is probably a just war. Of course, if waged with sufficient incompetence or confusion, as Trump exhibits, that would affect questions of morality. The key is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. In taking extreme measures to avoid new nations acquiring nukes, Trump stands squarely in the tradition of all US presidents since Harry Truman. In 1945, only the US possessed atomic weapons. Today eight nations do – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. That we’ve avoided nuclear war, restricted the number of nuclear weapons states to eight and prevented terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons is a triumph for the human race, and above all for the benign exercise of American power. The two most unstable and dangerous nuclear states are North Korea and Pakistan. Both have nuclear weapons partly because of historic Chinese complicity in proliferation.
Um, it's just North Korea and Pakistan? What about Israel, Russia, the United States, three incredibly unstable and dangerous nuclear states? What about Israel's notorious attempt to help South Africa nuke up?
Um, didn't the notorious liar advise only months ago that they'd completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program?
He did, he did, with the reptiles themselves regurgitating the news straight from Tulsi's lips ...
Couldn't the bromancer simply admit that there hasn't been a war he hasn't loved in his war mongering way, without trotting out distractions and silly, deeply inapplicable Catholic theology?
US President Bill Clinton; US President Harry Truman
The urge to distract is so naked, so opportunistic, that the pond for a nanosecond felt embarrassed for the bromancer ...
Bill Clinton in 1994 was on the brink of taking military action to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program. He consulted Australia and wanted our support. The action was explicitly not going to attempt regime change and Washington had elaborate plans to communicate this to Pyongyang and Beijing. Clinton was forestalled by the “peace activism” of former president Jimmy Carter making a high-profile visit to Pyongyang just when Clinton would otherwise have struck. Today, North Korea has perhaps 60 nuclear weapons and has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles that can deliver them to the US or indeed to Australia. Was it really more moral for the US not to engage in military action against Pyongyang’s nuclear establishment, so that today one of the most bizarre dictatorships in human history has the physical power to wreak catastrophic damage over large parts of the planet? Israel famously destroyed nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria. The whole world is safer as a result. The US persuaded many countries, friends and foes, to forswear nuclear weapons plans. It bombed and threatened Libya into abandoning its nuclear program. Famously, Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke up but was persuaded to get rid of them in exchange for security guarantees from the US, Britain and Russia. As late as the late 1960s Australia had considered acquiring its own nuclear weapons. One reason we didn’t was because we sheltered under the warm embrace of America’s extended nuclear deterrence. If any nuclear power attacked us with nuclear weapons it could fear retaliation in kind from the Americans. Those who are reflexively anti-American have no appreciation for the moral good of American power.
He's wanting to blather about the moral good of American power right at the moment that Benji is indulging in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, with the full approval of said American power? Benjamin Netanyahu reacts while visiting the area destroyed by an Iranian ballistic missile. Picture: Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images
The bromancer worked himself up into a lather about nukes, as if stuck in Dr Strangelove land ...
A lot of countries were talked out of seeking nuclear weapons, including South Africa and Brazil. The US convinced two key Asian allies, South Korea and Taiwan, to ditch nuclear weapons programs because they would be protected by US security guarantees. If the US alliance system unravels, nuclear proliferation will accelerate. South Korea and Japan could both be expected to seriously consider acquiring nukes. Japan could probably produce a nuclear weapon in a month if it wanted to. If Saudi Arabia loses faith in the US, it’s reported to have an agreement with Pakistan to acquire nukes quickly. Other Arab states also could make the move. Certainly without active, powerful American opposition, nuclear arms would spread. Among existing nuclear powers, China is producing new nuclear weapons at a record rate, adding perhaps 100 new nukes a year. Russia has abandoned the treaty constraints that the late Soviet Union had negotiated with Washington. The theory of a just war is one of the most important ethical contributions Christianity has made. Theologians who abandon this theory are abandoning reality and centuries of authoritative Christian teaching. A just war must involve a just cause, be a last resort, have a realistic chance of success and be conducted by proportional means; that is, the harm allowed by waging it must not be greater than the harm caused by the enemy. War itself is subject to rules, for example not intentionally attacking civilians. Proportionality means if someone punches you in the head you’re entitled to defend yourself but not to shoot them dead. Proportionality is conceptually tricky, however. The response must be proportionate to the credible threat, not just to the aggressor’s action.
A man cleans a billboard featuring Iran’s late supreme leaders Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (l) and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (c) next to newly elected supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. Picture: Tauseef Mustafa
Following that attempt to exploit the image of some mad mullahs, it became the pond's sad duty to advise that the bromancer is not in good standing with the Catholic church, has failed to follow its essential precepts, and does not adhere to the Church's essential teachings, and perhaps should be subject to canonical penalty ...
...The pope’s criticism of the war was more pointed on Sunday when, during his weekly Angelus prayer in St Peter’s Square, he renewed his appeal for a ceasefire. He described the death and suffering caused by the conflict as a “scandal to the whole human family”. He said he had been following the situation with dismay. “We cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of so many people, the defenceless victims of these conflicts. What hurts them hurts the whole of humanity,” the pope said. “I strongly renew my appeal for us to persevere in prayer, so that hostilities may cease and the way may finally be paved for peace.” Leo, who was elected pope in May last year after the death of Pope Francis, has so far been cautious over his engagement with Donald Trump. He has relied instead on his college of cardinals to directly criticise the US’s decision to go to war in Iran. Earlier this month, Cardinal Domenico Battaglia in Naples addressed an open letter to “the merchants of death” profiting from weapons’ sales, while the Washington DC cardinal Robert McElroy said the conflict “fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war”. (Graudian)
Sorry, Pope, sorry Cardinal, you have a heretical cuckoo lodged in your bosom ... preaching hate and falsehoods, a merchant of death, so to speak ...
Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Tehran has been attacking Israel, the US, the West generally, SunniArabs and its own dissidents relentlessly and murderously. It’s the chief state sponsor of terrorism. It created Hamas and Hezbollah, two of the sickest, most sadistic terrorist groups the world has known. It sponsors proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq to mount missile attacks on a long list of enemies. It assassinates critics in its diaspora. And it’s pursuing nuclear weapons. That satisfies, in my view, the just war criteria. There are in truth very few real pacifists. Jesus himself was not a pacifist, meaning someone who objects to any use of force. He uttered threats filled with violent imagery against those who abuse children. He himself used force to throw money lenders out of the temple. He refused to respond violently, or allow his followers to respond violently, to attacks on his own person. That is an option of heroic virtue open to an individual. But not in defence of others. If a murderer tried to kill your children, would you intervene with force or ask a policeman to do so? If so, you’re not a pacifist. Most claimed pacifism is hollow moral posturing that simply pushes hard moral decisions to the adults in the system. Nuclear weapons pose an exquisite moral dilemma. If they can’t discriminate between civilians and combatants, can their use ever be moral? But if the threat of their use deters war, that surely is moral. Our historic moment lacks moral adults. We’ve never needed them more.
Always contemptible...always projecting, and without a shred of irony or any awareness of his hypocrisy or his rampant stupidity ...
And so to the lesser member of the Kelly gang's report on the war ...
The header: Donald Trump’s campaign teeters on brink of economic catastrophe; The US has pulled back from its strike threat claiming the Strait of Hormuz will re-open ‘soon’ under joint US-Iranian control, but Tehran still holds the world’s oil lifeline hostage.
The caption for the clown imagining he's Churchill: US President Donald Trump waves before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. Picture: AP
Joe attempted a more balanced perspective, though being a reptile, there are the usual sins ...
The US military campaign against Iran faces its most dangerous moment, with the world on the brink of a genuine economic catastrophe over the stand-off in the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump says he will “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – unless the regime reopens the waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes. The 48-hour deadline the US President gave Tehran in a Truth Social post was scheduled to expire at 7.44pm on Monday, Washington time (10.44am AEDT on Tuesday). But the US President extended this window period for another five days at 7:23am on Monday, Washington time, (10:23pm AEDT on Monday), when he posted on Truth Social that the US and Iran had “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.” “Based on the tenor and tone of these in depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period.” After raising the stakes, the US President quickly de-escalated.
Um, he quickly changed one set of lies for another set of lies, so that reptiles in the lizard Oz could say he de-escalated ...
But he never gets called out, inside you get this sort of AV distraction, Sky News host James Macpherson says “productive conversations” have occurred between the US and Iran as the Department of War has been instructed to postpone strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
King Donald has always traded on the way the mainstream media acts like all day suckers, and is always keen to placate the markets and settle the nerves.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has pushed back against reports suggesting any ongoing negotiations with the United States, stating clearly that “no dialogue exists between Tehran and Washington.” The statement, published by the judiciary-linked Mizan News Agency, directly challenges recent remarks made by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Just wrap it up Joe ... take your time, but just finish it ...
He said on Monday (Tuesday morning AEDT) that the Iranian regime had initiated the talks with the US about ending the war and his administration was “very willing to make a deal”. If negotiations prove successful, Trump says the Strait of Hormuz will be “open very soon” and he would like to see the vital shipping route operate under joint US and Iranian control. But the next five days still loom as the most crucial in the military campaign so far, with the potential for the world to see how far Trump is willing to go and how much Iran is willing to endure. If he makes good on his threat, fuel, energy, information technology systems and water desalination infrastructure across Gulf nations risk being drawn far more seriously into the conflict, an outcome that would both heighten and extend the economic pain from the still unfolding hostilities. The war is on the verge of a tipping point. Iran has already launched strikes on critical energy infrastructure in the region. This includes its attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG terminal - estimated to have taken out about 17 per cent of the country’s LNG export capacity - in response to Israel’s strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field. The regime has shown no reluctance to embrace escalation and in recent days attempted to launch missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint UK-US military base in the Indian Ocean, 4000km away. Already the Iranian Foreign Ministry has denied being in talks with Washington, saying there was “no dialogue” with the US and rejecting Trump’s claims of productive discussions. Tasmin, the semiofficial Iranian news agency controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that the US President had backed off his threat to target Iranian energy sites within 48 hours “after Iran’s military threats became credible.” Trump’s instinct is to engineer a sense of crisis as part of his political modus operandi. The tactic allows him to create opportunities and new solutions by maximising US leverage and raising the stakes. But this approach has not worked with Tehran so far. Escalation has been part of Iran’s strategy since the conflict began on February 28. Its asymmetric strategy has been to maximise the political and economic pain of the conflict on America and the rest of the world. A US strike on Iran’s power facilities may give the regime another excuse to turn up the dial and embrace a new level of extremism as it fights for survival. Of course, Trump may be trying to raise the stakes in a bid to create an offramp by providing an incentive for negotiations – including with the Gulf states – but the regime has, so far, shown zero interest in talks. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has demanded reparations, assurances against future aggression and recognition of the country’s legitimate rights as the key conditions of any settlement. The problem is Trump’s ultimatum not only puts pressure on Tehran, it also puts pressure on him to make an agonising decision in the event he is rebuffed. If Tehran stares him down without consequence, it will risk undermining his credibility and define the limits of his tolerance for escalation. Confusion already exists regarding the circumstances that led to Trump’s decision to extend his 48-hour deadline for another five days. The unfolding crisis now reveals how much Washington’s war aims have shifted. Success for America hinges on the US reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a sign the terms of the conflict are being controlled too much by Tehran. It also reveals a US President veering from one position to another. Trump on Friday said America was “getting very close to meeting our objectives” but threatened a major escalation the very next day through his 48-hour ultimatum. Last week, Trump rebuked Israel for targeting Iran’s South Pars gas field and publicly distanced himself from it in a Truth Social post, declaring that “no more attacks will be made by Israel” on the site – unless Iran struck Qatar first. Days later, Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants in the kind of infrastructure-destroying escalation against which he had only just warned. This casts doubt over what the US endgame in Iran is. While the US has certainly weakened the Iranian regime, Trump’s threats of escalation suggest he no longer believes he can simply withdraw and declare victory while Tehran retains control over one of the world’s most vital waterways.
The pond would have liked to spend some time with Rowan, desperately trying to blame it all on the Chinese ...
Meanwhile, speaking of surveillance states in action ...
Okay, the pond just wanted a break before wrapping up proceedings with the traditional Tuesday groaning ...
The pond confesses that it went the screen cap route because it's feeling tired ... there's only so much bromancer the pond can take before the boiler bursts and hot steam vents.
Besides, there's nothing whatsoever that Jimbo could do that would stop Dame Groan from embarking on a groaning, while shouting to the world "we'll all be rooned, and before Easter at that" ...
The misguided forward guidance issued by governor Philip Lowe in 2022 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 was a major misstep. But whether these events had anything to do with how the bank was structured was never made clear. Chalmers was keen to be seen to be doing something and was attracted to the idea of the separate monetary policy board, particularly since he would be able to make his own appointments. New appointees with known dovish views on interest rates had a clear appeal. The Treasury secretary would continue to have an ex officio position on the board, unlike in other countries. This remains a contentious feature. In the end, a compromise was made and the terms of the old board members were rolled over. But Lowe was not reappointed for another term – this had been common practice in the past – and Chalmers was able to make his own appointment of the new governor, Michele Bullock. While Bullock has spent her entire professional career at the bank, she was mainly involved in the payments side rather than interest rate setting. Chalmers is proud that the heads of most of the key economic and financial agencies are women. A key recommendation of the report was “the RBA should have dual monetary policy objectives of price stability and full employment, with equal consideration given to each”. Unsurprisingly, this was generally interpreted as meaning that equal weight should be given to inflation and full employment, although one of the panellists claimed this was not the intention.
The pond only bothers with this because Dame Groan has a cult following, and they will be undoubtedly pleased to discover that they get their information from Sunrise ... Sunrise host Nat Barr has claimed Labor is 'spending like crazy' following a second consecutive rate hike by the Reserve Bank of Australia, as Jim Chalmers defends government spending and points to global volatility.
There's 22 seconds of your life that's been saved by a screen cap ...(have the reptiles gone fully Daily UK Snail?) ... and you can now waste it on the groaning ...
Of course, it doesn’t make any sense to impose a strict equal weighting between the two factors. For one thing, the inflation goal is stipulated as a target band while unemployment is measured as a continuous variable. How would an equal weighting even work? And what if inflation is 20 per cent and unemployment is 4 per cent? Should the bank be giving an equal weighting to the two factors? Or what if inflation is 2 per cent and unemployment is 12 per cent? In other words, the value of the variables matters when it comes to sound decision-making. The principal means whereby this potential conflict between the two objectives is resolved is through recurring communication between the Treasurer and the RBA governor. It goes by the name of Statement on the Conduct of the Monetary Policy. An updated statement was released in July 2025. In the past these statements have endorsed the central role of controlling inflation. This latest statement is less clear about the primacy of inflation targeting, with considerable discussion about the meaning of full employment and the need to achieve this outcome. The change is subtle but it’s there.
There came a final snap, The misguided forward guidance issued by governor Philip Lowe in 2022 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 was a major misstep. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
And there came a final groaning, though it avoids making the obvious point.
Until Dame Groan is put in charge of the RBA, or even better, made Treasurer, or perhaps both, we can never be free, we'll all be eternally doomed to being rooned ...
The words are as follows: “The Monetary Policy Board and Government agree that the Monetary Policy Board’s role within this is to focus on achieving sustained full employment, which is the current maximum level of employment that is consistent with low and stable inflation.” Another instruction from the Treasurer to the governor was that she should hold media conferences after each meeting of the monetary policy board. This now occurs, although it’s not clear whether this initiative is proving to be worthwhile, from the perspective of the bank or the Treasurer. The conferences too often turn into word salad versions of lectures on macroeconomics while the governor does everything to avoid implicating the government in the inflationary process. The release of the most recent consumer price index figures raises the important question whether the monetary policy board took the wrong path last year by giving too much weight to unemployment and too little weight to inflation. Inflation is now clearly travelling well outside the target band, which is not the pattern in most advanced economies. That last week’s decision of the monetary policy board was split, 5-4, has only added confusion to the process. Given that credibility is critical to the effective operation of central banking, this new way of doing things looks like a clear negative, particularly as names are not attached to the votes, as is the case in the US. There is no doubt that Chalmers regards the changes to the RBA as one of his finest achievements, having struggled to get the necessary legislative changes through the parliament. Whether they really are a case of beneficial reform is an unanswered question at this stage. The early indications are not favourable.
Not favourable? Quelle surprise. Even by the old biddy's dismal standards, that was dull stuff.
Meanwhile ...
... or perhaps a just TACO carrying out a just Cotija, like many cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Who can say? Who can tell?
