You are invited to a Sunday morning tea with a reptile ...

 

Now where were we?

Colbert? Long gone, though some say they saw him in Monroe. Whatever, CBS and Paramount were dead to to the pond in 60 seconds, made easy by the intertubes being dead to the pond for some time.

Gaza? The pond felt the urgent need to shriek about well-meaning activists, which in terms of Australian media produced a new formula: one maltreated activist equals 10,000 Palestinians (and Lebanese people) displaced, brutalised, starved, murdered people, subject to ethnic cleansing and life under apartheid rule. White phosphorus anyone?

Benji's government and King Donald's war on Iran? Think that song lyric, same as it ever was.

The United States under mad King Donald? Just a long slide into dementia, surrounded by sycophants, dropkicks and losers.

Ukraine? Vlad the Sociopath also scored himself a never ending war.

While away, the pond didn't take a single squiz at the lizard Oz, and what a relief that was.

Instead the pond spent its days moving as far south as it could before getting nosebleed, which is to say to the mighty 'Gong, home of awesome Aunty Jack, plucky bleeder Norman Gunston and other luminaries (younglings, ask your elders).

As a result, the pond has gone full rustic. How rustic? Consider this: on signing the lease, the real estate agent gave the pond a box of Cadbury Roses Chocolate. 

The real estate agent! A box of chocolates! (cue Forrest Gump).

The pond was swept back to its earliest days, growing up in Tamworth, once the centre of the known universe. 

In those ancient times, men would rock up with beers, while the women always had the fallback of a box of chocolates, Roses of course. The size of the box was carefully determined by the occasion and the status and relevance of the recipients (the pond was given a twenty buck box!) The pond's married maiden aunt would swoon at the sight of a box, and always kept one handy for the guests who arrived, at least one a decade.

What else?

Well while the pond was away, several Tonys came out to play.

The pond was particularly drawn to the savvy Savva's assessment in the Nine rags Abbott’s ineptitude meant he didn’t last two years as PM. Now he’s back, with four new slogans (*intermittent archive link).

Inter alia:

...Abbott came prepared with four new slogans. Stripped to the bare bones, or down to the budgie smugglers if you prefer, they were: stop taxes, demonise migrants, wreck the planet and only ever wave one flag.
OK, so he didn’t say that exactly. That’s my interpretation of what he said, given 75 per cent of his plan is built on culture wars over patriotism, welcomes to Country, migration and climate change, and the other 25 per cent is a scare campaign on tax, a formula unlikely to regain old heartland seats including the one he lost in 2019.

Indeed ...

And Tony Bleagh hovered back into view, as the pond squinted at its phone and read a cracking Crace:

‘Worry no longer, I am back’ – Tony Blair’s Why I Have Always Been Right About Everything, digested by John Crace

Inter alia:

...Politics is about power. And since I left No 10, the UK has become a second-class global power. So we need to stick close to the US. We need to be partners, not in opposition. Donald Trump is a great guy when you get to know him. Probably the best president since George W Bush. Someone who will be fully worthy of his Nobel peace prize. Just as I treasure the replica one I awarded myself. No one has done more to stop the wars he started.
Have I mentioned that I am the only Labour prime minister to have won a full second term? Not that I am in any way needy
I am deeply honoured to be a member of Trump’s Board of Peace along with many others from the world’s most eminent list. Keir made a huge mistake by not joining the US in bombing Iran, because it can never be wrong not to go to war along with the US. Can it? There were weapons of mass destruction. I’m sure of it. There has to have been, we just haven’t found them yet.
It is also time to rethink our relationship with Europe. Now is not the time to relitigate Brexit. That ship has long since sailed. Instead, what we should do is become much more powerful than Europe and then get the EU to come to us begging to join the UK. And we can only do this if we deregulate everything I once regulated, and grasp the benefits of AI. I won’t say here what the benefits of AI are, mainly because I don’t know what they are, but all my tech bro pals are making shedloads of money, so it has to be a good thing.
We also need to rethink the way we do politics at home. Voters want politicians who are prepared to crash into brick walls. To challenge the very orthodoxies for conventional. Have I mentioned before that I am the only Labour prime minister to have won a full second term? Not that I am in any way needy. Or condemned to the purgatory of all yesterday’s men. Just that I feel obliged to answer the call when the country I quite like, though not as much as the US and China, is in need.
The change needed will be radical. First we have to get rid of all workers’ rights. No country ever achieved economic growth by worrying about them. We have to accept that if some people are broke then that is a price worth paying. Likewise, Labour needs to realise the welfare bill is far too high. There must be an end to a culture of state support. And maybe we should think about getting rid of pensions altogether. If people don’t have the capability to set up their own global institute then they deserve every misfortune that comes their way.

Indeed, and what a hoot from a man doing his best to resemble the Joker...

And so on, and what is it with Tonys, how do they always end up sounding like prize loons of the first water?

'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. (in full here).

And so to another note on life in the 'Gong surrounded by raucous cockies, perhaps chortling at the two Tonys ...

The pond has undergone a lifestyle change, what with the escarpment looking like the Tamworth hills on steroids.

As a result, with unpacking still to be done, and order restored to the world, (fat chance), the pond isn't that keen on getting up early to check out the reptiles and do a full survey of their follies.

Instead the pond thought it might step gingerly back into the swamp by inviting people to enjoy a morning tea with just one reptile: Kinkara (if only you could find it - perhaps Bushells or Griffiths, née Robur, as subs?), scones with blackberry jam and cream fresh from the cow, just like the 1950s ... which approximates the picket fence times of the reptile hive mind.

But when the pond dived back in, it was appalled and astonished to see that somehow the reptiles had managed to get even worse over a few short weeks. 

It was a veritable den of disrepute, a swamp of mugwumps...

How could the pond stick to just one reptile, when the rag had transformed into the the perfect embodiment the One Nation paper of choice, what with Pauline filching all her best forms of bigotry from their insightful analyses? (Climate change isn't real, it's all the fault of migrants, and what's this vax crap?)

Of course, the reptiles still performed the duties required to be the Australian Daily Zionist News (henceforth ADZN).

This weekend Julie held up that flag for all to see ...

Blaming and vilifying Jews – it’s as easy as ABC
A week full of strange and hypocritical cultural moments shows how institutions have applied a dangerous double standard when Jewish people are targeted.
By Julie Szego

But the real marvel was the way the reptiles had lurched towards One Nation, what with Pauline being the perfect embodiment of everything the Murdochians had campaigned for over the years.

Unsurprisingly, the MAGA-cap-donning Dame Slap was front and centre with the shift ...

No wonder voters want Hanson when AHRC spouts such lunacy
Our institutions are now so infested with the radical ideology once seen only at university ­orientation weeks that One Nation seems like the logical ­answer to many.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Dame Slap spent many words explaining why Pauline was right about everything, before concluding ...

...The Coalition failed completely, over many terms, to do anything about the ABC thumbing its nose at mainstream Australia. Hanson’s rise in the polls suggests a desperate yearning among voters for someone who will at least try to put the cleaners through the taxpayer-funded mess of government bodies who seem to regard mainstream Australia with contempt. Nobody knows if Hanson will have any more success than the Coalition at hosing out the radicals feasting on the public teat. But increasing numbers seem to think she can’t do any worse, and she just might do better. “Worth a shot?” they ask.

Indeed ...

But the most astonishing effort was performed by the Ughmann, with a truly bizarre comparison, a descent into mugwumpery of the first water, such that even the pond's partner noticed ...

The header: Australia’s new reformation is a growing revolt against a detached governing elite; Australia’s woke elites have sparked a backlash, just as the Catholic Church’s Curia did in 1517.

The remarkable caption featuring that uncanny likeness: The rise of One Nation is not simply a rebellion against the political class. It is a revolt against the permanent governing caste of progressive elites that inhabits the state and federal bureaucracies, universities, courts, commissions, NGOs and much of the media. Like the Curia of old, this clerisy sees itself as the arbiter of modern morality.

Talk about an exact match. How could the pond have missed it? 

The died orange hair, the glowering black eyes, the whimsical, mischievous look dancing on the lips.

There's even a hint of black in both their garbs, though Pauline has updated her gear to reflect a Manichean dance between black and white, good and evil, without any shades of grey. (Possibly they also share similar thoughts on international banking conspiracies).

Best to slip in that reference to a heresy, so the pond could get down and dirty with the Ughmann in full blown stupid Xian fundamentalist mode.

What a irresistible theological marvel he is ...

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
The question was probably never seriously debated by 15th-century Catholic theologians, but it neatly satirises a Church that is so absorbed in Byzantine theological and legal disputes that it lost the trust of the people it claimed to serve.
An institution-wide infection of legalism, self-interest and intellectual arrogance had spread through what is known as the Curia, the vast permanent bureaucracy that advises popes, interprets doctrine and enforces orthodoxy to this day.
But alas, as the century turned, it was a dangerous time for a complacent clerisy.
Europe had been brutalised by famine, plague and the Hundred Years’ War. The Church had endured a schism that produced three popes. Labour shortages and heavy taxation weighed down societies struggling to recover from generations of turmoil.
The symbolic nadir of the Church’s decline was the sale of indulgences, a cash-for-salvation racket run by clerics more intent on filling their coffers than tending their flocks.
Rage grew in the hearts of a people who lacked the language to describe their plight and the means to escape the suffocating atmosphere of oppression.
Into this cocktail of discontent, the dissident Augustinian theologian Martin Luther hurled his Ninety-Five Theses, demolishing the notion that forgiveness could be bought and damning a Church that had abused its spiritual authority.
Luther also harnessed a new technology, the printing press, spreading his ideas at unprecedented speed, giving voice to a rage that had brewed for generations and unleashing the revolution that was the Protestant Reformation.

Lordy lordy, did that seminary get into his head, and screw his mind forever, or what? 

The reptiles decided to compound the madness with another snap celebrating the WASP way of life... Martin Luther, the original rebel against institutional repression. Picture: News Corp

As for the actual scribbling, there's no need to comment. 

It's simply too bizarre, too surreal, and is the sort of drivel that would have André Breton or Jean Cocteau rolling Jaffas down the aisle. ("L'oiseau chante avec ses doigts.")

Luther’s true genius was as a master communicator. His pamphlets were laced with coarse language and dripped with sarcasm, ridicule and fury. He mocked popes, humiliated bishops and treated scholars with contempt. He translated elite failure into the language of ordinary people, and they loved him for it.
The Church’s response was to declare its unimpeachable authority in the slogan Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus: outside the Church there is no salvation. Luther’s revolutionary riposte was: Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide, Scripture alone, faith alone.
Luther argued that the institution held no monopoly on truth. The people did not need the clergy to interpret the Bible when they could read it for themselves.
The Reformation was not a revolt against a single pope, bishop or king. It was a decision to demolish institutional repression. It was a rage against the machine.
There are echoes of that revolt in what looms as the reformation of Australian politics. The rise of One Nation is not simply a rebellion against the political class. It is a revolt against the permanent governing caste of progressive elites that inhabits the state and federal bureaucracies, universities, courts, commissions, NGOs and much of the media. Like the Curia of old, this clerisy sees itself as the arbiter of modern morality.

Now what did the pond say about going full Hansonite, or full Killer Creighton of the IPA? You know, vax, masks, and how to cultivate a plague (waiter, a little hantavirus if you please):

In a deep irony, Covid unmasked the secular Curia. For more than two years Australians were exposed to the unfiltered instincts of the governing caste and the experience left a vivid mental scar on many. Experts, bureaucrats and regulators authorised absurd interference in daily life while insisting every decision, no matter how draconian or irrational, was based on “science” and for our own good. Choice was not an option.
The Curia spits out orders. It is impervious to argument because there is no one to argue with. It never pays for its mistakes. It rarely explains itself and never apologises. Dissent is evidence of ignorance or bigotry and there are objective punishments for subjective crimes.
It decides. You comply.

Oh dear, it's that seminary thing all over again, as the reptiles did their best to join RFK Jr. in the hunt for a racoon penis ... Covid testing at Sydney airport in 2021: an example of the secular Curia’s unmasked interference in daily life. Picture: Getty

Measles, polio, whatever? Just live with it. What matter if a few of the herd are culled?

Even better, what if we cull the entire planet?

For a long time, the Curia pursued the impossible goal of Covid Zero. Now it demands Net Zero. As the energy analysts at Doomberg like to say, zero is an emotional number. Our secular Curia is deeply attached to a zero-sum game that will deliver zero jobs, zero growth and zero measurable benefit for the planet. It also has zero chance of becoming a genuinely global policy, which is the only way it can materially affect the climate.
No matter. Decarbonisation targets are set and pursued with bloody-minded determination as ends in themselves because they are a faith. The assumptions are never revisited, the premises are never challenged and every agency of government exists to reinforce the creed in a profound institutional betrayal of the people.
But there is a revolution stirring in the regions, where vast wind farms, transmission lines and the bureaucratic contempt shown to local communities are breeding a fierce resentment. When the suburbs eventually draw the link between wind and solar and higher power prices, the politics of this transition will turn toxic.

The pond should note a conflict of interest here. 

The pond's new (hopefully temporary) residence had, to the pond's surprise, solar installed, and so the very first bill showed the pond handsomely in the black.

But none of that for coal-loving reptiles, as yet again the reptiles trotted out a snap designed to instil fear and terror in the hive mind... Rural Australia’s landscape reshaped by the secular Curia’s Net Zero agenda. Picture: Supplied

All that did was remind the pond of a conversation with a cocky who explained that sheep actually enjoyed the shelter solar panels provided.

Enough of the destruction of the planet, it's time for a little transphobia, as only a reptile bigot of the narrow-minded kind can do.

Usually the pond would trim this sort of bigotry, but hey, it's the Ughmann, so let the bigotry flow...

Elsewhere, the Curia pursues its other passions in decisions that mock reason.
Reading Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr Anna Cody’s defence of her role in relegating biology to a technicality conjured images of a cabal of scholastic theologians counting angels on the head of a pin.
Cody could have mounted the perfectly respectable argument that no one should be discriminated against because they identify as transgender. Instead, she makes a more radical leap. She argues that a change of gender on a government document overturns the biological reality of sex written into every cell of the human body.
Cody concedes that a trans woman cannot become pregnant because she is biologically male but, in perfect legalese, argues that an employer might mistakenly attribute a uterus to the job applicant, perceive the possibility of pregnancy and deny that person a job. That would constitute discrimination.
The problem with Cody’s argument is not that it is simplistic. It is that it is so legalistic that it elevates classification above reality.
This is not a minor matter. It strikes at the roots of reason itself. If sex is erased, if a legal designation can outweigh a biological reality, then words no longer describe the world as it is. They become instruments for reshaping it. Many ordinary people instinctively understand that something has gone wrong. They know reality is being bent to fit an ideology but are powerless to change it. This breeds frustration and resentment.
It is a symptom of a wider institutional pathology. Increasingly, our bureaucracies, universities, courts and commissions begin with an ideological objective and then construct baroque intellectual frameworks to justify it. The debate is no longer about what is true. It is about constructing arguments to support what the clerisy has deemed to be true.
Anyone who objects is gaslit as starting a culture war when they are simply returning fire. The war began when institutions set about redefining long-settled understandings of sex, identity and nation without seeking public consent.
No one was asked. No one got a vote. One day, Australians were told that a man could become a woman, that three flags were better than one, that our history was shameful, and that disagreement was a hate crime.
But the culture wars are only one front in a far larger war. The deeper problem is a state that grows relentlessly while the private economy that sustains it struggles under its weight. More taxes beget more officials and more agencies that impose more rules, regulations and interference.
Eventually people begin to ask a dangerous question: who exactly is serving whom? If the purpose of government is to serve the people, why does it increasingly feel as though the people exist to serve the government?
And if the only way to get change is to start a revolution, then dangerous choices begin to look rational.

You see? It's exactly the same conclusion as Dame Slap ...

...increasing numbers seem to think she can’t do any worse, and she just might do better. “Worth a shot?” they ask.

Rational? Worth a shot? The reptiles are going all in ...they're more than Pauline curious, they're ready to celebrate a woman who espouses their notions on epidemics, climate science, transphobia and other splendid policies...

How could the pond stop there?

Have another scone. (The best meal the pond can recall ever having was having fresh baked bread, with nicely blackened crust, hot straight from a bush wood-fired oven, with hand-picked, home-made blackberry jam, and cream straight from the cow, separated out and nicely thickened. Not likely with Barners in the kitchen).

In the before times, Sunday was always prattling Polonius day, and he too was deep into the perils of Pauline ...

The header: Pauline Hanson’s surge in polls makes fools of sneering lefties; The ABC’s sneering dismissal of Sky News meant it completely missed the historic wave of voter anger driving One Nation’s rise.

No need for a caption for that snap. The parallels were simply too obvious, the identity already established by the Ughmann ...

The pond has always fancied itself as a Polonial whisperer and just knew that by the end, Polonius would establish that it was all the fault of the ABC (though to be fair, the old dotard gave that game away in the header):

It’s a time of advancing polls and retreating sneers.
Writing in the Australian Financial Review on June 2, election analyst John Black, a former Labor senator for Queensland, had this to say: “On Monday’s Redbridge Poll, taken after a federal budget which has slugged small business and investors, the Coalition parties would lose every House of Representatives seat they now hold – but their preferences could elect Pauline Hanson as prime minister.”
There would be an almighty shock if the Liberal Party and the Nationals held no seats in the House of Representatives after the next election. But perhaps a bigger shock would be if a second-term Labor government were replaced by One Nation. With, possibly, Pauline Hanson as prime minister and Barnaby Joyce as her deputy.
Sure, the next election is not due until May 2028. However, on primary votes, One Nation is scoring 31 per cent on Redbridge, 27 per cent on Fox & Hedgehog, and 29 per cent on Sky News Pulse/YouGov. This compares with Labor at 28, 29 and 26 per cent and the Coalition at 20, 25, and 20 per cent respectively.
The authoritative Newspoll is awaited with interest when it next appears in The Australian. For the moment it is clear that, unlike a year ago, One Nation is likely to be a key player in determining which party will prevail in a couple of years’ time.
And that’s why members of the left intelligentsia, who self-indulgently regard themselves as “progressive”, have had to desist from sneering at Hanson and her team. With support for One Nation at about a third of Australians, Hanson has to be taken seriously by critics and supporters alike.

Taken seriously? Like mad King Donald?

Nah. If the country wants to go to hell in a handbasket, the pond reserves the right to keep laughing all the way. 

So instead of this sort of snap of a toad in action... Election analyst John Black, a former Labor senator for Queensland.

... the pond will always go the 'toon ...

Unlike the Lutheran Ughmann and the MAGA-cap-donning Dame Slap, there was a little tremulous fear in Polonius's scribbling, as he looked around for others to blame ...

There are exceptions, to be sure. For example, Nine newspapers columnist Peter FitzSimons posted on June 2: “I repeat: One Nation is a circus, Senator Hanson is the ringmaster, and Barnaby Joyce the clown. #Discuss.” This is undergraduate hyperbole. Whether you agree with them or not, Hanson and Joyce are among the best communicators in Australian politics.
As I wrote in these pages on May 30, the surge in support for One Nation occurred over the Christmas holiday period. In mid-November Newspoll registered the One Nation primary vote at 15 per cent. By early February, it had risen to 27 per cent.
In between, the terrorist attack took place at Bondi, aimed at the Jewish Australian community, a part of Australian society. This was the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil. And it was followed by the return of what have been called the “ISIS brides”. Reminding all Australians that there are some radical Islamist individuals in our midst who do not – or perhaps did not – accept the values of democratic Australia.

Actually there are plenty of reptiles around who'd settle for an authoritarian government, just like the Murdochians at Faux Noise ... Australia’s worst terrorist attack at Bondi preceded the return of ‘ISIS brides’.

Now note how, in the following litany, how Polonius conveniently leaves out the onion muncher's one true love and provider of funds, Hungary ...

It’s true that the increase in support for the populist One Nation is consistent with what is happening in such Western democracies as Britain, France, Germany, Italy and more. A large number of citizens of such nations, especially those outside the inner city, believe their standard of living is declining and that their elected leaders are not interested in their plight. In part, they maintain, this reflects too large an immigration intake.
John Howard’s memoir, Lazarus Rising (HarperCollins, 2010), contains a perceptive chapter titled “Pauline Hanson”. He recounts how, in 1996, Hanson won the former Labor seat of Oxley in Queensland with a massive swing. She benefited from being on the Liberal Party ticket – despite the fact that shortly before the election, Hanson had been disendorsed for inaccurate comments she made about Australian Aboriginals.
On September 10, 1996, Hanson made her first speech in the House of Representatives. This contained the infamous statement: “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians” who, Hanson said, do not assimilate. She also claimed that Indigenous Australians were not the nation’s most disadvantaged group. Howard was critical of Hanson with respect to both statements. But he acknowledged that she “echoed community sentiment” on many issues such as multiculturalism.

Or is that reptile sentiment, as the reptiles flung in a snap of one villain for the hive mind to hiss and boo ... Nine newspapers columnist Peter FitzSimons.

And so the chastened Polonius admits to an error. 

Perhaps he too should get on the Pauline gravy train...

At the time, I wrote that, in his capacity as prime minister, Howard could have been more confrontational in this approach to Hanson. However, with hindsight, I believe his approach was essentially correct.
Hanson’s instant success was followed by total failure. As the editors of The Rise and Fall of One Nation (QUP, 2000) wrote: “Pauline Hanson’s One Nation was a shooting star that blazed spectacularly across Australia’s political skies during 1997 and 1998 before crashing to Earth in 1999.”
But Hanson came back and she learnt a lot along the way. In Lazarus Rising, Howard spoke respectfully of Hanson as an “Aussie battler who had run a fish-and-chip shop in Ipswich”. He mentioned her “faltering manner” when speaking on occasions. But Howard saw this as part of Hanson’s popular appeal. These days Hanson’s faltering manner when speaking is a thing of the past.
On February 23, ABC TV Media Watch presenter Linton Besser referred to Hanson as a “one-time peddler of fish and chips from Ipswich”. It’s unlikely that he will continue with such intellectual snobbery.

Why? If listening to Pauline sometimes feels like being in a fish and chips shop in Tamworth in the 1950s, why not remark on the phenomenon? Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson. Picture: Tom Parrish

And so to establishing that it's all the fault of the ABC, while celebrating Sky Noise down under (still no re-brand?)

ABC types at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster are also known to sneer at what they call “Sky News After Dark”. Meaning when the subscription television’s opinion programs commence at 5pm (AEST).
If ABC journalists got out more (as the saying goes), they would understand the impact of Sky News – before and after dark – within Australian society. Over recent years, Hanson has appeared regularly on Sky News and spoken directly to Sky subscribers, as well as Sky News Regional (which is free to air) viewers.
Unlike the ABC, Sky News presents contesting views. On the voice referendum, Chris Kenny (for Yes) disagreed with Andrew Bolt (for No). Currently, Paul Murray is in One Nation’s corner while Peta Credlin is in the Coalition’s corner.
The tendency of the ABC to dismiss Sky News led to a situation whereby it missed a big story in Australian politics. Namely, the growing disenchantment of many Australians with politics – particularly after the Bondi massacre on December 14.
On the current figures, the short-term political outcome will turn on the distribution of preferences – which all parties will take seriously. One Nation may, or may not, falter.

What a bold prediction to end on ...

May, or may not, whatever the future may be, que sera, sera ...

The pond was so enchanted that it plunged a week back in time, because the ancient dodderer had taken up the same topic ...

The header: Polls, preferences unseat traditional political prophecies; Redbridge’s bombshell poll predicts One Nation as Australia’s opposition, yet the pollster’s own track record raises serious doubts about the prediction’s reliability.

The caption: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is benefiting from the support of voters who are disappointed with the major parties. Picture: Richard Dobson

The pond was still haunted by that uncanny resemblance spotted by the Ughmann. How had the pond missed it?

Spitting images ... as Polonius turned to that vexatious poll that turned the reptile universe on its head:

A problem with insightful sayings is that they soon become cliches due to overuse. I was reminded of this last Saturday when the front page of the AFR Weekend ran a story titled “Is This Our Political Future?”. At least there was a question, I suppose.
The reference was to a Redbridge Group/Accent Research MRP poll that declared what the House of Representatives would most likely look like if an election were to be held now. An MRP poll occurs when a national survey is combined with demographic data from previous elections on a seat-by-seat basis.
The Labor Party was ahead on 76 seats, followed by One Nation on 53 seats, the Coalition on 12 and Others on nine. The poll of some 6015 voters was held between April 29 and May 14, with most of the research being undertaken before the May 12 budget.
In itself, the timing should have alerted some of the crystal-ball gazers in our midst. The Newspoll conducted on May 13-15 revealed that the 2026 budget was rated worst for the economy in recent Australian history – exceeded only by Labor’s 1993 budget.
No one knows how a similar poll would look if it were held in the two weeks after Jim Chalmers’ budget. Kos Samaras, director of the Redbridge Group, was interviewed by ABC TV 7.30’s presenter Sarah Ferguson last Monday.
Asked to describe the scale of the result the Redbridge poll had picked up, Samaras replied: “We’re clearly seeing a collapse of the Coalition. The medium result for them in terms of seat count is about 12. And One Nation’s clearly snatching up the bulk of the seats from the Coalition and a portion of the Labor base as well.”
Ferguson put it to Samaras that he was talking about One Nation becoming the official opposition. To which the reply was “that’s right”. He went on to suggest that Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor would lose his seat of Hume in NSW and frontbencher Andrew Hastie would be defeated in his Perth seat of Canning.

Is it all the fault of the ABC? 

They're clearly guilty, but strangely Polonius didn't drive the point home. So the ploughed past the next illustration in a state of nervous anxiety, wondering what Polonius might do with this ABC perfidy, interviewing a heretic ... Asked to describe the scale of the result the Redbridge poll had picked up, Kos Samaras replied: ‘We’re clearly seeing a collapse of the Coalition.’ Picture NCA NewsWire / Aaron Francis

Luckily Polonius was not for turning, and this is where another 'maybe' or 'maybe not' construction came in terribly handy, as it has done for seers and prophets down the ages...

Well, maybe they will. Or maybe not. For Samaras was asked another question. Namely, what would happen if the Liberals and the Nationals increased their primary vote by a few points? The Redbridge pollster responded: “That’s right, if they improve their primary vote by about 3 or 4 per cent or 5 per cent they would save them a lot of these seats … well in excess of 20 seats if the figure is 5 per cent.”
The special post-budget Newspoll, commissioned by The Australian, has the primary vote as follows: Labor 31 per cent, One Nation 27 per cent, the Coalition 20 per cent, Greens 12 per cent and Others 10 per cent.
If the Coalition were to win back votes from One Nation to the extent that if its candidates get ahead of Pauline Hanson’s party, then its candidates can win seats off the back of One Nation’s preferences – presuming that One Nation preferences the Coalition ahead of Labor, the Greens and independents.
When preferential voting was introduced in the House of Representatives before the 1919 election, it favoured the non-Labor parties. This was the case into the 1950s and 1960s, when the Coalition benefited from preferences from the Democratic Labor Party, the members of which had broken away from, or been expelled from, the Labor Party.
However, since the emergence in more recent times of the Democrats for a while and then the Greens, preferential voting has primarily benefited Labor. Now, the Greens will always put Labor ahead of the Coalition and One Nation. But if the latter two parties can arrange a preference deal, preferential voting will benefit both.
The task of the Coalition – under the leadership of Angus Taylor and the Nationals’ Matt Canavan – is to build up its primary vote. It’s a difficult task since One Nation is benefiting from the support of voters who are disappointed with the major parties.

Still no major carry-on about the ABC, but the reptiles managed to dig up a snap of that Orbán tragic, the onion muncher ... Newly elected Liberal Party federal president Tony Abbott. Picture: Getty Images

He's baaack ...

Polonius kept on brooding, and amazingly managed to forget about the ABC...

Writing in Nine newspapers last Monday, George Brandis (who, once upon a time, was associated with those Liberals who presented as moderates) commented: “Taylor’s budget reply speech could have been given by John Howard or Peter Costello, steeped as it was with the Liberal Party’s core values.”
The appointment of Tony Abbott as Liberal Party federal president puts the organisation’s best communicator in a prominent role and is likely to assist with fundraising. And Canavan is the best-equipped National to challenge One Nation’s Hanson and Barnaby Joyce.
It’s not impossible for the Liberals to win back a seat or two from the teals – particularly Bradfield on Sydney’s north shore. After all, a lot of teal voters will not be all that impressed with Labor’s broken promises on capital gains tax and negative gearing.
Allegra Spender is a fine, intelligent politician. But the teal member for Wentworth in Sydney’s eastern suburbs has had scant input with her taxation policies. After all, the teals have only six seats in a 150-seat parliament.
Minor parties and independents usually only have real influence in the Senate. Hence the proposal by some teals to form a political party of sorts – seemingly with the encouragement of Malcolm Turnbull.
The former Liberal Party prime minister enjoyed his occasional (soft) interview on ABC Radio National last Monday and, once again, used the occasion to criticise the Liberal Party. But he advanced no proposal to revive the teals or establish a new party.
In any event, the next election is a long way off. It’s possible that One Nation will continue to surge. It’s possible that the Coalition parties will hold on. It’s possible that Labor will continue as the dominant party despite its low primary vote. No one knows.
It’s much the same with Redbridge. In 2024, Redbridge-Accent conducted an MRP poll between October 29 and November 20 – around six months before the May 2025 election. It estimated the Coalition would win between 64 and 78 seats, Labor between 59 and 71 seats and the Greens between three and five seats. The final result was Labor 94, Coalition 43 and Greens just one. Enough said about political prophecy.

Oh the onion muncher will help in so many ways ...

And here's what the pond really missed while being off air. 

The 'toons, there should have been 'toons. Looking at the 'toons on a phone is like looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope with the Ughmann ...

Take it away infallible Pope and immortal Rowe. Celebrate the return of the onion muncher ...

And now, as the pond mangled a couple of infallible Popes, the originals in full as a reminder of great times... sure to come again...

In which the bromancer and Dame Groan feature in the pond's placeholder ...

 

A few housekeeping notes.

The pond regrets it can't keep the comments section open in the immediate future, and so the moderation bar will kick in after a few more days. That's because the pond has to take steps to moderate the content, or risk upsetting the google bot.

Unfortunately the pond will be offline in every way bar the phone, and won't be able to moderate the moderation in the near future.

Blogger wasn't really set up with mobile phones in mind (huzzah) and the pond never bothered configuring it as an operating system.

The pond will try to extend the moderation curfew with the odd post, but that will be tricky until the pond has made the shift and set up online shop in its new location.

Hopefully the pond will be back (the pond has been told some intruders are shot on sight at its new southern location), though if so, it'll likely be in modified form.

The pond's hours derived from the need to do the blog, then get on with work, but in the pond's new iteration work isn't an issue, so maybe the pond will set a more genteel and leisurely schedule. 

Given the way that most correspondents seem to access the site, no one's that keen to get up early in the morning to enjoy freshly baked, piping hot reptiles served up for breakfast. 

The pond might also limit exposure to the reptiles ... there are any number of wastrels and time wasters at the lizard Oz, and one reptile can be as amusing as three can, especially if the intermittent archive is available to offer samples of the others.

The pond would like to thank all the cartoonists for being unwittingly dragooned into the pond. The pond never attempted to score revenue out of the blog, and one of the reasons is that it didn't wish to trade off on the hard work of others. Rather the pond wanted to draw attention to the glories of local cartoonists plying their trade for the enjoyment of all.

And lastly the pond would like to thank all the pond's correspondents, a small, but trusty, hardy band who long ago graduated as doctors of herpetology studies, and who kept the pond slogging on simply to read the comments section.

Hopefully we'll all resume play, but for the moment, it's time for the last placeholder for a while.

Unfortunately, as expected, the lizard Oz didn't deliver a dream team of reptiles as the placeholder.

There's no Our Henry ... there's just this motley crue ... and yes, the budget jihad, the mother of lizard Oz jihads, was still in full swing.

In no particular order ...

COMMENTARY by Dennis Shanahan
Labor falls into tax trap in the valley of death
The desperation and vehemence of the denials and claims from the PM and Treasurer about scare campaigns are proof in themselves that the death tax debate is getting away from Labor.

The bouffant one took a trip back in time ...

Ye ancient cats and hounds, the reptiles are running really hard on the death and taxes routine, and there's a 'toon for that ...

The canny Cranston lined up for a crack ...

EXCLUSIVE
Surprise stamp duty bill looms after trust crackdown
Labor’s trust issues extend to a looming fight on stamp duty
As businesses and families across the country face the prospect of a tax bill if they are forced to restructure their trusts, the states prepare for a multi-billion-­dollar fight over the revenue.
By Matthew Cranston

There was much wailing and quailing ..

BUDGET 2026
Why Labor’s capital gains overhaul became an internet meme
‘Albo owns 47 per cent of my business’: Why Labor’s CGT overhaul became an internet meme
Small business owners are venting anger over reforms they say could deter investment and hit start-ups hard.
By Jack Quail

Rosie and Julie-Anne were suffused with fear, and happy to spread the fear mongering wide ...

FEARS FOR VULNERABLE
Strike at wealthy hits low-income families
Jim Chalmers has defended Labor’s trust tax raid as targeting wealthy tax avoiders, but estate planners warn everyday families will suffer most.
By Rosie Lewis and Julie-Anne Sprague

Even Ancient Troy chimed in over on the extreme far right ...

A taxing problem: major parties fail test of our future
The real intergenerational problem ALP, Libs missed: paying off debt bomb
Labor and the Coalition have condemned future generations to pay for record spending and debt.
By Troy Bramston
Senior Writer

What a pity none of them tackled the alternative ... a brave, bold back to the future ...

To be fair the reptiles also found space for an essential contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News... with Frank top of the world ma over on the extreme far right ...

ROYAL COMMISSION
‘Change can happen’: Lowy’s soccer blueprint to tackle antisemitism
Frank Lowy’s powerful antisemitism submission: we changed soccer, and we can also extinguish smouldering racism
In a powerful submission to the antisemitism royal commission, Frank Lowy says change will require the same cultural shifts that saw ethnic divisions in soccer transformed into loyalty.
By Frank Lowy

Frank was also top of the "news" with a "love it or leave it" angle ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘If you don’t like Australia, leave,’ says Lowy
Frank Lowy tells Bondi inquiry his soccer fix could help cure hate
Sir Frank Lowy says the same approach that ended ethnic conflict in Australian soccer could solve the antisemitism crisis – but those who won’t accept our values should face deportation.
By Stephen Rice

But what if soccer bores you senseless? 

What if you've seen endless, inane stories of fans feuding and rioting in the streets?

What if you think that the only way to respond to the astonishing grift at work in the World Cup is to participate in a boycott?

Forget it Jake, that grift, that form of madness, is going to go on forever.

The reptiles did gratify the pond by featuring one of the pond's favourites.

It's lesser, minor bromancer, but the pond would have settled for any reptile writing about anything other than the budget, so this'll do reptiles, this'll do:

The header: Can anyone govern UK effectively – a question also for similar democracies, especially Australia; The UK faces having six prime ministers in seven years as Keir Starmer’s leadership crumbles amid a crisis that mirrors Australia’s own policy failures.

The caption: Protesters at a rally organised by Tommy Robinson pose in front of a banner featuring Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images

The bromancer spent a bigly four minutes diagnosing Britain's ills, beginning with a cornball joke that says a lot about his sensa huma ...

When I first visited Britain way back in the 1970s, before Margaret Thatcher transformed the place, it was a terrible mess, its economy notoriously the sick man of Europe. (It was nonetheless fun to be there – the Brits made great jokes out of their misfortunes and an Australian with even a few dollars in his pocket felt rich). Britain’s economic performance was dismal and it was riven by strikes and bitter ideological division.
I remember in a country pub one fellow wanting a smoke and having trouble getting his match to light. In exasperation, he declared: “This match is the only thing in Britain that doesn’t strike!”
Britain’s problems are a bit different today but essentially they throw up the same questions as the 1970s. Can anyone govern Britain effectively?
This question, acute in Britain, can be asked with increasing pertinence about similar democracies, and especially Australia.
Long term, I remain a solid optimist about the Brits – their institutional and cultural inheritance is so great, although modern culture is trying to cut them off from their own legacy. Keir Starmer, in office less than two years, is a very poor prime minister. It now seems he has little chance of surviving more than a month or two.

The reptiles flung in snaps of Keir's rivals, Andy Burnham. Picture: Getty Images; Wes Streeting. Picture: AFP

The bromancer was in his element, dissing Labour ...

The campaign to push him out is a mixture of light opera and musical farce, with a strong dash of ­Dynasty/Dallas-style soap opera centred on sibling hatreds that have no logical explanation. The two main challengers are Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, and Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester. They and Starmer all appear to share rich mutual detestation while always speaking publicly of each other with saccharine emollience.
Streeting notionally comes from the Labour right, though that’s a long way left of normal voters. Burnham has no ideological fixed address. The joke is: a Blairite, a Brownite (follower of Gordon Brown) and a Corbynista (admirer of loony left Jeremy Corbyn) walk into a pub together and the barman asks: Mr Burnham, what would you like to drink?
To return to parliament, Burnham had to get a Labour MP to resign so he could stand at a by-election. The seat in question is Makerfield. In recent local elections, Nigel Farage’s Reform swept to victory there. Ten years ago, the electorate voted overwhelmingly for Brexit.
So Streeting declared Labour must seek to rejoin the EU. This is the conventional view among ­Labour lefties but the public hates the idea, even those people who think successive governments have made a mess of Brexit.
It’s also, mutedly, more or less official Labour policy.

There came an AV distraction ...

UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has dismissed speculation about a potential leadership challenge against Prime Minister Keir Starmer as "froth and nonsense." Political tensions within the Labour Party have continued following significant losses in local elections nearly two weeks ago. The issue of Brexit may become significant in any future leadership contest, as UK MP Wes Streeting and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham have both expressed support for Britain rejoining the European Union.

The bromancer finally turned his keen mind to what ails Britain ...

Burnham thus can’t really denounce it, but having it front of mind increases the chance Burnham loses the by-election. One up to Streeting. But the party rank and file don’t like Streeting. So, sans Burnham, the left would have to put someone else up.
It’s even barely conceivable Starmer could hang on for more tortured months of paralysis if Burnham loses in Makerfield.
Burnham is the only national Labour politician with a positive approval rating. That’s partly because as mayor he doesn’t have to take tough decisions and has no responsibility for issues ripping Britain apart, and for which he has offered no solutions.
Assuming Starmer goes, Britain will have had six PMs in seven years – Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Starmer and Starmer’s replacement. Add in David Cameron before May and it’s seven in 10 years. That’s a sign of deeply dysfunctional politics, of a political system, and a society that can’t resolve its public policy contradictions.
People talk, justifiably, of the crisis on the centre right in many democracies. There’s an equal crisis on the centre left. Only three EU governments are left of centre, and they’re in trouble.
Britain’s problems are not mysterious.
They include: massive public debt; uncontrolled welfare spending; the desperate need to increase defence spending; massive disguised unemployment through huge welfare rolls; a loss of social morale and self-confidence; persistent Islamist violence; an education system dedicated to the idea that Britain is evil; a complete loss of trust in institutions, including the mainstream political parties; wildly expensive energy prices arising from net-zero commitments; and the separate but related problems of uncontrolled mass immigration and illegal immigration.

Strange, no mention of Brexit? 

Could it be that the bromancer was all in on that ruinous strategy?

Is it true that the bromancer was something of a Boris and Brexit man?

Indeed he was, and the pond felt the need to send this to the intermittent archive, just for the fun of it...

Brexiteers fighting for liberty and the people’s will

Here you go, a little teaser trailer ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles were featuring a riot ... Anti-migration protesters riot outside Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, South Yorkshire, 2024.

And then the bromancer seamlessly shifted from Labour bashing to Labor bashing, so he too could join in the lizard Oz budget jihad, the mother of all reptile jihads ...

Australia has similar problems. Although the Albanese government is politically dominant, its policy responses are essentially the same as Starmer’s and equally ineffective, indeed destructive in the medium and long term. But we start richer, so will take longer to bankrupt.
A columnist in The Times argued recently that the British people were at fault because they wanted a vast welfare state but didn’t want to pay the taxes to fund it. That seems wise but is actually quite mistaken. Britain, like Australia, is already a very high-tax society. The problem is that putting on even more taxes, especially at the level that would be needed to wipe out deficit spending, is just about impossible because it cripples the economy.
None of the new Albanese/Chalmers taxes will help the economy in any way. They just hinder growth. Britain is at an even worse point in this continuum. Governments have gone down the road of electoral bribery so far they have reached a dead end, where a flimsy but important safety sign warns there is no road ahead, only a cliff.
The Makerfield by-election has quickly become a two-horse race, Labour versus Reform. That’s bad news for the Conservative Party, whose leader, Kemi Badenoch, is immensely likeable and plainly doing a good job, but not yet registering big gains in the polls.
Have the voters deserted the Conservatives forever? Farage has welcomed a number of senior Tory defectors into Reform, and this has slightly reduced his outsider appeal and greatly increased the credibility of Reform as potentially a party of government.
Barnaby Joyce joining One Nation is a similar, though weaker, manifestation of the same dynamic.
Britain will muddle through, but what a mess. Mind you, the 1970s did give us Fawlty Towers.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor

Please, a little 'toon balance...

The pond suspects that in a month or a year's time the reptiles will still be in the throes of their budget jihad, and the pond is pleased to be shod of it...

And so to the mother of all budget bashers, the old biddy herself ...

The header: Effects of budget shemozzle likely to get worse for Labor; It’s one thing to break a promise delivered 50 times; it’s another thing altogether to deliver a set of policies that can best be described as bungled.

The caption? None, and no credit for the crappy collage, because the graphic is as familiar and as aged as a pair of lizard Oz slippers.

Dame Groan spent a bigly four minutes ranting and railing in a way designed to produce a warm glow in her cult following:

It’s one thing to break a promise delivered 50 times; it’s another thing altogether to deliver a set of policies that can best be described as bungled.
Replete with high compliance costs and unintended consequences, the budget announcements demonstrate both the ineffectiveness and naivety of Treasury to provide advice of an adequate standard. It’s already a shemozzle and it’s likely to get worse in the coming weeks as the flaws and inconsistencies of the announced policy changes emerge.
Rather than representing some sort of gift to the younger generation, the way in which the changes will be grandfathered confers an ongoing gift on anyone who has negatively geared property or a testamentary trust, to give two examples, that will not be available to newcomers.
This facet of the policy may create a lock-in effect whereby those with negatively geared properties simply hold on to them and re-leverage over time. But because of the new capital gains tax arrangements, there will be a strong disincentive to improve the property lest the gains be eaten up in tax. While both Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers talk about improving the rate of home ownership for young people – “getting a fair crack” and all that – the CGT changes apply to all asset classes. You can just imagine the Treasury officials warning about uneven treatment of asset classes.
This is notwithstanding the acknowledgment by the Treasurer that the simple 50 per cent discount method being replaced favours property over shares. But by lumping them into the same method going forward, clear biases remain – particularly against high-growth assets held over relatively short periods of time. Let’s be clear here: what is being proposed is not a return to the Keating system of indexation. Under that arrangement, there was no 30 per cent minimum tax. Moreover, capital gains could be averaged over five years. What was announced in the budget is another beast altogether. It will also be costly to administer.

Of course there had to be a snap of the chief villain: Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

It was classic "we'll all be rooned, and well before Xmas" territory for the old groaner, as she contemplated the dire suffering of the rich:

The impact of the CGT changes on start-ups was quickly identified as a major issue because the new system will impose punitive rates of tax on owners and the staff who generally forgo years of income to achieve success. It is common overseas for there to be specific carve-outs for start-ups – in the US and the UK, for example – but Chalmers’ lame response is that he will consult more on the topic. And what’s with the bizarre proposal of roping in pre-1985 assets that have been CGT-exempt? Surely, this is just a desperate tax grab, reneging on a promise made a long time ago and kept – until now. Again, the compliance costs are substantial.
The fact neither the Treasurer nor Treasury understand the role trusts play in the commercial world has been on full display. Many small businesses are set up as trusts, often in association with bucket companies, because this is the most effective and least costly arrangement for them. There are several reasons for this choice, including asset protection as well as managing tax. But evidently Treasury thinks it knows better.
There is a section in the budget papers that comes close to providing commercial advice to business owners, telling them companies are better than trusts. There is no acknowledgment of the hefty costs associated with restructuring, including the payment of stamp duty to state governments. This impost alone will deter many business owners from considering any change.
There is also the complication of franking credits, which arguably was the issue that determined the outcome of the 2019 election. Where a bucket company is attached to a discretionary trust, the franking credits will not be transferable, implying very high rates of effective tax. This may become an issue the government has to deal with. And why would Chalmers opt to include discretionary testamentary trusts within the scope of the new taxation arrangements for trusts? Again, this is completely bizarre.
These trusts are incorporated in wills often to protect young children in the unhappy event of both parents dying at the same time. They are also a form of asset protection to ensure disgruntled creditors or ex-partners cannot access the proceeds of an estate. As for noting that fixed testamentary trusts will not be affected, this advice is again naive in the extreme. Fixed trusts are, by definition, inflexible and unable to accommodate changing circumstances, and are rarely used.

Trust the pond, the pond's trust is suffering almighty. 

Is there a timetable for things to get better?

The pond can't imagine Dame Groan following that prescription, not when there's groaning to be done:

The government is also on thin ground when it comes to the carve-out for new properties from the ban on negative gearing. Again, this is coming close to offering uninformed and slipshod advice to investors.
The reality is that investment in new apartments in Melbourne and Sydney over recent years have been complete duds. The capital gains have been minimal – 10 times less than the capital growth of stand-alone houses – and many new apartments have defects that must be remedied, often at the expense of the owner. There are also significant problems with the body corporate arrangements a new owner has to deal with.
Of course, anyone who understands basic economics could have predicted this outcome.
A great deal of the gains from investment in property is the return on the land on which it is built. In the case of apartments, there is very little land and there are often few restrictions on new apartment buildings being built close by. It’s a case of buyer beware when it comes to buying new housing stock, something not being mentioned by the government. Evidently, negatively geared owners of new residential real estate will feel a warm inner glow because they are doing something for the nation. It just won’t show up in personal bank statements.
The government is also on thin ground when it boasts about the uptick in home ownership predicted to result from the tax changes – 75,000 over a decade. That’s a mere 7500 a year, which hardly shifts the dial for what is a major shake-up of tax arrangements.
There is also only one direction for rents – and that’s up. The fact is universal negative gearing effectively subsidises renters by shifting some of the costs on to the taxpayer. This impact will be largely lost with the changes, save for new properties and grandfathered investments. There is a lot of water to go under the bridge. The fiasco of the 2014 budget played out over time; this is likely to be repeated in this case. The government will have to tweak several of the settings in response to the information it is given and the likely perverse outcomes.
In the meantime, the only sure winners are accountants, lawyers and valuers.

Is there any upside? 

Well for once Dame Groan identified some winners, though surely she should have included herself and the rest of the reptile jihadists and the lizard Oz as a sure winner. 

Endless columns are now guaranteed, much shrieking, moaning and whining and groaning about budget chaos, and well beyond Xmas, with Dame Groan's "we'll all be rooned" taken up by the rest of the reptile jihadists, her gracious legacy to all...

And that, preserved in gelatinous aspic and the dubious functioning of the intermittent archive, is the reptiles this day, and it will have to serve as a placeholder for anyone turning up to marvel at this weird blog... and the even weirder world of the lizard Oz hive mind.

All that remains to do is to wish everyone well, and turn to the immortal Rowe - alas too early in the week for the infallible Pope to join him - for a farewell 'toon ...

Why they can play that game up until Halloween ...

In which the pond has nothing but Lord Downer, the floodwaters in quarries whisperer and Major Mitchell as placeholders ...

A correspondent reminded the pond of one last thing to do while still online - make sure that there's not a single mention of CBS and Paramount in any of the pond's subscription lists (though mentioning the genuinely funny Colbert in the same breath as the pond was way more than too much).

This is the penultimate pond post before the great darkness descends, though some cynics might suggest that the pond has spent its time full of reptile darkness, and at last there'll be a light glowing on the hill.

Off but mainly on, the pond has been online since way back in the late 1980s - the pond can still remember the pond's son, at thirty bucks an hour access, running up a very big bill to see very little.

How the pond descended into the reptile abyss after that must remain a solemn and sad mystery.

This will be the pond's longest outage, and given its druthers, the pond would like to have left a placeholder featuring some all time pond favourites - say the bromancer brooding about mad King Donald selling out Taiwan, Our Henry doing over the Thucydides trap, and Dame Groan announcing for the zillionth time that the end of the world is nigh. What a wrap that would be.

But the reptiles are rarely congenial in their programming, and the pond is likely to end up tomorrow with the sort of dross that littered the lizard Oz hive mind this morning.

First up comes Lord Downer, like a Colonel Blimp straight from the Adelaide Hills.

The header: Political malaise in UK a warning to our major parties; The Conservative and Labour parties have lost the trust of the public. There have been the scandals, but the real problems are deeper.

The caption for the snap of the chief UK villain (Kemi who?): Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Picture: Peter Nicholls/Pool/AFP

Being a dedicated member of empire, Lord Downer spent a bigly four minutes on the comforting illusion that the UK and Australia remain peas in the colonial pod, and as usual, his analysis revealed more about the dear old sod than anything about the two countries:

Given the affinity between the UK and Australia, events in Britain might help us better understand our own political challenges.
Ten days ago, Britons went to the polls in local government elections. Overall, the insurgent Reform party won 30 per cent of the vote, Labour 20 per cent and the Conservatives 15 per cent. So poorly did the Labour Party perform that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is now under serious challenge from within his own party.
We can speculate on whether Sir Keir will survive or, if he doesn’t, who will replace him. What is more interesting is why the two major parties that have dominated British politics since the 1920s have lost the support and confidence of the public.
Above all, the Conservative and Labour parties have lost the trust of the public. There have, of course, been the scandals, such as the Partygate controversy when Boris Johnson was prime minister and the Mandelson scandal under Starmer. Certainly, these events have upset the public, but the real problems are deeper.
First, there is the issue of immigration. This has several facets. Illegal immigration seems to be out of control. In the two years Labour has been in office, 200,000 illegal migrants have crossed the Channel into England. These illegal migrants are accommodated in hotels at great public expense.

Just to make sure the hive mind knew who could help, the reptiles slipped in a snap of Nigel making plans ... Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at the House of Commons chamber during the State Opening of Parliament on May 13. Picture: Toby Melville/Pool/AFP

It turns out that Lord Downer is deeply sympathetic to Nige's cause ...

This grisly trade began under the Conservatives, and it has only accelerated under Labour. Yet both parties swore black and blue they’d bring to an end illegal immigration. Neither of them did.
Legal immigration has also been controversial. Huge numbers of migrants have been coming into the UK over the past few years, in particular, to fill poorly paid job vacancies.
The perception of the public is that these migrants have changed the face of the country. Voters feel they have contributed to the increase in house prices and waiting lists for the National Health Service. They have also caused civil unrest, particularly over foreign policy issues such as wars in the Middle East. Migrants are also associated with the rise of antisemitism. Now, a lot of these perceptions may be partial truths or totally unfair. It is noteworthy that they are widely held views in the UK, and both the Conservatives and Labour are blamed for allowing all this to happen.

Then just to terrify the hive mind, a terrifying snap... Migrants wade into the sea to board a dinghy to cross the English Channel on August 25, 2025, in Gravelines, France. Picture: Getty

Lord Downer is also a Brexit devotee ...

Then there’s the economy. Unemployment is low, but living standards have flatlined for years.
Taxes have increased, and government debt has spiralled to levels not seen since the Second World War. Both the Conservatives and Labour have tried to persuade the public they have brilliant plans to increase economic growth and the prosperity of the country. In both cases, their plans have been found wanting.
Some commentators will point to the Brexit referendum in 2016 as the cause of these woes. I doubt that that is remotely true. Certainly, Brexit contributed to an escalation in the political temperature from 2016 through until around 2022, but the deleterious impact on the British economy has been nothing like as great as Remainers claim.
For example, over the past 10 years the UK economy has grown by around 15 per cent, France by around 13 per cent, and Germany’s a mere 8 per cent. While none of these records is impressive, the UK’s economy has grown post-Brexit slightly faster than France’s, and at almost twice the pace of Germany’s.

Strange, this from December 2025 ... Brexit's impact on the UK economy ...

There's damned statistics, and then there's damned Lord Downer, as the reptiles slipped in an ancient snap, though they could have dug up a much more recent one, as featured in the Graudian report on a couple of recent marches... An anti-illegal immigration demonstration in August 2025 in Bournemouth, England. Picture: Getty

It being Lord Downer, a true member of the climate science denying hive mind, inevitably any hint of renewables produced a reaction equivalent to an attack of the hives ...

Having said that, the British public are upset about two familiar things. First, the persistent and unrelenting increase in the cost of living. Energy prices have increased alarmingly. For the average British household, electricity prices have doubled since 2016.
In Australia, we’ll be familiar with the reasons why. There has been a massive investment in windmills, in particular, and a reduction in the use of gas. All coal-fired power stations have now been closed. That means intermittent wind power has to be backed up with the remaining gas-fired power stations, as well as nuclear power. As in Australia, there has been a substantial decline in the productivity of electricity generation, and that inevitably makes electricity very expensive.
The British public were promised by both the Conservative Party and Labour that wind power was the cheapest form of power, and that by moving away from coal and gas, electricity would get cheaper. Well, exactly the reverse has been the case.
The public were also told it would help control the climate, but given the UK contributes only 1 per cent of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions, not surprisingly the sacrifices have achieved absolutely nothing.
One consequence of the climate policies of the UK government has been to transfer much of industrial production outside the UK. There’s only one steel blast furnace left in the UK, and much of the country’s steel is imported.
This is a familiar theme to any Australian. We stop industrial production because it emits CO2 as we try to reach improbable targets such as net zero by 2050. As a result, we have to import industrial goods, which are, of course, produced emitting CO2 but in another country. So, in terms of net CO2 emissions, it achieves nothing, but within the borders of an individual country the statistics look good. It’s just politics.
There are other pressures on prices, in particular caused by huge levels of government expenditure. In the UK, government debt is close to 100 per cent of GDP.
The government spends twice as much on servicing its debt than it spends on defence. Think about this. In the last financial year, the Labour government borrowed £130bn ($242bn) and spent £110bn just servicing debt!
This massive level of government expenditure, which has now reached record levels, has not surprisingly been accompanied by ever-growing taxation. British government expenditure is now 45 per cent of GDP.
Under the Tories the tax burden continued to rise, but that was nothing compared to the Starmer government. It increased capital gains tax, increased the equivalent of payroll tax and imposed a 78 per cent additional tax on profits from North Sea oil and gas. The results were obvious.
Fewer people sold assets and so revenue from the capital gains tax actually went down. Fewer employers took on staff so revenue from payroll tax declined. And extraction from the North Sea declined because of the huge supertax.
This is an abridged version of many UK policy failures but the moral of the story is brutal reality: if you don’t do a good job, don’t expect people to vote for you. So instead votes are atomising at the expense of the two major parties.

There's one moment of truth, one moment of insight in all that gibberish, and likely derived from Lord Downer's own experiences. 

If you don't do a good job, you'll score the royal order of the high heeled kick to the groin ...

And so to a survey of the rest of the reptile scene, and the pond regrets that the budget jihad is still going strong in the lizard Oz.

The pond has no idea how the the hive mind readership tolerates this monomania. 

The best the pond can do is link to the intermittent archive, where correspondents can romp to their hearts' content (an actually working archive permitting) ...

WeChat: A canary in the coal mine on Labor’s tax changes?
The sentiment across Chinese media and social platforms has been demonstrably more negative to the budget than mainstream English-language coverage.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

It turned out that the billionaires and tradies and the Chinese community were being short changed by boomers ...

BUDGET MISCALCULATION
Ironically, Baby Boomers may quietly benefit the most

Budget risks alienating voters with three key wealth miscalculations

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ fifth budget may ultimately be remembered for three political miscalculations.

By Chris Brycki

The indefatigable but generally unreadable Geoff was on hand to chamber his usual rounds ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Jim Chalmers gives Paul Keating a run for his money with unpopular budget
Jim Chalmers’ unpopular budget has helped Angus Taylor get back into the game.

That was just double dipping - they might be renewables cynics, but the reptiles love to recyle:

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: historic rejection of Labor’s big-taxing budget
Newspoll: Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese’s budget flops with every generation of voters
A special post-budget Newspoll reveals Jim Chalmers has handed down the most unpopular budget since 1993 and eclipsed the visceral reaction to Joe Hockey’s austerity budget of 2014.
By Geoff Chambers

A whole gaggle of reptiles, or at least a triptych re-enacted the Spanish Inquisition and made Comrade Albo confess ...

PM trips, then confesses
It’s a tax on trusts but not a death tax: PM
Anthony Albanese confirms tax on discretionary trusts set up for people’s last wills, but rebuffs it is a death tax
Anthony Albanese has admitted future inheritance trusts will face higher taxes after initially claiming all testamentary trusts were exempt from the policy changes.
By Greg Brown, Noah Yim and Lachlan Leeming

This was all pretty standard nattering negativity by the nabobs of the Murdoch press, but it was when the quarry whisperer arrived with an attempt at a positive spin that the wheels truly fell off ...

The header: Taylor channels Reagan with bold plan for reform; Angus Taylor’s inspiration is Ronald Reagan, who indexed income tax thresholds in 1985 as part of a program of tax cuts.

The caption for the cornball artwork credited Frank, when really to help his career, it might have been a better career option for Frank to credit AI or Alan Smithee ... Opposition Leader Angus Taylor. Artwork: Frank Ling.

Reagan?

Oh yes, he's back in the game of wild-eyed comparisons.

So preposterous was this idea that the quarry whisperer could only manage three minutes, and that felt like an interminable stretch ...

Angus Taylor’s conservative critics have been urging him to release his inner mongrel. Well, now he has, by unleashing the boldest economic reform since the introduction of the GST.
By committing to index thresholds, Taylor has drawn attention to bracket creep: a scam that has reaped countless billions of dollars over the years by creaming off cost-of-living pay rises.
The stage is set for a fight between collectivists and classical liberals. In one corner are socialists such as Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers, who believe governments were put on Earth to raise money and then spend it. They believe the state has a moral claim over private income. In the other corner is the party of Robert Menzies, under a leader who passionately believes individuals should receive the fullest possible reward for their labour and investment.
Chalmers’ confusion is evident from his claim that Taylor’s automatic annual tax cuts would “cost” $35bn over four years. Cost who exactly? Not taxpayers, obviously, who’ll have tens of billions of dollars more disposable income. The greatest cost will be borne by politicians forced to expend political capital by cutting spending or adding to debt.
On Thursday, Nationals leader Matt Canavan delighted Coalition supporters at a post-speech dinner by describing the indexing of income thresholds as the Ozempic of fiscal policy. It will reduce the appetite for big government by forcing politicians to take a bill to parliament to increase taxes, rather than relying on inflation-linked revenue-raising on the sly.
Taylor has been working through the challenges of reducing the public sector burden for years. His strategy to reduce government spending to the pre-Covid level of 24 per cent of GDP is to grow the private sector rather than leaning heavily on expenditure cuts, as Malcolm Fraser tried to do half a century ago.
Fraser at least tried, going to the 1975 election promising “an end to Labor’s tax rip-off” by fully indexing personal income tax for three years. Yet persistent inflation broke his resolve and, by the end of his term, indexation had effectively been dropped.

The pond has been disturbed for some time now by the reptile desire to live in ancient times, and this didn't help ... US President Ronald Reagan in 1988.

Just to make sure everyone caught the full absurdity of this burst of hagiography directed at the beefy boofhead, the floodwaters in quarries whisperer doubled down ...

Taylor’s inspiration is not Fraser, but Ronald Reagan, who indexed income tax thresholds in 1985 as part of a program of tax cuts. Far from reducing revenue and increasing deficits, as critics predicted, Reagan’s tax cuts had the opposite effect, stimulating economic growth and instilling optimism that actually increased revenue. Monica Prasad’s account of that period in her 2018 book, Starving the Beast: Ronald Reagan and the Tax Cut Revolution, shows Reagan faced circumstances not unlike those faced by the Liberal Party today. Republican support was in the low 20s after Watergate. An editor at the Los Angeles Times mused: “Who can even imagine a Republican congress being elected in our lifetime or perhaps in our children’s lifetime?” Polls showed inflation was the No.1 concern. Bracket creep was sapping the confidence of workers and businesses.

The reptiles seem haunted by the head prefect, the squatter from Nareen, though he's long been gone ...Malcolm Fraser in 1977. Picture: Getty

And that was pretty much that, with the Caterist working hard to do a puff job on his prime serve of Angus beef ...

In his first televised speech as president, Reagan outlined his plan to constrain government expansion. “We can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath,” he said. “Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance.”
Unlike Reagan, Taylor will limit tax cuts to bracket creep, initially at least. Yet he is strongly persuaded by the supply-side arguments of economists who inspired Reagan, notably Arthur B. Laffer, whose thoughts were distilled on a paper napkin during lunch with Donald Rumsfeld in 1974, now on display at the National Museum of American History.
“If you tax a product, less results,” Laffer wrote, a phrase Taylor is fond of repeating. “If you subsidise a product, more results.”
The truth of Laffer’s observation was reinforced by Chalmers’ decision to remove concessions on capital gains, negative gearing and trusts. It is effectively a tax on entrepreneurial investment and, as Laffer predicted, we’re about to get less of it. On Sunday Chalmers painted himself further into a corner, claiming Taylor’s proposal was irresponsible and inflationary. Allowing workers to keep more of their income would “pump the most money into the economy when inflation is already at its highest”.
Yet tax cuts do not increase the amount of money in circulation. They merely change who gets to spend it. Chalmers’ logic is that if the government spends money, it isn’t inflationary, but if citizens spend their own money, it is. Experience persuades us the opposite is true: individuals tend to spend their money in the productive side of the economy, stimulating investment, increasing output and building confidence. Governments are inclined to spend money on unproductive pet projects, siphoning scarce capital to low-return or loss-making projects.
Which, ironically, helps Taylor enormously. Four years of lavish Labor spending have created a bucketful of projects few taxpayers would miss. Taylor listed some of them: climate change bureaucracies, sweetheart deals between governments and corporations, notably in the energy sector, transmission lines, electric vehicle subsidies. Cutting welfare for non-citizens, including subsidies for first-home buyers, will deliver a not insubstantial fiscal dividend. Plus, the government has pledged to cut $37.8bn from the NDIS over four years, enough to pay for Taylor’s tax cuts on its own. Not that Taylor should hold his breath on that one but, hey, you never know.

Desperate, desperate times.

Of all the angles offered by the reptiles - the suffering of billionaires was a particular pond favourite - this surely must be the most wretched and desperate of them all.

The Major was also to hand to offer more of the lizard Oz budget jihad, done in his usual manner by berating anyone who didn't share the Major's vision ... (that's why they never could find the Order of Lenin medal the Major proved was worn by Manning Clark).

The header: Jim Chalmers pulled the wool over the eyes of a gullible press; More than failing on its self-defined central task, the budget lacks any growth plan for the nation’s future.

The caption for the fully wired villain Jimbo: Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Getty Images

The Major's piece ran for an exceptionally tedious five minutes, but then when it comes to a murmuration of reptiles, the Major is always a reliable voice.

You see, he's a world-weary trooper, ready to explain things to younglings lacking the Major's infinite, hard-won, boots-on-the-ground, shop-soiled experience ...

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ budget last week pulled the wool over some young journalists’ eyes with talk of intergenerational equity.
Many lapped up Jim’s crumbs about the wealthy elderly, but the budget will do almost nothing to boost housing supply for the young and will almost certainly push up rents and interest rates. It also leaves the young with a total federal deficit about to pass $1 trillion. Not much intergenerational equity in any of that.
Chalmers inadvertently highlighted why more thoughtful journalists are disappointed when he answered a question at the National Press Club on Wednesday afternoon with a jaundiced reflection about aspiration.
His political opponents always had aspirations for a shrinking number of older Australians while ignoring the legitimate aspirations of the young, he said. In other words: it’s just politics.
So what’s missing from what Chalmers claims is bold reform? Today’s older Australians were young when reforming Labor treasurer Paul Keating and Coalition treasurer Peter Costello made tough decisions that grew the national pie.
Keating, in The Australian on Thursday, reflected on the 40th anniversary of his 1986 “banana republic” statement and the tough budget decisions he had to make then in the face of plunging terms of trade.
Journalist Troy Bramston quoted him saying excessive spending to maintain living standards and running up debt that burdens future generations was “Australia’s great policy lie” in the post-war period. He was not aiming that at Chalmers but the point holds.

Hard, hard yakka.

Desperate, desperate stuff. 

The pond ran that ancient Troy piece, and correspondents will remember that there was nary a word from the Swiss clock man about the current budget or Jimbo, and so the Major is forced into blather of the "but the point holds" kind... Paul Keating. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

No, the point doesn't hold and any youngling trying that trick of the trade - introducing the notion of a banana republic by nefarious means - should be hounded out of journalism school.

It's down there with the Major's next opening flourish:

Keating didn't say it ...

If Keating didn't say it, why is Keating's name in the sentence?

Keating didn’t say it but today’s young Australians will also get much more benefit from compulsory superannuation than the Baby Boomers who were middle-aged when he introduced the national system in 1996.
The Australian Financial Review on Thursday spoke to two former Treasury secretaries, John Fraser and Ken Henry, who thought the budget was too expansionary and should be in surplus. Yet Chalmers continues to deny government spending is affecting inflation.
To be fair, Tuesday night’s budget was better than Chalmers’ previous four, but it was not the bold reform The Guardian, Nine newspapers’ economics editor Ross Gittins and some journalists at the ABC claimed.
In fact, the budget’s “intergenerational equity” narrative is just a lazy way of taking money from one group, the elderly, to make another group, the growing youth vote, appear better off.
Chalmers and Albanese had hoped this equity spin would provide cover for ditching their pre-election promises not to change the capital gains tax treatment of investments or alter negative gearing. At least former opposition leader Bill Shorten had the courage to take the same policies to the 2019 election, where they were defeated.
Many older Australians live on welfare and don’t own a home. And while home ownership is harder today than in the Keating-Costello reform era, not all of that is driven by concessional investment taxes or negative gearing. Much is down to state governments’ development imposts.
Budget numbers show the latest housing changes won’t fix the problem. House prices will grow but by 2 per cent less than otherwise. Only 75,000 extra first-home buyers will benefit over the next decade but 110,000 will be trying to get into the market each year.
Chalmers’ “tough reform” is a far cry from Keating cutting the top marginal tax rate from 60 to 49 per cent in 1988, or the company tax rate from 49 to 39 per cent the same year, and again to 33 per cent in 1993.
Nor have Chalmers and Albanese shown the courage of Costello and then PM John Howard, who went to an election in 1998 to win support for junking their “never, ever” GST promise before the 1996 election.

And here we go again, with the Major, just like all the other reptiles, living in the past, celebrating past glories ... John Howard and Peter Costello in 2004.

It's almost as if the reptiles didn't have any faith in the beefy boofhead and his current mob, and so must direct the hive mind readership to ancient times, and by association, imagine the beefy boofhead has somehow been exalted and risen to Valhalla ...

This column argued on February 22 that there were reasons to alter the tax treatment of investment homes and to focus negative gearing on new homes. But it said neither would raise much money or solve housing affordability for the young. Tuesday’s documents confirm those judgments.
But more than failing on its self-defined central task, the budget lacks any growth plan for the nation’s future. There are rats and mice on productivity but nothing to give the young the sort of crack at prosperity Keating and Costello gave their parents.
Instead, the young will face decades of national debt plus limits to the sorts of tax and property arrangements their parents, and Albanese and Chalmers, benefited from. They’ll also get falling per capita GDP, papered over by very high immigration.
Chalmers and Albanese are selling this highly political generational equity line because for the first time the Boomer generation is outnumbered by young voters who don’t vote Coalition.
So how did the media’s budget coverage go? As usual, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review had the best political and economic analysis, even though they are criticised as conservative by the left cheer squad at The Guardian Australian and the ABC, who have never seen a tax increase they don’t support.
The most credulous pieces were by Annabel Crabb on the ABC website and Guardian Australia’s Greg Jericho and Tom McIlroy. All thought Chalmers had done the really big stuff, even though the intergenerational changes raise little revenue in the early years and the main road to budget repair is through a very dubious NDIS repair plan.
They conveniently gloss over likely rent and interest rate rises that will follow this budget.

The Major really decided to test the pond, but given a choice, the pond would rather listen to Crabb than the Major ... Annabel Crabb. Picture: ABC

Okay, in an ideal world, the pond would have to endure neither ... as the Major powerfully suggested that the pond really should be tuning back into the ABC so that an alternative reality might be observed ...

The worst media performance was by ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson, who talked over Opposition Leader Angus Taylor all through their Thursday night interview.
Ferguson clearly disapproves of Taylor’s plans to cut immigration, even though the government proposes to do likewise. And she was sceptical of his promise to index PAYE tax thresholds to return bracket creep, something economists have supported for decades.

That reminded the pond of this ...

And so to the Major parading his choice of reptiles, from Pearls of wisdom, to of all people, that tired old hack Shanners ...

Like clockwork, Keating’s reform-era ally, former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, in Friday morning’s Daily Telegraph, called for the top PAYE tax rate to be cut to 39 per cent from its present 45 per cent plus 2 per cent Medicare levy.
This column thought the most incisive analyses of the Chalmers budget’s economic underpinnings were delivered by former Treasury assistant secretary David Pearl in The Australian and AFR economics editor John Kehoe.
Picking up early on the banana republic anniversary, Pearl said Chalmers had failed his first real test at his equivalent of Keating’s big moment.
“Jim Chalmers had one job and one job only in this budget. The fiscal lever had to be pulled hard to take demand out of the economy,” Pearl wrote.
Kehoe said: “This is the budget Chalmers has dreamt about delivering for more than a decade since Labor’s 2016 election manifesto for higher taxes on assets.”
In The Australian on Thursday, journalist Elizabeth Pike reported on the 20 Labor cabinet members who maintained investment properties that can still be negatively geared under the budget’s grandfathering arrangements. Albanese and Chalmers are pulling up the drawbridge to prosperity.
Dennis Shanahan, The Australian’s national political editor, called out the hypocrisy on budget night: Albo himself has risen up the ladder from meagre beginnings and is now a very wealthy man with multiple homes. Millennials will find it much harder but that won’t be the fault of their parents.

Oh go moan to the Emeritus Chairman, who has done as much to protect the status of billionaires as any story in the lizard Oz about their suffering ...

And so to the immortal Rowe revealing what's really fuelling the reptile nightmares and hysteria ...