In which Polonial prattle and the bromancer make up the Sunday meditation ...

 

Such august, exalted, rarefied company ...

Stupid reptiles, per WaPo...

A reporter for the Turkish newspaper Akşam signed the agreement, as did three individuals from the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency and two Turkish freelancers. Other signers included a reporter for the Australian, a News Corp-owned Australian paper; an Afghan freelancer; and three lesser-known operations, AWPS News, the India Globe and a blog called USA Journal Korea.

Mea culpa ...

Cf Susan B Glasser in The New Yorker, Donald Trump’s Dream Palace of Puffery, The Pentagon’s ban on real journalism looks to be a preview of where the White House is headed.(*archive link)

Such a heady, albeit brief, moment of international fame

Speaking of snivelling lickspittle fellow travellers, Helen Lewis contributed a fun piece to The Atlantic, I Watched Stand-Up in Saudi Arabia, What the surreal Riyadh Comedy Festival foretold about the kingdom’s future (*archive link).

A teaser trailer:

...When he returned from Riyadh, Burr gushed about the experience on his podcast, Monday Morning. “My whole fucking idea of Saudi Arabia is what I’ve seen on the news,” he said. “I literally think I’m going to fucking land, you know, and everybody’s going to be screaming ‘Death to America!’ and they’re going to have like fucking machetes and want to like chop my head off, right?” However, “everybody’s just regular—like, shooting the sh*t.” (Blogger bot friendly) (His next special should be called Bill Burr’s Low Bar.) How could Riyadh be an ethically troubling destination, he added, when it was full of American food brands—Starbucks, McDonald’s, Chili’s? Nowhere with a Dunkin’ could be that bad, surely. He might not have known about Deera Square, a short drive from ANB Arena. Known locally as Chop-Chop Square, it’s the traditional location of public beheadings in Riyadh. Although the Saudis executed a record 345 people last year, public beheadings are now considered declassé, having been ruined by the Islamic State. I’m sure Burr could do something funny with that.
Burr’s words reflect the bland incuriosity that accrues with wealth. As I ate dinner one night at the Ritz-Carlton, in a Chinese restaurant overlooking the indoor swimming pool, I reflected that the promise of a five-star hotel is insulation, a cocoon against the outside world. A rich person—a successful comedian, say—could glide from the business-class lounge to the front of the aircraft to an air-conditioned limo to a luxury hotel where your dinner is interrupted by five different people asking if everything is okay. Live enough days like this, and the whole world becomes your bellhop. No wonder these guys like Saudi Arabia. The way that daily life bends around rich people is that little bit more obvious here.
After several days of backlash to his naive musings, Burr returned with another thought: His critics, he told Conan O’Brien, were “sanctimonious c*nts.” (*Blogger bot enforced) For me, the fairer complaint is that Western detractors were thinking about the festival the wrong way. They deemed it a PR disaster for Saudi Arabia because it exposed the regime’s hypocrisy about free speech and the performers’ cynicism. On the contrary, the festival said to middle-class Saudis: Do you need the vote if you have lots of money and Louis C.K.? That’s a trade-off that even many Americans would accept.
Burr also told O’Brien something that I fear is correct: that American society was moving toward Saudi illiberalism by “f*cking (Blogger bot censor) grabbing moms and dads and sticking them in a van for making illegally made f*cking tacos.” This, to me, was the greatest irony of the Riyadh Comedy Festival. With its Cheesecake Factory outlets and newfound interest in comedy, Saudi Arabia is becoming more American—just as America is becoming more Saudi. In the U.S., the government is stifling the media, due process is being eroded, the ruler’s relatives are sent on quasi-governmental missions, and businessmen make overt displays of loyalty. Donald Trump’s White House has given up lecturing other countries on their human-rights records and adopted a purely transactional approach to foreign affairs. Comedians are just following his lead.

Talk about laughs, and the lizard Oz reptiles were keen to follow Pentagon Pete's lead, at least for a little while, what with him being a must view for the troops ... Pete Hegseth's 'warrior ethos' speech is now mandatory viewing for the entire US military.

Why did the pond start with some comedy? 

Well today's Sunday meditation is tough going, what with Polonius's prattle covering the very same turf already covered by "Ned's" natter yesterday ...as if the pond hasn't already endured enough motivational speechifying, as if it was fair for the reptiles to try to ruin the lettuce's chances, as it battled suffering Susssan ...

The header: Liberals need to have their A-team on the frontbench, It’s all too easy for outsiders to give advice but in any contest – political or otherwise – it’s wise to have the best team on the field.

The caption for the mournful snap of a bewildered-looking Susssan (the more "s's" the greater the power and the karmic strength): The task for Sussan Ley and those who want Labor out of office is to be patient. Picture: NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

On the upside, the reptiles had clocked the outing as just the usual four minute pontificating Polonial read...

The most memorable line in the 1880 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance’s Policeman’s Song is “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one”. The same is true of the leader of the Liberal Party in the modern era – currently Sussan Ley.
Only four Liberal leaders have become prime minister after defeating the Labor Party at an election – Robert Menzies in 1949, Malcolm Fraser in 1975, John Howard in 1996 and Tony Abbott in 2013.
Sure, Fraser was appointed to the role of caretaker prime ­minister in ­November 1975 after the then ­governor-general John Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam’s Labor government. But Fraser won the sub­sequent election on December 13, 1975 in a landslide, ­indicating that he would have ­prevailed at the scheduled end of Whitlam’s second term in office.
Quite a few Liberal Party leaders have never made it to the Lodge in Canberra: Billy Snedden, Andrew Peacock, John Hewson, Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson and Peter Dutton.
It’s all too easy for outsiders to give advice to the leader of a party in opposition. However, it’s not gratuitous guidance to suggest that, in any contest – political or otherwise – it’s wise to have the best team on the field.

On the upside, Polonius wasn't ranting about the ABC - oh frabjous joy to see such a rare day - and the pond held its tongue on its long-running Susssan v. lettuce routine, Shadow Attorney-General Andrew Wallace discusses the prospect of defectors within the Liberal Party. “It hasn’t worked well for others in the past and I don’t think it will work well for others … in the future,” Mr Wallace told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “I am absolutely fixed on ensuring that we toughen our laws in Australia. “I want to return safety and security to Australians.”

The reptiles allowed plenty of visual distractions, giving Polonius only two pars before inserting a couple of huge snaps of wannabes ...

The fact is that right now some of the most able Liberal media and parliamentary performers are on the backbench. I may have missed a few. But here’s my list in alphabetical order in the House of Representatives – Garth Hamilton and Andrew Hastie. And, in the Senate, Sarah Henderson and Jane Hume.
Senator Dave Sharma is an assistant minister but he is not in the full ministry. Senator Jacinta Price was dumped from the shadow ministry for failing to support her leader. And Hastie, the member for the seat of Canning in Perth, resigned in order to speak out on topics about which he disagrees with the Opposition Leader.

Cue the wannabes, Garth Hamilton. Picture: NewsWire / David Beach; Jane Hume. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Polonius stuck manfully to his motivational methodology (3Ms), and inevitably Ming the Merciless (2Ms) joined in ...

It’s not clear how the talented outsiders can be brought back into the team or onto the field. After all, this would require sacking some underperformers.
But the Liberal Party’s numbers in the House of Representatives are so small that it cannot afford to have good performers on the bench or in the ­seconds.
In the Coalition, the Liberal leader chooses the Liberal players in the ministry or shadow ministry. And the Nationals leader, currently David Littleproud, chooses his team. There are also some good performers among the Nationals who are not on the frontbench. This was also the case before the last election when Keith Pitt was excluded.
What opposition has in common with prison is that parliamentarians have a pretty good idea of when their time in opposition may end. The next election is scheduled for around May 2028. The task is to settle in for the long haul.
This week it has been reported that some of the Liberal Party’s right-of-centre MPs are thinking about breaking away from the Liberal Party and forming a Reform party, following in the steps of Nigel Farage in Britain.
This would be a waste of time and resources. As I documented in my 1994 book, Menzies Child, in 1944 Menzies drew together some two score of right-of-centre political parties and organisations to form the Liberal Party of Aus­tralia. This was, and remains, a ­federation.
The Liberal Party exists in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. In Queensland, there is the Liberal National Party – it is part of the Liberal Party but LNP members and senators sit in either the ­Liberal of National partyroom in Parliament House in Canberra.
And then there is the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory. Its representative in Parliament House, currently Senator Jacinta Price, sits in the Liberal ­partyroom, having decided to ­vacate the Nationals room.
In view of this structure, the talk of some members and senators leaving the Liberals and setting up their own party would be a gigantic task that would likely fail.
It’s not easy to organise, let alone finance, a new political party in Australia.

What better way to help than introduce the Bolter having a jocular moment with Jimbo, Sky News host Andrew Bolt discusses James Patterson’s suggestions for the Liberal Party. “Trump has won an election, and Farage is so far ahead, he might have the biggest landslide in our lifetime, I think if you followed some of the things he’s saying, you might not be in this stook,” Mr Bolt told Sky News host James Macpherson. “I think his point is this: you can’t just lazily copy a policy that works overseas and neglect the local conditions over here. “You can’t just be poll chases.”(sic)

Polonius then did his final gobbet best to help out ...

In recent times, only three minor parties have had a reasonable political life. They are the Democratic Labor Party, which split away from/was expelled by the Labor Party in the mid-1950s; the Democrats which, under Don Chipp’s leadership, broke away from the Liberal Party in the mid-1980s. And now there is the Greens political party.
None of the above have ever scored much more than 10 per cent of the political vote and the DLP and the Democrats lasted for only two decades.
The Australian system of preferential voting favours large parties. In the 2024 British election, Labour won 33.7 per cent of the total vote and 63.2 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. The Conservatives won 23.7 per cent of the vote but only 18.6 per cent of the seats. The Tories’ problem is that the Farage-led Reform UK won 14.3 per cent of the vote but only 0.8 per cent of the seats.
It’s not impossible that Reform UK could prevail over the Conservatives in time. However, it’s unlikely that a Farage-lite party could succeed in Australia in a preferential voting system unless it had substantial support.
The task for those who want Labor out of office is to be patient. The Labor Party’s combined political success depends on the state of the economy in general and the standard of living – especially the cost of energy – in particular. To the extent the economy deteriorates and unemployment increases, the Liberal Party can recover.
In recent times, good advice had been provided by such Liberal Party identities as Angus Taylor, as well as senators James Paterson, Andrew Bragg and Sharma.
The task is to work hard and present well.
After Whitlam’s defeat in December 1975, the Bulletin magazine ran a cover story raising the question as to whether the Labor Party could survive. It was back in office under Bob Hawke’s leadership in early 1983. The same was said when the Coalition lost in 1993. It was back in office under John Howard’s leadership in 1996.
What the Hawke and Howard oppositions had in common turned on the fact that they had their most talented on the field. It made their lot easier.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute. His Media Watch Dog blog can be found at theaustralian.com.au

It's a small point, but the pond will make it anyway. 

The lizard Oz no longer carries the Polonial media hound, wherein Polonius frequently thinks he's a dog. 

As the thumb bio makes clear, it was shifted over to Sky Noise down under ...

Gerard Henderson is an Australian columnist, political commentator and the Executive Director of The Sydney Institute. His column Media Watch Dog is republished by SkyNews.com.au each Saturday morning. He started the blog in April 1988, before the ABC TV’s program of the same name commenced.

The pond won't provide a link, it's more just to wonder why the reptiles are so slack around this tedious droner and his boring offerings ...

Instead of Poloniuts, it was left to the dog botherer to do the reptile rant about the ABC this week, and for a nanosecond the pond thought of making the offering the Sunday bonus read ...

Just a nanosecond, because it was the usual sort of stuff the pond has come to expect from The Zionist Daily News ...

ABC finally reports Hamas executing Gazans – to blame Israel and Trump
In two years the ABC reported once on Hamas murdering Gazans. This week that changed when the executions cast doubt on Trump’s deal. Such sunlight on the reality of the terror group is welcome, but fair reporting should have been standard practice from the beginning.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

The pond is well over the rampant Zionism in the Oz, and the refusal of the reptiles to contemplate the wanton destruction and the ethnic cleansing that's gone down in Gaza,.

Each day the reptiles insist on offering this sort of Benji-loving tosh (spoiler alert, it's the climax to the DB's rant) ...

That's as much as the pond could take.

Here, have an immortal Rowe for making it this far ...

That happens to set the tone and the feel for the bromancer's offering, the bonus for this Sunday's meditation...

The header: All this, and rare earths too: the PM’s pitch to Trump, As he heads into face-to-face talks with Donald Trump, our PM has an unexpected edge: the Chinese Communist Party and Hamas have uniquely conspired for Australia to win US favours.

There wasn't really a caption for the astonishingly weak gif style caption which saw the two leaders pop up into frame with a Batman-style sparkle behind them:

To be fair, each day the pond is astonished by the abysmal reptile graphics; each day seems to get worse.

As for why the pond selected the bromancer, rest assured it wasn't for the insights. 

Given the turf and the subject matter, the bromancer gave the pond the chance to fling in some random 'toons, just for fun ...

That said, buckle up because the reptiles rated it a 9 minute read, and so of interminable, ennui-inducing length ...

Anthony Albanese has the help of two acutely unlikely friends in his effort to make a good impression on his first date with Donald Trump on Monday night Australia time.
The Chinese Communist Party and the Hamas terrorist outfit have both uniquely conspired to help the Australian win the favours of his American counterpart.
If Albanese doesn’t have a successful meeting with Trump this time, he surely never will.
Beijing chose just now to announce a whole bevy of export controls on rare earths. China is the rare earths superpower.
As its legendary leader, Deng Xiaoping, decades ago committed to and forecast, China has become to rare earths what Saudi Arabia was to oil, only more so.
Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, has been trying to get a rare earths deal with the US ever since the Australian election. Beijing has just made the logic of such a deal very powerful.
Hamas, by agreeing to Trump’s ceasefire, has done two useful things for Albanese.
First, it provides a context in which Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles can all lavish praise on Trump without upsetting their left-wing base.
It may be a temporary situation.
The peace deal may not last. However much that is Hamas’s fault, Albanese, Wong and Marles would surely go back to demonising Israel if it resumed military action.
But the ceasefire will surely last beyond Monday, so the government in Canberra can keep singing Trump’s praises, the right way to maximise chances of a good Oval Office meeting.
The second Hamas gift is that Canberra’s foolish decision to recognise a Palestinian state when no such state exists will no longer be of any consequence in the context of the Trump-Albanese meeting.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, The selfie game may be strong, but Anthony Albanese has less influence with Trump than any Australian prime minister since World War II has had with an American president. Picture: Instagram

The rictus grin! And so the pond seized the moment ...

Back to the bro ...

The Albanese government is making every concerted effort to make the Prime Minister-President date night a night to remember; to make it, if not magical, at least warm and fuzzy. It’s re-announcing all its defence projects, pretending it’s spending and doing much more than it is.
Yet it’s still the case that Albanese’s singular lack of serious ambition, focus and purpose in foreign affairs and strategic matters will likely lead to, at best, a mediocre outcome.
Albanese is not the worst Labor Prime Minister you could imagine.
Gough Whitlam nearly destroyed the US alliance.

Hang on, hang on, didn't ancient Troy in his endless book promotion tour scribble US alliance never in danger despite Whitlam-Nixon spat, Kissinger revealed, In an interview before his death, Henry Kissinger downplayed suggestions the US-Australia alliance was ever materially at risk during Gough Whitlam’s government.

He did, he did:

The Australia-US alliance was never at serious risk during the Whitlam government, revealed former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and disagreements with Gough Whitlam were as much a factor of personality differences as they were about policy.

In one of his last interviews in the year before his death, Kissinger said differences such as that over the bombing of Vietnam and outbursts from Whitlam and his ministers caused concern in the White House but there was never any concerted move to cease ­military co-operation or end intelligence sharing.

“It’s conceivable (that) people said, ‘This kind of rhetoric should be penalised’,” Kissinger recalled in mid-2022. “It never reached an operational point. And I think it is inconceivable today.”

And so on, and the pond wishes that the reptiles got their stories straight, as the bromancer pressed on regardless ...

When his attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, ordered a Commonwealth Police raid on ASIO headquarters, this led to Washington cutting off intelligence sharing with Australia. The British and Canadians did the same.
Albanese is nothing like that.
Provided he doesn’t have to do anything substantial in Australia’s own defence, Albanese wants the US alliance to continue and to succeed.
This is a kind of minimalist, base-camp level of credibility in Australian national security. But it’s not nothing.
Given that Australia has no independent strategic capability at all and that we are living in, as the government and its agencies have told us, the most challenging strategic times since World War II, it would be literally insane for a Canberra government to oppose the US alliance or to allow it to fall into danger.
PMs and Presidents past
Nonetheless, Albanese has less influence with Trump than any Australian prime minister since World War II has had with an American president.
Trump is one year into a four-year electoral cycle and Albanese has met him only once and then very fleetingly.
The contrast with the past is damning for Albanese.
Richard Nixon wrote with unabashed admiration of Robert Menzies. Lyndon Johnson regarded Harold Holt as a close friend and came to Australia to visit him, and then came again for Holt’s funeral.
Paul Keating overstates his influence with Bill Clinton but there’s no doubt that Clinton sought Keating’s input and advice of regional issues. George W. Bush and John Howard were closer than the occupants of their respective positions had ever been and much of the structural integration the Australian system enjoys with the US today came from the Howard-Bush partnership.

The pond gets the strategy. 

The bromancer's piece is littered with snaps of PMs and Presidents, in an attempt to normalise the current reign of King Donald, and this strategy began with the French clock devotee and the sexual relations man canoodling...Paul Keating and Bill Clinton at The White House in September, 1993.

But these aren't normal times, and it's hard to normalise the new King...

The bromancer next resorted to his good/bad Trump routine ...

Rudd as PM was influential across the American political and bureaucratic system and had a generally good relationship with Bush. Barack Obama didn’t like Tony Abbott’s climate policies but had Abbott on speed dial when he wanted a favour. Both Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison did well with Trump in his first term.
But Albanese has been substantially a void in national security, and specifically American, policy. The Economist recently described the Starmer government in Britain, which so much resembles the Albanese government, as “aimless”. In strategic matters, the same adjective applies in Australia.
For although this will likely be a satisfactory meeting, though you can never be sure of anything involving Trump, it will suffer from Albanese’s lack of ambition in strategic and regional matters.

Oh you can pretty much be sure of many things with King Donald ...

The bromancer blathered on ...

Albanese has been motivated on the US alliance in part by domestic political considerations. Albanese comes from the left of Labor but he has been around a long time and he has seen the desperate damage Labor has done to itself whenever it looks like it’s undermining the US alliance.
A new raft of polling by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney bears this out. Australians reject Trump overwhelmingly, but only 17 per cent think we should end the alliance. Almost half think the alliance more important than ever.
Trump is unpopular in Australia, the alliance is still strongly supported.
Australians have always distinguished between a president they don’t like and an alliance they treasure.
Nixon was unpopular in Australia but not the alliance.
Bush was deeply unpopular in Australia, but the minute Labor leader Mark Latham attacked Bush in a way that looked as though it might hurt the alliance, his ascendancy in the polls disappeared.
Bill Hayden as opposition leader briefly flirted with a policy banning visits by US nuclear-powered or armed ships. He quickly realised that given a choice between the US alliance and his leadership, Australians would choose the alliance.

Cue the next normalisation strategy, because all the way with LBJ and run the bastards over now feels like a very polite conversation, The PM Harold and then-US president Lyndon B Johnson. Picture: Supplied

Protests have come a long way since those days ...

Where's the shark?

Next the bromancer decided to devise a mission statement...

Albanese will never knowingly walk into that trap.
He will support the alliance. Not only that, the alliance suits him politically.
Australia is completely, 100 per cent reliant on the US for security.
In accepting that dependency so comprehensively, Albanese Labor frees itself of any responsibility for providing for Australia’s own defence or even having any strategically difficult conversations with the electorate.
Australia is a classic free rider on the US for defence. This allows Albanese to maximise social spending and minimise defence spending. Ugly policy. Irresponsible. Dangerous. Politically effective.
PM’s main mission
There will be four main objectives for Albanese’s meeting with Trump. The first is just to get a Trump benediction for the alliance and the relationship generally. No modern American administration has been so utterly dominated by its president and staffed by people who follow every presidential word as though they were Vatican altar boys following the pronouncements of the Pope.

So to another attempt to normalise the abnormal, Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and former US President George W Bush when the pair were each in power in 2004. Pucire: Auspic/NAA

Why not show a more apt historical parallel, one that Colbert made a meal of in his monologue (YouTube link)...

Everybody loves an arch, from the Caesars through Napoleon to Adolf and King Donald, and the bromancer loves to see the need for benediction ...

Therefore, some sort of presidential benediction, encompassing Albanese personally, is essential. Objective two for Albanese will be to get a similar presidential benediction specifically for AUKUS. The AUKUS agreement is eccentric and strange in the way it has displaced ANZUS as the key acronym, or single word, symbolising the US alliance. It involves the UK. It’s right that Australia relates closely with the UK, and the US and UK together will notionally provide technology for Australia eventually to build nuclear submarines, although I remain very sceptical that any subs will ever be built in Australia.

Speaking of benediction ...

Did correspondents catch up with the latest move of the Woke Marxist?

Oh dear, what will the barking mad Catholic fundies make of that?

And speaking of barking mad Catholic fundies, the bromancer was praying for AUKUS...

But AUKUS, in emphasising the relationship with the UK, valuable though that is, actually takes away from the region and key security partners such as Japan. The moment of truth with AUKUS comes in 2031, after Trump has left the White House, when whoever is US president has to decide whether to go ahead and in 2032 transfer a Virginia-class nuclear submarine to Australia.
There’s every chance Australia won’t be ready to operate and base its own nuclear submarine by then. And there’s no chance the US will feel it has enough Virginias. My prediction is the president at that time will not say a flat-out “no” to Canberra, which will already have spent many billions of dollars on the project, but rather will say “not yet”. You’re not ready yet, we can’t spare one yet.

Then came another attempt at normalistion, with that parade of PMs and Presidents, featuring the onion muncher pretending to smirk at the Kenyan socialist. It looked more like a sinister sneer, in Then PM Tony Abbott meets US president Barack Obama in the White House in 2014.

The pond was still stuck on fundamentalist Catholics of the Nazi-loving, couch-molesting kind...

Always strange to see grown men well above the age of consent described as boys and kids ... but liars got to joke around ... while the bromancer spruiked the deal ...

In any event it would be crazy for Trump to walk away from the deal right now because Australia pays billions of dollars directly to the US to bolster its submarine industrial base, provides eventually hundreds of sailors to serve on US boats and, albeit very slowly, constructs a nuclear submarine maintenance facility in Perth that the Americans can use.
Even Trump couldn’t have organised a better deal for America than that.
Congress strongly supports AUKUS, in no small part due to prodigious, effective work by Rudd and his team.
The third big objective is a critical minerals and rare earths deal. Rare earths are not that rare but you need to find them in sufficient concentration to make mining and processing them economically viable.
Australia has rare earths in abundance. It also has a lot of mining and processing expertise. Australian company Lynas enjoys a partnership with Japan that Tokyo undertook to have a non-Chinese source of supply.

Hang on, hang on, speaking of that alleged processing expertise, didn't the lizard Oz editorialist downplay Australia's potential only yesterday?

...this is not a problem Australia alone can solve. China has monopolised the market because it has used government policies to make it uneconomical for others to compete. Building a rare earths mining, processing and supply industry in Australia will require other nations to step up with financing and firm commitments to buy products that may be more expensive than what has been on offer from China.

(S)he did, (S)he did, and the bromancer had to fall into line ...

Creating a non-Chinese source of supply is quite difficult. The technology involved in extracting rare earths, turning them into oxides, alloying them, smelting them into a metal and finally turning out magnets is exceptionally challenging, complex and hard. It’s different for different rare earths. So-called light rare earths are involved in all manner of everyday technologies. So-called heavy rare earths are particularly prominent in defence technologies.
It’s a sign of the complete dereliction of Western governments and the madness of applying the free market model to critical national security supply chains that China dominates 90 per cent of this trade. To make the weapons that it might need to use against China, the US has to buy Chinese rare earths.

Dumb? You think?

Beijing, following, it must be said, something like Washington’s example, has announced that from December it will apply new export restrictions.

Dereliction, madness and the war on China by Xmas in a Catch-22 mode, and perhaps, to the bromancer's despair delayed until well after Xmas?

Who'd have thunk it? Who'd have known? Who could have reported it?

Well at least the reptiles can sign up to ways of keeping such sordid matters hidden ... and earn plenty of bones in the process.

Speaking of compliant woofers, the reptiles flung in a snap of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Picture: AFP

That's got to be worth a rich man 'toon ...

The bromancer stayed strong ...

Any component with even a speck of Chinese rare earths will require Chinese approval to be sold. So if one US company makes a hi-tech component to sell to another US company it will need Beijing’s approval.
How would Beijing enforce such a rule? Simply by refusing to export to a company, or indeed a country, that doesn’t follow this rule. Trump hit the roof when he heard about this. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent responded by saying the US and its allies should decouple their economies from China if China goes ahead with this rule.
Trump and China’s Xi Jinping are likely to have a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea in November. Beijing’s new restrictions are scheduled to go into effect in December. So it may be that the extravagantly unreasonable and aggressive move by Beijing is, again a la Trump, essentially a negotiating position.
Trump has certainly been clearing away all sorts of irritants to allow him to make a Big Deal with Xi. However, almost everyone in the US system understands that this dependence on Beijing for critical technology is extremely dangerous.
This is where Australia could come in.

Say what, we can come in, join up, with radical forces seeking to end the reign of King Donald?

The pond keeds, it keeds ... there's some serious bromancer strategising going down ...

The problem is that China can always undercut any other supplier on price. Beijing, with Indonesia, destroyed much of the Australian nickel industry this way. Incidentally, to do this they built a slew of coal-fired power stations in Indonesia.
The problem with a strategic deal between Australia and the US on rare earths is that the trade is carried out by private companies. The companies building the hi-tech equipment will always go for the cheapest price, unless directed otherwise by their government or in receipt of a subsidy.
On rare earths, China has massively outplayed the West. The US has known about all this for at least 15 years but very, very little has been done to counter Beijing’s dominance.
Rare earths exports are only worth about $15bn for Australia this year, but the potential, if anybody actually does take security seriously, is vast.
Albanese’s final objective for the meeting should be to try to get Trump interested once more in the Quadrilateral Dialogue involving the US, Japan, India and Australia. Trump’s mismanagement of the India relationship, apparently because Narendra Modi won’t nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, is the most counter-productive and irresponsible element of his entire foreign policy so far.
Australia’s key interests with the US are to maintain the alliance and keep the US involved in our region. A more ambitious prime minister would try to get Trump more actively involved regionally because in his administration the only things that get serious traction are the things Trump takes a personal interest in.

Yes, yes, regional involvement, it's just what we want and need ... how else to score the right laughs?

Hard to choose, they both do great comedy stylings, whether it's a Qatar base or baseless defences of neo-Nazis.

And that just about finished the bromancer, and it certainly finished the pond ...

Australia has huge natural advantages with the US. Washington needs our geography to disperse its forces in the Indo-Pacific. It has rare earths the US wants. It has a big trade deficit with the US. It’s going to spend 70 per cent of its defence acquisition budget on US kit. And Australia is popular in the US. There’s no natural MAGA constituency to beat up on Australia as there is with France or even Canada. Anyone who doubts this should watch the screamingly funny Netflix series The Residence.
Given all these enormous advantages, surely Albanese gets a good result with Trump?

Indeed, indeed, perhaps we can get the same good result the disunited states are currently getting ...

In which the pond endures the Ughmann and nattering "Ned" because ... brussels sprouts ...

 

Astonishing. Appalling. Cowardly. Craven. Indefensible, both when caught coming and when going ...

No wonder that other place had a little fun ... The Australian does a U-turn on controversial Pentagon press rules (*archive link to the original version)

News Corp’s The Australian has done a dramatic U-turn on its decision to sign up to the Pentagon’s new controversial press rules, which led every major news outlet, including Murdoch-owned Fox News, to hand over their passes.
Just hours after The Australian was revealed to be one of just 11 global news outlets to have agreed to the new rules, a spokesperson told this masthead that it had “revoked our assent”, citing press freedom concerns.
“The Australian has reviewed the Pentagon’s new press rules and requirements. They raise serious concerns and place undue limits on press freedoms,” a spokesperson for The Australian said following questions from this masthead.
“Because of The Australian’s long-held position on independent journalism and press freedom, we have advised the Pentagon that we have revoked our assent.”
This masthead sent questions to The Australian’s Washington correspondent, Joe Kelly, about how the newspaper signed up to the Pentagon rules, but he did not respond. Nor did the paper’s editor-in-chief, Michelle Gunn.
The decision to sign up to the rules was out of step with the vast majority of major news organisations, including fellow News Corp outlets, who have handed in their passes.

Look at the company they initially decided to keep ...

The Australian was initially among global outlets, including the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, newspaper Aksam and The Federalist, along with far-right publications One America News Network and The Epoch Times, to agree to the new rules put forward by the Pentagon.

Pathetic. Weak-kneed. Clueless ... and what was the best counter-attack they could muster?

Dame Slap, come on down ...

Food critics’ restaurant ban exposes something deeply rotten at Nine
The Sydney Morning Herald’s decision to make its Good Food Guide food tasters judge, jury and executioner on untested allegations is enough to make you gag.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

A Merivale restaurant ban is one thing, putting yourself, however briefly, in the company of the likes of OANN and The Epoch Times is entirely another.

What were they thinking? Sorry, it's the reptiles, thinking isn't in the business model ...

And so to doing the reptiles slowly this weekend ...

Setting out on the journey early on the weekend, there was much to avoid. 

The pond can only stomach a couple of reptiles at a time, and there wasn't anything in the headlines to help distract the pond from the usual unpleasantries...

The contemptible Andrew suffered another blow, and TACO Donald reminded the world that delusion was the first requirement of anyone in his cult ...

‘Premature’ to give Zelensky Tomahawks says Trump
AFP and staff writers

What a waste of space and time, but there were other shameless grifters on the scene.

There was no way that the pond could stomach ancient Troy at all, what with him busy flogging his book ...

This Gough routine is as bad as the relentless reptile obsession with Ming the Merciless ...

Naive, shy, loner: The real Gough Whitlam revealed
His leadership radically transformed Australia but a new biography reveals the former prime minister’s dramatic demise was fuelled by his own character traits.
By Troy Bramston

EXCLUSIVE
Kerr’s torture over Whitlam dismissal revealed from grave
Former governor-general Sir John Kerr poured out his heart in notes about his dismissal of Gough Whitlam, revealing him to be obsessed, troubled and utterly delusional.
By Troy Bramston

Oh go drunkenly stumble over a horse.

So over it, and the pond wonders if the relentless plugging will end even when ancient Troy's tome hits the stands at the end of the month ...

But are any of the alternatives to ancient Troy any better?

The pond will get through a few of them, slowly, ever so slowly, but the pond was always taught to swallow the brussels sprouts, the turnips and the beets first, before settling down to a serve of salt-laden, greasy chips ...

Oh no, not the Ughmann and another bout of climate science denialism, way down there with the brussels sprouts ...

The header: Climate activism clouds the science, A new frontier is opening in climate science: litigation-ready research. It should trouble everyone who still believes science should pursue facts, not verdicts.

There was no caption for the risible gif-style graphic, which consisted of the clouds parting to reveal another body and mock cop tape marked "climate crime scene".

It was deeply pathetic.

The pond wondered if even the worst AI could be that bad. 

Perhaps some uncredited human agent was involved, and realising how bad it was, passed on the credit?

As for the Ughmann, why bother?

Well this is a 5 minute read, so the reptiles say, where all the pond has to do is present the noxious former seminarian weeds masquerading as a science nerd brain, and let others take the bait and the trolling, if they're so inclined...

A new frontier is opening in climate science: litigation-ready research. It’s a rich field as more scientists turn from observation to prosecution. That should trouble everyone who still believes science should pursue facts, not verdicts.
It clearly bothers some academics. In a cautionary article written for the advocacy-adjacent journal :  Climate Action, University of Cambridge environmental systems analysis professor Ulf Buntgen argues that “climate science and climate activism should be separated conceptually and practically”. Ironic, then, that the same journal this week published an Australian-led paper that leans unapologetically into activism.
The paper’s lead author is Australian National University climate scientist Nerilie Abram and the research was part-funded by iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest’s philanthropic Minderoo Foundation.
The purpose of the research is explicit. The paper notes that “Scientific progress in quantifying and attributing climate change consequences is underpinning litigation claims worldwide” but identifies a gap, the need to link individual fossil fuel projects directly to human and planetary harm to put pressure on decision-makers.
The researchers’ solution looks simple and elegant. The paper uses a method that links how much the planet warms to how much carbon dioxide we release.
In geekspeak this is called Transient Climate Response to CO2 Emissions (TCRE). It attributes about 0.45C of planetary warming for every 1000 billion tonnes of carbon released, with a likely range between 0.27C and 0.63C. The method does not define a lower limit because the greenhouse effect runs all the way down to the molecular level.
So simply wind the numbers down to any known quantity of carbon dioxide and every fossil fuel project is in the gun.

Then came a snap of something that excites the reptiles no end, Woodside Energy’s Scarborough energy project has been labelled by some as “Australia’s biggest carbon dioxide bomb”.

On with the Ughmann, and note the pond's stoic refusal to take the bait, to respond to the troll, despite all the flourishing of ersatz stats...

As a case study, the authors chose Woodside’s recently approved Scarborough gas project.
Here, let’s note that Forrest has called Scarborough “Australia’s biggest carbon dioxide bomb”. “This project is going to last at least 50 years and it will destroy the environment around us,” Forrest said. “This death race to the finish of oil and gas is a death race for human­ity if we let them get away with it.”
A Minderoo Foundation spokesman said the paper formed part of its Lethal Humidity research program but stressed the proposal had been developed independently by the ANU and that the foundation had no role in shaping or reviewing the work.
Meanwhile, back at the research, the authors have run the sums on Scarborough’s emissions through to 2100. “The best estimate is that the 876 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from this project will cause 0.00039C of additional global warming, with a 66-100 per cent likelihood of causing between 0.00024C and 0.00055C,” the paper says.
This is a vanishingly small number. Natural temperature swings are hundreds of times larger each year. And the paper doesn’t mention that if any of this gas replaces coal, global emissions would fall.
Never mind. Now we need to fill some body bags. Here the authors pluck one study on heat and cold-related deaths in Europe and another that defines the so-called human climate niche to make the leap into epidemiology.
The second paper says pre-industrial humans thrived where the mean annual temperature was around 11C to 15C, with regions above 29C representing the extreme upper limit of habitability.
The human climate niche paper relies on the most extreme emissions scenario, now widely regarded by modellers as unrealistic. And it ignores the reality that burning fossil fuels has allowed people to flourish in every climate on Earth, from the Arctic Circle to Singapore. In the pre-industrial world, inside or outside the so-called niche, life was mostly nasty, brutish and short.

It's true that the pond had begun to grind teeth, in a way that will bring a visit to the dentist closer, as the reptiles showed outrageous activists at work, Members of Greenpeace demand action in Brasilia to save the forests, before the pre-COP30 opening ceremony. Picture: AFP

Why does the pond bother? Because the Ughmann is there, and one reptile is as bad as another in their own way, and to do any of them is as tedious as to go o'er ...

The Graudian possibly might take the bait, but they should remember that this is a mob that is inclined to rush in like The Epoch Times ...

Blinkers on and ploughing ahead, the paper delivers its headline-hunting conclusion. It calculates that by 2100 Scarborough would kill an additional 484 Europeans and that 516,000 people would be exposed to “unprecedented heat” and 356,000 people (213,000-504,000 likely range) would be left outside the human climate niche.
The paper got the headlines it was hunting, as most of the media typically regurgitated it enthusiastically and without question. “Emissions linked to Woodside’s Scarborough gas project could lead to at least 480 deaths, research suggests” was The Guardian’s take.
The Guardian is right about the deaths being only a suggestion, because dig deeper into the report and the numbers change once those people not being killed by cold weather are counted.
That’s significant, because the paper on European climate-related deaths notes “we estimated an annual excess of 130,228 deaths attributed to cold and 13,589 attributed to heat”. Scientists call a tenfold difference an order of magnitude.
In the swings and roundabouts of temperature, Abram et al calculate a net loss of 118 additional lives by 2100. In fact, by the authors’ own model, it’s possible that more people will live than die – up to 161 fewer deaths – depending on how reduced cold-related mortality offsets heat-related deaths. And most will be over the age of 80.
So, Scarborough is about to kill, or save, about two elderly Europeans each year from the time it kicks off until 2100. Seriously.

Seriously, the pond struggled to keep going, and it was only the arcana in the snaps that provided some relief, Nigerian agronomist Mercy Diebiru-Ojo clears the cassava crops of weeds at Ibadan. She hopes her work can increase Nigerian yam and cassava yields by 500 per cent, fight hunger and raise her country's position on the agricultural value chain from a mere grower to a processor. Picture: AFP

What a tedious man he is ...

Lest we forget, if every gas plant in the world were shut tomorrow, billions would starve. We feed the world’s crops with synthetic fertiliser made by drawing nitrogen from the atmosphere, using gas as both the feedstock and the fuel. There is no scalable alternative, nor is one on the horizon.
Surely it isn’t too much to ask that such an intelligent group reflect on how they came to live in the most privileged niche in human history.
Every comfort they enjoy depends on the concentrated energy of fossil fuels. The dirty little secret is they condemn the source of their prosperity while devouring it, a moral vanity made possible only by the abundance they feign to reject. It is time they lived their faith and spent just one day without anything derived from coal, oil or gas.
But let’s stay in the model land of make-believe, and run the scientists’ numbers over their benefactor’s businesses. Using the paper’s own arithmetic and assumptions, if Fortescue’s reported Scope 3 emissions of roughly 269 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2024 continue unchanged to 2100, its cumulative total would be more than 23 times larger than Scarborough’s. That translates to about 2750 net European deaths by 2100. No wonder its owner lies awake at night dreaming of green hydrogen.

At last a final snap ... Squadron Energy chief executive Rob Wheals at the Clarke Creek Wind Farm, 150km northwest of Rockhampton. Picture: Charlie Peel

And so to a final bout of Twiggy bashing ...

Forrest is also the owner of Squadron Energy, which is building a liquefied natural gas import terminal at Port Kembla. It will need to get gas from places identical to Scarborough. Let’s assume Port Kembla processes 500 terajoules of gas a day from 2026 to 2100. That is roughly 768 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or about the same as Woodside’s Scarborough project. Under the paper’s formula that makes Port Kembla a theoretical killer of about 100 to 125 elderly Europeans by 2100.
Both of Forrest’s companies danced around the questions this column asked.
A Fortescue spokesman explained all the many things the company was doing to cut emissions and ended: “We encourage Woodside to do the same: stop expanding fossil fuel production and start investing in solutions that drive emissions down, not up.”
Expanding fossil fuel production is exactly what Squadron Energy is doing.
A Squadron spokeswoman said gas was essential to support the grid when the wind dropped or sun set and added the Port Kembla terminal would “provide an immediate, flexible supply of LNG to ensure Australia’s east coast has reliable energy during the transition”.
On the west coast the Forrest empire ignores its own sins and demands chastity from others. On the east it screams “but not yet”. The good doctor preaches salvation through decarbonisation, but his credibility is nudging towards net zero.
If hypocrisy were a fuel, Forrest could power the nation.

For this sort of relentless guff, the reptiles want your shekels? 

Trusted source? Three trusted sources?

Pull the other one ...

And so to finish off the brussels sprouts with a bonus.

Second thoughts, this is more like learning to love a serve of durian ...you have to work really hard to get past the smell.

Wouldn't you know, there's a double bunger "Ned" natter to hand this day ...sort of an Everest and K2 climb all on the one day.

This EXCLUSIVE can be left to the archives for those wanting to do K2 ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Core values pathway’ to revive Liberals: Taylor
Liberal heavyweight Angus Taylor has warned his party must embrace both conservative and classical liberal traditions to survive its current crisis.
by Paul Kelly.

Really? The beefy, windmill hating boofhead from down Goulburn way is the best the reptiles have got?

A sample from the archive, as much as would fit on the pond's screen for the cap, just in case the fragile archive explodes yet again under the weight of all the nonsense it holds ...

There was a little more, including this Ughmann-style gem...

On ­energy, he said: “We cannot set climate targets that are unreachable and destructive across any time frame. We must back technologies that deliver affordability and reliability – gas, hydro, coal and nuclear – while reducing emissions through efficiency and innovation.”

That was just a four minute read, so the reptiles said, and out of that cloth, "Ned" managed to weave nine tedious minutes...

It started at the beginning, with header sounding like a cracked record on steroids: Angus Taylor and James Paterson have emerged as voices of clarity amid Liberal Party turmoil, delivering a unified vision; Angus Taylor and James Paterson have emerged as voices of reason amid Liberal Party turmoil, delivering a unified vision that could determine whether the party lives, or extinguishes itself.

The tragic collage had a name attached to it in the caption: Angus Taylor, left, and James Paterson, right Angus Taylor, left, have done what Sussan Ley, centre, has failed to do: as senior conservatives they have outlined a strategic vision for the Liberal Party’s future. Artwork: Sean Callinan

Sean, sometimes a 'no credit' is all the credit that's needed, or better still, blame it on AI ...

As for "Ned", the climb is the thing, and just getting to the end is the sole achievement that matters...

It is hard to believe, but this has been a good week for the Liberal Party.
The vandals did more bloodletting but it didn’t matter.
The big story of the week was that the true conservatives stood up – the ever impressive James Paterson and the likely alternative leader, Angus Taylor.
They engaged in the big ideas that will determine whether the Liberal Party lives or extinguishes itself.
In separate contributions Taylor and Paterson injected some intellectual steel, common sense and political nous into a third-rate shambles about the future of the Liberal Party that was inviting the possibility that it didn’t have a future.
While they used different language and have different styles, Taylor and Paterson delivered a remarkably similar series of mes­sages – to the party as a whole, to its conservatives, to its moderates and, ultimately, to its leader, Sussan Ley.
On display was a quality in short supply since the May election – true conservatism as opposed to the recent outbreak of cheapjack populist conservatism.
Paterson’s Tom Hughes Oration on Tuesday night exposed the maze of illusions that have tormented the party since its defeat.
In the finest speech so far on the Liberal trauma, Paterson was constructive, unifying and avoided aggravating the colleagues. He provided the clarity that has been in desperately short supply as he punctured a series of false choices.
Taylor’s exclusive interview and oped in this paper on Saturday constitute a strategic vision for the future of the party coming from its senior conservative and still the likeliest candidate to replace Ley if she succumbs under pressure.
Taylor, who lost the leadership 29-25 votes to Ley in May, has addressed the Liberal trauma and offered a way forward.

If the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way is the way forward, which way to the door so that the pond can collect its big plunge on the lettuce?

Sorry, at this point the reptiles offered up a snap of a man who makes the lettuce seem suffused with energy, James Paterson’s speech on Tuesday night was a showstopper. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

Sheesh, stunned mullets should take out a class action for that breach of copyright on their look ...

Okay, the pond gets it. These are troubled times, and all that's left is navel-gazing and fluff-gathering and perhaps a bit of teeth flossing, but knowing that doesn't get around the quiet desperation and the ennui and the terminal boredom, as "Ned" and the pond slogged on, one tedious step after another ...

The core message from both conservatives was the indispensable need for the party to honour and uphold its two traditions – classic liberalism and conservative faiths.
They emphatically repudiated recent wild, highly publicised, comments from inside and outside the party that unity was now impossible, that the Liberals should split into two parties or Liberal MPs should defect to the Nationals.
Such talk is the guaranteed road to doom.
Both Taylor and Paterson said they supported Ley’s leadership. That assurance is vital.
Yet Taylor and Paterson have done what Ley has failed to do: as senior conservatives they have outlined a strategic vision for the Liberal Party’s future, the basis for unity and the core principles that should constitute their attack on Labor.
They are saying what the leader should be saying.
In this sense their remarks – not about leadership as such – pose a direct test for Ley.
Is Ley up to the job? Can Ley successfully navigate a way out of the current Liberal crisis?
The Taylor and Paterson efforts represent powerful realities around four themes.
First, abandon the collective nonsense that the current crisis should lead to a restructuring of centre-right politics and a split or fracture in the Liberal Party.
Taylor warns this would consign Australia to the Labor Party for the duration. Paterson made the devastating comment that a split would represent a Liberal version of the disastrous Labor split of the 1950s.
Second, in ideological terms, speaking as conservatives, they warn the only future for the Liberal Party is to maintain its fusion of two traditions, classic liberalism and conservative faiths.

It reminded the pond of being in a mass, with ritual incantations, and ritual visual offerings, Taylor, who lost the leadership to Sussan Ley in May, has addressed the Liberal trauma and offered a way forward. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

If the beefy windmill-hating boofhead is the way forward, then all is lost, as "Ned" kept adding to his tedious listicle ...

Taylor said: “As John Howard has long argued, our strength rests on a balance between two great traditions. The first is the classical liberal tradition: individual freedom, enterprise rewarded, and government as enabler, not overlord, driving a resilient, growing economy. The second is the conservative tradition: family as the foundation of society, local institutions that hold communities together, and respect for the lessons of history.”
They see these traditions not as some weak-kneed centrist compromise but as instruments to weaponise their sharp policy differences from Labor.
Taylor warned of the consequences, saying: “If we don’t get this right, we lose the real contest, which is for the Australian people.” He made clear the issue at stake was Liberal Party identity. Asked how important it was for the Liberals to retain its two traditions, Taylor said: “It’s not the Liberal Party if we don’t.”
Forget Farage and Trump
Third, Taylor and Paterson came with wise advice for their conservative friends, particularly those on the populist fringe: forget your false prescriptions about reinventing the Liberals as a populist conservative party influenced by Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, understand Australia’s uniqueness, appreciate that such a reinvention will never be embraced by the party and will never fly with the Australian public.
Both denied their remarks were directed to prominent conservative Andrew Hastie, who has resigned to the backbench.
They are friends with Hastie and want to play down personality tensions.
Yet their comments are an obvious rejection of the speculation rife among a section of conservatives who call for an untenable shift to the right that would only marginalise the party.

Bring on the pastie Hastie, Andrew Hastie, who now sits on the backbench. Picture: NewsWire/Philip Gostelow

"Ned" carried on his listicle, as the pond realised the Everest climb had been abandoned, and in its place, there was mindless wandering in the wilderness ...

Fourth, Taylor and Paterson have a powerful warning to the moderates whom they also see as a distinctive, potential threat to Liberal unity and success. Their decoded message is: don’t ever think this party will ditch the conservative faith of Robert Menzies and Howard and become a free-market version of the teals.
Paterson offered a deadly and correct diagnosis of the argument put by some moderates – that the Liberals must abandon the “culture wars”, a line beloved by much of the press gallery.
He made clear that selling out to the left’s campaign to remake Australian values would render the Liberals soulless, hollow and unelectable.
Any such step by the Liberals would corrupt their identity as a party of liberalism that opposes identity politics (witness the voice campaign) and that believes in the flag, anthem, the constitution, the Anzac tradition and Australia Day. This is tied to a rising sense of Australian patriotism.
If the Liberals are selective and smarter in culture war campaigns inevitably triggered by the left, they can expect to win since such campaigns are usually at odds with mainstream opinion.
In his summary, Paterson nailed the two false choices for the party: succumbing to a pro-market economic agenda while selling out to the progressive cultural Zeitgeist and, on the other side, retreating to a populist, economic nationalism, state power version of Reform UK that would ditch the party’s economic tradition.
Australian solutions to Australian problems
Both Taylor and Paterson insist the party must avoid the Labor-lite trap. Taylor said: “We must reject a Labor-lite approach but equally reject becoming a pale imitation of any other political brands.”
They repudiate possibly the most ludicrous claim of the far right – that the Liberals must become populist conservatives as the only way to avoid the Labor-lite trap. This is the worst form of propaganda.
Taylor and Paterson want Australian solutions to Australian problems – this nation should have no role as a pathetic mimic of Farage from Britain or Trump from the US.

Mindless blather? 

You betcha, in spades. How else to describe all that talk of identity, culture wars and  the progressive cultural Zeitgeist?

Nige would make plans to have this mob for breakfast, Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage. James Paterson is unconvinced Farage-style politics will fly in Australia. Picture: Getty Images

On with the soul searching, or end it if only to save yourself from this sort of "Ned"coronial investigation ...

Taylor said Australia’s genius had always been to take the best from other countries but recognise our uniqueness.
He said: “The Liberal Party is different from the Tory party and the Republican Party. Our political cultures and political environments are different across these countries. So we have to find our own way, and do it in a way that reflects our own history. Obviously, US politics is very different from Australia, I think just cloning one or another of those countries is a really serious error.”
Paterson said: “We are told that our future lies in a Farage-lite populist conservative party which abandons our traditions on free markets and fiscal discipline in favour of a new nationalism of picking winners and turning our backs on free trade. But I am personally unconvinced a platform of significantly increasing government spending in a country where it is already 44 per cent of GDP and has a large budget deficit is fiscally sustainable. Or, for that matter, particularly conservative.
“But even if it would work politically in the UK, that does not mean it would work in Australia. Reform is currently averaging about 30 per cent in the polls. But it’s less than the primary vote we just secured in our worst ever election defeat.”
End the soul-searching
Both Taylor and Patterson recognise that after the worst defeat in Liberal history there had to be period of soul-searching. But they argue it is time to get to the main game. Taylor said the focus had to become an agenda to run “against a bad Labor government”. Patterson said “we must call time on the apology tour.”
What is required is the enunciation of core policy principles as the instruments against Labor. It is too early to outline detailed policies for the 2028 election.
But the principles are vital and it seems the party, under Ley, doesn’t yet have them. That’s damaging for the Liberals and for her leadership.
It doesn’t make sense. In the interim the media is having a field day with repeated questions: “What is your policy?”
“I can understand the frustration and anger people are feeling,” Taylor said in the interview. “There are always people who have a contrary point of view, at a time when we’ve had a cathartic loss. It’s understandable that people want to explore alternatives. But I am very confident that the vast majority of the party room believes in the importance of these two traditions and the importance of a policy agenda that reflects that.”
There was much common ground in the actual policy agendas that Taylor and Paterson put forward. Taylor said the priority must be economic growth to fund opportunity.
That meant competitive, enterprise-driven investment, lower personal income taxes and less regulation along with lower deficits and less debt to reduce the burden on future generations. Taylor said he was “dead against” automated personal tax increases via bracket creep – signalling support for a Liberal policy of tax indexation during the current term.
He said Australians wanted “affordable, reliable power”.

Nothing to see in all that, and the pond remarkably began to feel some sympathy for Susssan, what with the lettuce gaining more and more strength the longer that "Ned" blathered on, In a speech this week recognising the 81st anniversary of the formation of the Liberal Party, leader Sussan Ley said: “We are the party that built modern Australia and we must be a party for modern Australia.” Picture: NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

They built modern Australia?

That's a startling level of hubris and silliness, only matched by "Ned's" usual bout of 'Chicken Little, the sky is falling, rushing around headless' routines...

They didn’t want carbon taxes or “renewables-only policies that drive up bills and send industry offshore”. Taylor said gas, hydro, coal and nuclear should be the basis for “choice and technology” to replace taxes and subsidies. He said rent-seeking and perpetual taxpayer bailouts cannot be the basis for successful industry policy. The Liberals would champion affordable energy, streamlined approvals and more agile workplaces.
Taylor said Australia had been enriched by migration but the rate needed to be lowered, with a renewed focus on skills and migrants who could adopt our values. Childcare policy, contrary to Labor’s mindset, “must give parents confidence and choice” as opposed to undervaluing early family life, given Labor’s strong resistance to choice in types of childcare.
He highlighted education, calling for a return of “rigour to the curriculum” lifting literacy and numeracy, stronger vocational pathways and removing “ideological indoctrination”.
Paterson reminded that the party’s economic debates in the 1970s and 80s between the “wets” and the “dries” had been “won comprehensively by the right of the party in favour of free markets”.
That debate had been part of a wider national debate settled to Australia’s immense benefit but opposed by the left as part of its assault on so-called neo-liberalism.
A Liberal Party that abandoned free markets “would consign Australia to a poorer future”. The way forward was limited government, free markets and lower taxes.
Social fragmentation had now become a problem in the West.
The alarm some conservatives felt about the issues of family, faith, nation and community were “sincere” and “legitimate”. Paterson said Australia’s social cohesion was being tested and “at times has failed us” during the past two years.
But some events, like the decline in religious observance, “are simply out of reach of politicians and the state”.
On climate, Paterson said “our energy market is utterly broken by the pursuit of unrealistic targets, and it is hurting families and businesses”.
Post-pandemic migration has been “unplanned, uncontrolled and too high”, a major contributor to the housing crisis, and must be reduced to sustainable levels.
While manufacturing had been in decline, false arguments needed to be avoided: there was no threat to national security because the nation no longer made fridges, washing machines or TVs.
Paterson said the biggest recent problem facing the party was the voter perception it had abandoned its values. Too often in the past Liberals had adopted policies inconsistent with its publicly stated values.

Nah, actually it was immensely stupid policies, such as nuking the country to save the planet, which were entirely consistent with its publicly stated climate science denialist values, but the pond must resist engaging, what with The Price is Wrong turning up as the final snap ... Jacinta Nampijinpa Price sits with Andrew Hastie, senator Jane Hume and senator Sarah Henderson on the Liberal Party backbench. Picture: News Corp

By now the worst was out of the way and "Ned" had only a little drivel, a minor dribbling, left.

The pond promised itself a Ginsbergian Howl of Pain if Ming the Merciless once again returned from the grave to haunt the reptiles ... ...

In her speech this week recognising the 81st anniversary of the formation of the Liberal Party, Ley said: “We are the party that built modern Australia and we must be a party for modern Australia.
Menzies talked about the Forgotten People, we need to talk about a Forgotten Generation.” She invoked the history of the party, saying the Liberals had dismantled the White Australia policy, fought racism, championed immigration and multiculturalism, an obvious reminder to the conservative wing.
Ley has already delivered a strong economic speech consistent with party tradition.

Eek, Ming ... Howl ...

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the Ming the Merciless streets at dawn looking for an angry fix

And so to putter-out with a final flutter of core mindlessness ...

Reflecting the argument taken by Taylor and Paterson, Ley said the Liberals’ devastating election defeat this year was not because “of our values” but “because we failed to heed them”. That is largely true.
But Ley leads a divided party.
Her backbench includes Hastie, senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, senator Jane Hume and senator Sarah Henderson – all of whom are able and willing to speak up.
Ley’s future depends on her securing internal unity around core principles and, unless she achieves that, a polling recovery is a daunting task.

And now, rather than end with a 'toon, a note regarding the infallible Pope, frequently seen on these pages...