Who's a cheesehead now?
It's left to the likes of The Bulwark to enjoy tales of A Wakeup Call in Wisconsin ... and there's also Rattled Trump Says Elon Musk Is on the Way Out, The Tesla billionaire is returning to his businesses, according to the president. (paywall, but the header says it all. See also Changing his Tune)
The stench of Musk and Tesla receding, the pond must tend to the lizards of Oz, but even the reptiles felt the weighty presence of King Donald, with the lead story early in the morning this day ...
Anthony Albanese is poised for a showdown with Donald Trump if sweeping tariffs are slapped on Australian goods, with the government considering WTO action, as Peter Dutton pledges to ‘stand up’ to the US President.
By Geoff Chambers, Jack Quail and Ben Packham
The reptiles held out hope against hope ...
Trump open to tariffs deal, dangles a 50pc discount
With Australian exporters bracing for US tariffs on $23.9bn worth of goods, one insider has suggested the US President may be willing to negotiate over his April 2 tariffs, offering a 50 per cent discount to some nations.
By Joe Kelly and Noah Yim
A discount!
But wasn't the Duttinator going to take him down? Of course the cartoonists had tremendous fun with the notion of the mutton Dutton standing up to King Donald, including the infallible Pope...
Over at Crikey, the keen Keane noted Dutton has flirted pathetically with Trump. On ‘Liberation Day’, the honeymoon is over, Peter Dutton is unable to help himself in constantly offering Trump-style policies. But if Trump launches another economic attack on Australia, where can he run? (archive link)
Inter alia:
And while that’s happening, Dutton has given Labor another gift in the form of a Trump-style commitment to shutter the federal Department of Education, an idea that could have come straight from Project 2025.
It’s another stumble in a campaign start so poor that Dutton is already, just a few days in, promising colleagues that he will lift his game. Bizarrely, it looks like the start of the election caught the Coalition by surprise, despite it being the most heavily teased election in decades. Dutton’s signature nuclear policy — which clearly landed poorly in the Coalition’s internal polling — has had to be binned in favour of a gas reservation policy. Yesterday’s debacle in Victoria — where an announcement to cut funding from the Suburban Rail Loop (an excellent idea) and shift it to the Tullamarine rail link (a terrible idea) was inexplicably held in a vineyard — suggests inexperienced and poor-quality staff are making important decisions.
Dutton has repeatedly emphasised in his backgrounding to journalists that he’s no Trump. But publicly, he keeps trying to sound like Trump and offer policies like Trump. It doesn’t matter what press gallery journalists believe, only what voters think. And, having worked to align himself with the mad king, Dutton may find himself unable to escape the long shadow Trump is casting over this campaign.
Put it another way, per the willing Wilcox ...
The pond loves the smell of a cartoon in the morning, while the reptiles tried to batter the Teals, and this splendid effort by Natasha fell into the digital void...
No woke syllabus for us: Catholic schools
Catholic schools have called for the ‘ideological’ national curriculum to be abolished, as new research reveals more boys are slipping behind girls in their academic performance.
By Natasha Bita
That bloody Jesus and his woke ways. No room for him in the church of tykes.
Elsewhere, also lost in the void, the reptiles did show a dim awareness that things might be kinda funny with the climate ...
Outback Queensland’s flood of the century has descended into a human and financial disaster for far-flung communities, beef stations and vast sheep runs as stock losses pile up and emergency services scramble to save people from the rising waters.
By Jamie Walker, Mackenzie Scott and Elodie Jakes
(But naturally there was no sighting of a mention of the seas pounding Sydney).
Over on the extreme far right of the rag, the pond felt particularly safe in ignoring petulant Peta this day. She was trying to flog the Duttonator over the finish line ...
The Coalition has to better sheet home to voters who is responsible for their pain. Under Labor’s watch our living standards have dropped 8 per cent – the worst in the developed world.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist
She was top of the reptile digital world, ma ...
... but petulant Peta's prominence could be explained by looking down the list.
What a motley bunch, what a crew of riff-raffs and ne'er do wells...
Once upon a time the pond could have turned to the savvy Savva, but she's over in the Nine rags, scribbling Wakey, wakey: Dutton looks shaky as his aptitude is put to the ultimate test, The opposition leader has made a lot of mistakes since January, and they are beginning to catch up with him. (archive link)
For those keen to wander down the archived Savva memory lane, this is a teaser...
Malcolm Turnbull is right. No slumping to our knees, no sucking up. Allowing Trump to think it’s OK to treat Australia as an enemy rather than as a friend is not on.
Nor is it OK for a prime ministerial aspirant from Queensland to spit on the capital of the nation he wants to lead while expressing his preference to live in a harbourside mansion in Sydney.
Oh dear, perhaps that explains why Jack the Insider went all whimsical with ...
Have you seen the Coalition’s nuclear policy? Have a good rummage around. Try to retrace your steps. Maybe it has fallen between the couch cushions?
Jack the Insider
Columnist
Gerard Baker of the WSJ was also on view, which reminded the pond that it hadn't noted a classic bit of WSJ Editorial Board FAFO relating to RFK Jr., which ran a few days ago
RFK Jr. Is Already Vindicating His Critics, Shrinking HHS makes sense, but giving power to antivaccine crusader David Geier doesn’t. (archive link)
The archive had the opening snap of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday, but the pond wanted to dive straight away into the FAFO ...
Mr. Kennedy grabbed headlines on Thursday by proposing to consolidate sundry HHS agencies and cut 20,000 jobs. The bloated department could use some shrinking. Most of his plan, such as refocusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its core mission of preparing for and responding to infectious disease outbreaks, isn’t radical.
What is disturbing are news reports that Mr. Kennedy has tapped David Geier, a longtime vaccine critic, to assist with a CDC study of vaccines and autism. The White House hasn’t confirmed the reports, but HHS lists Mr. Geier in its staff directory as a “senior data analyst.”
Mr. Geier has spent decades spreading the discredited theory, embraced by Mr. Kennedy, that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism and neurological damage in children. He has published more than a dozen studies that trial lawyers have cited as evidence of vaccines’ harms, though they have been rejected by judges and the government’s special vaccine courts.
Mr. Geier has also accused the CDC of concealing vaccine safety data and claimed that better nutrition and hygiene—not vaccines—are responsible for the disappearance of deadly infectious diseases. If Mr. Kennedy truly wants an independent, impartial review of vaccine data, Mr. Geier is the wrong man for the job. The study’s results look preordained.
Another concern is that Mr. Kennedy will create a brain drain at HHS as he pushes out scientists who don’t toe his antivaccine line. We warned last month that Mr. Kennedy might try to fire Peter Marks, the head of the FDA biologics division who helped shepherd President Trump's Operation Warp Speed for Covid vaccines in the first term.
On Friday Mr. Marks resigned, which is especially regrettable since he pushed the FDA bureaucracy to accelerate life-saving therapies for children with rare genetic disorders. He also pushed back against those in and outside of the agency, including Biden FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, who fretted that the FDA was approving too many novel drugs with high prices.
Mr. Marks writes in his resignation letter that he was willing to work with Mr. Kennedy to address his “concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency.” However, he adds, “it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
Some Senate Republicans hoped that other Trump HHS appointees—e.g., FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya—would keep Mr. Kennedy in check. It isn’t working out that way. NIH is now requiring grants or contracts involving mRNA technology to be reported to Mr. Kennedy’s office. The mRNA platform helped to develop Covid vaccines, and it has shown potential to treat and prevent other diseases including cancer.
Mr. Kennedy rightly criticized the Biden Administration’s Covid responses for ignoring science, but he won’t restore public confidence if he feeds skepticism about vaccines that have saved countless lives. Our worst fears about Mr. Kennedy are coming true.
Speaking of worst fears, is it any wonder then that Baker of the WSJ turned to the divine for help? Apparently the current Messiah wasn't enough for him ...
The pond kids you not, it really does exist...
This book will explain in depth how "Donald John Trump's" full name literally means: "The Ruler of the World, graced by Yahweh (the LORD) and a descendant of a Drummer." Upon reading this book, the reader will be captivated when they realize how President Donald John Trump fulfilled most of the prophecies as the Son of Man. It speaks about End Time Prophecies and Biblical revelations regarding "President Donald J. Trump, the Son of Man. The Christ." (Amazon link only for those wanting to pander to billionaire oligarch Bezos, destroyer of democracy in darkness).
Baker did his best in a three minute read headed Faith, freedom and the long thread of technology, As humanity pushes the boundaries of science and artificial intelligence, God is waiting in the wings.
God is in the wings, She isn't in the White House?
For some reason the reptiles opened with this snap, The Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building seen through the arch of the Hertford Bridge.
Then Baker began his mystic journey ...
The tension between science and religion has in some ways defined human progress. The steady accumulation of scientific knowledge across millennia has challenged, undermined and, for many, extinguished the idea of some divine infinite creator, a spiritual superhuman that commands our universe.
(The reptiles provided two links for that opener, but being the hive mind, they only led to other bits of the hive mind. The talk of science and religion linked to a February 2016 review by John Carmody of a book by Peter Harrison, while the idea of some divine creator led to that recent Oz fetish about the way that the Pellists performed miracles from beyond the grave. Neither are of any interest, consequence or relevance, save to reveal the way that the reptiles insist everyone stay within the hive mind. Welcome to the hotel lizard Oz, you can never leave).
Back to Baker's journey ...
Mysteries ascribed to the supernatural were discovered to be merely the product of shrinking pockets of ignorance. It was no longer necessary to invent an omniscient God, as Voltaire said in a less enlightened time: science has enabled us to become him.
Yet God – or at least some sense of a supernatural being beyond the compass of the human mind – somehow refuses to die.
The realisation that knowledge itself begets as many questions as answers continues to leave just enough room for faith, as scientific “truths” themselves fall victim to new realities and the rediscovery of the inexplicable.
Sometimes scientific progress enabled rather than eroded religious faith: observation of the intricacy of cell division or the first view of Earth from the moon evinced a new awe at the genius of creation and, for some, a heightened sense of the divine. Now – in more prosaic ways – there are signs that our latest technological innovations are generating new thinking in surprising places about man, faith and God.
There have been murmurings of a religious revival in recent years. Some polling suggests the long steady decline in faith among Americans may have levelled off.
Even in godless Europe there is some evidence of renewed religious interest, and not merely because of the growing population of Muslims.
Oh that's awkward, did he have to mention two long absent lords, the following of either one dooming deniers to an eternity in hellfire?
The pond was reminded of a joke that could be found in the Graudian ...
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
Hey nonny no, on we go ...
In one of the more unusual events I’ve attended in recent years, on a cold mid-February day in Oxford, I listened as two unlikely prophets of a new spirituality entranced an audience of ambitious young students.
In Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre, seated aptly under the gaze of Robert Streater’s magnificent ceiling art – “Truth Descending on the Arts and Sciences to Expel Ignorance from the University” – Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp talked about how their entrepreneurial success at creating the screen-based activity now consuming so much of young people’s minds had turned them into urgent advocates of a renewed appreciation of the divine.
Their conversation was titled Reconnecting with the Sacred in a Technology-Driven World. Illuminated by a sea of candles that evoked an ancient church or a very expensive spa, they talked about the damage done to mental and social health by the ubiquity of social media and technology and how it demanded the reawakening of a fully spiritual humanity.
He's talking to a man who wants to take credit for co-founding what has become veritable cesspool?
Even worse the reptiles featured a snap of the dude, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. Picture: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg
Of course you're going to turn to the divine when you see what Uncle Leon has wrought ...
The second conversation was one I had with a brilliant young entrepreneur in artificial intelligence – the company he founded already has an 11-figure valuation.
Like many in the field, he is focused not just on the opportunity of AI but also on what it will mean for our humanity. AI, he told me recently, will soon create a world in which “intelligence is a commodity”.
If this is true – and I have no reason to challenge the word of such an authority – it has revolutionary implications for what it means to be human.
The entire history of human development can be viewed in some ways as the extraction of the scarce resource of intelligence and its application to human problems. If machines will do all that better and at an infinite rate, what is left for the human mind?
I don’t know, but I suspect part of the answer will be a deeper appreciation for what distinguishes man – and that surely is the existence of a soul, as well as a body and a mind.
In The Queer Feet, GK Chesterton’s becassocked detective hero Father Brown explains how he captured a thief: “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”
Chesterton was invoking the idea of God’s continuing, often unrecognised, immanence in our lives; the sense that, however much freedom we may have, however much agency we claim, we are simply spooling out the long thread that attaches us to our maker.
Watching the latest explosion of new technology I reflect that perhaps the whole long march of science, all that secular accumulation of knowledge, is simply the unreeling of that long, seemingly limitless thread, and that eventually we all feel the twitch.
The Wall Street Journal
Being a friendly atheist, the pond doesn't have much to say to twitchers of the Baker kind, and even less to the Sharp kind, which if heated, might cut a little butter, but it does recall this Blake poem ...
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."
A Hell in Heaven's despite! Put that another way, in the current US context, where King Donald is the new messiah ...
Would the long absent lord begin to recognise the treatment of strangers in the current USA?
The pond supposes it should pay some attention to local activities, and looked to find some Pearls of Wisdom in Peter Dutton needs to do more to smash through this election duopoly, Albanese’s campaign is based on two big lies: one, that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy. And two, that Dutton plans to end Medicare.
First came a reminder that it's terribly hard to do a flattering snap, Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton delivers keynote address at the Menzies Research Centre in Sydney. Picture: Britta Campion
Then it was on with the Pearls ...
If you doubt this is the case, consider the policy platforms the Labor Party and the Coalition are offering voters. In many areas they’re barely distinguishable, reflecting an implicit bargain not to disrupt a political equilibrium with which they are both comfortable but one that falls far short of the policy changes the country needs.
The major parties are running a unity ticket on significant fiscal, economic and environmental policy questions. They are both committed to net zero, which will continue to drive up power prices. Both support bracket creep. Neither is prepared to reduce our punishingly high top marginal income tax rates. Neither is prepared to touch the National Disability Insurance Scheme and other unsustainable entitlement programs.
Just as the Pearls were cascading to the ground, the reptiles rudely interrupted with a lying rodent talking to a dog botherer, Former prime minister John Howard shared his thoughts on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton during the lead-up to the federal election. “Strong, purposeful, steady, you want someone who is grounded; you can’t serve almost a decade in the police force without seeing life often at its worst,” Mr Howard told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “My association with and it started when he entered parliament when he successfully defeated Cheryl Kernot and held it through successive elections.”
Well they would say that ...
In this campaign, productivity – the ultimate determinant of our living standards – is the economic concept that cannot be mentioned. Indeed, by demanding that the Fair Work Commission approve an “above-inflation wage increase” for the millions of employees on awards – and being silent on the need for higher productivity to pay for this – the Albanese government is calling for a new inflationary breakout.
Of course, like any self-respecting corporate duopolists, the major parties give the impression of real competition by talking up a small number of policy differences. Under the heading of cost-of-living support, we have Albanese’s $5 to $10 a week income tax cuts up against Dutton’s $14 a week fuel excise cut. Think Coke v Pepsi. To be fair, Dutton has committed to increase our gas supply and build seven nuclear reactors. This is no small deal. On nuclear, he has not blinked in the face of Labor’s appalling fear campaign and looked like a leader as a result. His refusal to demonise gas and coal – which a renewables-captured ALP cannot help demonising – is a breath of fresh air.
In contrast, Albanese’s campaign is based on two big lies: one, that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy (the cost of these is infinitely high for the 60 to 70 per cent of the time weather conditions do not favour them); and two, that Dutton plans to end Medicare.
Ah, the cheapest form of energy and the nuking of the country to save the planet.
That reminded the pond that Jack the Insider had a few words to say on that matter, what with the keen Keane already noting that it had "clearly landed poorly in the Coalition’s internal polling" ...
There was an unconfirmed sighting two days ago, as reported in the Bairnsdale Advertiser in East Gippsland, Victoria under the imposing headline, “Coalition Nuclear Policy Unpacked”.
This proved illusory. The Bairnsdale ’Tiser merely chronicled a community meeting held by the East Gippsland Climate Action Network where a spokesman, who isn’t a member of the Coalition but is an engineer, explained the policy and raised several concerns about it.
Last week another breadcrumb on the nuclear energy policy trail was spotted when former Senate candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party, occasional harmonicist and environment minister in the Rudd cabinet Peter Garrett wrote an opinion piece for Nine newspapers. Unsurprisingly, he was against it. In the absence of any polemical response from the Coalition, I was left to wonder if Garrett had merely written the piece to publicise the re-release of Hercules – EP on vinyl with two new tracks.
So, where could the Coalition’s nuclear policy be? Furthermore, has the absence of any reference to it been driven by an internal partyroom brawl over the correct pronunciation of nuclear – you say new-clear, I say new-cular, let’s call the whole thing off?
I recall attending a soiree back in June 2024 where several Liberal Party apparatchiks were in attendance just days after the Coalition released its nuclear policy. At the time it was a bare-bones plan to build seven nuclear plants in five states, two small modular nuclear reactors, with a lot of artist’s impressions.
I heard much of the voluble positive chatter from afar. I turned to a mate and offered my opinion: “It’s terrible politics.”
“At least,” my mate said, “it’s got people talking.”
That was 15 months – a political eon ago. Now it appears it is being talked about only in Bairnsdale. Excitable party hacks aside, nuclear energy was always going to be a much harder sell to the Australian people who basically fall into three camps – why not, opposed and damned opposed.
Shortly after the policy was released and right on cue, Paul Keating offered a statement pronouncing his dislike for the policy and offering some free character assessment of Peter Dutton to boot. A walking thesaurus of invective, the former prime minister described the Opposition Leader as “a charlatan – an inveterate climate change denialist. A denialist now seeking to camouflage his long-held denialism in an industrial fantasy – resorting to the most dangerous and expensive energy source on the face of the earth – nuclear power.”
It’s not the most expensive energy source, by the way. That’s good old liquefied natural gas.
There has been more meat applied to the policy since, most of it released during the Christmas rush in 2024. One of the five large-scale reactors, would be firing up at Traralgon’s Loy Yang power station, just 150 clicks from Bairnsdale.
It almost certainly would need the support of crossbenchers in the House of Representatives and in the Senate to do so. The two acts, introduced in the early years of the Howard government, were merely symbolic, designed to ward off political scare campaigns. The black-letter law remains like an albatross around the neck of nuclear energy proponents. But for the sake of argument, I figure a year to overturn those two acts. Then on to the states where required legislative changes are even less likely. Let’s be kind and give that three years.
Then to the sites, with NIMBY protests and environmental impact statements up the wazoo. Even generously, it would mean soil turned on a large-scale nuclear reactor not a day earlier than 2030. From there, 20 years minimum for the build. And that’s only if the Coalition can find the policy first. Win, lose, or draw, the Coalition will be frustrated because Energy Minister Chris Bowen remains wide open to all manner of verbal assaults on Labor’s energy policy, its shortcomings, its shortfalls and its pitfalls.
Without wanting to state the obvious, Bowen, in cricketer’s parlance, is prone to wave the bat outside off. Terrible footwork. Of course, the Coalition’s recent silence on nuclear policy is in direct contrast to millions of households around the country that recoil in horror every time they glimpse their electricity bills.
The greater shame of the disappearing policy is that the nation won’t consider nuclear options for decades, despite some quite stunning advances in small modular reactors. They remain expensive, not only to purchase and assemble but also in projected costs of electricity generation.
We can safely expect improved performance and economies of scale as production gears up in a world that is screaming for zero-carbon technology. Taking that option off the table for the foreseeable smacks of arrogance and bad planning. I expect the door will remain closed on SMRs, only for it to rear up and become another source of political dispute in the middle of the century.
Alas, I don’t expect to be around for that momentous occasion. I’ll be in Bairnsdale looking for the Coalition’s nuclear policy.
The pond regrets having to strip Jack of his illustrative snaps, but the Pearls of Wisdom man was already well cluttered with snaps of villains, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail In Victoria.
Call these Pearls of Wisdom petulant Peta-lite, and you can see why the pond was keen to do a white rabbit and scurry through the rest of them ...
By refusing to offer a more compelling alternative to Albanese, Dutton is ignoring this political reality. He may be sending a subliminal message to the electorate – and I have in mind the 40 per cent of disengaged voters our electoral laws compel to turn up at the polls – that Albanese’s economic, fiscal and international policy settings are broadly acceptable. Dutton’s advisers could argue that oppositions offering ambitious policy manifestos inevitably fail.
But I am not calling for a 2025 version of Fightback. A single game-changing announcement can do the trick.
The only requirement is that it forces voters – and the media – to see our current political orthodoxy for what it is: a recipe for long-term national decline. Paul Keating’s much-maligned banana republic comment did just this.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, a commitment to abolish bracket creep would serve this purpose beautifully. It should be backed up by data showing how much this “inflation tax” has taken out of household budgets since 2022 – which by some estimates is greater than the toll higher interest rates have taken – and the damage it will continue to do under a returned Labor government. With this commitment Dutton would be appealing to voters’ loss aversion, a more powerful psychological incentive than the future benefit of more gas supply offers.
It would put an end to Labor’s taunt that Dutton is not lowering taxes. Getting rid of bracket creep would not cost a great deal in the short term (although the cost rises across time), it would put an automatic check on the growth of spending and it would be a progressive, not regressive, change to our tax system.
Strange, if he'd been Baker, perhaps it would have been a single flash of light descending from the heavens.
Instead the reptiles relied on an old ploy, yet another revival of an ancient Satan, but all that did was remind the pond that the lizard Oz is now for a very aged demographic.
Who else would care to see a roughed up snap of Gough?
Why no snap of Billy McMahon? Why no snap of Harold Holt? In their day, they were hot contenders, major players in the game of worst PM of all time...
Because nobody cares. It's all bubble headed influencers these days ...
Oh reptiles of the hive mind, see where print media now stands in the scheme of things?
Talk about irrelevance disappearing into the sunset, talk about the compleat uselessness of these Pearls of wisdom ...
A possible alternative to bracket creep reform, or an addition to it, would be to announce a substantial, specific and urgent increase in the defence budget in response to our rapidly deteriorating security environment. With the recent Chinese warship visit fresh in people’s minds, the electorate would be more than open to this. Again, such an announcement would put Labor in a difficult position, forcing it on to electoral ground it does not want to fight on – and exposing Labor’s instinctive anti-defence stance to full view.
No one can predict how election campaigns will unfold. Despite recent polling, Dutton could well win on the basis of his current agenda for change. Having worked on an election campaign long ago, I know how significant an ill-advised handshake, an unscripted comment to a voter or a costing black hole can prove to be in a tight contest.
Perhaps Dutton still may have a major policy card up his sleeve, as he has been hinting. His risk-averse advisers may be telling him not to play it, but for oppositions seeking to unseat first-term governments playing it safe is risky in itself. In short, Dutton needs to do more to challenge the foundations of our political duopoly, just as he did with great success on the voice and nuclear power.
David Pearl is a former Treasury assistant secretary.
The pond is content.
Let the current agenda for change run its course, and soon enough we'll be nuking the country to save the planet, at least in the lizard Oz's collective hive mind...
And so to end with the joyous thought that at last Liberation Day is at hand, with the immortal Rowe helping usher it in ...
