In which the pond celebrates group think, especially the group giving the lettuce a bigly chance ...

 

Give the pond a break.

They're still banging on about it ... and this time the wretched miscreant is nattering "Ned" ...

The three little-known factors in the Whitlam Dismissal saga
Goal of total victory cost Gough total defeat
Gough Whitlam wanted an unqualified victory that meant no opposition in future would ever thinking of blocking supply again.
By Paul Kelly
Editor-At-Large

Nah, that's an Everest climb too far, there's the archive link (relax, it might or might not work), and masochists can have at it, or just stare at the archive's whirling circle of doom, an infinitely more rewarding pastime.

The pond would even have accepted yet another obituary for the Swiss bank account man as an alternative, lickspittle reptile fellow traveller that he became ...

And the reptiles couldn't just honour the fallen, they had to turn it into a political point scoring fest...

War memorial blast
Decorated ex-soldier’s dire defence warning
The outgoing RSL president has stunned Anthony Albanese with an extraordinary Remembrance Day rebuke over Australia’s defence spending and preparedness.
By Jamie Walker

Oh go sell some iron ore to the Chinese with the help of Gina ...

And as part of his rehabilitation campaign the swishing Switzer turned up to blather on ...

The BBC crisis offers lessons for our own public broadcaster
Few things upset ABC and BBC journalists more than the allegation their news output is institutionally biased but a strong groupthink is too often at work at the broadcasters.
By Tom Switzer
Contributor

This was the credit ...

Tom Switzer is a former ABC presenter.

This is the way the pond prefers to remember Switzer, per the AFR...

Switzer resigns from CIS after harassment complaint

Former executive director Tom Switzer has resigned from the Centre for Independent Studies following a sexual harassment claim against him, which he denies.
A CIS spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday that “Switzer has decided that it is in the best interests of the organisation for him to resign”.
In August, it was revealed that Emilie Dye, who worked as a marketing and research analyst at the centre right think-tank, had alleged in an application with the Fair Work Commission that her employer had retaliated against her for refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement over her alleged sexual harassment by Switzer.
In it, she alleged Switzer rubbed her leg, told her she had a “great arse” and described himself as “a very sexual guy” on a night out in March. Switzer told The Australian Financial Review he “categorically denied” the allegations, both the alleged physical touching and inappropriate remarks.
On Tuesday Dye, who worked at CIS for two years and is still listed on its website as an analyst for its Intergenerational Program and regular contributor on Sky News, said she welcomed Switzer’s decision to leave.
“I see Tom’s resignation as a step forward toward CIS putting this behind them,” she said.
“All I ever wanted was to be able to do my job and to be compensated appropriately for my role in a collegial, productive and safe work environment.”
Switzer was executive director from 2017 to 2025, before he moved into a “senior fellow” position. On June 2, the CIS announced former Financial Review editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury would succeed Switzer in the executive director role.
Switzer is a contributor to The Australian, the Financial Review and Sky News Australia, and a former ABC Radio National presenter.
In an email to staff on Tuesday, Stutchbury said CIS “is facing a challenging workplace dispute in the Fair Work Commission”.
“The pressure of this process has affected both the CIS and Tom personally,” Stutchbury added. “After careful consideration, Tom has decided it is in the best interests of CIS that he resign effective immediately. We acknowledge his contribution to the organisation and wish him well for the future.”
The FWC case returns to mediation on Friday.
Switzer told the Financial Review: “I believe that the pursuit of sound classical liberal and conservative ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking.
“Since 2017 I’ve been grateful to have played a role in fostering popular events, digital output and media outreach as well as evidence-based public-policy scholarship at CIS, which have helped shape public discourse both across Australia and abroad. As we head into our 50th anniversary, CIS is more important than ever.”

Now as for the swishing Switzer's use of groupthink?

As in his opening flourish ...

Few things upset ABC and BBC journalists more than the allegation their news output is institutionally biased. But a strong groupthink is all too often at work at the Australian and British public broadcasters, which are obliged to be even-handed.
Indeed, it is striking how quickly the ABC or BBC “position” on any news story emerges. I worked at Radio National for a decade and I know expressing dissent in editorial conferences could be an uncomfortable experience.

He surely knows about uncomfortable matters and uncomfortable experiences, but the pond had been waiting for a reptile to use the word "groupthink" so that the pond might turn to David Merritt Johns in The Atlantic, musing thusly ...

In Defense of ‘Groupthink’
Are we too quick to agree on the dangers of consensus? 

Inter alia...

“Groupthink is a compelling myth,” Fuller and Aldag argued in their contribution to an academic journal’s special issue for the 25th anniversary of Janis’s theory. “Despite a quarter century virtually devoid of support for the phenomenon, groupthink refuses to die.” Other papers in the journal took more specific aim at the theory. One argued that what Janis took to be a herd mentality might just as well be seen as deliberate, venal compliance. In other words, the misguided bureaucrats weren’t so much “victims” of groupthink as they were savvy operators who were minding which way the political winds were blowing. Another paper, by the Stanford psychologist Roderick Kramer, drew upon newly declassified documents to reanalyze the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam cases from Janis’s book, and found that much of the new evidence did not support the original interpretation. According to Kramer, neither case showed groupthink; they both showed “politicothink.” (Needless to say, Kramer’s coinage has not caught on.)

That special issue marked a turning point for the academic bandwagon that Janis had kicked off. “It would be hard now to get a groupthink paper published in a top journal,” Aldag, who is retired but still sits on editorial boards, told me.

The implosion of Janis’s model has left groupthink in an odd place. In popular discourse, the word has taken on a life of its own, as an insult deployed without clear reference to any theory of psychology. “I don’t think people always know what it means,” Fuller said. Dominic Packer, a Lehigh University psychologist who has written about groupthink, told me that the term has become a useful pejorative. “It’s what the other people think,” he said. “You never hear people say it to their own group.”

Taking potshots at groupthink has become especially popular on the political right, where rugged individualism is beloved and elite consensus makers are not. From 2016 to 2023, Tucker Carlson often signed off from his weeknight Fox News show with a tagline declaring it “the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.” Before taking roles in government, both Makary and Bhattacharya joined the chorus in their appearances on Fox News, taking whacks at the groupthink in the U.S. pandemic response.

To be sure, there is something deeply familiar about the idea that human beings will sometimes follow the crowd because they cherish their place in the group. Yet the claim that our public-health mistakes can be pinned on some special force called groupthink is both unhelpful and misguided. For one thing, the label implies that we’d all be better off if a monkish master of “lonethink” could be recruited to weigh the science on their own, and then arrive at the objective answer to a thorny problem, such as whether to shut down schools and when to reopen them. But decisions like these are usually carried out in the face of competing values, squabbling constituencies, and genuine uncertainty about the facts. Deciding what to do requires negotiation and democratic politics. It’s a group activity.

Indeed, the failure of our leaders to explain that public health is never just a matter of “following the science” may be one of the pandemic’s most enduring fiascos. Now the MAHA crusaders themselves seem ready to repeat that error in extravagant ways. “This group is going where the science takes them,” Hilliard, the HHS spokesperson, told me when I asked about Kennedy’s decision to stack the nation’s vaccine-advisory panel with a group of his like-minded associates. To insist that this was necessary to rescue the committee from “vaccine groupthink” is to get the matter backward: It labels a triumph of systematic decision making—one that has saved countless lives—as a tragedy; it courts disaster rather than forestalls it. (Hilliard did not respond to a question about the scientific controversy surrounding groupthink.)

Well-managed groups operating under clear and transparent rules—groups such as the vaccine-advisory committee and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (which Kennedy seems ready to also dismantle)—are some of the most powerful and trustworthy decision-making tools that we have. They are guided by published research and hard-won experience on how to avoid bad group decisions. For example, group leaders should not impose their views at the outset, and should make it clear that they value candid input from the team.

But our MAHA leaders don’t appear to be heeding this advice. “A core aspect of the Trump administration is that these leaders are not willing to admit a single mistake ever,” Packer told me. That might drive team members to hide their own mistakes, and to never criticize their bosses, even when leadership is screwing up, he said. Any group decision comes with a degree of acquiescence and a leap of faith. But the best decisions involve bringing groups together, hearing out their different views, and not denying that we have a social nature. Our nation’s thinking isn’t broken, and this administration shouldn’t try to fix it.

Well that was a droll detour, all thanks to the swishing Switzer.

As for the rest early this Wednesday morning, Dame Slap again disappoints ...

Legal rights threatened by campus injustice
Lurking beneath fine intentions to reduce the incidence of gender-based violence in higher education is the codified vigilante justice of zealots.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Where's the bloody bromancer? 

Remember, it was on 28th October that he made his most recent appearance, and since then the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, the craven Senate Democrats and Chuck have folded, and the war with China is looming, as is Xmas, time for his usual celebration of Xianity ...

Only his patented brand of unhinged hysteria offered any pleasure in this dreary hive mind, groupthink reptile wasteland.

After surveying that sodden field, that's how the pond was left with the lettuce wars ...

The header: Do-or-die moment for broken Liberals as net-zero call looms large

The caption for the snap of the ruck: Opposition Leader Sussan Ley with Dan Tehan and Angus Taylor last week. Picture: Martin Ollman

Put it another way ...

Not that the pond cared, save for how the lettuce was going as Sussssan performed her Ssssipyhian feats ...

Sussan Ley has allowed two words – net zero – to become a festering wound that has crippled her leadership and diluted the ­influence of her moderate Liberal backers.
Over the next five days, Liberal MPs will finally abandon the politically motivated deal hatched ­between Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce before the UN climate change conference in 2021.
The misguided belief of Ley and her energy and climate change spokesman Dan Tehan that they could dither for 12 months over the conservative kryptonite net-zero issue smacked of poor political judgment.
The moment Matt Canavan challenged David Littleproud for the Nationals leadership after the May 3 election was when Ley should have known the Coalition’s net-zero emissions by 2050 policy was dead, buried and cremated.
Unlike Ley and Tehan, who aren’t staunch net-zero backers, Canavan and NSW Nationals Senator Ross Cadell moved decisively to develop a plan and secure partyroom support for the Nationals to reject net zero.
Littleproud, considered a net-zero sympathiser, had no choice but to go with the majority. “They did the work. Dan (Tehan) tries to please everyone, but has dropped the ball on this. It’s a mess,” a senior Coalition figure said.
More than six months after Peter Dutton led the Coalition to one of its worst ever election defeats, Ley has called Liberals to Canberra for a net-zero showdown against the backdrop of moderates threatening to quit and conservatives pushing to reclaim influence.

Suddenly the pastie Hastie was a consensus man ... Conservative Andrew Hastie has been working behind the scenes trying to land a consensus position. Picture: Martin Ollman

On and on the battle raged, the lettuce looking on with wild-eyed pleasure ...

The net-zero saga has transformed into an ugly public battle between Liberal moderates and conservatives that most believe will culminate in a move on Ley’s leadership early next year.
The Coalition was never going to maintain support for Labor’s legislated climate change agenda given the net-zero backlash in the regions, increasing scepticism the mid-century target will be achieved and rising fears about higher energy bills and job losses in heavy industries.
By retaining the net-zero policy, Dutton and Littleproud exposed the Coalition to backlash from moderate and conservative supporters. Moderates didn’t believe them and conservatives – repulsed by the words net zero, Paris agreement and emissions reduction targets – were outraged.
Ley’s supporters can condemn Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Andrew Hastie and others for her predicament but the net-zero issue should have been dealt with sooner. The blame game in the Liberals must stop.

The reptiles were so excited they introduced a gab fest ...

The Front
Liberal showdown over net zero
12:18
volume_up

The agonising was endless ...

Voters elected them as candidates for the Liberal Party of Australia, not as individuals. If a majority of Liberals support a leader or new climate and energy policies, including zero-emissions nuclear power, the rest should fall into line. Those best equipped to serve in shadow cabinet should do so without undermining the leader or threatening to quit.
While there has been some disagreement among Liberal conservatives, the moderates were too slow in making their case. Most conservatives accept staying in the Paris agreement, support a full repeal of net-zero legislation and bureaucracy, endorse ending the nuclear power ban and want reviews into impacts of wind and solar farm projects. Prominent moderates want to keep the words “net zero”.
Liberals including Hastie and Andrew Bragg, who are considered the next generation of conservative and moderate leaders, have been working behind the scenes trying to land a consensus position on net zero that allays concerns on both sides.

Damn you moderates, yearning for the science, Senator Jane Hume is one of the moderates who wants to retain net zero. Picture: Martin Ollman

Then it was a final bout of unhappiness, with the lettuce savouring the chance of an Xmas feast ...

Ley critics lament that the Liberal leader has outsourced negotiations to Tehan and not personally intervened to secure agreement across her party room.
North Queensland MP Phillip Thompson, a veteran and conservative who holds the biggest lower house margin of any Liberal MP, nailed it after he was forced to disrupt Remembrance Day events.
“It saddens me that on such an important day, now I can’t spend it with loved ones, my friends, families of my mates who have been killed in action, those who’ve lost people most important to them,” he told Sky News. “Because I’ve got to get on a bloody plane to fly back to Canberra to talk about something that we should’ve resolved months ago, I think it’s really a big kick in the guts. We’ve now seen people threaten to quit positions and throw all their toys out of the cot – once again the Liberal Party talking about itself. Those people who want to threaten to quit, then quit, you’re not that important anyway. We need to get on with the job.”
With One Nation on the march and conservative voters splintering across minor parties and independents, the alarm bells are ringing for Ley and Littleproud.
Since the election, the Coalition’s primary vote has plunged to a record low of 24 per cent.
One Nation’s primary vote has risen to a record-high 15 per cent and minor parties and independents are at 14 per cent.
Labor’s core support remains static at 36 per cent and 51 per cent of voters are dissatisfied with Anthony Albanese’s performance. The Greens have fallen to 11 per cent.
There is opportunity for the Coalition to rebuild but Liberals and Nationals MPs won’t move the dial if they can’t devise well-considered policies promising Australians a clear alternative vision, stay united and differentiate themselves from Labor.

Meanwhile, the infallible Pope had a splendid vision ...

Strange, is there some kind of conference going on?

Never heard of it says the devout follower of the hive mind.

But wait, there was more, because the Brown out also offered a bout of navel gazing and fluff gathering ...

The header: Net zero showdown ultimate test for Sussan Ley’s leadership

The caption: Opposition Leader Sussan Ley at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Geoff had chambered a goodly 5 minute read, but the Brown out outdid him with a total of 6...

Sussan Ley faces the ultimate test of her leadership as the Liberal party room meets to debate a net-zero emissions target but is not guiding her MPs on how she wants the policy to land, with conservative powerbrokers claiming her only chance of holding onto the top job is dumping any ambition to a carbon-neutral future.
Moderates are still hopeful a deal can be struck to retain a net-zero goal under the Paris ­Agreement, claiming some conservatives had suggested they were open to a long-term aspiration as long as it was not accompanied by domestic policies mandating it is reached.
Conservatives including leadership aspirants Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie are backing remaining committed to the Paris Agreement but are claiming there is no need for a net-zero commitment as part of the international agreement.
Mr Taylor said on Tuesday he was not “focused on” on challenging for the Liberal leadership but did not rule it out in the future. “It’s not something we’re planning,” he told the Nine Network’s Today, when asked if he would rule out a challenge.
Pro-net-zero frontbencher Tim Wilson put his support for the Opposition Leader on notice based on the outcome of the policy, he told Sky News.
“I’m looking for leadership because that’s the way through this debate. And it’s very important that people step up, they rise to the challenge.”

The reptiles had devised a new kind of video player ... think of all the ad revenue ...

Your video will play after the ad
Ad 1 of 1 (00:12)
‘All sorts of strife’: Liberal showdown looms over net zero debate
Sky News host Chris Kenny highlights how Shadow Assistant Defence Minister Phillip Thompson...more

The pond avoided any time with the dog botherer, and ploughed on ...

Allies of Ms Ley say she has not advocated any position internally, in an approach that has infuriated moderates who believe she has created a vacuum that has provided momentum to the push to abandon net zero.
Ms Ley wants the issue to be resolved by consensus from the “bottom up”, although MPs expect her to junk net zero in line with the wishes of top conservatives and other powerbrokers key to her leadership, Alex Hawke and James McGrath. The position of deputy Liberal leader Ted O’Brien is unclear among Liberals, with conservatives claiming he is in favour of junking net zero while moderates say he has signalled support for retaining it.
While Mr Wilson, Andrew Bragg, Paul Scarr and Maria ­Kovacic are not ruling out quitting the frontbench if net zero is dumped, retaining the goal would likely see more conservative MPs join Mr Hastie and Jacinta ­Nampijinpa Price on the backbench.
The Australian reported on Wednesday that some moderates were conceding that a majority of MPs favoured dumping net zero, with the views of Liberals shifting over the past month on the back of the rise of One Nation’s polling numbers and the frontrunning of the Nationals.
Liberal frontbencher Melissa McIntosh, who is from Mr Hawke’s centre-right faction, said she did not believe Australia needed any net-zero ambition under Paris, even if it was a vague one. “I know that my community doesn’t want net zero, not at all,” Ms McIntosh told The Australian.
She said she hoped there would be no frontbench resignations after the position on net zero was finalised.
The party room meeting on Wednesday will include presentations from energy spokesman Dan Tehan and federal director Andrew Hirst. There will be contributions from MPs, with the Liberal position to be finalised after a meeting of shadow ministers on Thursday.
A committee of senior Liberals and Nationals will work through the differences of the policies and unveil a joint Coalition position on Sunday.

Remember the pond is only doing this to give the lettuce an update on its chances ...

Your video will play after the ad
Ad 1 of 1 (00:13)
Angus Taylor denies planning challenge to Liberal leader Sussan Ley

The MP who unsuccessfully challenged Sussan Ley for Liberal leadership in May has revealed his... more

... even if that meant getting past the windmill-hating beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

There are unlikely to be major differences between the policies of the two Coalition parties, with many Liberals favouring the Nationals policy of linking interim emissions targets with the average achievements of OECD countries. There is also broad support for including coal and gas in the Capacity Investment Scheme as part of a plan to make the underwriting program “technology neutral”.
Denying Ms Ley’s leadership was under any pressure, Mr Tehan said bringing the Coalition together under one policy would be like “threading a needle” but he was confident consensus could be achieved.
He said there had to be a balance between taking action on climate change and ensuring there was affordable and reliable energy. “If we don’t have a strong economy we are not going to be able to address climate change in the manner that we need to,” Mr Tehan told the ABC.
Moderate MPs are telling Liberals that the party will fail to win an election if they drop net zero, with the issue particularly important in capital cities. They are sharing polling showing 49 per cent of respondents think the Coalition should keep a net-zero by 2050 target, compared with 30 per cent who believe it should be dropped.
The YouGov poll commissioned by the Blueprint Institute showed just 21 out of 150 House of Representatives seats had a majority of voters who wanted net zero dumped.
Mr Wilson, who beat former teal MP Zoe Daniel in the Melbourne seat of Goldstein at the last election, took aim
at the Nationals policy to link emission targets to the OECD average. “I find the idea that we would outsource to a globalist standard like the average of OECD emissions, frankly, bizarre. And I don’t really see that that’s a tolerable policy,” he said. “We need to be honest about what’s achievable and with what time frame.”
Assistant NDIS spokesman Phil Thompson – an opponent of net zero – criticised MPs threatening to quit the frontbench if the carbon neutral target was dropped. “Those people who want to threaten to quit, then quit. You’re not that important anyway,” Mr Thompson told Sky News.
An Afghanistan war veteran, Mr Thompson joined West Australian MP Ben Small and South Australian senator Alex Antic in criticising Ms Ley for forcing Liberals to cut short Remembrance Day commemorations to be in Canberra for the meeting. He said the issue “should have been resolved months ago”.
Groom MP Garth Hamilton attacked moderate MPs for calling to retain a version of net zero that was not Labor’s.
“The same people who tell us net zero is just semantics now insist on calling it ‘Labor’s net zero’. You just can’t beat mod logic,” Mr Hamilton said.

Talk about moles discussing the fate of mountains in their hive mind, groupthink way ...

What chance was there to discuss events in King Donald's realm, or even mention the pond's stunning promotion to being an official advisor to the White House?

In celebration of that appointment, a little TT ...just imagine the pond standing alongside the serial couch molester and the vampire, advising away ...

In which the pond doesn't pass go, doesn't get loomered, doesn't collect $200 or Gough, and settles for the usual Tuesday groaning ...

The pond sometimes wonders if paying attention to the reptiles only encourages them.

What to make, for example, of Antonia Hitchens' obsessively detailed portrait of the barking mad but influential Laura Loomer in The New Yorker, Laura Loomer’s Endless Payback, The President’s self-appointed loyalty enforcer inspires fear and vexation across Washington. What’s behind her vetting crusades? (*archive link)

Is it an exposé, a revelation of the dark, malignant forces currently at work in America?

Or does it simply elevate and pander to her narcissist sense of self-esteem as a modern-day Cassandra, a kind of Jiang Qing, the new Joe McCarthy?

It's revealing - all sorts of grift come out to play - but it also relishes the way this attack dog carries on with a rabid intensity. One of the hallmarks of the style is a kind of distancing, which at once humanises the subject while also showing them at their worst, full of a passionate intensity of the most baleful kind.

Does it help? The pond confesses it became bored by the endless depth of the exploration of barking mad obsessiveness.

But the length portends significance and importance.

After all, it's still quite something in the sheltered world of magazine journalism to be offered a New Yorker profile. It's rather like those Time covers to which King Donald is addicted and endlessly covets, up angled shot of turkey neck not withstanding.

And The New Yorker has done this before, helping lift her profile. Andrew Marantz back in June 2017 offered Behind the Scenes with the Right-Wing Activist Who Crashed “Julius Caesar” (*archive link)

Ghastly subject and ghastly-addicted journalist do the dance of attention-seeking together. 

And it spins out into the ether, with bottom feeders like the Beast immediately picking up on it, in Laura Loomer Proudly Styles Herself as MAGA’s Joseph McCarthy. (*archive link)

So what was once considered outré, beyond the valley of the fit and proper, becomes normalised, a fit topic for discussion.

If you look up "Who is Laura Loomer?" there are endless numbers of scribblers and publications, from The Graudian to PBS to Wired, anxious to inform and enlighten, and thereby enhance and empower.

The pond consoles itself with the knowledge that nothing the pond says or does has any impact on the reptiles, or the larger world outside the hive mind. The pond has never circulated widely, and its observations of the workings of the local hive mind have never created a splash.

This is just as well, because the thought of being an amplifier of the insidious depravity at work in the lizard Oz would be depressing. It would be a kind of local loomering.

And the pond can pick and choose what to discuss.

Sadly this also works in reverse.

Nothing the pond can say will expand the impact of Vann R. Newkirk II's bleak climate change prophecy piece for The Atlantic, What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century, Many places may become uninhabitable. Many people may be on their own. (* archive link)

Nor will the pond's celebration of Kate McClymont's Long lunches, Swiss bank accounts and a kangaroo scrotum: My decades pursuing Graham Richardson *(archive link) in another place cause a ripple.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about Graham Frederick Richardson: bagman, political fixer and bon vivant. There were the bribes paid to him by way of prostitutes, Offset Alpine, Swiss bank accounts, taking a cut of the political donations he collected, accepting a hefty payment from Eddie Obeid in return for getting Obeid into parliament, having a major property developer build the extension on his home, being on the payroll of developers, and so much more.

Perhaps best not to start, perhaps pay no attention to the myth-makers...

Once a fountain of knowledge on Richo’s unscrupulous behaviour, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has offered the late powerbroker a state funeral, saying: “We have lost a giant of the Labor Party and a remarkable Australian.”

Perhaps leave the tale of the kangaroo scrotum purse to that other place.

As bad as Minns and the NSW plods at a Nazi rally.

Instead on to the bemusing story of the week ...

The resignations follow a report by The Telegraph on Tuesday that revealed the BBC “completely misled” viewers by editing a speech made by Trump to make it sound as if he encouraged the January 6 Capitol Hill riots. 

Not only did King Donald encourage the rioters ...

"We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore," he said.

... he lied to them as part of the encouragement ...

You know, I say, sometimes jokingly, but there's no joke about it: I've been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. OK. Almost 75 million people voted for our campaign, the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of our country, 12 million more people than four years ago.
And I was told by the real pollsters — we do have real pollsters — they know that we were going to do well and we were going to win. What I was told, if I went from 63 million, which we had four years ago, to 66 million, there was no chance of losing. Well, we didn't go to 66, we went to 75 million, and they say we lost. We didn't lose.

Sure, the Beeb omitted to mention that King Donald slipped in a canny disclaimer, as if any of the mob who heard the dog whistling paid attention to that. They were off to the riots, and King Donald watched his work unfold on the telly, and for hours did nothing to stop them, instead relishing the chaos that he'd provoked ...

... and then he pardoned them, even the cop bashers, for their suffering in a noble cause ...

And he's still at the pardoning game ...

Soon enough there'll be no talk of attempted coups or riots in aid of a coup.

And being a grifter, always alert to a possible shakedown, now King Donald's threatening a Beeb law suit, in the usual billions...

Naturally the lemmings at the lizard Oz joined in.

What a chance to bash the cardigan wearers by proxy ...

Heads have rolled at the BBC. Where is accountability at the ABC?
All of the issues complained about at the BBC deserve forensic examination at our own public broadcaster.
By Editorial

UK fiasco raises new questions about ABC’s impartiality
The national broadcaster faces fresh criticism after it followed in the footsteps of the BBC in doctoring a Trump speech, a move that claimed the scalps of the UK broadcaster’s two senior executives.
By Thomas Henry

No it doesn't ...

Enough already, you lovers of rioters and coups ... you anarchist lovers of kings, mayhem and chaos.

Meanwhile, forget any stuff and nonsense about the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

The pond spent a moment remembering the grandfather who'd been trapped in the mud of the Somme, then ploughed on ...

Ancient Troy was still busy, with two bites of the seemingly never-ending cherry  ...

EXCLUSIVE
A 50-year regret: how Labor could have saved Whitlam
The last surviving minister from Whitlam’s 1972 cabinet says Australia has matured beyond another dismissal crisis, reflecting on the dramatic events of November 1975.
By Troy Bramston

COMMENTARY
The Dismissal an example of how not to run a country
New interviews and archival discoveries about the 1975 constitutional crisis underscore this was a monumental train wreck for our parliamentary democracy.
By Troy Bramston

Senior Writer

Nah, not really.

There was also ...

DISMISSAL 50 YEARS ON
‘Partisan political ambush’: PM fights for Whitlam in scorching speech
Anthony Albanese has launched an extraordinary attack on the 1975 dismissal of Labor hero Gough Whitlam, declaring it a calculated conservative plot rather than constitutional crisis.
By Geoff Chambers and Richard Ferguson

Frank also joined in the festivities ...

How history, myth and legend blurred the rage of 1975
It would astonish those who worried over such matters in 1975 that we could celebrate the strength of our democracy today with barely a mention of the Dismissal.
By Frank Bongiorno

FFS, it was 50 years ago, of course there's a blurring ...

FFS, talk about being as boring as bats*t (*blogger bot approved).

Did Kennedy Miller really make The Dismissal in 1983 and now hell is watching endless reptile sequels? (Does anyone remember Max Phipps as Gough, John Meillon as the currish Kerr, and John Stanton as the western districts squatter?)

All this relentless coverage did was remind the pond of just how ancient the reptile demographics must be these days ...

And that's how the pond ended back in its comfort zone, safe from memories of Gough, with a good old-fashioned groaning by the Dame of Groans ...

The header: 'Free' electricity scheme a distraction from the real cost of energy crisis, Chris Bowen’s ‘look over there’ tactic, talking up three free hours in the middle of the day, ignores some basic calculations that show the benefits don’t add up.

The caption for the collage for which no human hand is credited, featuring a pro forma snap of Satan's little helper looking kinda funny peculiar, in agonised grimace: Chris Bowen’s plan for three hours of free power has costly flaws. Pictured: News Corp/iStock

The old biddie warmed to her jihad this day, with the reptiles crediting her with a full 5 minute read:

“If you think health care is expensive now,” political satirist PJ O’Rourke wrote, “wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” What he clearly understood is that when something is “free”, someone else is always paying. And when something is “free”, overconsumption follows along with inefficient provision.
Sadly, for us, this message is not understood by our Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen. Sensing last week that the energy transition has not been going well, with retail electricity prices rising rapidly, he tried the old trick: “Look over there.”
Three hours of “free” electricity in the middle of the day for everyone on a Default Market Offer in some places, starting from the middle of next year. That’s the diversion. OK, less than 10 per cent of customers are actually on DMOs and you need to have a smart meter – smart for the retailer/generator rather than the customer. These meters are by no means universal.

Hmm, that must be a bit like King Donald's generous offer of $2,000 per person, arising from his tariffs, but the pond digresses, as the reptiles offered one of those entirely meaningless visual distractions, Just because the wholesale price is often low or negative during the middle of the day doesn’t remove the need for the fixed infrastructure costs – over 40 per cent of the retail bill – to be covered. Picture: NewsWire/ Gaye Gerard

Each time the pond thinks the reptiles' visual distractions couldn't get sillier, they run a new flag up a new flag pole ...

Meanwhile, the old chook cackled on ...

But if you opt in to this scheme – it’s called the Solar Sharer, the SS – you can run your clothes dryer, your washing machine, your dishwasher, even charge up your EV during these three hours – and it won’t cost you a penny.
How good it that? Sure, you will have to find those manuals – where did you put them? – that tell you how to command the appliances to switch on at certain times. But how hard can that be for those with up-to-date, top-of-the-line washing machines, dishwashers, airconditioners and the like. We are talking those on higher incomes, but let’s not forget that virtually all interventions made in the name of the climate are highly regressive.
Bowen was quick to point out, however, that it won’t be necessary to have solar panels on your roof to qualify. So those without them, renters and those living in apartment buildings – and don’t forget the government wants more of us to live in dogbox apartments – will be able to benefit.
The trouble with this thought bubble is that there are some major complications that haven’t been thought through. Just because the wholesale price is often low or negative during the middle of the day doesn’t remove the need for the fixed infrastructure costs – over 40 per cent of the retail bill – to be covered.
If retailers and gentailers (the companies that own generators as well as have retail arms) can’t cover these fixed costs during the “free” three-hour period, then prices at other times of the day will have to be jacked up.
Either Bowen is not very good at maths, or he doesn’t understand how the DMO is calculated; but there is no way around this. The alternative would be to send some retailers to the wall while inducing a massive hullabaloo about the scheme from the retailers/gentailers in the meantime.

Then came another of those wretched visual interruptions, Bowen was quick to point out that it won’t be necessary to have solar panels on your roof to qualify. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Dame Groan never tires when it comes to whining (and groaning) about renewables ...

One perverse consequence would be the misuse of electricity during the three-hour period. Only a few dishes in the dishwasher – turn it on. Whack the clothes in the dryer rather than hang them out. Turn on the AC on mild days. If consumers are not required to pay for the true cost of the electricity, then this sort of wasteful behaviour is likely to occur.
There is also the unanswered question of what the SS does to the incentives for households to fork out for new or replacement rooftop solar panels. If everyone gets the “free” three hours, why bother going to the trouble? But if prices are going to be jacked up at other times of the day and solar panels are already in place, it might make sense to invest in a battery, particularly as generous government subsidies are on offer.
The other strange thing about this “look over there” tactic is that there are currently several offers already in the marketplace that allow electricity customers to opt for time-of-day pricing. Why Bowen felt the need to compel retailers to make this offer is not entirely clear – the answer is almost certainly political, being seen to be doing something.
The deteriorating commercial position of many heavy industry operations in Australia is also something Bowen doesn’t want us to think about too much. The fates of the steelworks in Whyalla, the copper smelter in Mount Isa, the smelters in Port Augusta and Hobart, the aluminium smelters (Tomago, Boyne and Bell Bay) and several others are highly uncertain, with most of them being propped up by governments to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars a piece.

Thought you'd had your fill of gratuitous, meaningless visual distractions? 

Think again, The deteriorating commercial position of many heavy industry operations in Australia is also something Chris Bowen doesn’t want us to think about too much.

Why do they bother? Is the old biddie so boring that they think that sort of image offers some sort of weird relief?

And the one common factor is the escalating cost of energy that is eroding the margins of these operations and sending them into the red. Take Tomago, Australia’s largest aluminium smelter in the Hunter Valley. Forty per cent of its input costs are electricity. Its current electricity contract runs out in 2028 and a doubling in the megawatt hour charge is being foreshadowed.
Even Bowen with his limited mathematical ability can surely understand that it won’t be possible for the plant to continue. The notion that more renewable energy would have helped is completely fatuous. In fact, the RE penetration of the grid has been increasing but electricity prices have been rapidly rising.
The cost to the federal and NSW governments of bailing out Tomago is massive – around half a billion dollars per year. The fact that one of the co-owners of Tomago has written down the value of the asset to zero tells you all you need to know.

At last there came a human distraction, a fiend, a wolf in sheep's clothing, Chair Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean. Picture: Nikki Short

That led to a final gobbet of groan ...

It’s also naive to think the Boyne plant in Gladstone is safe. The non-transparent deal done with the previous Queensland Labor government may help, and there has been some additional investment in renewable energy. But companies need to earn an adequate return on the capital employed. If not, they can take their investment dollars elsewhere where energy costs are lower and returns are better.
The chair of the Climate Change Authority, Matt Kean, takes the view that it won’t matter if Tomago and other smelters close because aluminium is made in other places in the world and the plant is relatively old (it’s not). Many voters will not share this sanguine opinion.
The real meaning of the closure of Tomago would be the death of heavy industry in Australia. The Treasury is wont to tell us that net zero 2050 is a needed policy to create certainty for investors. In one sense, this statement is correct: the clear message is that if you are considering investing in a large-scale, energy-intensive operation in Australia, go away.
As Meg O’Neill of Woodside tells us, Australia is an increasingly hostile country in which to invest and operate. It is a whole lot easier in the US, both in terms of approval processes and input costs. That’s the real message for us. Implementing cute but largely pointless consumer electricity contracts is neither here nor there.
The idea that decarbonisation is some sort of economic prize was always a myth: economic prizes don’t require massive subsidies and regulation. It is finally dawning on one side of politics that the costs of any transition must be carefully managed and minimised.

Excellent stuff, and the pond forgot for at least a nanosecond the saga of Susssan v. the lettuce ...

And so to a reading from that piece by Vann R. Newkirk II, linked to above:

...Who needs imagination when the dystopia is right in front of you? During the Palisades and Eaton Fires, scenes played out that could have appeared in Butler’s Parable. Private firefighting outfits defended companies, utilities, and ultrarich enclaves while other parts of the city burned. The county’s defenses were overmatched. Its fleet of fire trucks was hobbled by ongoing consolidation in the fire-engine industry, where giant companies have been delaying maintenance orders and raising prices for new trucks. Hundreds of incarcerated people, making at most $10 a day, worked as firefighters for the state. All of these things at least partly reflect the increasing regularity, intensity, and cost of fires. They preview the kinds of problems that climate change will bring to our local governments and economies, manifesting most severely in poor and minority communities, but affecting us all.
One problem is who will underwrite disaster risks as they grow. Seven of the 12 largest home insurers in California—including State Farm, the very largest—have already limited their coverage or stopped taking new policies there. After the fires, State Farm proposed increasing its homeowner premiums by 22 percent statewide, and warned that it would need to “consider its options,” seeming to imply that it might unwind even its existing policies, if the state didn’t allow the increase (the two sides ultimately agreed on a 17 percent rate hike). The specter of huge future premium increases or whole-state withdrawals by insurers adds a new level of risk for every homeowner. Other insurers are also reconsidering their long-term positions, and asking to raise rates sharply.
There are parallels to the 2008 financial crisis, when entire communities were built over the rotten plank of subprime mortgages. Insurers lost more than $100 billion in underwriting in 2024, and “insurance deserts,” where policies are becoming impossible to find or prohibitively expensive, are growing in the South and the West—more than half a million Florida residents are down to just one state-established “insurer of last resort,” for example. Last year, a report from the Senate Budget Committee found that the withdrawal of insurers from many markets threatens “a collapse in property values with the potential to trigger a full-scale financial crisis similar to what occurred in 2008.” But it’s six one way, half a dozen the other: Insurers that stay in risky markets will be imperiled by unexpected disaster payouts, and might be destabilized if multiple disasters happen in different parts of the country at once.
Even if climate change does not trigger a full-fledged economic panic, whole regions will be thinned out and impoverished. Residential areas are the centerpiece of local economies, yet without insurance, people cannot get mortgages, and so most cannot buy houses. The mere prospect of that makes business investment riskier. Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who studies climate change and real estate, told me that some places are already becoming economic “no-go” zones.
Keenan is not some lonely Cassandra. In February, in a report to the Senate Banking Committee, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of exactly the same thing. “You know, if you fast-forward 10 or 15 years, there are going to be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage,” he said. “There won’t be ATMs. You know, the banks won’t have branches and things like that.” Leave it to the banker to think about the banks, but the same logic applies to everything else. In places that suffer an increasing number of climate disasters and don’t receive commensurate assistance, we should expect more food deserts, fewer libraries, and fewer small businesses. We should expect that, with a larger share of municipal budgets going to disaster mitigation and repair, city and county services will suffer or disappear. Even as local taxes rise, “service deserts” will spread, leaving the remaining populations with only shells of local government. These are the dead zones...

And so on.

Oh yes, truer words have never been scribbled than those by that groaning Cassandra  ...

The idea that decarbonisation is some sort of economic prize was always a myth: economic prizes don’t require massive subsidies and regulation. It is finally dawning on one side of politics that the costs of any transition must be carefully managed and minimised.

And so to the immortal Rowe, staying true to the reptile themes for the day ...

In which the Caterist gives the lettuce yet another shot in the arm ...

 

There's a depressing sameness and monotonous familiarity to the start of each week in the hive mind.

Do the reptiles realise that repetition dulls the senses, in much the same way that smoke is used to induce a soporific state in bees?

It seems some days only obituaries provide a distraction, but the pond isn't going to waste time on those who added little to the world, whether it's Laws...

Golden mic falls silent
‘Australia’s greatest ever broadcaster’: Radio icon John Laws dead at 90
The talkback king, who only retired last year, has been remembered as a ‘towering figure’ after his death on Sunday.
By James Madden and Graeme Leech

If he was the greatest, the long absent lord help broadcasting ...

Or the Swiss bank account man ...

To Richo, you were loyal, or you lost your head
Graham Richardson had a compassionate side which he displayed more than once during his period as Minister for Social Security.
By Stephen Loosley

He was the worst of the little mates club ...down there with the Lionel Murphys of the Labor world, and so naturally found a home amongst the reptiles.

What else? 

Well simpleton Simon showed yet again that the reptiles know how to get someone coming and then going ...

Our Governor-General dives into murky waters on Dismissal
Governor-General appears to have a contentious view of her powers
‘The holder of this office is there to protect the Australian public against the potential of irresponsible government.’
Sam Mostyn has offered a new interpretation of what she regards as the role and responsibilities of the monarch’s representative. She clearly has a more expansive view of the job than any before her.
By Simon Benson

Political analyst

Ancient Troy sought her out, as part of his tome promotion tour, the reptiles splashed her response far and wide, and now the fuss can be kept alive by clobbering her yet again ...

And there's never a moment not to offer fear, doubt and querulousness to the very small world of TG folk ...

Ex-judge admits doubts over landmark ‘pro-trans’ ruling
The former chief justice who led Australia’s Family Court when it green-lit liberalised access of puberty blockers to gender-distressed children in the 2010s reveals she now has doubts about the ruling.
By Bernard Lane

The pond's TG friend, who was subjected to electric shock treatment, sustained systematic abuse at the hands of shrinks and priests, and an uncomprehending Catholic family might disagree.

But as always the pond must dredge something from this day's ruck of reptile odiousness.

It won't be an item from the Australian Daily Zionist News or its leading correspondent, Major Mitchell ...

Anti-Semites lack even basic grasp of facts
It’s obvious from the large audiences of social media influencers in the US that many media consumers have little understanding of WWII, Nazism, anti-Semitism or the Holocaust.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist 

The Major mentioned the ethnic cleansing of Gaza just once, thereby performing a singular, Herculean feat of distraction ...

The Major did mention Tucker, spawn of Faux Noise, Nick Fuentes and that mob, serial couch molester JD ... and Ross Douthat ...

The pond only mentions that mention because of a glorious moment in The Graudian in Arwa Mahdawi's Everybody panic – the workplace has become too ‘feminized’!

...And now, because the right has been so successful in rewriting reality, you can see gender grifting splashed all over the homepage of the New York Times. On Thursday, the Times published a transcript of a recent episode of the conservative columnist Ross Douthat’s podcast Interesting Times. This very interesting (in the British sense) piece was originally titled: Did Women Ruin the Workplace? The headline was then changed to the more nuanced: Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?
Douthat generously invites two women into his own workplace: the podcast features two critics of liberal feminism, Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, in conversation about “what a right-wing politics of gender should look like.” Andrews apparently caught Douthat’s eye because she had just written an essay for Compact called The Great Feminization, which argues feminism has failed because it has driven masculine virtues out of our institutions. The word “woke” or “wokeness” was used unironically 11 times in the piece: a failsafe sign you should not take anything in it seriously.
Andrews continued to just mutter wokeness, wokeness, wokeness in her conversation with Douthat (variants of the word were used 25 times in the conversation), explaining that “the pathology in our institutions known as wokeness is distinctively feminine and feminized … in a very literal sense, our institutions have gone woke because there are more women in them than there used to be.”
The conversation unfurls exactly as you’d expect. Carefully cherrypicking examples, Andrews explained that #MeToo was woke, college campuses are too woke, and “the law is currently lopsided in favor of punishing male vices and allowing feminized vices totally free rein.” In response to a question about what constitutes “feminine vices”, Andrews explains that women like “gossiping” and have an “inability to deal with conflict directly”.
Sargeant, who has some valid critiques of liberal feminism, does her best to push back against some of this nonsense, but Andrews does most of the talking. Hilariously, towards the end of the conversation Douthat asks Andrews: “What do you like about women, Helen?” She seems unable to answer that question.
I know that this is just one man’s podcast rather than, say, a piece by the editorial board, but putting a piece like this on the homepage of the New York Times in 2025 is certainly an interesting decision. Taking the sort of misogynistic nonsense that you see on Fox News and repackaging it as a pseudointellectual debate in a prestigious publication imbues these arguments with a dangerous validity. (If you want a proper intellectual interrogation of gendered inequality and supposedly traditional values, by the way, I suggest you read Angela Saini’s The Patriarchs.)

Gender grifting is the pond's newest favourite grift.

And there was this ...

Mexican president pressing charges after being groped
“This is something I experienced as a woman, but it is something that all women in our country experience,” Sheinbaum said after being groped in the street. “If I do not file a complaint, where does that leave all Mexican women? If they do this to the president, what happens to all the other women in the country?” The incident has felt like a personal affront to many women in Mexico, where violence against women and femicide are major problems. But you have to ask yourself, don’t you: has feminism gone too far?

So much more fun than regurgitating the Major.

And so it was that climate science came around yet again, and landed atop the reptile magickal faraway tree ... in the form of yet another EXCLUSIVE, though the pond could have sworn that on Sunday The Insiders had offered Andrew Bragg, that shadowy opposition figure, bragging about net zero ...(as the cardigan wearers gave up transcripts, the pond has given up quoting) ...

Take it away Brownie ...

EXCLUSIVE
Moderate Libs push ‘Australian way’ to save net zero
Moderate Liberals have launched an eleventh-hour bid to save the party’s net-zero commitment by focusing on pragmatism, technology and gas as conservative MPs warn of ‘Armageddon’.
By Greg Brown

The most remarkable feature of this alleged EXCLUSIVE was the way that the Brown out was limited to just the opening snap: From left: Moderate Liberal Andrew Bragg, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, and conservative Liberal MP Tony Pasin.

The remaining four minutes - so the reptiles clocked it - was a visual wasteland, but the pond had to pay attention, because each day the pond must check on the odds riding on the lettuce, with poor old Susssan standing in for the war on Xmas, which has been very slow to crank into gear ...

Moderate Liberal MPs are pitching Sussan Ley’s potential climate policy as net zero “the Australian way”, in an 11th-hour bid to sway the partyroom towards retaining a watered-down version of the ambition that focuses on pragmatism, technology and gas.
But conservative MPs argue the push from the moderates to negotiate on a net-zero commitment has come too late, claiming the majority position of the partyroom has shifted in the past month from supporting a version of the ambition to opposing it completely.

And sure enough, then came the EXCLUSIVE, an EXCLUSIVE report on the ABC ...

As leading Liberal moderate Andrew Bragg on Sunday threatened to quit the frontbench if the Opposition Leader vowed to leave the Paris Agreement and junk net zero, The Australian understands there is a fierce internal campaign being waged to convince MPs to back a version of the carbon-neutral target by redefining it as an “Australian approach”. 

The pond understands that the reptiles watch the ABC, which is perhaps just as well because the pond didn't, having given up the habit some time ago, settling for watching the 'toon and snap segment when it lands on YouTube ... but do carry on ...

This includes an in-principle aspiration to net zero without a specified time frame, a focus on supporting technological innovation rather than subsidising green energy, and an exemption for agriculture.
The moderates are backing a “technology-neutral” Capacity Investment Scheme, which would see coal, gas and nuclear projects be eligible for taxpayer underwriting. Liberal MPs supportive of net zero also believe it is fair to benchmark interim emission targets to the carbon reduction achievements of other comparable nations, while backing the dismantling of domestic laws requiring the nation to achieve carbon neutrality.
The moderates want the party to be supportive of renewables while recognising the need for a larger role for gas.
One conservative MP warned there would be “Armageddon” if Ms Ley adopted the compromise being pushed by the moderates, amid concerns it was being seriously considered ahead of a crucial meeting of Liberals in Canberra this week. But a leading conservative on Sunday told The Australian it was unlikely the Coalition would retain any net-zero ambition in its policy platform, despite growing pressure being put on Ms Ley from moderates who are key to her leadership.
Conservatives are opposed to the Coalition proposing any aspiration to net zero under the Paris accord, rejecting an argument from moderates that it was required under the international agreement. Some moderates were highly optimistic a version of net zero would be retained while others said it was “in the balance”.
Conservative Liberal MP Tony Pasin said he was not convinced of the internal push for an “Australian approach” to net zero.
He said Ms Ley would be “ill-advised to advocate for a position that supports net zero”.
“We need to make the next election a referendum on electricity prices, not a nuanced debate about differing versions of net zero,” Mr Pasin told The Australian. “A number of my colleagues keep talking about Labor’s net zero and the need to approach this from an Australian perspective, presumably a Coalition Australian net zero.
“I think that is a pathway to failure.
“I don’t understand how you can have a different version of net zero to Labor’s version. Any version is going to harm the economy, industry and households.”
Liberal senator Andrew McLachlan said the global endeavour of net zero should be tackled “with an Australian target and Australian policy settings”.
The South Australian senator took a thinly veiled swipe at leading conservative Angus Taylor, who has dropped his support for net zero despite being the energy minister who committed Australia to net zero by 2050.
“Reaching a net-zero emissions target should not be feared. When we were in government and Angus Taylor had responsibility to meet this target, we were on track,” he told The Australian.
“Angus Taylor demonstrated that not only could a net-zero target be achieved but that we could do so and leave no one behind in poverty. 
“We have already proven the pathway that some call the Australian way. We did that when we sent our prime minister (Scott Morrison) to COP to give our solemn commitment to the world and subsequently worked hard to successfully reduce our emissions.”
Liberal MPs will meet in Canberra on Wednesday, with the Liberal shadow ministry to finalise the party’s position on net zero on Thursday.
A committee of three Liberal and three Nationals MPs will work through the differences in the respective policies and propose a joint Coalition position at a special partyroom meeting on November 16.
The Australian reported on the weekend that senior Liberals were brawling over whether to endorse a vague ambition for a carbon-neutral future under the Paris Agreement after Ms Ley’s expected axing of a net-zero target by 2050.

By golly, with that level of word salad, they really will need to give the lettuce a go ...

Subsidies 'r us ...

The moderates are backing a “technology-neutral” Capacity Investment Scheme, which would see coal, gas and nuclear projects be eligible for taxpayer underwriting.

And then back to the nub of it, the EXCLUSIVE report on the watching of the ABC ...

This push – being resisted by top conservatives – would see the Coalition go to the next election vowing to maintain an “aspiration” under Paris to hit net zero while refusing to tie it to any date, and having no domestic policies to hit the goal.
Senator Bragg, a key supporter of Ms Ley, rejected claims from conservatives that the party could stay in the Paris Agreement without retaining an aspiration to net zero in the second half of the century.
“You can’t have a fatwa on two words. I mean, it’s ridiculous,” Senator Bragg told the ABC.
“It is in the text of the agreement so I don’t see how you can create your own standard.
“It doesn’t talk about net zero in those exact terms but it talks about net zero in a functional sense.”
When asked if he would quit the frontbench if the party either left Paris or walked away from any net-zero aspiration, Senator Bragg said “sure”.
“But I don’t imagine we will ever leave Paris,” he said.
“We are a party of government, we are not a fringe party. We are not fringe-dwellers.
“Most Australians want us to play our fair role in terms of emissions reduction, so I just don’t think we are going to be leaving the Paris Agreement.
“Net zero, if done properly, could reduce power prices and will reduce power prices over time.”
Senator Bragg said leaving Paris would put Australia in a grouping with the “baddies”, Iran, Syria and Azerbaijan.

What else?

The pond notes that in one way or another it has mentioned all the reptiles on parade on the extreme far right early in the morning, save one.

Is it necessary to mention him at all?

Couldn't the pond just end with some fun? The latest movie to hit town?

Or perhaps a 'toon, featuring an exotic whiff of musk?

Sorry, life was meant to be sleazy, and the quarry-whispering Caterist was at it again, giving the lettuce a real shot in the arm, or should that be the leaf? 

The header: Even in the cheapest countries, renewable power is subsidised, If renewables are cheap, why have electricity prices risen more than 20 per cent since the Albanese government came to power?

The caption: As Environment Minister, Sussan Ley rejected the Lotus Creek wind farm proposal on remnant native forest with its koala population. Picture: AAP

That could just as easily have been headed Even in the cheapest countries, fossil fuel power is subsidised ... How much in subsidies do fossil fuels receive?

The pond knows that this fine tradition is being urged on ...

The moderates are backing a “technology-neutral” Capacity Investment Scheme, which would see coal, gas and nuclear projects be eligible for taxpayer underwriting.

Sadly those figures are for 2021, but note the healthy orange glow down under ... enough to get any Nat fired up on the joys of agrarian socialism.

Sure there's a large distinction between major fossil fuel producers and very poor countries, with some trending to zero, but still it's a depressing picture, as usual ignored by the flood waters whisperer ...

Cat herding is an indispensable skill for a Liberal Party leader. All being well, Sussan Ley will have managed to coax, prod and cajole her caucus into the pen by Wednesday evening, ankle-deep in dust and nursing a few scratches, but with her leadership intact.
Only then can she embark on the real art of politics – the art of persuasion – by convincing voters that wind and solar are neither cheap nor good for the environment.
Ley may be tempted to run dead on environmental and energy policy, as Scott Morrison did in 2022 and Peter Dutton did earlier this year.
At best, that will secure another term in opposition. More likely is that the Liberals will be condemned to irrelevance as a stand-for-nothing party jumping at its own shadow.
The road to recovery begins by exposing the most fraudulent policy inflicted on Australians in living memory. Ley must take on a renewables-industrial complex, which will throw more money to stop her becoming prime minister than her party will have to spend.
The Gretafication of environmental policy, utilising tens of billions of dollars in murky overseas funding to defend renewables, has become an even more corrupt force in Australian politics than the trade unions.
Perversely, it has also set back the cause of natural conservation as practical measures to protect biodiversity have been sidelined in the cause of saving the planet.

The reptiles decided to remind the world just why the Liberal party is currently in such a dire pickle, Should Sussan Ley follow Peter Dutton’s lead and run dead on environmental and energy policy risks a further descent into irrelevance. Picture: Richard Dobson

Rather nasty, really, to revive the mutton Dutton, and put hapless Susssan alongside him - it's almost enough for a defamation action - but the lettuce will take any break it can get ...

The Liberal Party must attack the glaring contradiction in Labor’s energy policy. If renewable energy is cheap, why have retail electricity prices risen more than 20 per cent in real terms since the Albanese government came to power?
Why the continued need for subsidies? It was not unreasonable to assume that as the price of renewable energy infrastructure decreased, it would reach a point where the transition away from fossil fuels could be justified solely on the grounds of price.
That fallacy was baked into the policy Labor took to the 2022 election. It gave the party the confidence to set ambitious emissions reduction targets, in the expectation that once renewables became more affordable the market would take off.
Yet it hasn’t. Investment has not been occurring at anything like the level required by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to meet his 2030 targets. Financing remains the ultimate chokepoint.
The government’s attempts to ease investment decisions with subsidies have been only partially successful.
And few are naive enough to imagine that subsidies can go on forever.
The unfortunate truth is that without government handouts, the renewable sector can’t survive, however low the price.
Nowhere in the world is wind and solar energy operating subsidy-free. Not even in India and China, where the cost of building renewable infrastructure is the cheapest.

Would it be a genuine reptile outing without a terrifying snap of whale-killing windmills? 

Sorry, the pond meant to ask would it be a genuine reptile outing without a terrifying snap of Satanic solar deep frying the country? Nowhere in the world is wind and solar energy operating without subsidies. Picture: Neil Fenelon

Then came a truly odd and shameless moment ...the Caterist quoting Brett Christopher.

According to Randeep Ramesh, reviewing his 2024 book in The Graudian, this was his intent ...

...It was political economist Karl Polanyi who introduced the distinction between real and “fictitious” commodities. Electricity, says Christophers, is an example of the latter, a resource fundamentally unsuited to being priced up and traded. Such an insight might have helped the high priests of green finance realise that the elaborate market structures being erected to produce a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sit on unsound foundations.
Only the state, concludes Christophers, has “both the financial wherewithal and the logistical and administrative capacity” to deliver the trillions of dollars in annual investment in solar and wind that could keep the planet from burning up. The message is that active involvement in shaping the future is crucial, and such a task is too important to be left to markets. Or, as Lenin put it, “sometimes history needs a push”.

Argue as you will, observe the way that state interventions provide never ending relief to fossil fuels, but please marvel at what the Caterist makes of all this ...

Brett Christophers explains the paradox in his new book, The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.
Christophers argues that while the price of renewables has indeed tumbled, the profitability for private investors has not increased. The key metric for the financial market is not price but profit – the ability to forecast a stable return on investment.
He points out that most renewable projects must achieve stable, satisfactory returns over decades and that without government support they do not.
That is a more honest admission than governments are willing to make. Bowen repeatedly reassures us that the energy transition will cost less than business as usual.
Bowen’s optimism overlooks the fact that private investors still demand risk premiums.
Christophers, by contrast, embraces the inconvenient truth: if renewables are to scale, they require permanent government support.
By accepting that the state must underwrite returns – either via regulation, public ownership or long-term contracts – Christophers forces us to recognise that the transition is not purely about cheaper electricity; it’s about paying for that transition. In other words, renewables may be more affordable to produce than fossil fuel generation today, but turning them into a reliable, risk-managed low-carbon system remains more expensive and capital-intensive.
The implication for future energy prices is clear. Renewable energy carries an unavoidable premium price. Whether that cost is passed on to customers or offset with government subsidies makes no difference to the downward economic spiral.

Um, sticking with fossil fuels carries an unavoidable premium price, but the reptiles, and the flood waters whisperer in particular, have never much minded a volatile planet carrying on like a heat-stricken dog or English person out in the Tamworth noon day sun ...

For no particular reason, the reptiles then slipped in Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite with Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in 2022. Picture: AAP

Could it possibly be a Caterist outing with an invocation of Ming the Merciless?

Of course not ...

The Liberal Party must do more than regain its traditional advantage on economics if it is to win this or any argument. It must revisit the wisdom of Robert Menzies, who saw the party’s mission as more than looking after pounds, shillings and pence.

And so to a further reminder of why the lettuce is still hot favourite, with the Caterist pretending that he's suddenly become a caring environmentalist.

Remember the days when the likes of little Timmie Bleagh mocked those expressing concern for poley bears?

Now it's the caring Caterist all torn up about the fate of koalas ...

Practical care for the environment was a strong suit for the Coalition until the early 1980s, when Labor began to see the potential of the tree-hugging vote.
Graham Richardson’s passing reminds us of his achievements as environment minister, notably in Tasmania and the tropical far north, where rainforests received permanent protection as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Such practical measures were abandoned under Kevin Rudd, where pragmatic environmentalism was subsumed by climate change, the great moral issue of our time.
Nowhere is the conflict between saving the planet and protecting the Earth more apparent than in the carnage created by grid-scale renewables.
Ley understands the tension better than most. In June 2020, as environment minister, she rejected the Lotus Creek wind farm proposal on remnant native forest in Central Queensland, ruling it “clearly unacceptable” under national environment laws. Her decision was reversed by her Labor successor, Tanya Plibersek, who gave the green light to the bulldozing of old-growth forest on the Clarke-Connors Range, including 341ha of known koala habitat.
The Coalition should seize the opportunity to address the gap in biodiversity, adopting a strategic approach to combating invasive species for the benefit of the natural environment in general and agriculture in particular.
The threat of fire ants spreading from southern Queensland into NSW is real, yet funding has been patchy and inadequate. Fire ants attack crops, livestock and equipment. They chew through electrical wiring, irrigation systems and even machinery. They can reduce farm productivity by up to 40 per cent.
Yet on the list of government priorities, eradicating feral ants, goats, deer and pigs comes a distant second to climate goals. The Liberal Party should capture the vacated ground, not for the sake of symbolism but out of the conviction that sound land management is key to successful agricultural policy.
Environment and energy policy alone won’t win the next election, although it will be a more potent issue than most if tied to the cost of living.
The first party to level with Australians about who pays and why will own the future of energy policy. That could still be the Liberals.

Deeply weird. F*ck the planet (*blogger bot approved), but care for the environment.

Go lettuce ...

... you have to ask yourself, don’t you: has feminism gone too far?