Consider this: each day the reptiles in the hive mind of the lizard Oz must wake up and devise a new way to be grumpy and unhappy, and if no plausible reason is available, they must spend their waking time devising a simulacrum of unhappiness, a feint, a strategic diversion or three...
And each day the pond must note their deviant, deeply perverse desire to destabilise, admonish and otherwise behave like ratbags ...with productivity the buzz word that sets the reptiles off on their mission this day...
Look, over on the extreme far right, Dame Groan is currently cock of the walk, top of the world ma, and she's deeply unhappy, as the old grumpy biddy always is ...
Below her came the usual mixed lolly assortment ...
Snappy Tom was on on hand, but the pond decided he only warranted an archive link and a teaser splash ...
One of the reptile tricks in devising an EXCLUSIVE is to dig up some barely remembered hack, perhaps a toad from the deep north, insisting that somebody MUST do something ...
‘China will kill us’, warns Labor heavyweight in innovation SOS
Jim Chalmers must exempt start-up investors from the $3m super tax or watch China ‘kill’ our economy, Peter Beattie warns.
By Matthew Cranston, Paul Garvey and Eric Johnston
The pond must save a shred of dignity and so must avoid offering even an archive link. If Beattie's a heavyweight, show the pond a helium balloon ...
This tendency to MUST infects all the reptiles, as in ancient Troy's teaser ...
Can Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers write themselves into the history books alongside the great reformers?
By Troy Bramston
Senior Writer
The pond decided it must give ancient Troy a pass, but did decide on an archive link and a teaser, and those who must partake, for whatever weird reason, can ...
The header: Four-day week wins the wooden spoon award for worst reform idea, It’s tough to choose between the bad ideas put forward for this week’s roundtable, but in the end the ACTU proposal takes the cake.
The caption for the comical snap of Jimbo: Treasurer Jim Chalmers discusses the Albanese government's Economic Reform Roundtable at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman
It was a five minute torment, so the reptiles advised, and the pond must plunge in, even though the topic is completely tedious...
The only explanation seems to be that the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, didn’t really want to spend three days talking about productivity.
For starters, it would be inevitable that the productivity-sapping industrial relations changes implemented by Labor would need to be discussed. Ditto the surge in net overseas migration and the over-representation of low-skill, low-paid workers.
It would also be clear that the Labor government doesn’t really have much of a clue about boosting productivity growth. In any case, most of the corrective suggestions are unpalatable.
Examples include reducing government spending and significantly slowing the growth of the care economy.
Let’s face it, Chalmers has already decided what he wants to get out of the three-day jamboree.
The attendees were very carefully selected. With some minor exceptions, they will play the game and go along with the government’s predispositions.
In addition, there have been more than 900 submissions made, most of which can quickly be placed in the policy trash can.
Is there some bile about not being among the chosen? Possibly, but to console the grumpy one, the reptiles sent in a certain Quail to do a bit of quailing, Political reporter Jack Quail on what we can expect from next week's Economic Reform Roundtable and what it will mean for business.
Sadly, the Productivity Commission is the author of several of the contenders.
Having two systems of company tax collection is surely, of itself, a completely bizarre idea. But to suggest that it’s OK to raise the company tax rate on our largest companies with turnover of more than $1bn because the investment decisions of these behemoths are not affected by tax rates is completely off the wall.
Evidently, we are supposed to believe that these large companies are all nasty oligopolies earning unjustified returns that can be taxed without doing any harm. How could this possibly be the case given the mix of companies in this category? And let’s not forget here that our successful mining companies are essentially price-takers on international markets. They also pay a large slab of the company tax revenue on which the government depends to fund its ongoing commitments and pet projects.
The pond wonders if Dame Groan ever looks at the payouts for the bludgers at the top of these companies.
This June 2025 report for the year 2024 set out a tasty dish ... with this in the executive summary for CEOs...
Now there's a tasty dish to set before an exceptionally grumpy queen ...
But given the chance to expound on nasty oligarchies, what does she do? She insists on being trolled by the trade unions, taking the easy bait, falling for the sucker punch, unnerved by that woman glaring out at her, happy at the table while Dame Groan sobs and sighs in the wilderness, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus will have a seat at the table. Picture: Martin Ollman
That sight set the grumpy one right off ... and it should go without saying that climate science denialism will be involved.
Could there be any other way, and stay true to the hive mind spirit?
Just think through what a four-day working week would mean. For those operations that require workers to be on site – a fair chunk of the workforce, including the large retail sector – the mandate would raise labour costs by about 20 per cent and potentially involve engagement of (lower-productivity) additional workers.
For those workers who can squeeze their five-day task requirements into one fewer day, it suggests they are currently being overpaid, or a fair amount of time-wasting is going on.
The broader point is this: one-size-fits-all can never work for a diverse economy and labour market. Employers and workers, represented or not, may agree to a four-day working week in specific instances by enterprise or individual negotiation. But to impose such a costly, across-the-board obligation would be complete madness.
The PC is also on my short shortlist for its dubious report with the leading title, Investing in Cheaper, Cleaner Energy and the Net Zero Transition. Where is the evidence that cleaner energy is cheaper? It’s nowhere in the report. Indeed, it is conceded that there is a “green premium” to the price of cleaner energy.
Apart from the report’s wacky proposals – a complete classification of all 11 million homes in Australia according to their climate resilience is but one example – the real pity of this report is the failure to deal with some of the highly doubtful modelling of some of the key agencies driving the transition, including the Australian Energy Market Operator, the Australian Energy Regulator and the CSIRO.
Given the technical skills of some of the PC staff, it is unfortunate that the output of these mission-driven agencies wasn’t put under the spotlight.
The reptiles paused to insert a snap of a DG hero, Aidan Morrison from the Centre for Independent Studies.
The valiant lad earned a tick of approval, no grump for him ...
For example, the AEMO modelling essentially accepts the government’s emissions reduction targets and other policies and attempts to assess the system requirements. This is similarly the case with CSIRO and its GenCost report, which now makes the modest claim that renewables plus storage is the cheapest form of green energy – not all energy.
The use of pretend cost-benefit analysis by the AER to declare transmission lines worth billions of dollars as regulated assets should also be thoroughly examined. Bear in mind that network costs are close to 50 per cent of electricity bills. What is about to happen is that hundreds of dollars are about to be added to each of these bills by dint of the AER’s questionable approach to decision-making.
It would be very useful if the PC were to unpick the assumptions underlying these models because it would reveal the very real risks, both technical and economic, that are involved in the forced transition. It might also diminish the Treasurer’s enthusiasm for the energy transition, which he regards as “indispensable”.
There is a long list of other dopey suggestions from various parties.
Not so much of a tick for a miscreant, a wretch adding to the grump, Andrew Fraser believes electricity and insurance should be exempt from the GST.
Watch Dame Groan demolish him ...
In his view, this would be consistent with a green agenda and help households. Any competent undergraduate in economics could easily demolish this proposition.
Taxing wealth in various forms is another dimwitted proposal raised in many of the submissions. The fact that capital investment underpins productivity growth is completely overlooked.
Taxing wealth creates a disincentive for capital accumulation, the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Let’s also not forget the compliance costs of taxing wealth, which would inevitably involve estimating and taxing unrealised capital gains.
So, here’s my drumroll moment: the wooden spoon is awarded to the four-day week proposal, with the PC contributions coming in a close second.
The only valuable suggestion I have heard so far is the pausing of the National Construction Code, which runs to many thousands of pages. It is estimated that the latest version has added between $10,000 and $50,000 to the cost of a standalone house. The only issue is whether we should revert to the previous version of the code, which had many fewer “sustainability” impositions.
Of course, the roundtable’s final communique has already been drafted by Treasury, with some scope for amendments as the days roll by. But in any case, the Treasurer has made it clear that the roundtable is “about informing decisions, not making them”. No surprises there, but the roundtable itself is already looking like a drain on productivity.
An excellent, most productive day, wooden spoon and all ... though it's a tad ironic that the roundtable, a drain on productivity, has seen Dame Groan drain all her productivity away, and we must wait another time for an exceptionally productive column ...
And now to the great betrayal, and the best the reptiles could do early in the morning was rely on a news service ...
Ukraine peace deal likely to include territory swap says Trump
Donald Trump said Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin would have to agree on a land swap and the US would be involved in any security guarantees with Ukraine.
By AFP
The pond expected some reptile response to the great betrayal.
Where, for example, was the reptiles' alleged "foreign editor", the man allegedly designated to opine on such matters?
Why, he was wimping out, a gutless wonder, a cowardly custard, reverting to ancient reptile custom dragooning a much easier target, comrade Dan ...
The header: Why Albanese is the ‘Dangerous Dan’ of Canberra, Anthony Albanese could well become the Dan Andrews of federal politics. Albanese and Andrews are good friends. Once they were housemates. Both from Labor’s left, they became utterly ruthless machine politicians.
There was no credit for the gormless collage, all galah pink and grey, which is just as well, but on the upside, there was no invitation to go elsewhere, with this bemusing feature seemingly having been dropped forever ... Seeing double: Anthony Albanese, left, and Dan Andrews, right. Pictures: News Corp
Must be AI, and the pond suspected that AI was also behind the bromancer recycling ancient platters that never really mattered ...
Anthony Albanese could well become the Dan Andrews of federal politics. Albanese and Andrews are good friends. Once they were housemates. Both from Labor’s left, they became utterly ruthless machine politicians.
See how easy it is for AI slop to deliver a casual slur ... "could well become"
Well the bromancer could well become an actual foreign editor, but not this day ...
If a party achieves electoral dominance through good performance, what you might call ethically innocent good governance and good politics, that’s entirely to be praised. But Andrews in substance was a disaster for Victoria.
The idea that the benighted, suffering citizens of that diminished jurisdiction should have to fork out for a statue of the all-conquering Dan adds a layer of irony and contempt to an era of failure, one in which autonomous institutions became weak or compromised.
It's truly, richly, deeply pathetic, this still ongoing obsession with comrade Dan, a man who resigned his seat almost two years ago, back in late September 2023, and yet still the subject of reptile ritual incantations of demonic forces, Then Labor premier-elect Daniel Andrews speaks to the media in November after Labor won the Victorian state election. Picture: AAP
Are the reptiles saying they dug that snap out from 2014?
Talk about a musty smell, and there was much mustiness in the bromancer's trolling ...
There was something approaching, in effect if not in design, a two-tier legal system. You could go to jail for promoting an anti-Covid lockdown demonstration, but left-wing causes were given very wide leeway and tolerance.
The feeble excuse for this exhumation? Dozens of politicians and staffers attended a private farewell party for former premier Daniel Andrews on Friday. It comes after Mr Andrews announced his resignation this week. The event was held at Victorian Trades Hall in Melbourne. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was snapped at the event along with Mr Andrews’ successor Jacinta Allan. Former cabinet ministers were also spotted, including Deputy Premier James Merlino and Attorney General Martin Pakula.
FFS, what about the great betrayal bromancer?
What a completely inept, contemptible and blithely irrelevant buffoon the bromancer was this day...
Andrews had very similar social and political values to those of Albanese. He saw the People’s Republic of China as an essentially benign force and Coalition government security concerns about it as overblown. Thus he signed up Victoria to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a move cancelled by the federal government. But with Andrews there was always a ruthless political dimension to everything he did.
He used his Beijing connection as part of an intense, targeted social media campaign among ethnic-background Chinese citizens, with the clear implicit message that he was more on their side than was the Coalition.
Andrews’s machine was brilliant at the use of social media. A million miles ahead of the Coalition. He could communicate with voters who didn’t pay attention to mainstream media, which in any event doesn’t any longer pay much attention to state politics. Andrews was utterly ruthless, acting against internal critics as much as overt political foes. For a long time the normal operations of the Labor Party were suspended and he had huge influence even over preselections.
His control was very detailed. In his endless Covid press conferences he would address pesky journalists by their first name. Perhaps unintentionally, this resulted in social media warriors being able to work out the identity of the pesky journalists and subject them to vicious online trolling. Andrews didn’t approve the social media trolling, but it was at least partly a result of his dominance and hyper-partisanism.
As I say, he was brilliant at politics, terrible at government.
The reptiles didn't help in the irrelevancy syndrome game by throwing in an AV distraction which made the pond think it had been caught in a time warp or had stepped into a hive mind time machine, The Australian’s media writer Sophie Elsworth claims former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews had a large contingency of the media “wrapped around his little fingers”. Mr Andrews announced his shock resignation on Tuesday afternoon after nine years in the state’s top job. “He always was able to control the narrative; he was very good at shutting down journalists, gaslighting them, making them look stupid – he was a master at that,” Ms Elsworth said. “He was incredibly popular with the Victorian public, and I know that will be hard to fathom for some people around the rest of the country, but he rocked it in the last election.” Ms Elsworth added that the state’s new Premier, Jacinta Allan, will not have any of the attention Mr Andrews had.
FFS, there's an ongoing genocide in Gaza, with the pond waking to reports of more unprovoked settler violence in the West Bank, and the great betrayal is unfolding...
... and the lizard Oz "foreign editor" is obsessing about Victoria and comrade Dan?
Some might think it a sign of a mind tragically overthrown, a Lear of foreign affairs, but the bromancer lacks the dignity, or any sign of an impending arrival of self-awareness ...
Now Victoria is locked in a political death spiral. An incompetent state government, manifestly unfit to govern, pursuing terrible policies, with massive state debt, punitive property and other taxes causing wealth and industry to leave Victoria, can’t be unseated because the opposition has been worn down to an uninspiring and incompetent rump.
Economic growth sectors have been destroyed; it’s impossible to see how Victoria pulls itself out of this mess. One-party government produces disastrous results.
How deeply weird did it get?
Try on this kind of connection for size, Former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews is welcomed at Parliament House in Canberra, where Chinese Premier Li Qiang was meeting Anthony Albanese in 2024. Picture: Jade Gailberger
If you want actual writing on the great betrayal, you'll have to head off to The Atlantic to read Thomas Wright's piece, The Only Plausible Path to End the War in Ukraine, Has the Trump administration misread Moscow? (*archive link)
It's true that Wright was in the grip of a serious delusion ...
...Ultimately, the diplomatic problem the Trump administration faces is how to persuade Russia to accept an independent and sovereign Ukraine. All the signs from Moscow are that it has not backed off of a maximalist position. The only plausible way to end the war is to create a battlefield reality that convinces Putin that he cannot make more gains, that he will pay a massive price for continuing the war, and that this reality is unlikely to change. That means that the United States and its allies need to, paradoxically, get serious about arming Ukraine for a protracted conflict and putting pressure on Russia. That is the only way to create the conditions for successful negotiations to end the war.
As if Captain Bonespurs, aka TACO King Donald is going to go there.
But at least he's writing about it.
What do we get from the utterly feeble bromancer?
The Albanese government is utterly dominant politically. Albanese, like Andrews, is attempting to become omnipresent in the lives of ordinary Australians. But at the same time he’s avoiding most real scrutiny with extraordinary ruthlessness.
This approach, which is now sadly common in much democratic politics around the world, has the faintest echo of Big Brother in George Orwell’s dystopian satire, 1984. Big Brother was everywhere, but he was never opposed or scrutinised. Orwell wrote: “Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear and reverence …”
Still locked in the bitterness of that big election loss, and clearly unable to cope ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese celebrates his landslide election win with staff and supporters in Bar Italia in Sydney’s Leichhardt in May. Picture: Julian Andrews
The bromancer could sense his war with China by Xmas slipping away ...
Albanese, like Andrews, is moving quite ruthlessly to limit scrutiny and policy contestability. Famously, he has cut opposition questions in question time from seven to six. The government has moved to try to reduce the number of parliamentary committees in which the opposition, as is the custom, provides the deputy chair. It has substantially cut the staff resources for the opposition, the Greens and the crossbenchers.
It’s moving against the one think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which, because it focuses on national security, has tended to have a worldview marginally more sympathetic to the Coalition’s worldview than to Albanese Labor’s, though of course the ASPI is not remotely partisan.
This government has a newly benign view of Beijing. It is extremely reluctant to share information with the public.
Couldn't the bromancer pay even the slightest attention to the great betrayal?
Not even that weird Melania letter, with its bizarre Sharpie signature, which has been causing tears around the world these past few days? (Okay, it's tears of laughter, but when you think of Ukraine's fate at the hands of a sociopath there should be real tears) ...
Talk about rich pickings, a lavish serve of irony with the fluff and the lettuce, and yet all the bromancer could offer was a final foray into Orwellian claptrap?
The opposition’s Dan Tehan asks, entirely reasonably, why the CSIRO will not release for public evaluation the economic modelling tool that underlies its entire raft of estimates about what energy costs will be under different policies.
There is a sense of Big Brother simply pronouncing the Approved Truth to the people, which they must then accept.
The Albanese government embraces countless policy contradictions.
Ever more ambitious climate goals, indulging ever more green tape on fossil fuel development, yet resting its entire, vast social spending ambitions on the wealth that minerals alone bring the nation.
And of course government spending, as happened in Victoria, is out of control, increasing from 24 per cent of GDP when Albanese took office to 27 per cent in one parliamentary term.
Faux consultations such as this week’s productivity summit are all but meaningless. The Andrews model was a disaster for Victoria. It could well be the same for Australia.
He should hang his alleged "foreign editor" head in shame.
If there's a wooden spoon to be handed out, it should surely go to the bromancer, the very worst of the reptile worst this day, a compleat waste of space and time and effort...
The pond won't be getting any bro answer to the question posed by the keen Keane in Crikey ...(*archive link)
Instead of that cowardly custard bro, dodging, ducking and weaving, regurgitating stale, ancient, hive mind talking points, the pond must turn to a cartoon to end this day of consorting with reptile curmudgeons ...