In which the bromancer, Dame Groan, and pearls of wisdom are the day's entertainment ...

 

Are you not entertained?

That elegant King Donald design reminded the pond of Topol singing this lyric (slightly modified) ...

I'd build a big tall ballroom with bumps and columns by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town
A fine gold roof with real marble floors below
There would be one long staircase just going up
And one even longer coming down
And one more leading nowhere, just for show ...

As for the reptiles providing entertainment? 

Alas, it's not so easy this Tuesday ... with the bromancer out and about ...

At last it's finally dawned on the bromancer that things might be a bit tricky thanks to the deeds of King Donald and his minions, and even worse, encouraged by the chairman emeritus in his folly ...

The bromancer, being a 97pound weakling who always got sand kicked in his face on the beach, is ripe for a Charles Atlas course, and is obsessed with the usual nerdish, weakling stuff which fills up his snowflake whining on a regular basis ...

The header: We’re an energy rich nation that’s chosen to be weak; The Iran war is a full-blown global crisis, a crisis in oil, gas and fertiliser. It devastatingly demonstrates Australia’s vulnerability.

The caption for the triptych of villains: Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and Chris Bowen hold a joint press conference at Parliament House regarding the national fuel security crisis. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

All the bromancer revealed in his four minute ramble is how easy it is to slip slide from his previous blather about a just war - neigh, an Xian white nationalist holy war - into wringing hands about the consequences, and blaming the wrong people for all that's gone wrong, is currently going wrong, and will keep going wrong for the foreseeable future ...

The Albanese government is floundering, as the nation is floundering, in response to the global economic crisis brought about by the Iran war.
Australia looks determined to learn every wrong lesson and make every wrong response.
Make no mistake. This is a full-blown global crisis, a crisis in oil, gas and fertiliser. It devastatingly demonstrates Australia’s vulnerability.
Two ominous new developments suggest this conflict may go on for quite some time. Donald Trump is sending thousands of US marines from several different locations to the region. This may be for negotiating leverage, but it may also mean he plans at least a limited ground operation.
The likeliest such operation would be to take Kharg Island, through which Iran gets 90 per cent of its oil income. That could take weeks and involve massive new conflict. The other big development is the Yemeni Houthis entering the war on Iran’s side.
So far they’ve only fired mis­siles at Israel and these appear to have been intercepted. But they could easily hit Saudi energy infrastructure, as they have in the past. Worse, they could again strike shipping in the Red Sea, especially the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

How to describe the bromancer? 

The pond floundered recently trying to describe Dame Slap's pandering portrait of the beefy boofhead's wife, and so turned to John Hanscombe's recent effort in The Echnida to revive the term "drongo", which was once big in Tamworth, but has fallen out of favour ...

...Hanson was on song again last week, doubling down on her support for Trump, oblivious to the effect the war was having on her own constituency. Oblivious, too, to polling that shows most Australians do not support the war or Donald Trump. Most of us think he's the drongo-in-chief.
Then there was the Coalition call for the government to slash EV and home battery subsidies to fund a cut to the fuel excise. At the very moment Australians are reminded that solar power stored in batteries doesn't have to navigate the Strait of Hormuz and that EVs might be a better idea than diesel-guzzling utes, only a drongo would suggest making us even more dependent on fossil fuels.
The Nationals launched the No Fuel Here platform, encouraging users to report fuel shortages in regional areas. One problem was they had no intention of publishing the data collected, which instead would go to MPs. Another was the fine print saying that by using the platform, users agreed to receive material from the Nationals. In other words, a clumsy attempt at email harvesting from a bunch of drongos. (sorry, newsletter, no link)

Drongo!

The bromancer is exactly that sort of drongo.

Meanwhile the reptiles were offering a distraction from the bromancing drongo, featuring the Greater Israel campaign (sssh, don't mention the ethnic cleansing) ... A woman stands amid Hezbollah flags on March 29, 2026, in the Choueifat area on the outskirts of Beirut. Picture: AFP

The drongo of the moment kept blathering away ...

The Houthis have limited missile stocks but appear to have plenty of drones. Without a navy and without much national infrastructure, the Houthis during the Gaza war provided what US naval commanders described as the most intense naval battle the US had fought since World War II.
The lethality of asymmetric warfare waged by drones has increased exponentially. The disruption to global energy markets could yet get much worse.
Australia’s situation is intensely vulnerable and constitutes a species of the theatre of the absurd. We possess the natural resources of an entire continent, just for us, a mere 28 million people, yet our hallucinogenic, Green-dominated politics has become so self-damaging that we import the vast majority of resources we use.
The Albanese government responds as it does to all national challenges – it will just spend loads more money.
Let’s deal with this at first principles. We’re rich because we export coal, iron ore and natural gas. Some other stuff, too, but those are the big three. Our crippling commitment to the fiction of net zero means we won’t develop any of these resources at home.
We insanely use the money we make from exporting fossil fuels to subsidise hugely expensive non-fossil fuel sources of energy domestically, but then because our economy still actually runs on fossil fuels we import vast quantities of refined fossil fuel.
Thus, we are a diesel economy. We export billions of dollars worth of coal to China. As the Page Research Centre’s brilliant new report, All at Sea: Fuel, War and Australia’s Achilles’ Heel, points out, we could easily make the diesel in Australia but we choose to import it.
China burns hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal a year to make diesel out of coal. We don’t do that ourselves because it produces a lot of emissions.

Ah, the old war with China routine, and never mind that China is taking leaps and bounds to turn itself into that new fangled notion of an electrostate.

Hanscombe was interesting on the origins of "drongo", though it's familiar enough for those who care and easily found online... (with more "d's" here, and never mind the asbestos lady's attempts to ruin the institution) ...

...from stage right, comes another drongo, Clive Palmer. Failing at the last election, he's re-entered the populist political fray with new sickly yellow advertisements. Last time it was the Trumpet of Patriots; this time it's the "New Deal", borrowed from Franklin Roosevelt's Depression-era reconstruction program. If at first, second, third or fourth, you don't succeed, try and fail again.
Which takes us neatly back to the origin of the expression drongo. Drongo was the name of a 1920s racehorse which never won a race after 37 starts and became the butt of jokes. A century later and the old slang word has a whole new currency.

Don't think the lizard Oz can match the drongo power of Clive?

Get past this meaningless snap ... A general view of the Port of Kharg Island Oil Terminal, 25 km from the Iranian coast. Picture: Getty Images

...and you can enjoy the drongo powers of the drongo bromancer in full flight ...

At least one Australian company believes it could do it with much lower emissions, but governments won’t go near any research on technology like that because of our net-zero commitments and obsessions.
At much lower levels of emissions, we could make diesel from gas. We are always going to be a diesel economy. There’s no substitute.
We’re already in a mess in this crisis yet the crisis hasn’t really begun. We have more oil than before the war began. But any oil we’re receiving now was dispatched on its long voyage well before this war began. Yet we’ve had hundreds of service stations without fuel and costs have shot through the roof.
This is especially so for artificial fertilisers, which are central to agricultural production and based on hydrocarbons.
The fertiliser itself is now much more expensive. The cost of transporting it is much more expensive. Some farmers, therefore, won’t plant cereals this year.
The whole world is still completely dependent on hydrocarbons. Renewable energy has added to fossil fuels but not made any significant impact in replacing them.
The Australian government’s own Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water website reports: “Fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) accounted for 91 per cent of Australia’s primary energy mix in 2023-24.” The primary energy mix goes beyond just electricity generation and includes transport, mining, agriculture, industry and the rest.

What a hoot. Embedded in the promo for the AV distraction is the immortal line "says expert", and just as you're expecting a real expert, you're served up the bromancer blathering to petulant Peta, two drongos, or numbskulls if you don't want to be dinkum ...

Sky News contributor Greg Sheridan says the US going to war with Iran is an “acute dilemma” with “no easy solution”. “This is an acute dilemma, and there’s no easy solution … Iran has proved itself to be worse than we thought,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “What other regime has just slaughtered 40,000 of its own citizens, what other regime is attacking desalination plants on which human lives depend in neighbouring states which are non-combatants, what other state has 400kg of uranium, illegally enriched to 60 per cent? ... This is a fanatical, devoted, regime, with an ideology that celebrates suicide.”

The pond had to enlarge that so the "says expert" can be seen.

Anyone can call themselves an expert at the lizard Oz ...

And so to a final word from the reptile expert drongo in chief ... doing the standard reptiles renewables schtick, with a grudging admission that maybe we should make a token gesture towards climate science ... but not too much, because who believes in climate science when we can blow the joint up, thanks to King Donald and the Emeritus Chairman ...

It’s reasonable to try to run a clean environment and even reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis. But we’ve decided, insanely, to ape the worst of West European policy in trying to convert to an entirely renewables energy basis. We can’t do it. It won’t ever happen. And we can afford, even temporarily, the grotesque indulgence of it all only because of our exports of raw fossil fuels, which other people then add value to.
The Nationals’ Alison Penfold made the blindingly obvious point in parliament: “If these fuels are important enough to stockpile, they are important enough to produce.” Her Nationals’ colleague, Anne Webster, quoted Geoscience Australia estimates we could have 17 billion barrels of oil we haven’t developed. Our shale oil alone could supply us for 43 years.
Australia is uniquely vulnerable and uniquely culpable for its vulnerability. We are at the end of the world’s longest supply chains. We face many potential choke points beyond the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea.
Yet despite our vulnerability, we have among the smallest fuel reserves of any OECD nation. The Albanese government has been in office for four years and has no right to blame this on the admittedly woeful performance of the Coalition government before it. And we have no merchant fleet to move energy. And no defence force to protect it.
Our economic problems are supply problems. We’re perhaps the only nation in the world that could be energy self-sufficient but has chosen not to be.
The opposition, having finally rejected net zero, must campaign furiously on the issue if Australia is to have a chance of preserving its sovereignty.

But the bromancer gave up his sovereignty long ago to an American-owned company, with its Emeritus Chairman encouraging King Donald to embark on a folly. 

Of such supine stuff are drongos made...

And so to the Groaning of the day ...

The header: Expect Jim’s ‘reform’ budget to come with some big caveats; Using the false cloak of intergenerational inequality, Chalmers may still decide to push on with his ill-considered changes to tax.

The caption? Yet again the reptiles forgot to tag it, but everyone knows it's the chief villain, the main heel, Dame Groan's bête noire, and the reptiles loved that image of his grim mug so much, you can see it repeated down the page.

This was a standard four minute groaning, and truth to tell, these days the sighing and the whining and the whingeing and the groaning tends to be water off the pond's duck-like back.

The pond really only persists with the Dame because of her cult following ...

The conflict in the Middle East has thrown the preparation for this year’s budget into disarray. Jim Chalmers had been talking it up as the statement that would finally deliver real reform.
He even went to the trouble of classifying its contents into spending restraint, tax reform and productivity. At this stage it looks unlikely he’ll deliver. Using the false cloak of intergenerational inequality, Chalmers may still decide to push on with a series of ill-considered and ill-timed changes to the taxation of capital/savings.
The pressure to be seen as a reforming Treasurer may be sufficient to prevent common sense from prevailing.
One issue that came to a head on Monday following national cabinet was the reduction in the petrol excise rate to compensate households and businesses for the impact of higher fuel costs. Apart from the budgetary costs of doing so, there is also the vexed issue of whether this action would add to underlying inflation when inflation is running well above the annual target band of 2 to 3 per cent. This will make it even likelier that the Reserve Bank will lift the cash rate again before the May budget.
The Coalition pushed for the excise to be cut, suggesting it be funded by eliminating some other spending. The government has not proposed any saving offsets.

Nothing to see here by way of visual distractions ... Anthony Albanese holds a joint press conference at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

There are likely some might care, but this was a siren song the pond had heard too many times. 

There was no reason to be strapped to the mast...

Because the excise is a flat tax, the higher price for fuel does not raise any additional revenue. Higher volumes will have that effect, but this surge in demand may not last. There will be additional GST revenue because of the higher fuel prices but this ends up with the states. Some environmentalists have seized this opportunity to call for the elimination of the diesel fuel rebate that applies to off-road use by miners and farmers, in particular. But the purpose of the rebate is widely misunderstood; it is for off-road use only and avoids a distorting tax on tax.
By this stage of the year, the Treasury will be close to finalising many details in the budget, particularly in relation to the domestic and international economic outlook contained in Statement 2, Budget Paper No.1. The final figures in the tables and commentary will have to be delayed to the last minute, although these figures find their way into the estimates of the receipts and payments over the forward estimates.
The Treasurer’s recent interest in spending restraint contrasts with his record as the top money man. When he first took the reins, government spending was $627bn or 24.3 per cent of GDP. This financial year it is expected to reach $787bn or 26.9 per cent of GDP.
And note that these figures don’t include the massive ramp-up in off-budget spending. It’s a wonder Chalmers hasn’t attracted the moniker: Hey, Big Spender. He still likes to quote the meaningless figure of $114bn of savings and reprioritisations the government has achieved. That of course is a gross figure, with actual spending rising by $160bn since 2022-23.
Chalmers also makes the ridiculous claim that government debt is now lower under Labor even as it floats past the $1 trillion mark. Trying to make a pointless comparison with something written down in 2022 in the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook smacks of desperation, although the fact he is not picked up by journalists is also depressing.
According to the most recent figures, the fastest growing spending items in the budget include debt servicing, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, hospitals, aged care, childcare and defence. There will be talk about restricting the growth of outlays on the NDIS, in particular. But without significant structural reforms it’s impossible to see spending being kept below the growth of the economy.

The pond only perked up as Dame Groan revealed her socialist inclinations by endorsing a road tax ...and even approved of employing cardigan wearers to work out the how of it ...

There have been rumours that a national road user charge is being contemplated, which will become more important if electric vehicles increase in popularity. There are technical limits on the ability of the states to do this; it will be up to the federal government to enact such a scheme. But whether the timing would be fortuitous is unclear. The best approach is probably to commission a practical review and to seek constructive input from those most affected.

Pause for an AV distraction ...

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says Australians are paying a “hefty price” for the impact of the war in Iran. “The war in the Middle East is doing a great deal of damage to the global economy, and Australians are paying a hefty price for that,” Mr Chalmers said during Question Time. “What we’ve announced today are additional steps to try and ease some of the pressures that Australians are feeling as a consequence of that war in the Middle East.”

Then Dame Groan could resume by having a go at EVs.

The pond takes it as a sign that EVs are at last taking off, and so the reptiles are threatened.

Again it was formulated in a way cultists would love ... "tax the rich", a mantra the reptiles seem to love in principle, but rarely in practice ...

One policy begging for reform or elimination is the fringe benefit tax exemption for novated leases of EVs. This is one of the most inefficient schemes around; it favours those on higher incomes and is costing the budget billions of dollars in forgone revenue. The cost has more than tripled from earlier estimates, with a figure of nearly $3bn in 2028-29 alone.
Unsurprisingly, interested parties, including those providing novated leases, have been trying to dissuade the government from making changes. But if Chalmers is serious about making real budget savings, this looks like low-hanging fruit. As cheap China-made EVs flood the market, it’s not clear that any form of subsidy is required for potential EV buyers.
There is also the Cheaper Home Batteries scheme that was so badly designed that its estimated costs tripled shortly after it was introduced. At one stage a figure of more than $7bn was estimated as the cost of subsidising relatively well-off households for installing oversized batteries.

Yep, EVs are on the move, and batteries and solar and reptiles of the Dame Groan kind are suddenly socialist...

My advice is to lower your expectations about the forthcoming budget. The reform will be piecemeal and arbitrary and won’t make any material difference to the budget’s bottom line, at least in the short term, but will annoy a group of voters who typically don’t vote Labor.
There will be a few heroic assumptions about reining in spending that won’t come to pass but may impress on the day. Any future economic downside will be the fault of events outside the control of the government, a point Chalmers will be keen to emphasise. Just don’t mention stagflation and falling living standards.

Sadly, the pond finds it can leave Dame Groan's advice parked at the door ... especially as she offered piecemeal and arbitrary advice in a column more dismal than usual ...

Heck, just fang it ...

And now for completists, thanks to the intermittent archive working early this morning, the pond is able to range over reptile offerings with teaser trailers ...

Excise cut a repeat of Covid-era handouts
The inflation dragon was never slayed. Instead, it is now hovering over Australia, blowing fire storms across the regions and cities.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Geoff could only manage a couple of minutes of time wasting...

One thing the pond will note ... on the weekend, the Hume highway was exceptionally quiet ... 

Only EVs and a few trucks dared roam the range last Sunday, as the pond discovered this incredibly cute offering in Gundagai ...

So far from home ...

And so to another offering, this one again just two minutes ...

Please explain: Why Anthony Albanese should get on the phone with Donald Trump
A call to the White House is perhaps more difficult than giving away $2.5bn to try to appease the punters on petrol.
By Dennis Shanahan

This is the reason the pond doesn't pay much attention to the lesser drongos on the far right just offering filler for the day.

The bouffant one ended with a word salad ...

...public concern and growing doubts and confusion about the aims and cost of the Trump ­attack on Iran have led Albanese to publicly complain about a lack of clarity over the US actions, which doesn’t put Trump off side but qualifies the Australian ­position.
“I want to see more certainty in what the objectives of the war are, and I want to see a de-escalation. So, a de-escalation is in the global economy’s interests,” the Prime Minister said as he added $2.55bn to the budget bill.
Making his position on Iran clear he declared: “I have nothing but contempt for the Iranian regime.”
But, listing the shifting objectives of the US military action, Albanese said “what is going to occur” needs to be spelt out.
The last time Albanese had a “warm” conversation with Trump was on March 10, at 2am, to discuss the fate of the Iranian women footballers who were seeking asylum at the time.
And, although there is regular contact between the administrations there hasn’t been a leaders’ conversation since then and nor has the US yet appointed an ambassador to Canberra.
Given Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong once suggested the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, should just get on the phone to Trump, perhaps the present Prime Minister should do the same, but that’s probably more difficult than just giving away $2.5bn to try to appease the punters on petrol.

As if you can reason with a mad King, or do deals, knowing he lies all the time, and breaks deals as easily as he lies.

The pond got rid of the canny Cranston even more quickly ...

Here we go again … Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers spend their way out of Iran War fuel crisis
The fuel excises cut is a clear signal the budget will include more new spending justified by an attempt at saving the economy from a Covid-style recession.
By Matthew Cranston

Of course the reptiles face a problem in all this, as does the government.

It was the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way wot suggested it, as noted in his Facebook video ...(a link does not endorse Facebook or suggest anyone should visit)

Finally, Labor has taken our advice and halved the fuel excise tax. It’s a step in the right direction, but it raises another big question, why is the Prime Minister always the last to lead in a national crisis?

Awkward, so all the reptiles can do is raise saucy doubts and fears, and conjure up the inflation dragon, and talk of Covid days and such like, while downplaying the way the big spend was something both sides agreed on.

But mention of the beefy boofhead did remind the pond that tucked below the fold were some pearls of wisdom.

The pond usually doesn't pay attention to these pearls, but this one raised some interesting questions for the beefy boofhead ... though it came by way of an attack on the pasty Hastie ...

A class war?

Was the dropper of these pearls of wisdom aware that Dame Groan had suggested ... gasp ... taxing the rich? Or at least the EV/solar rich...

Before the pond could get onto the question of whether the pasty Hastie endorsed Dame Groan's views, there was a visual interruption featuring the usual villains, chortling at the thought of their evil deeds ... Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then the irritating grain of sand in the flesh kept on ...but what did it all mean?

The pond took it as a sign that the pasty Hastie scored a big hit with his ABC interview, and the reptiles are now in panic mode ...

Or take Hastie’s assertion that America’s Iran war is a “huge miscalculation”: a big call to make at this stage of the conflict.
If this is Hastie’s considered military view, it is certainly worth listening to. But this line has been taken by US isolationists and anti-Trump Democrats who are desperate for this enterprise to fail.

What a classic. Now it's not a war, nor even a special military operation, nor even an excursion. Now it's an enterprise, and no doubt soon will be applying for Pty. Ltd. status.

But do go on ...

And when Hastie declares “multinationals and big business” in Australia “have lost their social licence”, is he backing the left’s view that Canberra’s politicians and bureaucrats should assert more control over them?
Hastie suggests neoliberalism is all but dead. In this regard, at least, he is on a unity ticket with Anthony Albanese and the modern Labor Party, which in the late 1990s under Kim Beazley denounced the Hawke-Keating policy legacy.
Yet if he’s worried about our dire economic predicament and wants to see young people climb the ladder of opportunity, he should be directing his rhetorical fire at the Albanese government’s neo-socialism.
Let’s discard the undergraduate labels and consider what neoliberalism means in practice.
It was the policy model embraced by Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard in this country. It was not an ideological project but a pragmatic one. By dismantling protectionist barriers, deregulating our domestic markets, means-testing welfare and lowering income tax burdens, they aimed to unlock the economy’s growth potential. It was the original abundance agenda.

The reptiles used the moment to try to flog their wares, but the wretched illustration was more than enough to put the pond off ...

PREMIUM
Andrew Hastie's hit-back at Trump
Become a member to access our premium video content

Really reptiles? You can't even get the distracting snap's proportions right, and yet you want people to splurge their shekels?

And so to even more panic:

As the fiscal, regulatory and taxation footprint of government was wound back, the scope for individuals and companies to aim big and prosper increased.
The growing economic pie this created weakened the politics of envy and class division in this country, strengthening our social cohesion and national pride.
And as our economy become more flexible and resilient, our ability to ride out global economic and security shocks increased.
It is no accident that as we’ve progressively dismantled the policy legacy of Hawke, Keating and Howard, the economic and social foundations of this country have been weakened and, with them, our ability to defend ourselves from foreign and local threats.
When Hastie rejects neoliberalism, does he have in mind a right-wing version of the Albanese government, junking net zero but pursuing some other centrally devised vision or plan?
Tony Blair was wrong. In politics, there is no third way. If you demonise the market system, you must by default be a supporter of statism. If Hastie merely means that, in a more fractured world, we should strengthen our national defence force and develop some sovereign capabilities while remaining a market-based economy, that is another matter.
But in that case, the “look at me” neoliberal critique does not have to be made.

What a sublime black and white approach.

The reptiles flung in a final distraction ...

Bondi Partners Senior Adviser Peter McGauran says Shadow Industry and Sovereign Capability Minister Andrew Hastie has the “gift of clarity”. Mr McGauran told Sky News Australia that Andrew Hastie is “an issue” for Opposition Leader Angus Taylor. “He’s definitely getting into areas that are the province of others.”

And there followed one last pearler of alarm...

Hastie is clearly rattled by the rise of One Nation. He is right to challenge a Liberal Party that is in denial about the existential threat it poses. But is he offering a coherent, carefully thought through way forward for conservatives or is he an ideological bowerbird, picking up ideas from wherever he can find them, including JD Vance and the Labor Party?
Perhaps Hastie’s many pronouncements are his way of working out just what he thinks, a bit like a teenager who says they are a socialist one day and libertarian the next. That is not necessarily a bad thing – unlike so many of his peers, Hastie is thinking about the world and responding to popular frustrations, but at some point he needs to find his political due north.
If he wants to be a future leader of the Liberal Party and this country and not just a gadfly at the margins, it needs to be sooner rather than later.
David Pearl is a former Treasury assistant secretary.

It needs to be sooner rather than later?

The pond had thought the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way was pretty safe for the moment, what with Dame Slap writing up uxorious, gushing texts about his partner in life, and the other reptiles sounding all in, but suddenly rattled reptiles are calling for another leadership challenge, and the sooner the better.

Bring it on, there can never be enough entertainment when it comes to prime Angus beef.

Second thoughts, haven't we got enough entertainment already?

Finally, he's not the best talent talking to camera, but compared to the lizard Oz's practitioners of the dismal science, he's not entirely wrong either ...(there's a transcript here for those that find that easier)

In which the Caterist and Major Mitchell are on a war footing ...

 

The reptiles are intent on ignoring the real villains for the current world-wide crisis, King Donald and his minions, and those who encouraged him in his folly, such as the Emeritus Chairman ...

Instead there was the chance for a crowing amidst the carnage ...

The reptiles also dropped the pastie Hastie off the front page, and you had to head to another place to read the likes of Hastie’s truth bombs on tax and war will rattle the Liberal Party (*intermittent archive link)

...On foreign affairs, Hastie has gone where no major party politician has gone: admitting Donald Trump’s war in Iran represented a “huge miscalculation”. Hastie proves that one can hold this view at the same time as retaining a disdain for the theocratic butchers of Tehran.
The war would dent American prestige and cast doubt on the president’s judgment, Hastie said, plunging Australia into a new, truly multipolar era in which military and economic self-sufficiency will be crucial.
The effect of Hastie’s interview, which came after weeks of outspoken interventions, will accelerate the conversation about the potential upside of a Hastie-led Liberal Party.

Or you could turn to the source, the ABC, Andrew Hastie says Iran war a 'huge miscalculation' by Donald Trump

Or The Conversation, Andrew Hastie calls out Trump’s war strategy

Where's the bromancer when he's needed to repent and recalibrate? Where's Lord Downer, in his finery, high heels and stockings, ready to explain it all away?

What reptile dared to stand up with the hastie pasty, gone wild-eyed rogue?

None.

Instead it was left to hapless Geoff to chamber a round on the extreme far right ...

Anthony Albanese faces his worst year yet as Andrew Hastie looms as a future Liberal Party leader
There are two big questions that will be answered ahead of the 2028 election: will Anthony Albanese run for a historic third term and will Andrew Hastie make his move on Angus Taylor?
By Geoff Chambers

Sublimely, the chambering managed to avoid any mention of King Donald's war as he contemplated that rogue pasty Hastie...

...Taylor has done a solid job to date.
The Coalition’s primary vote in Newspoll is up, the Opposition Leader has narrowed the gap to an increasingly unpopular Prime Minister and the popular vote for One Nation appears to have plateaued.
The challenge for Taylor and his senior team is to keep out of their own way and ensure they don’t give Labor easy ways out.
The fuel excise policy intervention, which recycled one of Peter Dutton’s election losing ideas, was not needed.
While plenty of Australians would like cheaper petrol, the issue right now is finding fuel.
The Coalition needs to better understand when to intervene and when to not.
The Albanese government is under massive pressure.
Similar to the pandemic, the opposition should attack the government’s mistakes while not providing ammunition for Labor or One Nation.
Despite returning to shadow cabinet, Hastie on Sunday showed he will not be muzzled and will continue to speak his mind on whatever issue he chooses, even if it is contrary to formal Coalition policy.
Hastie’s intervention, which included being open to increasing taxes on the gas industry and clamping down on capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing, will be weaponised by Labor during the final parliamentary sitting week before the Easter break and the federal budget.
Taylor needs to keep his team on the same page.

The oil crisis has magically turned up out of nowhere - likely greenies are to blame - and the team just has to stay solid, and ssshh, don't mention the war.

This was the one disassociated mention of the war in that feeble Chambering ...

The Iran war and its associated impacts will fundamentally alter Treasury’s forecasts and the nation’s economic outlook.

You don't say, Sherlock ...

What a pity you were completely clueless about who caused it, and it was left to the pastie Hastie to bell that cat (yes, even broken clocks ...)

Naturally, the careening, cratering Crater was an astute diviner of the real reasons for the crisis, up there with his analysis of flood waters in quarries.

The header: Labor has turned its back on real victims of this oil shock; The party’s natural constituency is no longer those who drive the economy, but those who interpret it.

The caption for the opening snap? Sorry, there was none. Yet again the reptiles forgot to tag it, but no matter, the gesticulating man looks incredibly sinister and is likely a villain.

Ironies never cease, and reptile mischief makers abound, and so it was that prize blatherer, that "interpreter" braying about "those who interpret it", who spent four minutes blaming everyone but King Donald ...

A minister’s diary clash can tell us more about a government’s true priorities than a thousand scripted answers in question time. Last week, the Energy Minister assured the House that the government had been working tirelessly with state governments and industry to alleviate the effects of the fuel crisis.
Yet Chris Bowen’s decision to skip the last national cabinet to attend informal net-zero discussions with Pacific climate ministers suggests his mind is elsewhere. Bowen prioritised attending an open-ended talkfest about the energy system of the future over addressing the crisis in the energy system we actually have.
As we enter the fifth week of the war against Iran, Bowen maintains that all is quiet on the western front. He says fuel reserves remain strong and more is on the way. Australia’s two refineries “are working absolutely full pelt”, he told ABC Insiders last week. He insists we have the same, if not slightly more, petrol and diesel in Australia than before the crisis began.
Yet his narrative jars with the mood on the Metro filling station forecourt on Hoxton Park Rd in western Sydney, where motorists were lining up last week to top up their tanks at $2.50 a litre.
Bowen calls this panic buying. Yet, with fuel prices rising week by week, others might call it prudence. Motorists are doing exactly what rapid inflation encourages: buying earlier, buying more often and avoiding exposure to higher prices.

Just remember the advantages of EVs, and renewables, the pond suggests, as the reptiles did manage to tag the next snap, Anthony Albanese holds a press briefing about the fuel crisis with Chris Bowen in Sydney. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Inevitably the Caterist was all in on fomenting hysteria, and panic - that's what flood waters in quarries diviners do best ...

On Thursday afternoon in question time, the Energy Minister was challenged about the rising level of bowser anxiety by the member for Lindsay, Melissa McIntosh, who raised the plight of Shane from Penrith.
“The way things are going, I won’t be able to afford to go to work,” Shane said. “It’s either pay the bills and starve or eat and not pay the bills.”
Bowen appeared unmoved. He insisted the government could not be blamed for rising oil prices and referred Shane to the state government app that gives real-time service station prices.
Not for the first time, the Albanese government has fallen into the trap of mistaking the mood in inner-city coffee shops for that of the country as a whole.
In Erskineville, in Sydney’s inner west, for example, public transport and cycle paths are so plentiful that a quarter of households don’t bother to own a car.
Normal life is impossible in the outer suburbs without a car. That’s why three out of five households in Penrith go to the expense of owning two or more vehicles compared to one out of five households in Erskineville.
Nine out of 10 people who travel to work in Penrith use a car. On average, they travel further to work, and a few enjoy the luxury of paying for fuel with a company credit card. The effects of the fuel crisis are deeply regressive. It is punishing the working poor in outer-suburban districts far harder than households with higher incomes in more fashionable suburbs.
The government’s response to rising fuel prices has been to wash its hands of responsibility, blaming international markets and hinting at fuel company price gouging.
There is no evidence whatsoever of predatory behaviour by retailers, nor would there likely be in a fiercely competitive market where a range of independent companies competes aggressively on price.

Roll that one around on your tongue again, and enjoy the Menzies Research Centre flavour ...

There is no evidence whatsoever of predatory behaviour by retailers, nor would there likely be in a fiercely competitive market where a range of independent companies competes aggressively on price.

And so to the wretch himself, thankfully reduced to a screen cap, Menzies Research Centre Senior Fellow Nick Cater says Australians are seeing political figures as taking the public for “granted”. “These revelations about Anika Wells and others in the party,” Mr Cater said. “They think the political class are taking them for granted.”

Time to bash renewables and alternatives such as home batteries ...

Indeed, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s latest weekly survey shows retail margins have contracted strongly since February. In Melbourne, for example, the average retail price of 176.1 cents a litre for regular unleaded on February 20 was 24c a litre, more than the average terminal gate price. Last week, with the average price at 250.8, the retailer’s mark-up was just 2.3 cents per litre.
The biggest price component beyond the Singapore benchmark, which was around $1.07 on Friday, is fuel excise duty and GST.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s proposal to halve fuel excise duty for three months would cut the pump price overnight by around 26c a litre. Taylor also announced a 50 per cent reduction in the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge to assist the transport industry.
The Treasurer will be reluctant to cut revenue, but Taylor has helped him by identifying commensurate cuts: scrapping the electric vehicle fringe benefits tax exemption, slashing green hydrogen projects and freezing the home battery scheme, which offers consumers an attractive 30 per cent subsidy.
In a rational world, these cuts would be uncontroversial. The FBT exemption is transparently a tax cut for the rich, the kind of measure to which the Labor Party would once have been resolutely opposed.
The generosity of the home battery subsidy has made it wildly popular. The cost blew out to $7.2bn in less than six months, triple its initial budget. Once again, it is an example of government largesse to the already privileged: homeowners wealthy enough to install solar panels on their roofs and with enough spare capital or borrowing capacity to bear the upfront costs while amortising the returns over time.

Poor beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, struggling to stay relevant as the pastie Hastie made his play ...Angus Taylor proposed to halve fuel excise duty for three months. Picture: Martin Ollman

And so to a rousing 'oils is oils' climax ...

Handing out any more green hydrogen subsidies would be plain silly when no one in the private sector has been able to assemble a viable business case.
Yet none of these cuts would be easy for Bowen, who remains fixated by the real energy crisis, not a shortage of fuel but an excess of emissions.
Labor once understood itself as a party of material interests: wages, prices, the universal provision of health and education. Its instincts were shaped by the pressures of everyday life, with particular concern for the downtrodden and dispossessed.
Those old-fashioned socialist instincts have dulled. In their place is a politics more concerned with systems than outcomes and the future rather than the present. Its natural constituency is no longer those who drive the economy, but those who interpret it.
The party has become remote – and not a little disdainful – of the people who grow things, make things, import and distribute things. All of which, inconveniently, require energy in real time, not 30 years hence.
The oil crisis gives the government a chance to recalibrate, to acknowledge the limits of current assumptions and the indispensability of hydrocarbons. It is an opportunity that will almost certainly be squandered.

Indeed, indeed ... but credit where credit is due ...

Major Mitchell was also on a war footing ...

The header: Outright hostility to Donald Trump and Israel colours media’s reporting of Iran war; Analysis of the war should not gloss over miscalculations by the US and Israel. Equally, the rush to doomsday pessimism undermines journalism’s credibility.

The caption: Bulk carriers sit anchored at Muscat anchorage in Oman. Picture: Getty Images

The Major spent a bigly five minutes filing and filling his report for the Australian Daily Zionist News, but before beginning, the pond did wonder if that correspondent's suggestion that he matched up with Colonel Blimp was in any way fair ...

Probably not, though that bird skewed the 'mo sample ...

And so to the Major doing his best to defend King Donald, his minions, and above all, the current government of Israel's quest for a greater Israel, and never mind a little ethnic cleansing...

Much of the world’s media seems happy to publish instant criticism of every statement by US President Donald Trump.
The Nine papers in Australia, most commercial broadcasters and the ABC last week reported Iran’s denials that it was negotiating with Trump, based on statements from Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the speaker of its parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
The Iranians would say that. Several layers of the regime have been eliminated and it is unlikely anyone privately talking to the US via intermediaries would admit to it given what the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps might do to them.
Journalists don’t realise the regime paranoia triggered by Trump’s claims Iran was “desperate for a deal” could actually help the US.
As Mehdi Parpanchi, executive editor at US-based Iran International TV, wrote on Tuesday on Substack, the US President’s statement “is already producing an outcome Trump wants: psychological pressure inside Tehran and calmer energy markets outside it”.
As The Wall Street Journal argued on Wednesday, Iran’s regime had plenty of incentive “to deny, deny, deny and keep markets roiled”.
Yet by Tuesday morning it was already clear Pakistan was involved in brokering a deal with Iran. Egypt and Turkey were helping.
The Gulf states were pressuring Iran. Saudi Arabia’s leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the UAE said they wanted the war to continue.

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of a journalist butcher, just the sort of man the Major loves quoting, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. Picture: AAP

The Major kept on with his padding ...

UAE ambassador to the US Yousef Al Otaiba wrote in the WSJ: “We need a decisive outcome that addresses the full spectrum of Iran’s threats: nuclear capabilities, missiles, drones, proxy networks and disruptions to international shipping routes.”
Nine Newspapers’ international editor Peter Hartcher on Tuesday wrote an opinion piece under the headline “Trump has no idea what he is doing”.

Now fair should be fair.

All the links in the next Major gobbet just kept reptile readers inside the lizard Oz hive mind.

There was no link to Hartcher, harumphing Trump has no idea what he's going. Now his hubris has put the world on edge... (*intermittent archive link)

It takes a lot for the pond to admit that the harping Hartcher had a point, but this is was his opening thrust ...

Great powers are prone to great delusions. Vladimir Putin thought he’d defeat Ukraine in three days. The Pentagon believed him. The war is now in its fifth year.
Donald Trump allowed a little extra time for his planned war on Iran. He was confident of defeating the Islamic Republic in four days, according to a credible expert. It’s now halfway through its fourth week.
The war is turning out to be full of surprises for the American president. First, before the war began, his administration assured anxious officials in Turkey that the US-Israeli assault on Iran would be over in four days, says Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkish scholar with the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The administration had convinced itself that if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were removed, the entire Iranian regime would collapse in short order: “Trump wanted to carry out a hit-and-run move, and now he is stuck in an open-ended war,” she says.
Trump should not have been surprised. His own peak intelligence adviser had told him not to expect the regime to fall: “A classified report by the National Intelligence Council found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the US would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment,” reports The Washington Post.
The intelligence assessment had been informed by a raft of government experts on Iran. It seems Trump consulted no Iran specialists anywhere inside or outside the government.
Bloomberg, however, reports that he was urged by the well-known authority on Iran, Rupert Murdoch, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran. Should we be surprised that the president who advised his population to try injecting bleach to cure COVID also did no homework on going to war?

Nor did the Emeritus Chairman do his homework.

Naturally the Major couldn't mention that little tidbit in his summary ...

Hartcher’s points can be boiled down to Trump underestimating the Iranian regime’s military; Trump rejecting US defence warnings Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz; and Trump treating with contempt US allies who were not keen to send ships to protect the vital waterway.
Hartcher saw the weekend’s revelation Iran had fired two long-range missiles at Diego Garcia, 4000km away in the Indian Ocean, as a reason the US should be cautious. This column reckons long-range missiles and 400kg of enriched uranium are reasons to hit Iran hard.
And what of the potential for success? What if Iran’s hard line speaker can become a leader the West can deal with?
What if the UK and NATO countries do end up patrolling the Persian Gulf, which they need but Trump does not because the US is self-sufficient in fossil fuels?

What if?

That's the best the Major has got while the world goes to hell in a handbasket, and it will take years for the world to recover from King Donald's deed?

What if the Major is a major twerp and a fool?

Fear always spooks markets, and oil shocks produce the most fear. Fear has been driving reporting about the war rather than action in the region, which was actually slowing before an uptick by Israel late last week when a truce looked possible.
The Jerusalem Post has examined the war’s progress and on Wednesday produced an assessment more sober than reporting in Australia and in the US.
Strikes by the US and Israel on Iranian targets have fallen dramatically, possibly to as few as 240 a day, compared with 1000 a day by both the US and Israel in week one.
There is separate evidence Iranian strikes against Israel, and against the Gulf states, have also fallen, probably because Iran’s launch capabilities have been severely degraded.

The way the reptiles work is always to toss in a billy goat butt ...

Analysis of the war should not gloss over miscalculations by the US and Israel.

But that's always so the butt can be refuted ...

Equally, the rush to doomsday pessimism undermines journalism’s credibility and ignores the plight of ordinary Iranians and the Sunni Gulf States.
If Trump derangement syndrome rules in much of the coverage, outright hostility to Israel’s right to defend itself dominates reporting of its war aims in Lebanon, where Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to drive Iran’s Hezbollah proxy from positions south of the Litani River, perhaps even occupying southern Lebanon.

Sadly the Major has a case of Trump delusion syndrome, accompanied by a severe dose of Zionism, and a seemingly endless devotion to Benji ... Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. speaks during a video released on social media. Picture: X

As always, it's the fault of the cardigan wearers ...

In Australia, much of the reporting treats Israel as an aggressor against Lebanon, even though the Lebanese would like nothing more than to be rid of Hezbollah.
The ABC, like Britain’s BBC, is always on the lookout for innocent Lebanese civilian victims but seems unable to find innocent Israelis affected by Hezbollah rockets across northern Israel.
Remember, 60,000 Israelis had to leave their homes in the country’s north for almost two years before the November 27 2024 truce.
Readers may have seen footage of a journalist being fired on near the Litani River on March 19. He claimed he was being deliberately targeted by the IDF as part of Israel’s war on journalists. It made compelling television.
The reporter, Steve Sweeney, is the Lebanon bureau chief of RT: Russia Today. Australian networks that aired the footage did not say the IDF had specifically warned in advance of that date that it would soon be targeting bridges across the Litani for destruction.

So to the Major's source, and here the pond must do a pre-emptive reference to a wiki for CAMERA...

CAMERA is known for its media monitoring and advocacy. It releases reports to counter what it calls "frequently inaccurate and skewed characterizations of Israel and of events in the Middle East" that it believes may fuel anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice.The group mobilizes protests against what it deems unfair media coverage by issuing full-page ads in newspapers, organizing demonstrations,[and encouraging sponsors to withhold funds.
CAMERA's critics have called it an "extreme Israel advocacy group" and said it is aligned with hawkish right-wing viewpoints, pays stipended fellows to write anti-Palestinian articles, and employs smear and intimidation tactics, routinely targeting media and journalists critical of Israel and pro-Palestinian activists on campuses.

Well yes, you don't get more peak Zionist than the Major, so naturally he was all in ...

Camera, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, said on March 23 that a BBC Verify investigation defending the footage as real failed to mention Sweeney used to write for the pro-Hezbollah outlet Al Mayadeen or that cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity used to work for Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV network.
By last Wednesday, Lebanon had decided to expel the Iranian ambassador. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on March 2 demanded Hezbollah disarm.
While Al Jazeera sided with Hezbollah against the ban, Salam told Saudi television on March 22 that Hezbollah’s “rocket fire towards Israel had led to heavy damage in Lebanon and undermined the government’s credibility”, the Times of Israel reported.
Trump is no doubt the most mercurial president the US has ever had. Netanyahu certainly has used the latest conflict to build his domestic popularity ahead of an election later this year.
But these facts do not invalidate the desire of the Arab Gulf States, Israel, Lebanon and long-suffering Iranians for an end to the violence the country’s mullahs have spread throughout the Middle East.
Trump on Wednesday said Iran had offered a precious gift, related to oil and gas.
The Times of Israel on Thursday reported Arab and US sources saying Iran had let some tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz as a sign of good faith.
As usual, Trump had made too much of a gesture that won’t alleviate high oil prices.

The reptiles decided to fling in a snap of King Donald looking a tad the worse for wear ... US President Donald Trump. Picture: AP

The pond seized the chance to slip in an matching 'toon referencing the old louche libertine...

The Major finally wrapped up ...

Don’t be surprised if Trump offers Iran continued oil sanctions relief, counterbalanced by the threat of 5000 US Marines being sent to take over the Kharg Island oil export facility 640km west of Hormuz if a deal is impossible.
On Friday, Trump extended the deadline on threats to destroy Iran’s energy system to April 6. He was trying to appease markets that on Thursday night (AEST) had their worst trading session since the start of the war.
No journalists know if a truce is possible. Negotiations are more difficult because the regime’s leaders are mainly dead.
The WSJ suggested on March 25 the way ahead may be a temporary truce that opens Hormuz but leaves the tough questions about Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and the longer-term arrangements in the Strait for future negotiation.

Don't be surprised?

The only time the pond will be surprised is if the Major ever stops sounding like the Australian Daily Zionist News.

Then we can turn back to other more gilt-edged and important matters...

And so to a few also rans, who should be noted as reptile contributors, not because the pond cares but because they were there on the Monday morning ...

One was Clive ...

Trump can still turn tide of war back in his favour
The coming weeks will clarify whether Tehran opts for de-escalation and survival or continued defiance.
By Clive Williams

The pond was happy to do a teaser trailer for that intermittent archive link ...

Clive counted as his credentials a role in two of the most astonishing US victories in recent times...

Clive Williams served with the US 173d Airborne Brigade in Vietnam, was an instructor at a US Army school, and was an adviser to the US commander in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2012.

Oh well, if it turns out as well as Afghanistan, Iranians will be sure to rejoice.

Clive was keen to see boots on the ground ...

...After weeks of sustained strikes, US forces hold overwhelming superiority in the air and at sea, and the island could be isolated from reinforcement. Timing appears favourable for rapid execution if ordered: Marine expeditionary forces are en route or arriving imminently.
Trump’s established pattern – issuing ultimatums, allowing brief pauses for negotiation or mediation, then escalating – suggests any decision window could arrive sooner rather than later, though recent extensions indicate diplomacy is still being tested.
Success in securing Kharg and its oil, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz under controlled conditions, could deliver a tangible strategic victory for US and allied interests. Importantly, this would not constitute an open-ended invasion or occupation of mainland Iran. It would represent a limited operation aimed at seizing a key economic chokepoint, protecting global commerce, and reasserting deterrence. Iran would retain the option to avert it through timely capitulation or a viable agreement.

Easy peasy ...

Simplistic Simon was also on hand ...

Forget the oil shock, the pond had a SloMo, liar from the shire shock at the next snap ...Scott Morrison was the last PM to cut the fuel excise in response to the oil supply shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Picture: Getty Images

Simplistic Simon quickly began to sound like one of those Monty Python sketches where old stagers tell young pups that things aren't so bad as the days when you got out of your bed at 4 am to enjoy a hearty breakfast of cheap tar. It was a bit of a surprise, given the way that the crackhead Caterist had tried to lather up a panic...

The oil price isn’t even close to the $US147 a barrel for benchmark Brent crude when it peaked in 2008 nor has it yet doubled as it did during the 1979 Iranian revolution in the second oil shock following the OPEC embargo of 1973.
But the context of today’s supply and price shock is different as it’s occurring during an ongoing cycle of pain for households and businesses.
The big story of the past four years that rarely rates a mention anymore is that the domestic economy has grown around 7.5 per cent. This is about the same level at which the population grew over the same period. In other words, GDP per capita has barely moved and GDP per capita has been virtually in recession for most of this period. The only reason GDP per person has stayed the same is because people are now working more hours to keep ahead of their declining standard of living.
The productivity shock across the economy has been profound. In effect, the response from the Albanese government has been to effectively transform a free-market economy to a government-directed one. While living standards have shown signs of finally beginning to lift again – marginally – few people will be feeling it. The current fuel price shock is set to put a torch to that.
It’s true Australia may have lifted slightly on this measure in the OECD rankings; its performance is still about a third of that experienced by comparatively wealthy countries. It is no wonder, then, that for many Australians the surge in fuel prices might feel like the straw that broke the camel’s back. While a temporary fuel price spike is not really a crisis in the same league as those we’ve recently witnessed, such as Covid and the global financial crisis, for many people it may feel like one.

The reptiles kept pumping the gas on the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, Angus Taylor has called for a temporary cut to the fuel excise. Picture: Martin Ollman;Pauline Hanson was the missing element in the 2008 crisis. Picture: Martin Ollman

Simpleton Simon kept spreading oil on troubled waters ...

Unsurprisingly, Angus Taylor has thrown down the gauntlet of a temporary cut to the fuel excise. While Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said Labor won’t go down this route, Albanese has left the door open. There are plenty of reasons why this is a dumb idea economically but equally good reasons that it is smart politically. It’s a well-worn one by Liberal leaders, starting with John Howard, and an easy one to dust off, considering it was part of the Coalition’s failed policy platform at the last election.
Yet precedent alone is not enough because the underlying circumstances now are different. The opposition has the luxury of not having to deliver it, which makes this a political issue rather than a genuine economic one.
While Scott Morrison was the last to cut the fuel excise in response to the oil supply shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it seems we have forgotten the more acute episode just after Kevin Rudd was elected, when the Coalition – this time in opposition – was demanding the same action. There have been many comparisons with today’s experience and that of 1973. But the 2008 oil shock should stand out as the better and more proximate domestic comparison.
There are competing theories on the causes of the 2008 crisis, but the general consensus is that a combination of a cut in supply by Saudi Arabia, a spike in demand from China and rampant price speculation in the commodities futures market saw the price rise to what is still its highest on record, at close to $US150 a barrel.
The cause may differ, but the result is the same. Price shocks at the bowsers. It is estimated that the price rise added almost one percentage point to inflation at the time, which peaked at 4.5 per cent in 2008. A federal by-election was also under way in the seat of Gippsland, with Brendan Nelson leading a demoralised Coalition. Fuel prices were central to the campaign.
Nelson was demanding a cut to fuel excise and proclaiming that fuel prices would be a central issue at the next election. The political dynamic to today’s contest is eerily similar – a fuel price spike, rising inflation, a by-election and a Liberal Party struggling for relevance. With one exception: an absence of Pauline Hanson in 2008.

How dire was this trip down memory lane with the simplistic one? Brendan Nelson and Kevin Rudd had much to ponder in 2008.

That dire, but luckily that was the signal that the final gobbet was on us ...

In a vacuum, what Taylor is proposing and what Albanese is considering would be inflationary. You can almost hear the economists screaming through the double-glazed glass of the Treasury Building windows not to do it. Offsetting the cost with equal or greater spending cuts to other government programs, however, is not. And this is what Taylor is proposing. That those programs he has nominated for a haircut to pay for the $1.5bn cost are those that Labor would never contemplate – such as the EV subsidies – exposes the naked political wedge.
Shovelling money into the economy to favour one affected group, in this case motorists without electric vehicles, while taking money out for others is not an extraordinary concept.
What economists hate, though, is when it becomes so politically tribal that the economics becomes the victim. One side seeks to prop up its own constituency while taking from its opponent’s people.
Had it not been for One Nation, Taylor may not have decided to go down this path as he is now also seeking to get his own people back. Just as Nelson was facing a by-election with fuel as the local concern, so too now is Taylor facing the same battle with a May by-election in Farrer but with a very different opponent.
As economist Chris Richardson has said, Australia has become pretty good at dealing with crises when they arise but appallingly bad at dealing with the chronic problems that cause them.
Enough Australian motorists have seen this horror movie before to know better than to panic. The question is whether there are enough politicians who have learned anything from it.

Did this simplistic analysis have any purpose?

Yes, it served as an introduction to the immortal Rowe ...and the good, gassed-up times ahead ...

Good times down the road for the beefy boofhead, with the sort of grille any reptile would envy ...(the pond denies any resemblance to flying pigs whatsoever).

Meanwhile, in another country ... with a man who confesses he's recovering from a hangover.