In which the pond returns to discover the swishing Switzer and a certain Zoe, and wished it had stayed oblivious in the big smoke ...

 

And why not help Saudi Arabia with nukes?

Israel has got nukes, Iran wants them, so why not smooth the way for even more? 

The pond had expected the reptiles to at least make a note, but top of the digital page ma, this morning, came this yarn ...

EXCLUSIVE
Jihadi Tareq Kamleh’s survival was a secret ALP sat on for years
Labor kept Tareq Kamleh’s survival secret for years despite being briefed multiple times, as his father speaks for the first time.
By Paul Garvey and Mohammad Alfares

Nah, hard pass. If he comes back, prosecute him according to the law. (And think of the hay the reptiles would be able to reap with that never ending jihad!)

Down below that, the obsession with Gina's pet continued, with three stories all in a row ...

EXCLUSIVE
Swan’s warning: One Nation is Labor’s biggest electoral threat
As Wayne Swan sounds the alarm over Pauline Hanson, Linda Burney says Aboriginal constitutional recognition is still possible in Australia’s future.
By Greg Brown

COMMENTARY
I was the true brains behind One Nation. Here’s why Pauline is in strife
Everyone has an opinion of what One Nation is – mostly, they’re wrong.
By David Oldfield

Did the pond need to spend time with another irrelevant loon of the Oldfield kind? And his delusions of Svengali grandeur?

Nah, hard pass ...

Perhaps the reptiles covered it yesterday, but this should have been the angle ...

Geoff was on hand to chamber another round and concoct a radical conspiracy theory ...

Commentary by Geoff Chambers
This time round, Albanese’s got them by the Shorten curlies
Anthony Albanese tried to disrupt the last ALP conference in Adelaide – now he’s the master
Expect well-orchestrated faux debates enshrining motions at this Labor conference that are ultimately designed to help the PM push ahead with new policies, some potentially even radical.

Sheesh, that's a pun that made the pun-addicted pond flinch.

Sorry, Geoff didn't actually mention Gina's pet, but whatever, it was inserted into the Gina pet's stew, a bit of trading off trolling, with that alarmist fear-mongering unexplained and left to a darkening final sentence ...

Expect well-orchestrated, stage-managed, faux debates enshrining motions that are ultimately designed to help Albanese push ahead with new policies, some potentially even radical, aimed at helping Labor win a third term in 2028.

"Potentially even radical"?

The pond's mother used to say that if you had nothing to say, best to say nothing, but Geoff apparently hadn't heard the saying, and squeezed out two minutes of drivel.

Well played Geoff, but nah, time to head over to the far right for a serve of the swishing Switzer ...

The header: Do celebrity activists really hold any political influence? The celebrity chorus may dominate the headlines. In the end, it never gets the final vote.

The caption suggesting that the swishing Switzer was shamelessly trading off on someone who still had way more box office clout than him: Paul Hogan carrying dead crocodile in bar in a scene from the film Crocodile Dundee, 1986.

One of my favourite sideshows of modern politics is the celebrity chorus: the actors, singers and writers among whom ideological conformity is as thick as Beijing smog.
Paul Hogan recently added another layer to that smog when he criticised Pauline Hanson for suggesting Australia should be a monoculture. “She’s a pelican. Outrageous, so racist. It sounds very much like this stupid boofhead over here, Trump,” the Los Angeles-based actor and comedian complained.
Hanson responded in kind, with her hilarious Please Explain video accusing Hoges of lecturing Australians while living in California and asking why someone who no longer lives here should presume to tell Australians how to run their country.
Fair enough. Both were entitled to have their say. But the exchange raises a broader question: how much political influence do celebrity interventions really have?

Such an inane and deeply stupid man, and apparently infatuated with Gina's pet's cartoons ...

The Pelican - Please Explain
Pauline Hanson's Please Explain

Nah, the pond isn't going to bother with a YouTube link.

And it took a lot of summoning of energy to continue with the swishing Switzer, what with evidence of at least one celebrity intervention that has had much political influence, much of it malign ...

But do go on, in a superficial and vapid way, picking low hanging fruit ...

For decades, in Australia, Britain and especially the US, actors, musicians and writers have sought to influence political debate – usually with far less success than they imagine.
Start with Australia. In the lead-up to the 1998 federal election, veteran broadcaster Phillip Adams declared that John Howard’s Australia was poised to occupy “the proud place vacated by pre-Mandela South Africa”. Not to be outdone, novelist and playwright Bob Ellis warned that Australia would become “an international pariah like South Africa, with no way back”. Howard won (again).
Three elections later, actor Toni Collette lamented: “I think I’ll slit my wrists if Howard gets in again.” Howard did get in again. Two decades later, Collette is happily still with us.
In 2015, a group of entertainment figures – including Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce and Brendan Cowell – launched the #saveourboys campaign against Tony Abbott over the impending executions of drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia. They urged the Prime Minister to “grow some balls”, “show some ticker”, “be a leader” and do more to help the Bali duo.
The campaign changed nothing. Chan and Sukumaran were executed, and Abbott preserved Australia’s crucial relationship with Indonesia.

Now there's a triumph, and then for some reason the reptiles slipped back in time... Hanson is set to meet with Nigel Farage during her time in the UK. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

She's set to meet? During her time in the UK?

Will someone tell the reptiles about her return? Will they ever wonder who paid for the junket?

Preserve the pond in aspic and persevere...

The pattern repeated itself during the 2023 voice referendum. John Farnham allowed his anthem You’re the Voice to be used by the Yes campaign, joined by figures including Shaquille O’Neal, Jimmy Barnes and Missy Higgins. The referendum was defeated decisively.
Across the democratic world, celebrities have repeatedly ventured into politics, usually with little to show for it.
Scottish tennis star Andy Murray backed independence ahead of Scotland’s 2014 referendum. The No campaign prevailed. Two years later, a galaxy of actors, musicians and writers implored Britons to remain in the EU. Brexit won instead.
If celebrity politics has a natural home, however, it is the US. Politics may be described as show business for ugly people, but America’s beautiful people have long shown an enthusiasm for nailing their colours to the mast – usually Democratic blue.
Take the 2004 election when virtually all of Hollywood’s stars backed John Kerry against Republican president George W. Bush. Indeed, celebrity activism had generated such public irritation that it became the target of the satirical film Team America: World Police. Puppet versions of Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon and Matt Damon joined forces with Kim Jong-il before meeting spectacularly grisly ends, to the delight of cinema audiences.
The same campaign produced an even more revealing episode. Britain’s Guardian newspaper urged its readers to write to voters in Clark County, Ohio – one of the pivotal counties in a pivotal swing state – explaining why they should reject Bush. Among those lending their names to the effort were Antonia Fraser, John Le Carre and other celebrated progressive writers.

Here's the thing. It's all about the vibe. Some care what celebrities think, some don't. Some care about the drivel the swishing Switzer scribbles, some don't.

Some realise that the real point of this piece is to mock anyone speaking out who might have some visibility, especially if they can be shown to disagree with the reptile monoculture that the reptiles want to impose on the world... Robert De Niro speaks in support of US President Joe Biden outside of Manhattan Criminal Court. Picture: Charly Triballeau / AFP

And so to the inevitable bout of mad King Donald triumphalism (and hasn't that worked out well?):

The response from Ohio was not what The Guardian had hoped. Many recipients told the newspaper that “real Americans aren’t interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions”. Clark County, which had narrowly backed Al Gore in 2000, swung decisively behind Bush in 2004. Local Republicans later credited the campaign with energising conservative voters rather than persuading them.
The pattern was even more pronounced in the 2016 contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Middle America was inundated with lectures from Hollywood’s cultural elite – actors, comedians and musicians who seemed united in their conviction that Trump was unfit for office. Meryl Streep, Madonna and Robert De Niro were among the most outspoken. De Niro declared that he wanted “to punch him in the face”. Trump won anyway.
Eight years later, almost every major figure in Hollywood and the music industry lined up behind Kamala Harris, from Taylor Swift and Katy Perry to George Clooney. De Niro again became one of Trump’s fiercest critics, Bruce Springsteen branded him “a moron” and Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone spoke of moving to Europe if Trump returned to the White House. None of it mattered. Trump won. Stone remained in the US. Television host Ellen DeGeneres and her wife did “get the hell out” of Trump’s America only to relocate to (of all places) post-Brexit Britain.

Did it occur to the swishing Switzer that mad King Donald was a reality TV star, famous for his starring roles?

 

It's a Hollywood circus, cf the both siderist NY Times, How Donald Trump Used Hollywood to Create 'Donald Trump' ...(*intermittent archive link)

So all the swishing Switzer is doing is putting one celebrity up against others...ones with their own kind of charisma, ready to go into the entertainment game after serving their time handing out gongs ... Barack Obama presents actress and comedian Ellen DeGeneres with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Eventually there had to come a billy goat butt, but it was a minor one, though it suggested that at last the swishing Switzer was realising that there might be something to getting the vibe ...

None of this is to suggest that celebrities are invariably wrong. Gough Whitlam’s 1972 It’s Time campaign enlisted an array of entertainers, such as Little Pattie – and it helped capture the national mood. Nor were celebrities mistaken in opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At that year’s Academy Awards, dozens of Hollywood’s biggest stars wore silver “dove of peace” pins to signal their opposition to a war that proved a costly strategic blunder.

But, billy goat butting away, it might have been a costly strategic blunder, but did they stop it? 

Does anybody have a way to stop mad King Donald and his impotent, if testosterone laden, sycophants, conducting an incredible folly in Iran?

So why did the swishing Switzer give mad King Donald a pass, but crack down on George Bush?

All anyone can do is say their piece, and add to the vibe, and hope that appearing with a crocodile in a bar might boost a lizard Oz columnist, even if it's an appearance from the 1980s ... (is that the real time for the lizard Oz demographic?)

The lesson is not that celebrities should stay out of politics. Like everyone else, they are entitled to their opinions. The point, though, is that celebrity interventions rarely change electoral outcomes and can even provoke a backlash when cultural elites appear to lecture voters, who are more concerned about cost of living and national sovereignty.
Hogan’s intervention is fair enough. Yet it also serves as a reminder of an enduring democratic truth: in liberal democracies, political authority belongs not to actors, musicians or bestselling authors but to citizens casting ballots. The celebrity chorus may dominate the headlines. In the end, it never gets the final vote.
Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland YouTube podcast.

The real point? Appearances by dull pedants in rags like the lizard Oz can provoke a backlash when these cultural 'leets declare war on other cultural 'leets ...

The celebrity did get the final vote, and the last disunited states ruining vote ...

What a useless tool he is, another four minutes of the pond's time down the drain, never to be recovered ...

Please allow the pond a chance to catch up with today's infallible Pope ...

As for the rest, it was a dull early morning stint in the hive mind, with a bit of legalese ...

‘Fleeting facts’ make comments a comedy
A Federal Court judge has handed Rebel Wilson a defamation victory, finding Instagram posts are too ‘fleeting’ to damage a person’s reputation.
By Jenna Clarke
Culture Writer

NSW DPP Sally Dowling should not be allowed to play covert games
Scrutiny of the NSW DPP wouldn’t undermine justice — it would protect it. After what this inquiry uncovered, greater oversight seems hard to argue against.
By Stephen Lawrence

The pond felt vaguely guilty it had to turn to Zoe for the bonus.

The header: The green energy transition: soaring bills, dead eagles; It is time Australia’s leaders stop pretending the current paradigm is working.

The caption for the terrifying image: “When it comes to energy sources, we need every option on the table,” writes Zoe Hilton.

Zoe could only manage a three minute serve, but the moment the pond saw that snap of wind farms, the pond knew she knew what would sell to the reptiles of Oz and their hive mind.

When it comes to energy sources, we might need every option on the table, but dammit, we don't need those bloody windmills.

So Zoe plucked up her best Don Quixote impression and tilted at them ...

Two recent stories from NSW wind farms have exposed the failure of the energy transition before our eyes. Far from saving the environment while lowering power bills, the attempt to transform a mostly coal-powered grid to one running on 96 per cent wind and solar by 2050 has shown no signs of doing either.
The first story reveals wind farm developers have been unable to make their projects stack up economically, even with federal underwriting, and are now setting their rent-seeking sights on a state scheme.
The federal Capacity Investment Scheme provides taxpayer underwriting to wind, solar and battery projects. But for wind developers even this generous subsidy scheme isn’t enough for them to turn a profit. After the federal government rejected their plea for more taxpayer money, some developers in NSW are now trying to secure even more subsidies, this time through NSW’s Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap.
Subsidies doled out through the roadmap are charged to NSW consumers, not taxpayers. That means consumers are being hit with a double tax – once through their tax bill and again through their energy bill, all to benefit renewables investors in the name of government targets; targets that have completely failed to deliver affordable energy for Australians.
Power prices have more than tripled since the mid-2000s, with prices rising 21 per cent in the past year alone.
The effects are devastating. One in five households is in energy hardship or on the brink. The same number have been forced to skip meals because of financial strain. Forty-one per cent of Australian seniors are rationing heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, and 340,000 customers are in long-term energy debt, averaging $1367.

The source of this data?

Go whistle in the wind, and maintain that fear of windmills...Lotus Creek Wind Farm (central Queensland). Picture: Steven Nowakowski

In lieu of reptile links, the pond did find one beat up at Nine ... Millions of Aussies going cold as electricity bills bite

More than half of Australians are minimising heating in their homes this winter to avoid paying hefty electricity bills, new research released today shows.
Many households are also buying cheaper heaters, despite experts warning the budget buys consume more electricity, according to the survey by comparison website Canstar.
The findings were based on 700 people who had purchased an electric heater this winter to stay warm.
While their main concern was keeping power bills down, less than half of are carrying out basic measures to stay warm, such as pulling on a jumper and socks before switching their heater on, keeping their room warm by closing windows and doors and fixing a draught stopper on their doors.

That's a survey? Sure, and this is a knife.

The pond scented the stench of AI in that ...

As for Zoe, it's like she'd spent the last 18 months swallowing reptile talking points...

And it’s not just households paying the price. Rising energy costs are now the No.1 factor affecting the finances of small businesses, with one in five reporting difficulties in paying their energy bills. Australia has lost 39,400 manufacturing jobs in the past two years alone.
Government energy policy has failed to put affordability at the centre for too long.
That’s why I’m launching the Affordable Energy Australia campaign. We are calling on our country’s leaders to prioritise affordable, reliable energy. We are calling for every party to commit to prioritising energy affordability and sustainability.
When it comes to energy sources, we need every option on the table. It is time to put engineering before ideology – because ideology is not lowering power bills or saving the environment.
The second story revealed a single NSW wind farm killed 20 wedge-tailed eagles in 18 months. This is only the tip of the iceberg of the impacts many wind farms are having on wildlife across the country.

The pond did chase that story down. 

Here's the thing.

The data came from the developer, and was picked up by the AFR (*intermittent archive link), and remedial measures were put in place ...

Inter alia ...

Well yes, it should be possible to pat climate change tummy and chew conservation gum at the same time, but Zoe was intent on a litany of fear...

In Queensland, pristine rainforest and the habitats of endangered koalas are being blown up to make way for the infrastructure required by wind farms. Bird and bat deaths from wind turbine blades are commonplace, and reported numbers are likely underestimating the death toll because carcass surveys are being carried out only on a monthly basis.
Destroying the environment to save it is nonsensical. 

How did the pond know this was pure reptile? It came with this line:

At 1 per cent of global emissions, Australia does not have any control over our own climate. 

Oh that's all right then, do nothing, and carry on regardless ...and make sure you confuse and conflate action in relation to conservation with climate change, and disregard entirely the impact that climate change is already having on all parts of the planet, humans and creatures alike...

What we do have control over is the direct impacts we have on our environment at the local level.
We need a rethink of our approach to environmental policy. For every industrial project, there is a trade-off between its economic benefits and the effects it has on the environment.
Wind farms are not providing the predicted net economic benefits to Australia. In fact, they are often a net cost to society as they cannot survive without ever-growing subsidies. On top of that, many are destroying the environment they were meant to preserve. Yet the federal government still plans to more than double the amount of wind capacity in the eastern grid by 2050.
It is clearer than ever that governments’ renewables targets cannot help secure cheap energy for Australia, nor will they preserve our unique natural heritage.
Australian families and businesses deserve better. It is time Australia’s leaders stop pretending the current paradigm is working. They must prioritise affordable, reliable energy so our energy system serves the needs of all Australians – not just the rent-seekers profiting off the public purse.
Zoe Hilton works at Affordable Energy Australia.

The pond felt titillated enough to check out "Affordable Energy Australia" and discovered its site was just a shell (and that of late Zoe has been picked up by the likes of Sky Noise and petulant Peta) ...

Eek, he's a 'Gong-ite. The pond bowed its head in shame, and it turned out that Zoe had other connections ...

 

CIS?

See its wiki and the opening lines...

The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) is an Australian think tank founded in 1976 by Greg Lindsay. The CIS specialises in public policy research and publishes material in areas such as economics, education, culture and foreign policy. Although there are no explicit ties between the CIS and the centre-right Liberal Party, the CIS is politically aligned with the Liberal Party, praising Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies, hosting various Liberal Party politicians and holding very critical views of the Labor Party.

So Zoe is a mover and a shaker, a tilter at windmills, and the pond offered up a Herbert 'toon as an act of contrition ...

And here's what a TV celebrity will give you ...

In which the pond offers a serve of Akker Dakker as place marker pablum...

 

Back in the day, the pond vividly remembers its first stay in Sydney, free of parents or the need to pander to the rellies out Kogarah way (as much losers as the current St George thugby league team).

In order to do some research at the Mitchell library, the pond decided to stay, as rustic folk were wont to do, at the Gresham, an elaborate Miss Havingsham kind of Victorian wedding cake concoction ...

It's since been rebadged and repurposed.

It was dirt cheap, suitable to a student budget, but that meant the rooms were rustic basic, and when checking under the bed to see nothing had escaped when packing to leave, the pond discovered a used condom.

This was big smoke sophistication at its finest, and the pond felt quite Parisian, in a brothel sort of way.

The pond relived that rustic spirit the last time it was in Sydney, preferring the downmarket vibe of the Great Southern Hotel to expensive inns with a harbour view.

The pond knows this is the sort of place that cockies, squatters and Tamworth types like to stay ... and it pretty much still looks like it did back in the 1940s ...

 

It has a twenty bucks all-in bacon and eggs breakfast, and a shower and toilet cubicle of a size to give anyone claustrophobia.

And it has a sub-Shining vibe - the lobby/foyer area is littered with snaps of the hotel in its grand 1940 era, and there are still some hints of the past.

The night the pond stayed, there was a giant exhaust fan blasting away, perhaps for the restaurant downstairs, but it shut down early enough in the night to allow a little sleep (unless you had a fear of being trapped in the rabbit warren if a fire broke out). (After all, country folk must eat no later than seven, and be in bed by eight, in order to get up with the sun).

The noise reminded the pond of the air conditioner racket that ran all night when the pond stayed at the Tamworth Hotel (just across the way from the railway station).

That too was a bit of nostalgia, because the pond's father had paid for that hotel back in the day when it was known as the Town Talk (aka the Railway), brick by brick, fermenting ale glass by glass, until he was completely awash in amber fluid ...

And the pond is staying at the Great Southern again, it being the cheapest, price friendly, home away from home available to rustics and tourists, and that's why the pond isn't able to offer an update this day for herpetologists devoted to the lizard Oz.

Enough of exploring ancient remnants of near forgotten Sydney, at least the pond can offer a token distraction before hopefully returning to the real business at hand tomorrow.

How about another serve of Akker Dakker?

Though the pond has shamefully ignored him in recent years, back in ancient times the pond always had a taste for the Gresham hotel-like festoonings that littered the Akker Dakker brain.

He was big on fear and loathing of the NBN ...

Akker Dakker tried every scare and bit of fear-mongering imaginable - the cables ruining the fine aesthetics of inner west Sydney, death stalking the land ...

Since the pond has moved to the mighty 'Gong, it's experienced the joys of fibre to the home, what with an earlier Labor government pandering to its base by making the 'Gong a trial run, and what a mighty fine thing it is ...

The pond now looks with pity on those who were deprived of the real thing by the shameless Malware doing it down on orders from the onion muncher and News Corp (desperate to see its box model for streaming survive in the new age. Silly reptiles).

The pond hesitates to provide a link to this Akker Dakker outing, what with it hooking up with news.com.au, but some might want more ...

And so on. 2009, and a visionary even then!

Others have been devoted to Akker Dakker. 

Here he is in a piece by Graham Readfearn back on Wednesday 30th March 2022, under the header A cut-and-paste attack on electric vehicle batteries and renewables is spanning the globe. But is it right?

If you followed the link, you might have come up against a Daily Terror paywall, so here it is ...

Those younglings are just the sort to give Akker Dakker nightmares - but then Akker Dakker's always been a 'green nightmares, we must nuke the country to save the planet' sort of reptile ...

We've been there before, and still go there each day ...

There wasn't anything Akker Dakker wouldn't tackle in order to keep the country back in the Mesozoic era ...

The Finkel report will burn us just like a Canadian wildfire? Or perhaps like the forthcoming Australian summer bushfire season?

Such a visionary.

Wait, the pond should probably finish off that other Akker Dakker outing ... especially as it evoked memories of that ancient dinosaur, Shane Stone ...

The fat owl of the remove was possibly shattered when the NRRA was merged with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), with Stone ankling his baby, and with Murray Watt eventually coming to hold ministerial responsibility for it ...

Sic transit Akker Dakker, knock 'em down Humpty Dumpty glory ...

Is it any wonder that the pond once was devoted to Akker Dakker?

Why, the vibe's just the same, and the pond has always loved ancient vibes ...

Sorry, that's possibly a little too modern for Akker Dakker ...

And still he burbles on, at it again last Sunday in the Terror ... and so at last to the real place marker pablum ...

The header: Piers Akerman: Bowen’s silly electric truck plan running out of road while EV users don’t pay for the damage; Australia would need 14,000 extra trucks on its roads if Chris Bowen’s electric prime mover policy succeeds – and Piers Akerman says that is only part of the problem.

The thing about the fat owl of the remove is that he only manages a couple of minutes for a read, though perhaps even that's stretching the attention span of the rag's thugby league demographic, notoriously known for thinking that a full minute is quality time for a woman.

The reptiles have been down on EVs for some considerable time, so it was inevitable the fat owl of the remove would have a go at trucks ...

Veteran radio host Ray Hadley reacts to the Labor government’s push for electric trucks. “The arrant nonsense about B-doubles … and road trains being run on electricity,” Mr Hadley told Sky News host Sharri Markson. “Anyone who thinks that is going to happen in the next 100 years is stark raving mad. “They need fossil fuels to run.”
A scientific poll conducted under strict guidelines has found Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is the stupidest member of the Albanese Labor government’s cabinet – except for Anthony Albanese.
OK, the poll was probably not that scientific. It involved asking groups at bus stops, in coffee shops, waiting at check-outs and sporting stadiums one question: Who do you rate as the biggest idiot in the government? The answer was Bowen every time, with some saying the Prime Minister was almost as dumb for keeping him in the cabinet.
When further explanation was sought, those who followed up pointed to Bowen’s denial of obvious facts, including the reality the price of electricity has soared since he insisted that rolling out so-called renewables, including wind and solar factories, would reduce energy prices to homeowners and businesses.
As one member of an impromptu focus group said, anyone who thinks the global climate can be altered by increasing taxes, subsidising electric vehicle purchases, importing solar panels and carbon fibre windmill blades from China or eating less red meat, hasn’t a clue.

Classic, sublimely stupid Akker Dakker, a form of self-projection of a kind that can be found throughout his scribbles, because he's a vox pop ssort of dude of the first water, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. In a street poll, Bowen was rated the biggest idiot in the government, with Albanese almost as dumb for keeping him in the cabinet. Picture: NewsWire/Nathan Smith

The pond notes that battery-powered heavy duty trucks still need work.

But the pond can remember the days when reptiles at the lizard Oz tried to introduce range anxiety to the hive mind.

And yet these days  Chinese manufacturers are promising EV cars which can do Sydney to Melbourne on a charge.

Too rich for the pond, but dare to dream. Who knows, the next scratchie might be the answer. And if battery technology continues at its current pace, there'll be plenty to drop the cash on.

The pond remembers the days when EV vans were dismissed as out of the question. 

And yet when the pond rocks up to IKEA for a charge, there's always a flock of vans on view ...

Ditto buses, at least if the wretchedly inept Minns government ever gets its act together ...

The pond understands that not everyone is ready for an EV, or can afford one, or wants the singular pleasure of hooking up their EV to a trickle charger, and watch the car load up during the day for free courtesy of solar charging ...

But dare to dream, the pond says, in a way that luddites never can ...

These things are so apparent that no further examples of his stupidity should be necessary but, in the course of the research, the question of the government’s subsidy for electric prime movers – the big trucks that thunder across the nation’s highways – was raised.
Both federal and state governments underwrite the cost of heavy-truck electrification. LinFox received a $19.63m package, $755,000 a vehicle, to cover the gap in truck costs and the upgrade needed for charging stations, for example. Subsidised green financing is spewing money, but trucking firms aren’t convinced EVs are the answer. One trucking company executive bluntly says Bowen’s EV truck policy won’t work west (or east) of the Great Divide.

Akker Dakker was inevitably agitated at the sight of an EV van rocking across the bridge... Subsidised green financing is spewing money, but trucking firms aren’t convinced EVs are the answer.

Worried by the state of the strait of Hormuz? Worried that oil might hereafter be more a political football than a means of getting about?

In Akker Dakker's world, you just suck it up ... (in much the same way that mug punters must do without a FTTH connection) ...

“There just aren’t the charging stations and EV prime movers need charging every three to four hours, for hours at a time,” he says.
A regular prime mover carries enough fuel for 24 hours of operation. EVs’ hefty batteries put a 9-tonne weight on the front axle; regular diesel-powered prime movers are restricted by regulation to a 6-tonne weight limit.
This is a free pass for EVs, an additional penalty for the majority of trucks that crisscross the country. An articulated vehicle, a semi-trailer or a B-double truck with an electric powertrain weighs five tonnes more than a diesel truck. Logically, a wheat carter driving a single trailer EV could only cart 20 tonnes, a diesel would carry 25 tonnes legally.
There are 105,000 articulated vehicles on the road every day, and if the big trucks all went electric, there would need to be an extra 12-15 per cent more vehicles on the road just to carry the same payload as the current fleet.

Regarding the impossibility of it all, why not repeat that line so that the thugby league readership will fall in line, and stay with their gas guzzlerd ... There are 105,000 articulated vehicles on the road every day, and if the big trucks all went electric, there would need to be an extra 12-15 per cent more vehicles on the road to carry the same payload.

Should the pond revert to calling the fat owl full Bunter?

He's always had the same preening, supercilious air about him.

And so to the closing gobbet ...

That’s roughly an extra 14,000 trucks to carry the same loads. Australia can’t get enough truckies now; perhaps Bowen or the hopeless Immigration Minister Tony Burke will retrain returning ISIS fighters as heavy-vehicle operators.
The huge batteries would need to be changed by forklift vehicles because recharging the monsters would take too long.
Freight costs would soar and the effect on our climate would be zero. The extra cost would ensure greater inflation in almost every productive sector of the economy, and it would be more difficult to compete on the export market because all our agriculture, wheat, rice and cotton rely on road transport.
Our truckies pay for the damage they cause to roads through a 52c-a-litre excise, of which they can reclaim 20c a litre.
EV road users don’t pay for the damage their heavier vehicles cause.
With new Euro-standards being introduced, diesel trucks will use more fuel, pay more tax, and produce fewer emissions.
It’s a big country outside Canberra. Bowen and Albanese need to be reminded.

Hopefully this sort of carry-on will get slotted into the Daily Terror's campaign in favour of tungsten light bulbs.

Hopefully Akker Dakker will meet his match when invited to play a challenging game of chess ...

It's no longer Monday, but it seems like it's always Monday in America ...

Despite a flurry of lizard Oz teaser trailers, the good oil from the bromancer and Dame Groan is there to be found ...

 

First a housekeeping note: the pond must head off to the big smoke again, and so perforce will have to leave a place holder in place tomorrow, in lieu of proper lizard Oz herpetology studies. Hopefully the pond will escape a Sydney mugging and return to normal duties the following day.

Now carry on with wild abandon.

Lately the lizard Oz seems to have turned into the Geoff Chambers show.

There he was again early in the morning, top of the digital page ma, with an EXCLUSIVE and a Commentary...

Luckily the intermittent archive was to hand ...

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: Left-leaning voters not so spooked on China threat
Partisan divides are emerging in the electorate despite Beijing’s increasing aggression towards Australia.
By Geoff Chambers

Geoff was bitterly disappointed by this, so he chambered yet another round, what with the war with China by Xmas a long standing, highly prized and favoured reptile jihad:

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Apathy, ‘Beijing blindness’ are not options
The threat to Australia posed by Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army has never been greater.

Teaser trailers should entice correspondents into those reptile chambers, at least those with nothing better to do...

Splendid reptile stuff, and with the war on China taken care of, another favourite theme was given the Pike treatment ...

EXCLUSIVE
Bowen splurges $4.2m on five-star Fiji resorts for COP talks
Chris Bowen’s department sets aside $4.2m to reserve luxury Fiji resorts for COP delegates
Foreign bureaucrats attending the climate change meeting will be treated to beachfront resorts and golf courses – all on the Australian taxpayer’s tab.
By Elizabeth Pike

Liz piked him good and hard ...

So Pauline had dropped off the reptile jihad charts? The fixation might be failing?

What a pity...

All well and good, but the pond takes its foreign affairs and climate science advice from the bromancer. 

Sadly, in his welcome return he showed the same apathy as left-leaning and university educated voters by ignoring China and focusing on the couch molester who is inclined to be aroused by suggestive, provocative ice cream eating.

The header: Critics have misread JD Vance. Don’t rule him out in 2028;What an astonishing figure Vance is, surely the most unlikely and distinctive personality to be Veep since Theodore Roosevelt.
The caption for the snap: JD Vance speaks at the 128th Air Refueling Wing Hangar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Picture: Scott Olson / Getty Images

Where some see an ambitious, deeply weird loon, the bromancer was entranced, bedazzled by the couch molester and his magnificent theology.

After all, if one can resort to Satan's site:

Let the bromancer help JD put that recalcitrant papal tyke in his place:

As the US-Iran war races up the escalation ladder, one thing that has failed is the peace deal Vice-President JD Vance negotiated. The memorandum of understanding was simple. Vance explains it much better than Donald Trump does. Iran was to open the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping in exchange for sanctions relief. Then Washington and Tehran would subsequently try to negotiate an agreement on nuclear issues.
The deal failed not because of Vance, but because Iran, instead of opening the Strait of Hormuz, fired on commercial shipping. Which makes it bizarre that in a three-hour podcast with Joe Rogan, Vance went out of his way to criticise America’s ally, Israel, for allegedly spending money on a public diplomacy/social media campaign to criticise the deal as too soft on Tehran. Incidentally, the lobbyist involved swears he never campaigned against the MOU, only against Iran.
In any event, any money Israel spends trying to influence US opinion is a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars Arab countries spend similarly.
Vance’s remarks are even more surprising given that in his new book, Communion, Vance records that his murdered Christian friend, Charlie Kirk, was gravely concerned that young American men were becoming anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

There came a certification that established the couch molester as being one of the UFC people, always ready for a rumble in the heathen jungle...US vice president JD Vance has appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast. Picture: YouTube

Why he's a veritable young Ted, a sort of outdoor type for the ages, compelling if you happen to be a bromancing bro ...

But let’s leave Iran and remark what an astonishing, and oddly compelling, figure Vance is, surely the most unlikely, diverse and distinctive personality to be Veep since Theodore Roosevelt occupied that office more than a century ago. I’ve just finished reading Communion, which recounts how Vance lost the evangelical Christian faith of his childhood, was for some years atheist, and came back to Christianity through Catholicism. Oddly enough, Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, charted an exactly parallel but opposite journey. Pence was brought up Catholic, lapsed into atheism and came back to belief as an evangelical Christian.

As a dedicated tyke, the bromancer is right behind JD, and might even be inclined to be a little Peter Thiel curious ...

I interviewed and profiled Pence at length in my book, How Christians Can Succeed Today, and have no doubt of the depth and sincerity of his Christianity. Having read Communion, I feel the same about Vance.
I can’t believe how vituperative many reviews of Communion have been. For this is a brilliant, absorbing and challenging book, with only one big flaw. It has very little politics (that’s not the flaw). Mostly, it’s the story of Vance’s struggle to get to belief, to possess an attitude of life’s biggest questions that is meaningful and sustainable, and to lead a decent life. Vance’s previous book, Hillbilly Elegy, was one of the great memoirs, as good as Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father, but with deeper sociological insights.
Vance squarely faces the many times he hasn’t done the right thing. There’s nothing false or humble/brag in his self-accusations: “In my life, too, getting drunk and acting like a jerk had filled the void left by God.” Vance’s personal search for God is a quest for decency, and for understanding.
As he later observes: “Human nature is one of contradictions: of the animal merging with the divine … The secular view was that consciousness and civilisation were a sort of accident of evolution … The creation story (in Genesis) tells us that we are both animal and divine on purpose – a purpose, to be fair, we can’t fully understand.”
This is a rich book. Vance has read deeply in Christian scriptures, and especially in Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and the dazzling scholar Rene Girard, who unpacked the secrets of human desire and the need for a scapegoat in the context of the story of Jesus. And of course Vance is also influenced by CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. None of this is fake. Vance has clearly internalised so much of it.

Indeed, and if only the Catholic church wasn't so stupid, and had appointed a stupid pope, why JD himself might stand as a profound guide to Catholic theology, and Catholic school students be made to read the new JD bible, JD Vance has written a new book, Communion, about his path back to faith

JD has had his troubles ...not least the way he helped kill off one pope ...

Vance's new book published June 16, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, chronicles his conversion to Catholicism and his Easter 2025 meeting with Pope Francis is featured prominently. The Catholic vice president uses the story to open up his reflections on the perceived tensions between his views on migration and the Vatican's moral teaching. The pope died the following day of a stroke and cardiovascular collapse.
But while details of that meeting are sparse, the vice president is sharply critical of his meeting the previous day with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, and other Vatican diplomats, describing their discussion of migration as "too abstract to be helpful."
After what he described as a "substantive" conversation on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Vance said the subsequent discussion on migration was "unsettling" because Vatican officials did not make any specific requests.
"Here I was, the most senior Catholic in the United States government, and the Vatican seemed unwilling to move its moral guidance past the point of trite platitudes," he wrote. (NCR here)

Speaking of trite platitudes, the bromancer had plenty of his own ...

As I say, I can’t understand the determined, vicious hostility with which the book has been so much received. I’d recommend the first 200 pages without hesitation. Vance links his beliefs to the culture around him, and the breakdown of key institutions, but his religious belief is not essentially a matter of the culture wars.
Vance honours all the Christian denominations. But he’s found his home in the Catholic Church: “The Christian tradition was so rich, the Bible so big and difficult to master, that I began to see the structure of Catholicism as a benefit, not a burden. That the Church spoke with literally thousands of years of tradition behind it, that it had long-established processes for evolving doctrine and responding to new realities …”
He explores the role of doubt in faith: “No matter what we see, we are all tempted by doubt. The Peter whom Jesus pulled out of the sea is the same Peter who denied Christ three times shortly before His crucifixion.”
Most of the last third of the book is about politics but only in a very general way. Vance is inspired by Catholic social teaching, especially the balanced view of the social reality of humanity described in Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), the historic encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891.
Vance relates this all to his own life. The therapeutic idea that he could blame his own shortcomings on childhood abuse and dislocation was profoundly unappealing. It robbed him of agency and denied his own moral responsibility. His gratitude to his grandmother, his love of his wife, radiate from the page. He embraces the Catholic practice of confession – it offers him reflection on his own shortcomings, genuine personal responsibility for them, and forgiveness. This is certainly not for everyone, but it’s not nothing.

Inspired by social teachings? The ones about shooting all furriners on sight?

Not nothing? Comes a fly in the bromancer ointment, Donald Trump and JD Vance salute during a ceremony at Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. Picture: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

There's simply no avoiding him ...

Finally the bromancer had to bite the mad King Donald bullet with a mild remonstrance, a gentle billy goat butt, only to provide a masterly retort, a JD supporting epic billy goat butt ...

The one glaring omission in Vance’s book is how he reconciles this genuine Christianity with serving in the Trump administration. There is a reasonable defence of this, I think. Democrats, at least as much as Republicans, have made a mess of America. There was a solid case for thinking Trump a less bad alternative than Kamala Harris at the last election. Therefore, trying to make the best of Trump is an ethically reasonable response.
Nonetheless, Vance certainly sometimes goes too far down the Trump road. Yet his versatility is astonishing. In his podcast with Rogan half an hour is spent on the niceties of caged fighting, half an hour on Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories, half an hour on whether aliens are demons, and so on. Lots of four-letter words. Yet mostly Vance is moderating Rogan, jovially pointing him to reality. Vance is quite different in his appearance on The View, responding politely, patiently, reasonably and convincingly to five vocal, hostile women.
But to see the best of Vance, watch his hour-long conversation with Bishop Robert Barron of Word on Fire. A brilliant, subtle, hopeful dialogue on faith, purpose and society.
Is it a strength or a weakness that Vance is so at home in such contradictory environments? He’s presently unpopular. But he may yet resemble his boss in being protean, persistent, limitlessly energetic, easily underestimated, always formidable. Don’t rule Vance of out for 2028 just yet.

Strangely the bromancer ignored not just the war with China by Xmas, but the coming of Andy ...

That was left to the malignant Magnay, sounding very Iron Lady Margie about idle munificence...

Time to put up, now Mancunian is in Downing Street
Scaring away businesses won’t help prop up the extraordinary welfare situation, where large families on benefits have more disposable income than schoolteachers.
By Jacquelin Magnay
Europe Correspondent

Day 1 and the rats were in the street ...

Sadly the pond had to pass by, but the intermittent archive abided and that's surely enough.

The intermittent archive also took care of ancient Troy ...

Breaking with history: why this ALP conference will be different
Labor’s national conference will be a highly stage-managed event with little debate, even less dissent, and an emphasis on unity.
By Troy Bramston
Senior Writer

Keeping to teaser trailers left just enough room for Dame Groan, present to remind Australians that they were deeply stupid...

 ...and would certainly be rooned by Xmas ...

The header: End of an era: How we fell from exceptional nation to outpost of mediocrity; All those years of hard-fought reforms, of accepting the important trade-offs, were simply forgotten.

The caption for the uncredited collage showing a gaggle of Tory heroes: Former Liberal leaders Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and John Howard.

Sheesh, the pond couldn't believe it.

There the pond was thinking that all the promotional work for nattering "Ned's" tome had been done and dusted, and straight up front the old biddy put in a plug for it ...

I have been reading the excerpts of Paul Kelly’s new book, The Twilight of Exceptionalism, with great interest. But it did occur to me that instead of using the noun “twilight”, I might have been inclined to use “end”.
Kelly’s book covers the period of the federal Coalition government between 2013 and 2022. In that time, we had three prime ministers, each very different from the other. It was a time of monumental lost opportunity, of parties that couldn’t quite figure out their common mission.
It’s worth outlining what Australia’s exceptionalism involved. Both the Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello governments take the credit for this outcome. By and large, it was a long period of outstanding policy, of careful economic management and unparalleled outcomes. Annual economic growth rates in the high 3s and into the 4s were common. Productivity growth averaged above 2 per cent per year. The change to per capita incomes moved Australia up the world league ladder, with Australia’s GDP per person exceeding all the G7 countries apart from the US by the middle of the 2000s.
When it came to budgetary policy, the results were truly remarkable. As Peter Costello points out: “By 2004, after seven cash surplus budgets, the commonwealth government was debt-free in net terms. No other comparable Western country got anywhere near that, not the US, the UK, the Europeans, the Japanese.”

To match Dame Groan's carry on, the reptiles slipped in another reminder to buy the book before it hits the remainder shelves, Paul Kelly speak at the book launch for The Twilight of Exceptionalism in Sydney. Picture: John Feder / The Australian

Now on with the important business of revising history and explaining why we're all rooned ...

In August 2006, the Financial Times editorial concluded: “Australia continues to live up to its much overused sobriquet, the lucky country. But as the OECD observes, a big reason for its good fortune is that it has been adept at making its own luck.” The fact Australia was feted at international economic forums was no surprise.
The election of the Abbott government came after the chaotic years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. Plenty of poison pills were left by Labor, representing a real challenge for any incoming government. Some of these pills were dealt with – abolishing the absurd mining tax and bringing illegal migration under control by turning back the boats. But when it came to economic policy, the outcomes were extremely disappointing.
Promises not to cut spending in key program areas stymied the Abbott government from the start. It was a time that spending on the misconceived Gonski school funding model and the NDIS could have been reined in, with future expenditures locked into sustainable trajectories. We are now paying a very high price.
The fact Joe Hockey as treasurer pushed for the abolition of the debt ceiling – and succeeded – was more than passing strange. Having promised fiscal restraint, this action made no sense. It has relieved future treasurers from the worry of having to argue the case for expanding the debt ceiling.

The reptiles spared no expense and wheeled out some lavish artwork by Emilia, which the pond had mistaken as a tonal AI rendering, John Howard and Peter Costello. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella.

What an excellent evocation of a lying rodent and a man without the ticker.

End times devotees then got exactly what they wanted, so they could embark on their day knowing that it was all futile ...with all that nonsense about climate science central to the ruination ...

Twenty years on from zero net debt, we are now on the hook for $600bn of net government debt, with gross debt fast approaching the trillion-dollar mark. It is surely ironic that the commonwealth’s biggest asset is the Future Fund.
After the disaster of the 2014 budget – the only “achievement” was a temporary income tax surcharge on the highest earners – the Coalition simply dropped the ball on fiscal management.
Some key ministers began to argue debt and deficits didn’t matter, and the voting public quickly absorbed the new messaging. With inflation seemingly under control – this had a great deal to do with the goods deflation associated with expanding exports from China – the old trade-offs seemed to have vanished.
Measures to deal with climate change took a central role, with Abbott being the prime minister when Australia signed on to the Paris climate agreement. Under Malcolm Turnbull, climate change assumed an even higher priority, with a series of interventions put in place. They included the commissioning of the disastrous Snowy 2.0, which was seen as a giant battery that could underpin the shift to renewable energy. Note also that it was the Coalition government that first introduced the Safeguard Mechanism, which is effectively a carbon tax on our largest industrial emitters.
To be sure, there was some pushback to the attention being given to climate change – who can forget Scott Morrison bringing a lump of coal into parliament?

Who could forget it? Was there ever a better example of a profound insight into climate science?

Strangely the reptiles decided to ignore that as a visual illustration, and decided to go full boring...Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull at the conclusion of Question Time in the House of Representatives. Picture: Sam Mooy / AAP Image

Dame Groan seemed to be showing weird signs of a yearning for the clap happy SloMo ...

But come 2021, Morrison had become convinced the Coalition would lose the election unless his government adopted the position of net zero by 2050. Coupled with some debatable arguments that Australia would face high tariffs imposed by climate-compliant countries and be starved of international capital, the cabinet went along with the change. The Nationals, whose instincts were to oppose the motion, were rewarded with the promise of billions of dollars of compensation.
At the same time, Covid played havoc with the budget as government spending went from $478bn in 2018-19 (24.5 per cent of GDP) to $654bn (31.3 per cent of GDP) in 2020-21. Of course, a great deal of this spending was unavoidable given the uncertainties surrounding the severity and course of the pandemic. The decisions by some of the states to impose prolonged lockdowns also forced the hand of the federal government.
But having grown accustomed to very low rates of inflation, the Coalition massively underestimated the danger of igniting inflationary pressures, particularly in the context of frozen supply chains. Many of the programs that were initiated at that time were both badly designed and badly implemented.
The HomeBuilder program, for instance, led to a surge in building costs that continued well after the pandemic had ceased to be a problem. The JobKeeper program was far too generous and allowed firms that didn’t meet the criteria to keep the assistance.

Oh dear, so it was actually the clap happy one that set the country on the road to ruin? That surely deserves a snap ...Scott Morrison speaks during a press conference.

Tears streaked down Dame Groan's weathered visage - bonjour tristesse - as she pounded out her last gobbet of doom ...

There was never any indication given by the government that the temporary financial assistance given to households and businesses would need to be repaid. Research undertaken by world-renowned economist Greg Kaplan has established that this failure to foreshadow repayment in the US contributed to the price level rising by some 16 per cent. There is every reason to think a similar conclusion applies here.
Exceptionalism was replaced by sloppy thinking and mediocrity. Handing out favours, spending more on programs, putting everything on the tab – this was the modus operandi of the Coalition government when it was voted out in 2022. All those years of hard-fought reforms, of accepting the important trade-offs in managing the budget and the ever-looming threat of inflation, which is the ultimate tax – they were simply forgotten.
The Labor government is arguably much worse as it focuses almost entirely on redistributing our shrinking wealth. But the rot had set in when it won the 2022 election. Productivity growth is barely above zero and real wages are where they were in 2012. From top of the pops to clear laggard in less than 20 years – it is a very sad story.

So sad, such tristesse ...

If only Dame Groan could look on the bright side, and the opportunities all around us, as Wilcox showed her how to do it ...

It turns out that everything is currently an odyssey ...

So why haven't the reptiles gone all in on the fully woke show that's ruining the planet?