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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the length portends significance and importance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the pond can pick and choose what to discuss.

Sadly this also works in reverse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not only did King Donald encourage the rioters ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Naturally the lemmings at the lizard Oz joined in.

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

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

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

No it doesn't ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senior Writer

Nah, not really.

There was also ...

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

Frank also joined in the festivities ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, the old chook cackled on ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That led to a final gobbet of groan ...

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

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

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

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

And so on.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Or the Swiss bank account man ...

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

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

What else? 

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

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

Political analyst

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gender grifting is the pond's newest favourite grift.

And there was this ...

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

So much more fun than regurgitating the Major.

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

Take it away Brownie ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subsidies 'r us ...

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

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

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

What else?

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

Is it necessary to mention him at all?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course not ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go lettuce ...

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

In which Polonius goes there, Shanners gives the lettuce a fighting chance, and garrulous Gemma goes back to the biblical future ...

 

Et tu Polonius?

The pond had resolved to spend a Gough-free weekend, but has a soft spot for the pedant, especially as the reptiles cast him in a minor supporting role, a kind play on that Stoppardian riff, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Tossed out on a Friday, buried, dismissed, without any fuss about the dismissal.

His effort, a walk down memory lane, was entirely stripped of distracting snaps.

This is how it looked, sans opening snap, sans opening flourish...

What a miserable presentation.

How cruel, and yet probably fair, because the text had a faint whiff of doddering mustiness, a bit like Joe remembering his Scranton days, or the pond recalling Peel street, a kind of mind-numbing form of navel-gazing and fluff-gathering ...

...In November 1975, I was a senior tutor in the La Trobe University politics department. Among my colleagues, I was closest to Hugo Wolfsohn. We were two of the few political conservatives in what was a typical social sciences faculty of the day, replete with left-of-centre and leftist types. Nice people for the most part but many were quite naive. Like most Australian campuses then, academics and activists were overwhelmingly opposed to the Dismissal and hostile to Fraser and Sir John Kerr. Some academics reported the event as a constitutional crisis from which Australia might never recover.
At the time Max Teichmann, a left-wing academic at Monash University, put out a pamphlet titled Don’t Let History Repeat Itself. He maintained that Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam had similarities with the events that occurred before Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933. In his rant, Teichmann made reference to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels before predicting that if the Coalition were elected in December 1975 it would establish a dictatorship.
The Monash academic’s political hyperbole annoyed Wolfsohn. On December 4, 1975, The Age published a joint letter signed by Wolfsohn and Rufus Davis, who was professor of politics at Monash University. They were well equipped to identify political hyperbole in a modern democracy.
Wolfsohn was a Berlin-born Jew who fled his country of birth as a young man in 1937 and arrived in Australia some time later. Many of his family died in the Holocaust. Davis was a Jewish Australian of Ukrainian background who arrived in Fremantle as a young boy in 1927 with his family.
The duo expressed concern at the pronouncements of academics containing alarming statements about a crisis in democracy and references to a coup d’etat. They wrote: “Australian democracy is neither in crisis nor has it come to an end.” They said “coups d’etat are not usually followed by elections” and dismissed comparisons of Australia and Nazi Germany as “merely comic were it not for the fact that these people are occupying responsible teaching positions in our universities”. Australia was merely facing a “temporary technical difficulty in the working of our parliamentary system which lacks adequate provisions for the satisfactory resolution of deadlocks between the two Houses of Parliament”.
Looking back after half a century, the Wolfsohn-Davis analysis holds up well. Australian democracy survived the events of November 11, 1975. Whitlam lost to Fraser again in December 1977 and stepped down as Labor leader. He was replaced by Hayden, who won seats from the Coalition at the October 1980 election.
Labor was back in office, under Hawke’s leadership, in March 1983 – and won five elections in a row. Howard led the Coalition to victory in March 1996 and won four elections in a row. Sounds like an efficient functioning democracy, don’t you think?
In the event, Australian politics was mugged by reality. The Fraser government was adversely affected by the way it came to office. A general feeling emerged within the Coalition that attempting to block supply to force an early election was not worth the trouble.
For its part, Labor refused to acknowledge that, when in opposition in the late 1960s and early 70s, Whitlam had advocated blocking supply to bring down the Coalition government. Whitlam had advanced such a tactic in his budget-in-reply speech on August 25, 1970.
As it turned out, the main victim of the Dismissal was Kerr, who was forced to resolve the dispute. Whitlam became a Labor hero. This hid the fact, despite high intelligence, Whitlam was a failed leader who was incapable of dealing with economic downturns that afflicted Australia in 1974 and 1975.
There was some political violence in late 1975 and into 1976. Fraser and Kerr were the main targets until the former stepped down as governor-general in 1977. From the mid-80s Fraser became a critic of the Liberal Party that had made it possible for him to become prime minister. In time Fraser became a hero among the leftists who had hated him years earlier.
But the important point is that Australia escaped virtually unscathed from the political crisis of October-November 1975.

And that was that, and the pond had done its Gough duties, and stayed true to Polonius, and best of all, the old codger's outing contained not one mention of ancient Troy's tome. 

Good old Polonius hadn't even been distracted by any attempt to be present in the new world ...

... or by the terrible doings of those cardigan wearers at the ABC.

Sure there was a plug for Sky Noise down under, but Polonius was so restrained he didn't mention that Ughmann was to be the star ...

To mark the 50th anniversary, Sky News Australia will premiere an exclusive one-hour documentary, ‘The Dismissal: 50 Years On’, presented by award-winning journalist and Sky News Political Contributor Chris Uhlmann on Tuesday 11 November at 7.30pm AEDT.

Now there's a date the pond can be guaranteed to miss, but oh, there was a breathless hush in the reptile crowd ...

...Chris Uhlmann said: “Like every Australian old enough to remember, I know exactly where I was on the afternoon of 11 November 1975.  I was a 15-year-old Canberra schoolboy walking down the third-form corridor on the way to class when a breathless friend ran up to me.  'Whitlam’s been sacked,' he said."
"That night on our black-and-white TV I saw for the first time the words and images that would echo through time.
“This November Sky News will wind back time to revisit the Dismissal and relive the day that split the nation and left a scar, a legend, and a lesson that endures fifty years on.” (the pond doesn't link to Sky)

And if that doesn't give you a clue as to the failing lizard Oz's demographics, nothing will.

Cue a tip of the hat to Christopher Warren in Crikey ...

Touting Trump, losing readers and shedding advisers: Welcome to Lachlan’s troubles at News Corp
Fighting off a shareholder challenge, losing another loyal adviser, and revenue drifting sideways — it’s hard times at News Corp for Lachlan Murdoch. (sorry, paywall)

...To understand Lachlan’s challenge is to understand that Lachlan’s business is not his father’s: Different power play. Different content. Different business.

Rupert built advertising-supported monopolies with mass audiences that threatened governments with their apparent power to move votes via the dark arts of journalism, while always (well, usually) pulled back by the hard constraints of pesky facts. Now, the family media are in the opinion business — distributors of talking points and ideological hard-men for the Anglophone right. Now, “news” is harnessed to the service of political outrage — like this week’s New York Post horror at the communist takeover of the city. 

It leaves Lachlan Murdoch with more of a second-hand power, with the strutting family media now more like cut-price street-corner touts for the larger-than-life personalities with real power on the right, like Trump in the US or Nigel Farage in the UK — or whoever emerges to fill that gap in Australia.

Not all the elements of the father’s business retain their value for the son. Last summer, the Foxtel network that the Murdochs shed blood to get off the ground back in the 1990s was swapped out for a small shareholding in the Saudi-backed sports streaming play DAZN. According to News Corp’s mid-year report, the big city tabloids like Australia’s Herald Sun are sliding, with subscription numbers well back behind their Nine competitors The Age and SMH, their audience, all too literally, dying.

Getting the siblings out of the company has left Lachlan in a weakened position, with control of just a third of the voting stock and lacking the hard-earned reputational heft of his father. The ISS-recommended vote against the reelection of sitting directors is just one pointer to Wall Street unease. News Corp shares are down about 15% since the family buyout seemed to take the company out of play.

But since the collapse of Project Harmony 12 months ago, the minority voting shares in the company have leapt in price relative to the majority non-voting shares, after about five years of the two moving in step. On Wall Street, pricing is messaging in an arcane insider code — so what’s the market saying?

The big buyer of News Corp shares is, well, News Corp. Earlier this year (and confirmed again this week), the company announced that it would be spending up to US$1.3 billion to buy back shares this year — that’s just under 10% of the total market value of the company. Still, might be a small price to pay to keep share prices up and the Murdochs in control.

After years of chasing, Lachlan has locked his teeth onto the bumper of the family car. But with all his worries, the siblings might just be happier to be walking away with the cash.

Couldn't happen to a nicer feller...

 ...but that doesn't help the lettuce ...

For that, the pond turned to the bouffant one for another dalliance with the greengrocer.

Usually Shanners could be relied to turn in 2 or 3 minutes of copy, but somebody up stairs must have told him to improve his productivity, or else AI, so this day he managed a goodly, bigly 6 minute read ... (or so the reptiles clocked it)...

The header: Liberals are quietly withdrawing support from Sussan Ley, hoping she’ll quit, There is even a suspicion that some Coalition MPs are ‘running dead’ to speed up the process as they abandon their first female leader.

Apologies, this is the only way this sort of errant misogyny could make it into the pond: Cartoon by Johannes Leak (so now they're ogling 71 year olds?)

The pond should say up front that it has absolutely no interest in any of this, save insofar as it helps promote the lettuce's cause ...

There is a growing gloomy expectation, a forlorn wish and an unlikely hope within Coalition ranks that Liberal Party poll support will sink through the bottom of the barrel, that resignations of Liberal Party branch members will persist and that opposition parliamentary tactics will continue to fail so Sussan Ley will resign as leader.
There is even a suspicion that some Coalition MPs are “running dead” to speed the process: not going to question time to leave vacant seats behind the isolated Opposition Leader; publicly not backing her personal attacks on Anthony Albanese; sitting sullen and silent when she is ridiculed; and simply becoming engrossed on smartphones and tablets instead of being actively involved.
Labor ministers who have lived through similar experiences even posit that some of Ley’s “friends” are complicit in letting the ship sink under her.
With only one scheduled parliamentary sitting week before the Christmas break in this 2025 election year it is likely that a slow implosion of Liberal leadership will see Ley limp into next year.
All of this is based on two assumptions: first, that Ley’s leadership is doomed and it is only a matter of time before she is replaced; and, second, it is better for the party and her successor, whoever that may be, if the first female federal leader of the Liberal Party is not removed in a bloody political killing season.

To be fair, it's also not about ancient events of the Gough kind, even if it sounds repetitive and tedious, Victoria Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson discusses the upcoming Liberal Party meeting regarding net zero as well as the future of Sussan Ley’s leadership. “I can’t pretend things are good,” Ms Henderson told Sky News Australia. “We’ve had a dire Newspoll result … things are not travelling well. “I do think Sussan is losing support, but I do believe in miracles.”

So much navel gazing, and yet every bit helps the lettuce, though the pond was shattered at the bouffant one's time line, what with the pond plunging heavily on a New Year makeover ...

The first assumption would seem to be correct; few MPs say they believe Ley can survive until the middle of next year and some think she could be replaced well before based on when the critical policy decision on a 2050 target for net-zero carbon emissions is made and how it is received.
With a series of Liberal and Nationals meetings next week, the Liberals plan to make a net-zero decision and Coalition position announcement on Sunday, November 16, a full week before the return of parliament for the last week of November.
It is expected that the Liberals will dump the net-zero target – which already has been dumped by the Nationals – but with some caveats.
All this week, as expectation turned to anticipation of a dumping of the 2050 target, Ley made it clear that she had always said “No net-zero target at any cost”, but the process has made her seem captive to the Nationals and conservative Liberal MPs.
“I said when I became leader that we would not have a policy that was net zero at any cost. When it comes to cost, this government has got it all wrong,” she said. “I’ll sit down with the Nationals and we’ll work out a Coalition position together because the objective of this is to hold this government to account for its trainwreck energy policy and right now.”
Some conservatives who support the dumping of the net-zero target have started to argue that Australia’s reduction of carbon emissions of 28 per cent below 2005 levels – a reduction far ahead of most of the rest of the world, including our major trading partners – should allow for a pause to reassess the impact on the economy, especially agriculture, that can’t even be attempted until there is a policy declaration.

Again there came more middle of the year year talk in the caption, Few MPs say they believe the Opposition Leader can survive until the middle of next year. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Why wait 6 or 7 months? If it were to be done, best do it quickly, and give the lettuce its moment of fame and glory ...

This week opposition finance spokesman James Paterson urged a settlement as soon as possible so the Coalition “will be able to scrutinise the government’s failures on energy, which are manifest and significant, as soon as we lock in our own policies and positions on these issues”.
Liberal MP for the Melbourne seat of Goldstein Tim Wilson, the only Liberal to gain a seat in the May election – and from a teal independent – also recognised the need for a decision to be taken to shift the focus from the Coalition and back on to Labor’s energy policies.
“While we are in Coalition, we have our own identity, we represent cities, suburbs and rural and regional Australia. The National Party explicitly says they are there for regional Australia, that’s their slogan,” Wilson said.
“We’re there to build the whole of the country and we have to reflect the full diversity of Aus­tralian opinion in how we’re going to build out the future of this country.”
Either way, Ley is not guaranteed support as her own mistakes, splits between the Nationals and Liberals, divisions within the Liberals and a record low 24 per cent primary support for the Coalition and a net personal approval rating of minus-33 for the Liberal leader as well as poor parliamentary performances spur discontent with her leadership.
After three days of ineffective Coalition tactics and strategy in parliament Ley faced the humiliation of a dressing-down from house Speaker Milton Dick and a lecture for beginners on politics and parliamentary procedure.
On Wednesday, the opposition hit a nadir in question time. There were poorly framed questions, name calling, ignorance of parliamentary procedure and pointless points of order.
This led to the first refusal of a point of order by a Speaker in more than a decade.
These silly interjections allowed an already dominant government to get away with murder. Manager of opposition business Alex Hawke, Ley’s biggest supporter, failed the leader on the floor of the parliament and angered even moderate Liberal MPs with poorly crafted questions that let ministers off the hook and wore out the Speaker’s tolerance.

The reptiles even made the bouffant one do telly work, Dennis Shanahan joins Claire Harvey to break down an eventful Question Time.

The bouffant one sounded like he was on the verge of tears ...

In the dying hours of Thursday’s parliament Dick became even more exasperated as Ley unsuccessfully tried to take on the Prime Minister. Dick sat her down and once again lectured the opposition on politics and procedure.
Ley misused a point of order, after asking a question on food for the poor that gave Albanese room to drive a truck through. “Sledges don’t feed people,” she declared. “Can the Prime Minister give a straight answer?”
After weeks of frustration, forbearance and courtesy beyond the call of any Speaker, Dick told Ley her behaviour was “absolutely unacceptable” and “We just can’t have question time descend to where people just get up and say what they feel like”.
“I’ve been trying to deal with this all week in terms of appropriateness of points of order and I’ve been more than generous with the Leader of the Opposition,” Dick said as he pointed to the failure of the question to limit the Prime Minister at all in his response.
“No more frivolous points of order,” he said the day after refusing Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan the right to a point of order.
But even with this run of losses and inability to get colleagues to back her political stunts – calling for Kevin Rudd to be removed as ambassador to the US or suggesting Albanese was wearing an anti-Semitic T-shirt – the record low polling, divisions and the nightmare of settling a climate change dilemma, the second assumption of Liberal MPs that Ley may resign and avoid a bloodletting is probably wrong.
Liberal MPs concede that removing the party’s first female leader will damage any male successor – and there are only male pretenders – and fervently hope Ley will resign under the weight of failure.
This quiet departure is akin to the removal/resignation of Alexander Downer after a similarly short, tumultuous time as Liberal leader in 1994 when an agreed settlement, implemented over the Christmas break of 1994-95, saw John Howard’s return to the Liberal leadership in early 1995 and election victory in 1996.

As expected, the only solution was to turn to brooding about the past, John Howard celebrating his election victory in 1996. Picture: Michael Jones

As the pond joyously, happily never stops noting, the man who not only lost government, he managed to lose his seat ... as the bouffant one kept trying to spoil the lettuce's Xmas fun ...

This remains unlikely in the Christmas break of 2025.
A likelier scenario is the messy process of the removal of Malcolm Turnbull that began 16 years ago this weekend, an anniversary perhaps more relevant than a 50th political anniversary next Tuesday, where Turnbull’s support for Rudd’s climate change emissions trading scheme led to a revolt in the party room and mass resignations of Liberal members.
Turnbull rejected his party room’s wishes and insisted on supporting the ETS.
Former Nationals’ leader in the Senate Ron Boswell told Inquirer that he had reported mass defections of Liberals to the Nationals and warned the Liberal leadership that Turnbull’s support for the Labor policy would leave them without a party.
“I warned Tony Abbott after the meeting that the issue was turning people off, the Liberals would be left without a party and that he had to stand as leader,” Boswell said.
Despite the party room revolt Turnbull held on, fought two ballots in two weeks and lost to Abbott in a party room that endorsed the dropping of the ETS.
Abbott went on to almost win in 2010 and to return the Coalition with a landslide victory in 2013.
Whichever course the Liberals follow on climate change policy and subsequent leadership choices and challenges, it is likely to be a messy political landscape and an ugly leadership showdown, although Abbott proved it was possible to turn things around in two elections.

Did the pond note a snooty note of dismissive haughtiness in the bouffant one's tone? an anniversary perhaps more relevant than a 50th political anniversary next Tuesday

Ouch ... perhaps another step to the right, and a chance to give the spawn of a creationist young earth home a chance?

Here's a little help from caring neighbours ...

And so to a bonus.

The pond realises that it dismissed garrulous Gemma out of hand yesterday, but today felt in need of an inspirational text to boost its Sunday meditation offering ...

The header:  A ‘Fortress Australia’ mindset still shapes national policy — and holds us back, What will it take to bring down the walls and return to being risk-takers and innovators?

The caption for a snap designed to downplay Covid: Public health and policy advice imposed on us all during Covid, for the most part, was bunkum. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

Grating Gemma went full Killer of the IPA for her opening, as if all those deaths pre-vaccine were just a dream provoked by government ...

I lived through Covid in the great state of Westralia. The almost, would-be sovereign nation of Westralia, for those who remember. A time when the name State Daddy was coined for Mark McGowan and at least one person publicly and proudly admitted to getting the premier’s face tattooed on their calf. Tell me you’re from WA without actually telling me … Years later it has been confirmed what many of us suspected at the time. That public health and policy advice imposed on us all was, for the most part, bunkum.
Pure politics, polling, power and fear. Weaponising it. Turning Australian against Australian. Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders. The worst of us, on so many levels. Sadly, though, most people were blissfully happy with life in Fortress Australia.
That name spoke of a physical barrier but I’ve come to believe Fortress Australia remains. We are open, we can come and go at will, but are we one and free? Not on your life. Not if you’re talking about freedom of thought, enterprise and industry; openness of mind, attitude and world view.
Australia may no longer be impenetrable in a physical sense but Fortress Australia remains as a state of mind.
Let me give you a couple of practical examples, starting with energy. I’m not talking about net zero (though everyone else is). I’m talking about this government’s ideological prison that is driving productivity, affordability and stability off the end of a cliff while the rest of the world has wised up.

When reading this, it's best to put aside all attempts by the reptiles to mount a valiant defence of fortress Australia.

As soon as the bromancer goes MIA, this is what happens.

Luckily, this being a reptile outing, there was a compleat lack of irony about fortress Australia, what with the garrulous Gemma preoccupied about ways to power the fort.

Inevitably there was going to be talk about nuking the country to save the planet, though devoted readers of the lizard Oz will know that climate science is a hoax and a fraud - a religious cult only practised by zealots - down there with masks and social distancing - but will be relieved that the back orders of an SMR in every back yard will soon  be fulfilled, at least if gabby Gemma has her way ...

Last week, some news broke that proves my point. Reuters reported that nuclear power was on track to become China’s fastest growing source of clean energy between now and 2040. Is it any wonder? The unstoppable demand for 24/7 power in the age of artificial intelligence and data centres can’t be met without it. Meanwhile, here in Fortress Australia, we’re mowing down prime agricultural land in Victoria’s King Valley to put up solar farms and our government scoffs at nuclear with arguments that are as dated and unsophisticated as the “evidence” on which it relies. The government protests that 10 to 15-year timelines to develop nuclear power are too long. By that logic, best we immediately stop funding all medical research.

There's a world of lies embedded in that unlinked, unreferenced, un-footnoted line quoting Reuters ...nuclear power was on track to become China’s fastest growing source of clean energy between now and 2040

Check out this graph ...

Instead of any of that, the reptiles reverted to an old favourite, Satanic Solar, We’re mowing down prime agricultural land in Victoria’s King Valley to put up solar farms. Picture: Catherine Sutherland/Tourism Victoria

What's dumb about this? 

Everybody and his back yard dog knows that anybody with half a clue, and the cash for solar and a battery, represents the real surge in solar ...

Sure it's tough if you're old or poor or live in an apartment block, but the suburbs - supposedly the place where dinkum lizard Oz hive minds dwell - have already spoken with their rooftops, leaving garrulous Gemma to squawk in some mindless bizarro world  ...

In my mind’s eye I imagine Australia’s energy policy being written to the soundtrack of Midnight Oil’s hit song Blue Sky Mine. It’s turned up to 11. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a banger, but it’s in the past. The world, the science, the technology – they have all moved on.
Not in Fortress Australia. Here, it’s still 1990.
Australia must deliver the cleanest, most affordable mix of energy available to us that supports the economy and doesn’t plunge people into energy poverty and cripple industry – mix being the most important word.

The next caption pretty much summed it all up, Our government scoffs at nuclear with arguments that are as dated and unsophisticated as the ‘evidence’ on which it relies. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Meanwhile, in another country ...

It's hard to resist the notion that the lizard Oz consists of stupid people writing silly things for hive mind readers ...

Luckily at this point grating Gemma got off the nuke the planet bandwagon, in order to nuke child care ...

And while energy offers one of the most potent examples, there are so many others.
Let’s look at childcare. The federal government is wedded to a policy that is out of step with the rest of the world. It prefers a one-size-fits-all, institutionalised, ideally nationalised approach that punts every kid into a cracked and cracking childcare system from the age of three.
This policy does not empower families with choice. It doesn’t recognise the vaults of data, including the government’s own, that acknowledge parents and primary caregivers are a better option. It removes parental agency and options. It doesn’t insulate children from risk.
Throughout Europe, namely Scandinavia, France and Germany, parents are allowed to choose how and where they spend their childcare subsidies. Not here in Fortress Australia. Here, we are not for turning. Here, we stubbornly refuse to adopt a flexible approach that gives parents choice. Perhaps it has something to do with it being a heavily subsidised $22bn industry. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think current policy has anything do with what’s best for children.

The caption showed of the blithe way that Gemma has with generalities, The federal government is wedded to a childcare policy that is out of step with the rest of the world. Picture: Tony Gough

At this point grave Gemma turned deeply philosophical ... and went back to the future by reverting to Nate Silver in 2012 ...

It’s hard to hear the truth from the noise. So much noise from politicians, from invested interest groups, from so many sources. It’s hard to get a read on what’s real. It’s especially difficult when the collective mindset is set like Roman cobblestones, firm and immovable in the Eternal City 2000 years after they were laid.
So much of current policy relies on flawed predictors, ideology and the like. They come with noisy fanfare and are established as truth. Based on what though?
American author Nate Silver, in his book The Signal and the Noise, spoke about how predictions get it wrong and why. Silver primarily spoke of the use of economic data and financial modelling but the broader principle holds. He wrote that silencing the noise requires scientific knowledge and, critically, self-knowledge.
“The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth,” he said.
Never has Australia’s social and political discourse been so calamitously noisy. There’s a dearth of measured, fact-based, intelligent conversations on issues that matter; an abundance of shouting. Sadly, all too often it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the most oil.
Here’s another example. Last week, research published by peak body Meat & Livestock Australia painted a very different picture about Australian attitudes to red meat than the noise would have us believe. In my day job we work with the cattle industry, but not with MLA directly (disclosure is important), so I found this research especially interesting.
Noise would have us believe that Australians don’t want red meat and overwhelmingly blame red meat production for environmental harm. Wrong. That’s just the noise. The signal is in the data, which found there are fewer non-meat eaters than ever, and that of those who shun it overwhelmingly (60 per cent) blame cost-of-living pressures. Only 5 per cent reference environmental concerns. Even less, animal welfare.
So much noise on so many issues, how to turn it down? Perhaps it’s because of our geographical isolation that his noise seems so easy to amplify. Has Australia become one gigantic echo chamber?
Once we were a nation known as risk-takers and innovators. I absolutely believe that is still wired into the Aussie DNA, but we are contending with a pervasive, close-minded, almost bunker mentality.
The sunburnt country has become the subsidy country, a land of sweeping reliance on government funding. Of rugged, mountainous resistance to new ideas. Of droughts of courage, initiative and ideas. Resistance to change that comes in like a flood. Can the metaphorical walls of Fortress Australia fall like those in the biblical story of Jericho? In that story the Israelites marched in silence around the walls for seven days. Not a word was spoken. Based on that, it would seem that drowning out the noise is the first step to take.

The pond said it yesterday, and will say it again today.

If an ancient Dorothea Mackellar poem and a reference to an ancient biblical story about a town for which no physical evidence exists is the best that Gemma can come up with as an alternative to an alleged pervasive, close-minded bunker mentality, then the pond is content to stay in the bunker...

How weird is it to jump from this ...Roman cobblestones, firm and immovable in the Eternal City 2000 years after they were laid ... to blather about the walls of Jericho c. 1550 BCE?

That's your futurism? That's your advanced thinking? An even bigger regression?

The chance of any risk-taking or innovation coming out of that brand of ludditism is down there with those who fancy Susssan over the lettuce ...

And now, in closing, this, yet another tribute to Ken Burns...

A short guide for suffering reptiles...

And a little fun with the mini-Vlad sociopath, doing it live ...