In which the pond has its usual quality Polonial time - this is a conservative-full zone - and gives the Angelic one and the lizard Oz editorialist a jolly good capping ...

The pond is again getting very tired of the monocultural diet inflicted on it by the lizard Oz hive mind.

It never takes long for the ennui to set in - it's a bit like being made to swallow Hollywood swill.

Yesterday the pond was forced to endure Spielberg's Disclosure Day, a film set in a purported present, but determinedly back in the 1980s, with endless amounts of fake lens flare and a plot about as credible as the UFO files released by mad King Donald in order to distract from the Epstein files.

Apart from the usual (ye ancient cats and dogs, not Roswell, not a crop circle), the pond objected to the portrait  of the greys, what with any viewer of People of Earth knowing that the greys are inclined to human abductions and anal probes.

Instead we're supposed to believe that a Catholic nun represents the people of earth in welcoming an alien invasion, because of "empathy", perhaps meant as a Spielbergian retort to mad King Donald.

Benevolent Catholics always make the pond nervous, and after a risible train crash stunt the pond lost all interest, especially as the big reveal happens in a replica of a small town Norman Rockwell type house - so E.T. Spielberg - and on broadcast television, as if the internet and social media hadn't been invented. That way too long routine perfectly suited the film's 1980s feel, but enough already. (Okay, maybe it was more 1977 given the visual references to Close Encounters).

When are we going to see a real movie, funded by a real man, with real stars and oodles of creatives behind the camera? Must we wait until Xmas?

Speaking of empathy, the pond feels entirely righteous not having it when it comes to the hive mind.

The pond found it extremely difficult to compile enough reptiles for its Sunday meditation, not helped by Bernie carrying on the lizard Oz TG jihad ...

The trans lobby says it saves kids. The evidence says otherwise
Australia still offers puberty blockers to children as countries like the UK, Finland and Sweden restrict them, and our national review remains unfinished.
By Bernard Lane

The pond never goes there, and is still haunted by a TG friend's anecdotes about the way she was tortured with electroshock treatment, and suffered much abuse at the hands of the Catholic church, called in to cast out her demons by way of "empathetic" exorcisms.

She was only saved from all this when she ran across a sympathetic shrink, and thereafter managed a varied and successful career, but still hasn't come out, because there's still so much "empathy" to hand in the land.

So what's Lane's credentials for rabbiting on about TG folk?

Bernard Lane is a former senior journalist with The Australian and publishes the Gender Clinic News Substack.

Oh he was a journo and now he publishes a substack obsessed with TG folk. Say no more. Just right for the lizard Oz TG jihad.

So much empathy.

Perhaps "empathy" should be the theme of the day, because this day Polonius's prattle displays much empathy towards Benji's barking mad theocratic culture and none at all to those Palestinians being ethnically cleansed from Gaza and the West Bank (not to mention the Lebanese being kicked out of south Lebanon, and the ones being bombed elsewhere):

The header: How the ABC and top universities turned a blind eye to antisemitism; Evidence exposes how Australia’s public broadcaster and elite universities allowed a culture of denial and ideological groupthink to fester.

The caption for the man with the furtive air of a devious prevert, or so the portrait would suggest: University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott offered apologies during senate and royal commission hearings for failing to dismantle antisemitic campus encampments earlier. Picture: NewsWire / Josie Hayden

Polonius spent a bigly four minutes rabbiting on in his prattle in a way entirely consistent with the current Australian Daily Zionist News jihad, and with not another visual interruption for the rant ... 

The ABC and the Group of Eight universities (Adelaide University, Australian National University, University of Melbourne, Monash University, University of Queensland, University of Sydney, University of NSW and University of Western Australia) like to present themselves as the leading intellectual and cultural institutions in Australia.
Yet evidence presented to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, along with other sources, indicates that both the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster and taxpayer-subsidised major universities have failed to act to thwart or reduce antisemitism in their areas of responsibility.
As I wrote in these pages before the terrorist attack on southern Israel by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023, antisemitism was rapidly increasing in Australia, particularly in the capital cities of Melbourne and Sydney.
On October 9, 2023, an unauthorised march to the Sydney Opera House witnessed what American writer Mark Levin has termed the Marxist-Islamist Alliance chanting “Where’s the Jews” or perhaps “Gas the Jews”. There is scant difference. This was before Israel went to war against Hamas in Gaza.

Mark Levin?

The pond decided to break a long standing rule just for the comedic effect ...

Okay, it's more Ben than Mark, it's more broken clock syndrome, but you could waste an eternity of time watching barking mad far right fundamentalists go at each other over the ethnic cleansing of Gaza ..

Back to Polonius, as he builds to an incredible suck:

And then, on December 14, 2025, there was the Bondi massacre where it is alleged that radical Islamists killed 15 innocent civilians who were celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Australia will never fully recover from this massacre of the innocents. Nor will many Australians ever feel safe again.
What has been notable about events in Australia since October 7, 2023, is that so few Australians publicly stood up for the Australian Jewish community. It happens to be a small group of over 100,000 but it has brave and articulate leaders.
Needless to say, the News Corp print media stood up – as did Sky News. 

What a classic suck, as if conducting a never-ending jihad of their own was more than a match for a funded-by-Benji Hamas jihad (look it up)...

But the rest of the mainstream media was relatively quiet – at least until the Bondi massacre – as synagogues were firebombed and bollards were constructed outside Jewish schools and childcare centres.
What about Australia’s academics? Many who might have spoken up were silent while others were supporting the Marxist-radical Islamist demonstrators.

It being a Polonial rant, eventually it transpires that it's all the fault of the ABC. Connoisseurs of Polonius-speak might wonder if it will lead to one of his classic lines, always present thanks to his keyboard shortcut:

What about the ABC? Four Corners – which presents as Australia’s leading current affairs program – did not devote one episode to antisemitism. Although it did cover the neo-Nazi movement, which is a minor part of the antisemitism problem in Australia.
I first met Mark Scott, vice-chancellor of Sydney University, many years ago. He is a nice, decent person. And that may be the problem.
In September 2024, Scott admitted he had failed Sydney University students and staff. Appearing before the Senate committee, Scott said that testimonials by Sydney University students and staff who were victims of acts of antisemitism on campus “were heartbreaking and unacceptable” and added that he was “sorry”.
Last week Scott gave evidence to the royal commission headed by former High Court judge Virginia Bell SC. He again declared his sorrow that he had not acted sooner to remove the encampment from the university campus. But Scott remains in office.
Compare and contrast Jennifer Westacott, the hands-on chancellor of Western Sydney University, which is not one of the Go8. She is the stand-out university administrator in thwarting antisemitism on the university’s campus. She is both nice and strong.
The problem with the Scott-managed university in recent years, apart from the antisemitic violence, is the lack of viewpoint diversity. Supporters of Israel’s right to exist within secure borders were silenced, including vocal opponents of antisemitism, physically or by intimidation.
For 10 years before he took up his present job, Scott was the ABC’s managing director and editor-in-chief. When he started this position, Scott let it be known that he intended to bring about greater diversity with respect to the public broadcaster’s news and current affairs coverage. He said as much when he addressed The Sydney Institute in October 2006.
But nothing happened. Like many of his ABC predecessors and successors, Scott was seduced by the fashionable left-wing culture that pervades the organisa­tion. He inherited a media organisation that lacked viewpoint diversity and when he departed nothing much had changed.

"Viewpoint diversity"?

How incredibly disappointing.

Everyone knows that the mantra should be a reference to a "conservative-free zone", as in ...

The fact is that over the years the ABC has lost many of its traditional social and political conservatives to other media outlets – including Sky News. That’s the inevitable fate of a conservative-free zone media outlet in a democracy. (Inevitable fate of ABC’s conservative-free zone: boring)

It goes without saying that the most crucial conservative the ABC lost was Polonius himself, with the bitterness likely never to leave him.

Now back to praising the hive mind and deploring the cardigan wearers.

This was evident when current ABC chairman Kim Williams was interviewed last week on Sky News’ The Kenny Report. When asked by Chris Kenny to name some right-of-centre presenters on the public broadcaster to match the plethora of left-of-centre ones, Williams said “from time to time” there had been some. But he could only think of Tom Switzer, who has not been an ABC presenter for two years.
John Lyons, the ABC’s Americas editor, set the tone for the organisation’s coverage of the US-Iran war. On March 1 this year he said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “driven” US President Donald Trump to initiate hostilities. We now know, courtesy of the book Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, that the final decision was made by Trump.

Point of order muh lud.

Trump might have made the decision, but Benji pushed him to it.

Here's a quote from the both siderist NY Times, written by none other than Haberman and Swan ...6 Takeaways From the Story of Trump’s Decision to Go to War With Iran

Netanyahu made a detailed pitch for war to Trump and his team in the Situation Room.

Sitting across from Mr. Trump in the Situation Room — a venue rarely used for in-person sessions with foreign leaders — Mr. Netanyahu made an hourlong presentation to the president and his top aides on Feb. 11. He argued that Iran was ripe for regime change and that a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign could bring down the Islamic Republic. At one point, he played a video that included a montage of figures who could lead Iran if the theocratic government fell. Among them was Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah.
The Israeli leader and his advisers laid out what they portrayed as near-certain victory: Iran’s missile program destroyed in weeks, the Strait of Hormuz kept open and minimal retaliation against American interests. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, could help foment an uprising inside Iran to finish the job.
Mr. Trump’s response was swift and appeared approving to most in the room. Sounds good to me, he told the prime minister.

U.S. intelligence officials called Netanyahu’s regime-change scenarios “farcical.”

U.S. analysts scrambled overnight to assess what Mr. Netanyahu had presented. Their conclusions, delivered the next day in another Situation Room meeting, were blunt.
The first two objectives laid out in the Israeli pitch — killing the ayatollah and crippling Iran’s ability to threaten its neighbors — were achievable, U.S. intelligence officials concluded. The second two goals presented by Mr. Netanyahu and his team — a popular uprising inside Iran and the replacement of the Islamic government by a new secular leader — were not. The C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, used a single word to describe the regime-change scenarios: “farcical.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio translated, “In other words, it’s bullshit.”
Mr. Trump absorbed the assessment — and moved past it. Regime change, he said, would be “their problem.” His interest in killing Iran’s top leaders and dismantling its military remained undimmed.

And given this inaccurate Polonial reporting, it takes incredible chutzpah for Polonius to berate the ABC for inaccurate reporting, but that's our Polonius ...

The unintended consequence of such inaccurate reporting by a critic of contemporary Israel is to play into the hands of the increasing number of antisemites in our midst. Lyons is not an antisemite but he is an Israel antagonist. There is no counterpoint to Lyons within the ABC.
It’s the anti-Israel ethos within the public broadcaster that leads to mistakes. The royal commission has heard that it took the ABC more than a week to correct (only online, I understand) a report it ran claiming 14,000 babies “will die” in Gaza within 48 hours unless the UN could reach them.
I heard this live on May 21, 2025, and just knew it was false. But ABC producers ran this BBC report because they believed what they wanted to believe. Once again, such false reporting has the unintended consequence of increasing antisemitism.
ABC management invariably goes into denial when defending its patch. This was the case when ABC editorial director Gavin Fang appeared before the royal commission on July 9 – although he did acknowledge some mistakes. And when Williams spoke to Kenny on July 16. Williams deserves praise for having the courage to address an ABC critic in the media – a rare occasion. Also, Scott has apologised for his failure at Sydney University.
However, in a sense it’s all too late. When the Go8 and the ABC needed to be heard speaking out for viewpoint diversity against antisemitism, there was silence.

For a man who berates the ABC for wanting to believe, this incredible ability to believe in the lizard Oz jihad in support of a fundamentalist theocracy is a remarkable piece of work.

Here, have a 'toon break ...

With Polonius out of the way, the pond struggled to find a bonus.

The pond briefly thought of snappy Tom...

Economic heavyweights warn Labor is ignoring Australia’s dire productivity crisis
While the rest of the world got richer after the pandemic, Australians got poorer – and Labor’s had almost nothing to say about it.
By Tom Dusevic

But snappy Tom is there in the intermittent archive, and he's really just Dame Groan-lite. Why accept the sardine John West rejects when you can have canned Groan tuna?

Besides, he's running the bog standard reptile line that we'll all be rooned by Xmas (and maybe the way mad King Donald is going with tariffs and the war on Iran we might be, but the reptiles never seem to mention that).

Spoiler alert, this is the end of snappy Tom's piece as he cranks himself up to an hysterical 11, with the pond offering it as a kind of teaser trailer ...

...Former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe this week declared wholesale policy changes were required to revive investment. “Our living standards have stagnated,” he said at a public event to announce new governance rules for securities trading.
Lowe noted there had been no net growth in per capita incomes for seven or eight years. In the previous three decades, or so, per capita income was rising at 1.5 per cent, year in, year out. “This is the fundamental economic problem the country faces,” he said.
In simple terms, while our population had grown, before and after the Covid crisis, our capital stock of factories, machines, tools and computers had not kept pace. “We require businesses to invest,” Lowe said. “We need Australia to be a great place for businesses to invest, expand and hire people. It requires some more fundamental public policy reform.”
Lowe’s prescription sounded a lot like his frequent urgings during his seven years as head of the central bank, a term that ended three years ago. That sage advice was heeded by neither Coalition nor Labor governments.
One intervention by a former RBA board member could be seen as a niggling outlier; two, for a pundit, is a megatrend. Bill Kelty, one-time ACTU secretary, was the third amigo in Labor’s 1980s and 90s Accord-led economic revival with leaders Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. The trio’s political and intellectual thrust could launch a SpaceX Starship.
In a submission to a Senate inquiry examining legislation on the nation’s cash distribution arrangements, Kelty put in everyday terms what the OECD’s latest figuring on living standards meant for workers: two years lost income over a working life of 40 years.
“This is material to working people who are really battlers,” Kelty wrote to the Senate economics committee in his role as a non-executive director of Armaguard, the cash logistics company.
Yet commodity export prices are high and sales volumes have increased, he added.
“We know the underlying malaise,” Kelty wrote. “Productivity change is the third lowest in the OECD. Investment is low. Growth per capita is non-existent.”
But Kelty wasn’t done. “Government expenditure is rising much faster than inflation,” he continued. “The tax on working people is increasing faster than their wages. It is easy to blame the governments of the past and present, but ultimately we are all to blame. Something is wrong with this place and we need to do something about it.”
You feel it in your bones. It is this accursed inflation. Most costs are never coming down. Wages, stuck. And the rising debt’s call on taxpayers. How much longer it takes for younger Australians to get a start. We all live the frustration: our economy operates in fits and starts, like the way Messi meanders, sprints, and is ambling again after he’s called off-side.

Messi's the metaphor?

Try mad King Donald ...

The pond also thought about the Angelic one, but the pond didn't feel the need to swing a hammer at the skull of a dead woman, so decided to do it in caps ...

There you go, there's the reason the pond couldn't be bothered... too much tyke empathy:

At worst she was regarded as a bigot – and a Catholic bigot at that – who opposed gay marriage, abortion and unchecked immigration, a symbol of the modern twin sins of racism and homophobia. 

Yes, she was a bigot and a furrinerphobe and homophobe of the worst kind, and that's all that can be said about her, except that she also indulged in the worst forms of showbix exhibitionism, as old bigots are wont to do ...

So much Catholic empathy, just like a Spielberg movie.

So the pond carried on with the caps ...

Save donkeys in the holy land (no caps please, it ain't blessed), and never mind the human casualities?

At least Simpson knew what to do with his donkey.

And this last cap has a line worth repeating ...

Here's the guff the pond found particularly irksome ...

Widdecombe was unlike most politicians, a person whose beliefs really did motivate her action. I have long been an admirer of that extraordinary woman. She first came to my attention through two things. First, her tireless campaign to end mass abortion in Britain, especially when she sponsored legislation to try to lower the gestational age of abortion. Her arguments were always grounded in the starkly rational: “Why use all of medical technology to save one baby born at 24 weeks when another can be put into a bag and thrown away?” Should women be able to do with their bodies as they wish? Her rational reply: “There are two bodies here.”

That's rational? Old biddies telling other women what they can do with their bodies?

So much Catholic empathy. 

So we should leave all that to the Catholic priests who theoretically shouldn't be in the business of f*cking at all? (Sssh, no mention of the gay priest in the pond's extended family).

This doing of screen caps became infectious and so the pond decided to bulk up further with the lizard Oz editorialist.

Correspondents might remember that yesterday the pond warned Ahmed that once he appeared in the lizard Oz, he'd be treated as a useful fool, or as a useless tool, a means whereby they could perpetuate their current jihad in support of ethnic cleansing.

For those who missed the reference ...

‘I grew up in Gaza. Hamas betrayed us for its own ends’
Western apologists glorify Hamas as legitimate resistance, but the group serves its own ends – not my people.
By Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

And now let's see how Ahmed plays into the reptiles' Australian Daily Zionist News jihad ...

Sure as sh*t Sherlock, it's tolling for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank right now.

So much empathy, it's almost hard to take.

But wait there's more ...a standard serve of "big government" bashing, a reminder that at heart the reptiles are fully Hansonite ...

Gina's pampered pet is really living rent free in the lizard Oz hive mind, with the reptiles having profound empathy for the policies she borrowed from them.

And what a classic bit of clowning about conspiracy theories, what with the reptiles being the home for climate science conspiracy theories these past few decades.

And then came this weirdness ...

Hang on, did the lizard Oz editorialist just say going nuke didn't offer any cost benefits?

But, billy goat butt, SMRs require enriched uranium, specifically a higher concentration of the U-235 isotope than traditional large nuclear plants. (see here for more). The pond checked that out when ordering one for its backyard (soon to arrive, just like the Trump phone).

And thanks to the Bjørn-again one - scribbling in the lizard Oz Hidden costs of ‘cheap’ solar and wind are too high - we all know that nukes are the way of the future.

If we want to fix climate change, we instead must invest a lot more in low carbon dioxide energy research and development. Only a significant boost in R&D can bring about the technological breakthroughs that are needed – in reducing trash, in improving battery storage and efficiency, but also in other technologies such as modular nuclear – that will make low-carbon dioxide energy sources truly cheaper than fossil fuels.

Sure, mad King Donald immediately nuked the deal by demanding Saudi Arabia kowtow to Benji, like a property developer thinking he might slide a second attic past the council. That's his empathy at work.

And sure, the United States actively negotiated with the Shah to help Iran to move towards nukes, thereby contributing to the current situation ...

...Seeking a huge electrical power generating capability, Shah Mohammad Rez Pahlavi negotiated nuclear reactor deals with France and West Germany and wanted to buy eight  reactors from the United States.  This nuclear power initiative overlapped with Washington's growing concern over nuclear proliferation triggered by India's "peaceful nuclear explosion" in May 1974.  While the Shah had publicly disavowed a nuclear weapons capability, the Iranians declared that they had the "right" to a full nuclear fuel cycle, including reprocessing of spent fuel.  Not sure about the Shah's ultimate purposes, neither the Ford nor the Carter administrations would sell reactors without strings attacked.
Washington policymakers tried to use the nuclear negotiations as leverage to minimize the extent to which Iran could develop any of the critical elements of a nuclear weapons capability. The Carter administration would go further than its predecessor in attempting to reduce Iran's freedom of action, but both Presidents insisted on the tightest controls possible over Iran's ability to use U.S.-supplied nuclear technology and fuel for producing plutonium.  While the Iranians made nationalist arguments asserting their "rights" to reprocessing and other activities under the NPT, by the summer of 1978, the two sides had reached an agreement, which the Iranian revolution effectively nullified.
Interestingly, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who presided over the negotiations during 1974-1976, has downplayed the role of proliferation during the nuclear negotiations with Iran. In a 2005 Washington Post interview, he said that "I don't think the issue of proliferation came up"; "They were an allied country, and this was a commercial transaction. We didn't address the question of them one day moving toward nuclear weapons."...  Certainly no one saw an Iranian nuclear weapons capability as a likely near-term possibility, but Kissinger and the State Department never treated the agreement as simply a "commercial" proposition.  First, Ford administration officials wondered whether the Shah of Iran would move toward a nuclear weapons option, should the regional balance of power change.  Second, Kissinger and his senior advisers would only sign off an agreement that constrained Iran's capability to use U.S.-supplied resources for producing nuclear weapons material.  This was no less true of the Carter administration; both Ford and Carter wanted to ensure that the terms of the agreement met U.S. nuclear nonproliferation goals. (Here)

But hasn't all that worked out tremendously well?

Talk about knock down glory and empathy, just like Humpty Dumpty.

And so to a few 'toons...

Always with the Odyssey, and so the Muskian circle is complete ...

And a few AV distractions ...

Good old PBS, funds cut, but still carrying on away, with pale blue double breasters the next best thing to cardigans, and sure to rouse Polonius's ire ...

And the usual, with a twist ...

In which the pond reluctantly offers up the bromancer and the dog botherer because there must be other things to do on the weekend...

 

Wildfires in Europe?

Vlad the sociopath at work in Ukraine? Ukraine giving Vlad the sociopath a hard time?

A new trade war announced by mad King Donald?

More trouble with Iran? Assorted straits in dire trouble?

Murder in the West Bank?

Sorry, there's a world out there, and things are happening in it, but this is the lizard Oz, and so early in the weekend, this was the headline feature.

Alan Joyce says he’s sorry. But what exactly is he sorry for?
After Qantas: Alan Joyce on his high-flying career and the benefits of hindsight
The former Qantas CEO grounded the fleet, outsourced staff, insulted customers and became a very rich man. Only one of these does he regret.
By Caroline Overington

Nah, not today Caroline, the intermittent archive can take that one.

Sheesh, occasionally it'd be nice to be in contact with times present.

Down below that was a bucket of Labor government stories, with the usual bashometer measuring a high level of bash ...

Read the prolific Geoff chambering a typical round if you must ...

Commentary by Geoff Chambers
Ed Husic embraces his role as chief government whinger, and Anthony Albanese is over it
Albanese had assumed his government’s historic decision to overturn decades of foreign policy and recognise Palestine statehood would placate the Left. He was wrong.

Follow Yim and Brownie if inclined and be astonished by the many and varied ways that the Australian Daily Zionist News goes about its business...

EXCLUSIVE
Labor files revealed: Extremes of party’s dark underbelly
Astonishing extremes of ALP rank and file laid bare on US, Israel and terrorism policy in amendments
Labor delegates have proposed stripping the US’s status as Australia’s ‘closest security ally’ and exiting AUKUS, as senior figures scramble to contain a damaging floor debate over Israel.

Dark underbelly? Aka any hint of noting ethnic cleansing.

Marvel at the many ways that the reptiles pursue a singular path in favour of Benji ...

‘I grew up in Gaza. Hamas betrayed us for its own ends’
Western apologists glorify Hamas as legitimate resistance, but the group serves its own ends – not my people.
By Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Um, you do realise that few people glorify Hamas, but in proposing that, all you're doing is serving as a useful tool for the lizard Oz Daily Zionist News agenda?

Noble words ...

Only in a Gaza that evolves to be nonviolent and prosperous and ceases to be a platform for terror, while providing opportunities for its people to attain fulfilment, freedom and enlightenment, can there be hope for a permanent defeat of Hamas and a rolling back of the international post-October 7 appeal of its narrative.
Only when Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza can the violence end and the future begin.

But what an inspired source for the reptiles ...

This is an edited extract from Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib’s Jewish Quarterly essay, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, out on Monday. Alkhatib is a Gazan writer and advocate, founder of Realign for Palestine and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.

Morry Schwartz strikes again ...

Meanwhile...

It was no better over on the extreme far right where simplistic Simon paraded about ...

Coronation, and a broken consensus on pro-Israel past
Having recognised Palestinian statehood, Albanese will preside over ALP party policy that’s now explicitly critical of Israel
Anthony Albanese cements his grip on power, but a shift on Israel alarms Jewish leaders.
By Simon Benson

Political analyst

Pro-Israel past? Aka pro ethnic cleansing lizard Oz Daily Zionist News agenda.

Nothing to criticise the current government of Israel about, right? The reptiles are right, right? Right?

Sorry, the pond should stop watching The Daily Show.

There's nothing like shifting away from ethnic cleansing to alarm the reptiles ...

With a sigh and a sob, the pond knew its duty, because the Brexit-loving bromancer was on parade ...

The header: Labour pain: Burnham’s back-to-the-70s Britain a grim warning for Australia; A personal brush with a decaying NHS drove home a stark truth: Andy Burnham’s 1970s-style policy agenda is a cautionary tale as Anthony Albanese treads the same path.

The caption and credit for a shameless collage attributed to a certain Emilia, who bravely refused to allow AI to take the blame for the meretricious nonsense: A photo comp of Anthony Albanese, right, and Andy Burnham in a 1970s style doctors office. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella. Sources: iStock / PhotoShop Firefly 3 /Supplied

Having proudly spent much time campaigning for the breaking of Britain, from Brexit to Boris, the bromancer had the cheek to whine and whinge about Britain being broken, and for a bigly six minutes and with just one visual interruption ... 

Britain under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham provides a grim picture of Australia’s future under Anthony Albanese.
Both Burnham and Albanese are committed to left-wing economic and social policies that replicate the 1970s, the last era of catastrophic Anglophone social democratic failure. Both men bizarrely idealise the 70s. It’s perverse, as though a 12-year-old boy chose cabbage and brussels sprouts for a birthday treat.
Burnham thinks all Britain’s mistakes began with Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Albanese (who has devoted his life to “fighting Tories”) and his ministers take inspiration from the disastrous 70s Whitlam government while determinedly becoming the complete opposite of the successful 80s Hawke government, which they never reference.
What should have been a mundane visit to a doctor in London recently brought home to me just how much Britain has fallen apart, how poorly it now compares with successful societies.
A brush with the NHS
A few weeks ago in London my wife was ill — not with a life-threatening problem — but ill. The emergency care I once experienced in Britain was fantastic but the National Health Service in routine operations is now a sprawling chaotic mess, an intense frustration for British voters.
Britain and Australia have reciprocal health arrangements. In the past, an Aussie could take their passport and Medicare card and secure an appointment with a local GP, no problem. Now, no NHS GP clinic I tried in London would take a visiting Australian. That’s not real­ly discrimination, they weren’t taking Brits either. One clinic’s website told registered patients to outline their problem in an online appointment application. If it was urgent, someone would be back to them within 48 hours.
A famous British cartoon has a couple standing on a mountain peak. One remarks: “They say on a clear day you can see your GP.”
Hotel staff advised us to go to a hospital emergency department. But while British hospitals are good in emergencies, to present there with a regular illness would be a monstrous waste of their resources. Not only that – the wait times! People qualify for retirement, indeed die of old age, waiting to be seen in NHS emergency departments.
The Scandanavian experience
We then spent a couple of weeks in Scandinavia. The contrast was fantastic, especially regarding doctors.
In Oslo, on a Sunday, we asked the guy on the counter at our modest hotel if there was any way to see a doctor. He showed us the website of the Doctor Dropin clinics. Although I got the site in translation it reverted to Norwegian, so he filled out the online form for us, showed me which appointments were available and where the nearest clinic was.
At the clinic there was no receptionist and apparently no danger of vandalism. We entered the waiting room and registered our presence on a computer. At the appointed time the doctor opened his door and welcomed us in. The appointment was scheduled for 20 minutes and was unhurried. The doctor spoke perfect English, was attentive, competent, able to conduct blood and other tests straight away, prescribed medicine and located online the nearest open pharmacy for us (many shops are closed in Oslo on Sunday). It cost about the same as a non-bulk billed GP visit in Sydney.

How much did the reptiles care about this pro forma bromancer bashing? They didn't even bother to provide a graphic for the audio interruption ...

LISTEN NOW: Can new UK PM Andy Burnham save ‘Broken Britain’?

So the pond decided to show what was on offer ...

Nah, what a relief it's just a screen cap.

Meanwhile, the bromancer had turned to a standard form of furriner bashing, as if that explained Britain's dismal situation post-Brexit, and the likes of Boris, and the bromancer's past prescriptions for a very sick patient (and this is the UK in AUKUS we should be relying on?)

Norway and Denmark have successfully controlled illegal immigration. They are placid, co-operative societies. The worst you could say is they’re perhaps a bit dull. As architecture, the Scandi look, which dominates except in historic districts, strikes me as a bit bland. The Oslo Opera House has a water setting as dramatic as the Sydney Opera House, but the building is uninspiring, straight lines and tedious triangles. But, but, but – unlike London, Copenhagen and Oslo are clean, safe, friendly, affordable even. Public transport is cheap, accessible and easy. There’s not much anti-social behaviour. In days of walking we never felt the slightest tension. Unlike London, people didn’t talk constantly of knife crime or having their mobile phones snatched.
Mass immigration has overwhelmed Britain’s NHS. But it’s not just the health system in crisis. Government generally doesn’t work any more. Neither does much else. One in four working-age Brits officially suffers a disability. A million 18 to 24-year-olds are involved in neither education, employment nor training.
The British state has never been bigger or more inefficient. Taxation represents nearly 39 per cent of GDP, higher than at any time since World War II. Just like Australia, seemingly everyone in the government sector works from home, which means they don’t work much at all. An English friend needs a minor update on his passport and has been told this could take six months and cannot be accelerated.

And so to the heart of the problem for the bromancer ... a singular lack of Tories and Tory incompetence ... and a chance to label Albo as a fanatical leftie, as bad as Gough ... Andy Burnham, right, is the most left-wing PM since World War II. Anthony Albanese, left, is second in Australia to Whitlam. Pictures: News Corp / AFP

And what's the point of berating the hapless Poms if you can't use it as a way to bash Labor down under?

Burnham affects a cool black T-shirt and claims he’ll transform politics, creating a whole new style and substance. Economically, he’s the most left-wing PM since World War II. Albanese is second in Australia to Whitlam. Burnham’s ascension was greeted by two dismal sets of figures. Labour didn’t rise in the polls. But the bond markets imposed increased borrowing costs on Britain. The unsentimental markets think Britain, and Burnham, a bad bet and charge it more to borrow money than any other advanced country.

Just like Australia, Britain has a dismal productivity record. Like Albanese, Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer, heavily re-regulated industrial relations and empowered trade unions. Both nations follow net-zero obsessions resulting in both having among the world’s highest energy prices. Manufacturing flees both nations. Labour, in neither London nor Canberra, does anything to free up the supply side of the economy.
There are a whole lot of things Burnham wants to do. They all involve spending money he hasn’t got. Reprising Albanese, none of Burnham’s initiatives will accelerate economic growth. Burnham has in the past pledged to make social care for the elderly free, like the NHS. This would cost £18bn ($34.4bn) a year at least. He has said he’ll raise defence spending. If he’s to get anywhere near Britain’s pledges that would cost another £10bn a year, though that’s one ambition he certainly won’t realise. He wants to subsidise public transport, subsidise consumer energy prices, raise the tax-free threshold for low-income earners, renationalise vast swathes of industry and much more.
All this is tens of billions upon tens of billions. Yet Britain already has a national debt equal to 95 per cent of GDP. It borrows more than £115bn a year. The Burnham government has started off by making wonderfully woolly and unreliable fiscal statements. In his first 48 hours as Prime Minister, Burnham spent the odd billion or two providing modest goodies for voters – among them 85 pence a week in electricity subsidies for the average family (about one takeaway coffee a month).
Some of this would be paid for by not proceeding with the digital ID initiative. Some tart Starmerite pointed out the government had not yet budgeted any money for the digital ID initiative. So that explanation was just flim-flam. Sound Canberra familiar?
A bad joke
Indicating how pandering to activists and extremists will go, Burnham made just one foreign policy statement. Ukraine? Russia? Iran? China? No, in a country awash with antisemitism fuelled in part by hate-filled anti-Israel demonstrations, Burnham apologised that Labour had been too soft on Israel, not strong enough for Palestine. Social cohesion is even worse in Britain than Australia.

Ah, the latest reptile riff. "Social cohesion", aka monoculture, and let the ethnic cleansing go about its business without let or hindrance ...

In the 70s Britain was a bad joke, needing an IMF bailout, crippled by strikes, the sick man of Europe. That’s Burnham’s happy time, Labour’s happy time. In Australia, Whitlam’s government was so disastrous more Australians left the country than migrants came in. Whitlam was rejected, twice, in landslide election losses. But in Labor myth Whitlam is the perfect leader. Thatcher’s election led to 18 years of Conservative rule. Brits became wealthier, many more owned their homes, London became the global financial centre, the UK had a powerful military and was central in defeating communism. For Burnham, this Thatcherism was all bad.
Australia and Britain today embody the crisis of social democracy. Burnham and Albanese are left-wing leaders of antique vintage, as though their respective electorates somehow mistakenly bought a Morris Minor or FJ Holden as the new family car. Their economic policies are impoverishing, building structural obstacles to growth. Social policy is woke, foreign policy often fatuous. Only in the vapours of Labor myth is the view today Olympian. For those forced to live in the real world, the outlook is bleak.

Perhaps spending squillions on nuking the submarine force is the real bleakness ...

Remember the bromancer glory days? Some do ...

...Predictably, the Morrison mandarins were largely free to continue implementing the agendas on which they had been working for the previous five years. It seems from the outside, for example, that Secretary Pezzullo continued to press the China war stance from Home Affairs which he had openly pushed since his “drums of war” speech in 2021, and to which he returned as a discredited public servant in a soft ABC 7.30 interview during April 2024 when he talked about the need for a war book.
The ABC under Buttrose was in lockstep with NewsCorp in its enthusiastic backing of AUKUS. Its Sunday morning flagship Insiders having dedicated a March 2023 program entirely to the topic, with Peter Hartcher from Nine offering his usual persuasive take and Greg Sheridan from NewsCorp bending over backwards to debunk anything negative said on the matter by White or Keating. They had contested Sheridan’s mantra of China’s “radical militarism and extreme aggression”, a fixation Sheridan has obsessed about since the days of ‘reds under the beds’ during the 1950s and 60s.
Sheridan projected himself on Insiders as an AUKUS sceptic until it supposedly dawned on him that the Virginia class submarines would fill the gap before delivery of the nuclear-powered subs promise, and so he claimed to see for the first time that that extra element would ensure the wonderful strategy worked by “complicating the thinking of any aggressor”.

The pond deeply regrets that the reptiles didn't provide a segue for the pond so that it might slip in the odd homage to mad King Donald, but whatever ... how about a little bleakness of a Faux Noise kind?

And so to the bonus, and a very reluctant one it is for the pond ...

The header: It’s not about Pauline Hanson – it’s about what she represents to disillusioned voters;  The reasons a third of the electorate is drifting to One Nation seem clear and the political establishment ignores them at its own peril.

The pertinent question, surely, is frankly why Frank must bother with this sort of collage: The pertinent question, surely, is why are people voting for One Nation rather than the Coalition parties. Sources: Supplied. Artwork by Frank Ling.

The pond has been well over Gina's pet from the very start, long long ago. 

There's something about the voice that grates, the worst sort of Tamworth-sounding shrew with something of a deep north toad overlay.

The pond realises this sort of personal response will be perceived as wrong, a bit like finding RFK Jr.'s voice hard to listen to, when his policies should be considered, but as he's got no policies worth contemplating, it comes back to that voice. (No poo jokes please).

So it's always been with Gina's pampered pet.

Why bother with the dog botherer going on about the wonders of Pauline's voice? Because it's the way she presents the policies of the lizard Oz to the deplorables, that's why, because the reptiles have always loved the bigoted and the stupid.

And that's why the dog botherer spends six minutes scribbling about his infatuation.

It's way more revealing of him and the hive mind than it is about Gina's pet.

Deep down but also on the superficial, allegedly "authentic" surface loved by the dog botherer, she acts as a mirror for sundry reptile fixations and phobias...

Media fascination with One Nation tends to focus on titillating but ultimately unimportant questions. Who paid for Pauline Hanson’s holiday? Who has she met? Why did Barnaby Joyce shout at his dog? What is the latest conspiracy theory endorsed by Malcolm Roberts?
Most of the focus is on Hanson, but few of the issues are new. She has long talked about men as domestic violence victims, flirted with xenophobia and proffered economically dubious policies.
The pertinent question, surely, is why are people voting for One Nation rather than the Coalition parties (as they have done in the South Australian election and the Farrer federal by-election) and why are they telling pollsters they intend to do so in Victoria, NSW and federally? In other words, rather than analysing, critiquing and even demonising Hanson, the political debate might more usefully consider why almost a third of voters are prepared to overlook all of One Nation’s shortcomings and support the party regardless.

At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction ...

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has again defended comments from One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson in a bizarre interview on ABC’s 730. When asked about Ms Hanson’s direction for One Nation, Mr Joyce was briefly distracted by his dog and yelled at it to “sit down” before apologising for the interruption. 730 host Sarah Ferguson urged Mr Joyce to answer the question and not focus on the dog, to which Mr Joyce replied “don’t be rude” as the interview took a tense turn.

The pond seized the moment with gratitude. The pond had been wondering if it would ever get a chance to pay tribute to the latest moment for Tamworth's eternal shame ...

 

What a a relief to be able to pay tribute - get around behind you bloody useless hund!! - and with that out of the way, please allow the dog botherer to explain why he's enchanted by Pauline and what she proposes (and remember for the sake of the argument that well paid hacks labouring for the Emeritus Chairman are never part of a 'leet):

Thanks to our compulsory voting laws even the most disenchanted voters are reflected in our system. Sure, there are informal votes and undecided categories in polls, but in the end we get about 90 per cent of eligible people casting a vote. So unlike most democracies, our electoral politics is a sealed system – the votes have to go somewhere. Think of it like one of those lava lamps so popular in the 1970s: all the blobs of liquid are like voting blocs, constantly changing shape, breaking apart and reforming; every blob must go somewhere, no vacuum is left unfilled.
If an imperfect, inexperienced and barely organised movement in our body politic is attracting high levels of support, why? What has gone missing from the other choices that has caused so many to coalesce around One Nation?
The short answer is that voters are rejecting the political establishment (or even the political class, which includes the major parties, bureaucracies, academics, pollsters and media). Predictably this loose coalition hits back the only way it seems to know how: by attacking Hanson and One Nation for daring to play politics outside its own unwritten rules of engagement.
The critics parse every phrase from Hanson and her team, verbal her endlessly to fuel feigned outrage. The One Nation leader mentions the White Australia policy and they say she laments it or wants to bring it back; Hanson mentions simple facts about domestic violence and is slammed as heartless; and Barnaby’s hilarious live-to-air rebuke of his dog is interpreted as a character flaw.
These attacks tend to be wind beneath One Nation’s wings because they underline the party’s anti-establishment credentials and insult voters by deeming them too silly to comprehend what is really being said – surely Hanson and her colleagues are controversial enough without making stuff up.
These episodes also serve as reminders that One Nation politicians are authentic rather than slick, the reversal of the political class standard.

Just to remind the hive mind of how authentic Gina's pampered pet is, the reptiles slipped in a couple of truly authentic snaps of an awesomely authentic holyday... Pauline Hanson holidaying in Sicily earlier this month. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart cooling off in the pool of the Grand Hotel San Pietro in Taormina.

The dog botherer continued his slow build ...

Writing in The Australian this week, renowned political strategist Lynton Crosby drew attention to part of what is going on here. Crosby, the architect of Coalition victories here and Conservative triumphs in Britain, was writing about UK Labour’s switching in of Andy Burnham as Prime Minister.
Crosby noted that major parties are too often driven by opinion polls and ideology rather than good governance in the interests of voters. “Voters can tell the difference between a party thinking about them and a party thinking about itself,” he noted, “and they punish the second without mercy.”
Most everything voters have heard from our major parties for a decade or more has been insincere, ideologically motivated or ultim­ately contradicted. Little wonder people have drifted to a rough and ready outfit that has said the same things constantly for decades, even through periods of virulent derision and palpable uninterest.
You do not need to support One Nation to recognise any of this. No one could accuse Hanson of being too timid to say what she thinks, scripted by spinmeisters or controlled by pollsters; her prized political asset is her status as the anti-politician. This makes talk of her as a potential prime minister completely counterintuitive, despite the mathematical possibility.
Hanson needs to avoid discussion of power-sharing arrangements, preference deals and the rest of it – no matter how essential they are likely to be – because they immediately graft One Nation on to the political establishment. It will be fascinating to watch this paradox play out. The mavericks have become so popular they now have to consider how they might become the new establishment.
One Nation’s rise has played out through core policy debates. Hanson has been a hate figure for 30 years because of her strident views on mass immigration and concerns about its sources (“I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians”).

At this point the reptiles offered up a chart which proved hard to cap ... this was the best the pond could manage ...

ONE NATION’S RISE AND FALL … AND RISE AGAIN
Primary vote (%)

Source: electoral commissions

How they love to talk Gina's pet up.

Onwards and upwards for Pauline and the reptile agenda.

And so to the real point.

The lizard Oz is Hansonite, the Hansonites are devoted lizard Oz readers, and what Gina's pet says on topics such as the Voice are precisely what the reptiles say on the voice ...

The numbers and the challenges have changed, especially when it comes to the risk of importing Islamist extremism, but both major parties in government have allowed migration to reach record levels and post-Covid under Labor the numbers became unsustainable, as even Labor has recognised.
The major parties have failed to control immigration and been squeamish about discussing the mix, so they have been peas in a pod compared with One Nation’s harsh and consistent immigration alarm.
Voters concerned about immigration – and the major parties now recognise many of those concerns are legitimate – have drifted to the anti-immigration party. Consistency can pay dividends in politics.
Likewise on Indigenous issues. Hanson was first expelled from the Liberal Party because of her criticism of Indigenous programs and separatism. Almost three decades later when the voice debate divided the nation the Coalition eventually opposed the proposal and won the political battle. But voters exercised by this knew that while other politicians sniffed the wind, Hanson had held this position all along.

There came another interruption, this time with a graphic ..

The Front
Pauline Hanson backs mass deportation 

Is the dog botherer troubled by notions of mass deportations?

Nah, not really, the dog botherer is delighted with notions of monoculture and most especially climate change, because what Canadian and European wildfires?

On multiculturalism and Indigenous preferment Hanson has always been a figure of resistance, even resentment, whereas the left has portrayed “diversity as strength” and the Coalition parties have often tried to straddle both streams. With Hanson’s team, whether you agree or disagree, the philosophy is right there in the name – One Nation.
Consistency has been a strength on other issues, in particular net zero. Labor has been fearmongering over climate change and delusional about emissions for more than two decades, while the Coalition has waxed and waned between signing on to Paris, scrapping carbon taxes and then adopting net zero.

There came a reinforcement that Gina's pampered pet isn't really a politician, Pauline Hanson’s prized political asset is her status as the anti-politician. Picture: NewsWire/Philip Gostelow

Surely that deserved a 'toon and while the pond has run it before, why not run it again as a way of coping with that quizzical stare of 'please explain'?

And so to the dog botherer embracing the full One Nation agenda, with a litany of what is apparently true and just ...

Voters worried about electricity prices, national energy self-harm and endless spending on UN virtue signalling know One Nation has had zero interest in net zero from the year zero. Hanson’s steadiness has allowed her to profit from the confusion and lack of conviction displayed by the Coalition.
Then there is honesty. Nobody has accused Hanson or her team of telling political lies – most of the time they get into strife for being too forthright about what they truthfully believe.
Without the responsibility of being in government or being seen as an alternative government, One Nation has not had to make serious promises or abide by them. This makes for an easy and sharp contrast to the major parties that have become parodies of political trust.
From Scott Morrison’s secret ministries to Coalition leadership treachery and flip-flopping on climate policies, to Labor’s secret tax increases and Anthony Albanese’s endless list of broken promises, the major parties have simply broken faith with all but their most hardened supporters. Therefore some see One Nation providing an opportunity to punish dishonesty, to hit back at politicians taking voters for a ride.
Also, One Nation is anti-elite. Voters clearly believe they can teach the political class a lesson by voting for Hanson’s mob – they have told me as much in straightforward terms.
Query such people about One Nation’s ability to govern and they will shrug their shoulders and ask how much worse government could get. Indeed, when I suggested to Hanson some months ago that she likely faced a problem recruiting hundreds of candidates, some of whom were bound to be duds and cause embarrassment, she retorted by asking whether the major parties had done so well selecting high-calibre candidates – touche!
The reasons voters are drifting to One Nation seem clear. While the Coalition has borne the brunt of the trend, Labor needs to be wary too (as Wayne Swan has suggested) as mainstream voters become disillusioned by economic malaise and political lies.

What does this embrace of Gina's pet mean?

No prizes for guessing. It means that the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way must swing way over to the mad hard right - perhaps even follow Malcolm Roberts on the matter of climate science - and what frabjous joy that will produce in the hive mind, and its devoted extreme far right pundits ...

Tell 'em dog botherer ...

The Coalition under Angus Taylor has started to reset its policies and rhetoric, particularly on immigration, net zero, taxation and national cohesion. Yet poll watchers will be frustrated if they look for quick corrections.

What do the reptiles want? Say it again ... 

Give the beefy boofhead time, and he'll come around to the lizard Oz policy agenda.

Monoculture now (perhaps dressed as "national cohension"), furriner bashing, a flat tax (Easytax for billionaires), and climate science denialism ... and who knows, soon enough we'll be at one with mad King Donald ... and talking sensibly about tariffs and a flat earth ...

Meanwhile, on another planet entirely unknown to the reptiles ...

In which Jimbo takes centre stage in a 'leet penguin suit, and Rowan refuses to STFU and crawl under a rock ...

Shattered.

Without a by-your-leave, or a word of explanation, early this morning there was no sight or sound from Our Henry.

The pond had to check that it was Friday, and then looked Our Henry up, and yes, it was a bigly week since he'd helped out the Australian Daily Zionist News with Overpaid vice-chancellors parade their ignorance.

What did the reptiles produce as an alternative to this wreckage, this dereliction of duty, this studied insult?

Jimbo!

Just Jimbo ... and not that Jimbo, this Jimbo ...

And worse it was double barrelled Jimbo, as the reptiles reverted to a favourite ploy of having Jimbo offer a column over on the far right of the digital rag, and then have a reptile hack regurgitate its contents as an EXCLUSIVE as the news lead of the day ...

The reptile hack of the day was Geoff, assigned the task of pretending he'd done something to earn the EXCLUSIVE ...

The pond dipped into it for the sheer pleasure, the impossible absurdity, of seeing one more time Jimbo posed at the top of the piece, as if a manifestation of the cultural 'leets the reptiles purport to despise ...

For the rest of that astonishing EXCLUSIVE, go here ...

EXCLUSIVE
Trashing free society: Paterson’s repudiation of Hanson
James Paterson calls for reforms to unis and the judiciary to stop threat of Hanson and populist right
The senior Liberal conservative says the ‘age of disruption and rise of populism’ threatens the Australian way of life.
By Geoff Chambers

But why drink at Geoff's EXCLUSIVE hack trough when you can go to the original horse's mouth? 

The header: Lies, conspiracies, anger: Don’t let populism trash our fragile inheritance; We should be very wary of those on the right who want to import foreign concepts of cultural uniformity to Australia.

The caption, featuring a new angle on Jimbo in a penguin suit, a manifestation of the cultural 'leets the reptiles purport to detest and despise: James Paterson delivering his speech to the Ramsay Centre at the State Library of NSW. Picture: Chris Pavlich / The Australian

The Ramsay centre's now based at the State Library?

Nah, it's just a mangling, just like the way that Jimbo had to spend a bigly eight minutes mangling blather about Western Civilisation (remember the caps!), as he goose stepped around the way that Gina's pet actually embodied pretty much every position favoured by the lizard Oz, and the Liberal and National parties, this past decade or so.

This called for an exceptional form of pomposity, while pandering to the nonsense the Ramsay centre embodies ...

The unique inheritance of Western civilisation is not just the great books, art, music and science, although they certainly have shaped our culture in a profound way. It is the institutions of Western civilisation that are truly unique and consequential. Institutions such as our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, our common law system of courts and an independent judiciary, and our universities.
For Australia, these institutions were primarily, though not exclusively, inherited, developed, and refined from the British, and translated to our continent at settlement. 

Say what? No mention of the classic onion muncher ploy of attributing it to a Judaeo-Xian tradition emanating from the middle east, as peddled by a swarthy type of dubious Semitic appearance?

Never mind ...

We should never assume just because we inherited these remarkable institutions from previous generations that transferring them to future generations is assured.
Because we are living in an age of disruption and populism. And the institutions we may have taken for granted in the past do not have the near universal support and approval they might have once enjoyed.
They are fragile. In many quarters they are under outright attack.
The populist challenge
A poll this week laid bare the bleak outlook for our fellow citizens. A record 68 per cent believe our country is heading in the wrong direction; 44 per cent say they are experiencing personal financial distress; 47 per cent believe they are worse off than their parents were at the same stage of life.
They are right to be angry. Australia’s post-pandemic economic performance has been dismal. Real wages have fallen by 5 per cent since 2021, when the average OECD member has seen a 5 per cent increase. It is understandable why distrust in our institutions rises when people feel like it is not delivering for them materially. But the danger is these anti-establishment parties don’t just mine grievance about poor economic performance. Whether on the populist left or right, they bring with them a much broader wagon of grudges and resentments.
Right now, they also have a helping hand from some foreign state and non-state actors, who see strategic advantage and even profit from weaponising our distrust and amplifying our divisions. It is easier than ever before for them to do so.

One thing's certain. The reptile obsession with the monster they've created - after all, Gina's pampered pet has found most of her policies within the pages of The Australian - will only draw more attention to her, and make her stronger ... One Nation senators Malcolm Roberts and Pauline Hanson in the Senate chamber.

After all, that prize loon Malcolm Roberts is just one of a long line of climate science deniers following the hive mind line ...

Jimbo handily decided not to go there ...and sought safety in other topics ...

Once, they would have had to mount a sophisticated human intelligence operation to influence journalists, editors or producers who controlled access to the public square in democracies. Now they can pump our public square full of propaganda by hijacking Western-headquartered social media platforms using inauthentic accounts or by covertly paying mercenary influencers to promote their agenda.
Even easier is secretly putting their thumb on the scale of the algorithm of foreign authoritarian-controlled applications to serve content that divides and distracts us.
The risk today is that understandable discontent with Australia’s recent economic performance – a solvable policy problem – is used as a vehicle to trash our political, legal and social institutions.
Australians struggling with the cost of living have not suddenly embraced conspiracy theories about chemtrails, the Federal Reserve, school shootings, 9/11 and pharmaceutical companies. But populism is a package deal.
Voting to express your reasonable frustrations with the established parties of government brings with it a lot of baggage. Those of us who want to preserve what is great about our Western society and way of life have two tasks.
First, address our economic underperformance to remove the main driver of populist discontent. Second, defend and, where necessary, reform the institutions of Western civilisation so they can survive this disrupted era.
The most fundamental idea of the “small c” conservative philosophy is that institutions must evolve gradually over time through the accumulation of wisdom. There are three institutions I will focus on: universities, the rule of law and pluralism.
Our universities
There is no institution more critical to the progress and success of Western civilisation that is more vulnerable in a populist era than our universities. The prosperity, progress and advancement of our civilisation in science, art and culture cannot be separated from the teaching, research and thinking conducted in our universities over centuries.
Right now, though, many universities feel underfunded and under-appreciated. They warn policymakers their business models are unsustainable, and the lack of public funding and interventions such as the Job-Ready Graduates Scheme, are leading them to cut staff and courses. I know many universities and their defenders believe these policies are the cause of their current malaise.
But this gets their dilemma exactly backwards. The reason why universities are not better funded and supported by our political system is because they have lost the broad social licence to sustain public support. And the reason for that is that a significant proportion of society feel estranged from our system of higher education.

Actually the universities have never recovered from the school of "what we need is plumbers and sparkies", and if you want an arts education be prepared to sacrifice your first born child brand offered to them by SloMo and his mates.

Remember Jimbo?

It’s time to axe the Morrison-era policy strangling Australia’s humanities degrees (sorry, that's a Crikey paywall)
‘Unless we have lawyers from all class backgrounds, we will have a legal system that is shaped by a particular narrow set of perspectives and assumptions and blind spots.’
Varsha Yajman

I enrolled in an arts and law bachelor’s degree in 2020 and left with a HECS debt of around $40,000. Students who started the same degree in 2021 and after will have left owing around $85,000. The blame for this lies at the feet of the Morrison-era Job-ready Graduates Package (JRGP).
While Australia was battling the COVID-19 pandemic, the Morrison government tried to encourage students to enrol in areas of “national need” that would help “drive economic recovery”, slashing fees for STEM and nursing while more than doubling the cost of humanities degrees, with law and commerce becoming the most expensive. 
But research has shown that the JGRP, rather than furthering the Australian economy, will likely worsen skills shortages. In 2024, the Australian Universities Accord stated the policy “should be replaced” and that it had “tilted the overall cost burden of higher education further onto students and away from the Australian government”. 

And so on, and of course the current Labor government has been equally tardy on this matter, but so much for all that blather about the glories of Western Civilisation.

In traditional Australian Daily Zionist News fashion, the reptiles slipped in a standard demonic snap comporting to Australian Daily Zionist News standards... An anti-Israel protest at Melbourne University. Picture: Jason Edwards

How to get out of the Western Civilisation bind? Pretend it's all about the long march through the institutions by lefties!

And so it was on to Jimbo trying to bs his way through the pricing of the humanities out of the marketplace ...

Classical liberals and conservatives believe their perspectives are unwelcome, at least in the humanities departments at universities across Australia. Australian data is limited, but there is no reason to think our universities differ much from American higher education, and there the data is stark and extensive. I don’t believe cabinet would have agreed to a Job-Ready Graduates Scheme that deprioritised the teaching of humanities, or allowed their fees to rise significantly, if they felt that they had a stake in what is taught there. But most Coalition MPs would tell you they regard what is exclusively taught at universities as openly hostile to their beliefs, and many of their constituents agree.
And if universities think that’s bad, the movement that seeks to replace centre-right politics in this country makes a Coalition government look like a walk in the park for higher education.
These are people who often display open contempt for expertise, and gleefully indulge in the most absurd conspiracy theories in the face of all evidence.
Universities should be alarmed that four years of centre-left government has seen no meaningful increase to their funding, no changes to the Job-Ready Graduates Scheme, cuts to their international student numbers and a massively increased regulatory burden. The recent, troubling antisemitism crisis on campus has not helped.
Universities need to do two things. First, make a meaningful attempt to ensure there is a diversity of views, especially in their humanities faculties. If any other group in society were as under-represented among their faculty as conservatives and classical liberals, every university would establish a working group to fix it.
Second, prioritise research in the national interest, and tell the Australian people – who ultimately fund it – about this critical contribution.

So you're now whining about how there's been no changes to the JRGP policy your government, with you in that government, implemented?

When it came to the 2020 vote, nobody rebelled against their party...

It's always the hypocrisy that gets to the pond.

Speaking of Western Civilisation...

And now at last the hypocrite in full flower, and so to another ginger dance...

The rule of law
The second institution I am gravely concerned about is the rule of law. One of the few things that separates a free and ordered society from domestic anarchy is the belief that a justice system will ensure wrongdoers are punished fairly. And yet decisions of our justice system are more routinely becoming sensationalised.
As you know, there is a high-profile prosecution of a former Australian soldier currently before the courts, following allegations of war crimes. Unlike some of my parliamentary colleagues, I do not want to run the risk of contempt of court. But we have recently seen this case become so politicised that a photo of an accused person was displayed at polling booths as a tactic to generate votes.

The reptiles followed up that peculiar foot dance with a snap of an alleged war criminal, Ben Roberts-Smith.

What with being gormless and gutless, Jimbo showed such bravery that Roberts-Smith's name never passed his lips, at least in the Oz-edited version:

Public support for the rule of law and, critically, an independent judiciary, is undermined when sentencing fails to meet community expectations. There have been too many cases, especially with violent and sexual crimes, where perpetrators are given light sentences. While we do not sentence criminals by opinion poll, and the individual circumstances of each case are relevant, too often the legal system appears out of touch with the people whose justice it is supposed to administer.
Nothing fuels populist discontent in our justice system more than the perception their justified outrage at its failings is being carefully managed to resist necessary reform. In May, Justice Beech-Jones launched a bizarre attack on a small voluntary legal association, the Samuel Griffith Society, and its American equivalent, the Federalist Society. He accused the Society of misappropriating Samuel Griffith’s legacy and being engaged in “ominous” activism on university campuses.
The Justice was particularly concerned about a paper presented to an SGS conference by my former Senate colleague, Amanda Stoker, who advocated taking greater care to consider the judicial philosophy of potential candidates for the bench before appointing them. For this, she is accused of “court stacking” and associated with a North Korean judicial college.

Does Jimbo have the first clue about the Federalist Society and what they wrought?

It's a bit like Faux Noise and the way they've prodded the disunited states into a black hole of madness ...

C.f. the both siderist NY Times ...

The Federalist Society Is Torn Between Its Legal Philosophy and Trump’s Demands
Guided by Leonard Leo, the society built a pipeline for traditional conservative judges. But that might not be enough for President Trump in his second term.

So what if they were hoist on their own petard.

They'd helped stack the Supreme Court, which promptly gave mad King Donald a grand form of immunity, and now here we are ...and Jimbo thinks Mandy has the first clue about all that?

And this guy should take the rap? Justice Robert Beech-Jones at Sydney’s Queen Square Courthouse. Picture: Oscar Colman

And so Jimbo ends up sounding just like Gina's pet ...

To justify his attack, Justice Beech-Jones commented extensively on US domestic public policy issues, including gun control, and said: “Ordinarily all this would be none of my business but these methods are being advocated for in Australia … To adapt a phrase, they have driven into my lane and they have driven into yours. If anyone thinks this particular US style of court stacking and judicial decision-making is a good idea, then go and live there.”
The problem, as the Justice surely knows, is that judicial appointments are not “his lane”. He may wish to live in a country where a cozy club of judges chooses its own colleagues. But in a common law democracy such as ours, judicial appointments are solely a matter for the elected governments of this country. I don’t want to live in a country where the decisions of judges begin to be called into question because of their unwise interventions into political debate.

And so the dance continued, what with Jimbo trying to sound like Pauline, but not really Pauline ...

Pluralism
Another of those intangible, philosophical institutions that has been so critical to the functioning of our harmonious and free society is the principle of pluralism.
There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about how we practise multiculturalism in Australia. Two things can be true at the same time: That Australia is a multicultural country. Also that it’s reasonable to disagree about whether the policies that underpin multiculturalism are working well, or not. One thing that would be totally alien to our history and political culture would be a government-imposed monoculture. We should be very wary of those on the right who want to import foreign concepts of cultural uniformity to Australia.
This has never been part of the Australian tradition. I do not agree with those who argue that “diversity is our strength”. Diversity in and of itself is not a strength. There are many diverse countries today that are not strong at all. Our strength is that despite our diversity, we have generally been a harmonious and cohesive society. This is thanks to pluralism. We have a live-and-let-live philosophy. Most Australians are comfortable that their neighbour may observe their own cultural traditions and have their own religious beliefs. But pluralism is not relativism.

For no particular reason, the reptiles flung in a visual reminder of that classic loon Mandy, useless in office and even more useless out of it, and now reduced to Oodgeroo toad status, Amanda Stoker.

Jimbo then performed a classic twist and pike:

In an Australian context, that means we can – and should – insist on the respect for and adherence to shared Australian values as part of any successful embrace of multiculturalism. If we don’t, we run the very serious risk of descending into a nation of tribes.
That is why I would never support our migration system discriminating against someone on the basis of their race, religion or nationality, as some have advocated, and I am more than comfortable with it being discerning about their values.
Frankly, the explosion of antisemitism in Australia in recent years is partly because we have failed to do this. We cannot practise multiculturalism in a way that tears us apart. We should never be afraid to insist that people who make a life here be from among the many in the world who share our values and want to sustain them, not those who want to change them.
Senator James Paterson is opposition defence spokesman. This is an edited version of a speech he delivered to the Ramsay Centre on Thursday evening in Sydney.

And if discerning their values isn't about their race and religion and nationality, what on earth is it about? If it's about sharing "our values", then Jimbo's all the way with Pauline banning those damned Islamics and Asians from the country.

And there's the Liberal party's (and the lizard Oz's) current dilemma in a nutshell. Too gutless to take on Gina's pet, too dedicated to their myopic brand of bigotry, fear and loathing, patented over decades, only to see it snatched away and rebranded as a form of generic populism they can't control ...

In that context, dressing up in a penguin suit is the least of Jimbo's thought crimes ...

Is there a reptile who manages to sound even more pathetic?

Of course there is ...

PM’s latest obsession is one he refuses to name
Similar to his approach linking Peter Dutton with Donald Trump, Anthony Albanese has adopted a Voldemort ‘she who must not be named’ approach to Pauline Hanson.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Just a thought? How is not naming Gina's pet the same as naming the mutton Dutton and linking him to the named and clearly barking mad King Donald?

The pond will concede a couple of things.

This Geoff is a prolific chamberer of rounds.

And the reptiles know which side their sales are buttered on. Just as the media was entranced, fell into a swoon at the sight of mad King Donald in his early days, so the reptiles have now fallen hard for Pauline, purveyor of their policies ...

She sells, bigly ... just like that bloody woke movie ...

And speaking of that bigotry, hate and fear mongering, the reptiles were at it again today ...

The pond refuses to indulge the reptiles in their TG jihad ...

Luckily the pond also felt no need to go here ...

Take that, chatbot: why I’m bringing back handwritten exams
AI will neither be as catastrophic as the pessimists fear nor as beautiful as the futurists imagine.
By Mark Edele
Contributor

Who on earth is this loon?

Mark Edele is Hansen Professor in History and head of the history program at the University of Melbourne. He developed the idea for this essay in a notebook, using a pen.

The University of Melbourne?!

The pond should have guessed it.

Did he want to make Jimbo sound sensible on the matter of academia?

The pond's handwriting looks like a spider had wandered too close to an inkwell ... it makes Molesworth look like a master of calligraphy, and it was 'rooned by academics demanding that the pond transcribe their insights, imagining them to be dollops of gold ...

And that's about it for the far right this day, though the pond must mention this rant ...

The hot-take economy is poisoning the public square
Who is entitled to demand public space to promote their personal views on areas beyond their expertise or particular knowledge?
By Rowan Callick

First a credential ...

Rowan Callick is an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.

Somehow that makes Rowan think he has the right to rant and rage away in the lizard Oz.

The opening snap was pure projection ...

Roll that line around on your tongue:

I am not convinced that my own views on these and other travesties are so compelling that they might command precious space in the realm of public discourse.

So why are you ranting?

Why don't you just STFU, crawl under a rock, go away?

The pond saved the rant to the intermittent archive, what with it being such a strange and puzzling insistence that we should all shut up, mind that we should stick to our lanes and not say boo to a goose and all would be well ...

It was peak rhetorical indignation and absurdity ... and so the pond presents the remainder of the text unencumbered by visual distraction or commentary ...

...Should all people of Chinese ethnicity, who might have been born in Australia or somewhere else outside China, and who are not members of the Chinese Communist Party, be expected as a condition of their gaining access to a public platform for whatever unrelated reason to use that platform to make very clear that they do not support the relentless subjugation of the Muslim Uighur population by the Chinese party-state, or that they are critical of the deaths in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution?
Not only that; should they on any occasion when they approach the public realm, online or offline, repudiate all wrongdoings on the part of the CCP, and keep doing so?
What of our fast-growing ethnically Indian population? Should we demand that they publicly disavow Prime Minister Narendra Modi over accusations of escalating religious tensions? Are Australians of Russian descent going to be held to account for the many horrors of Vladimir Putin?
Our citizens of Myanmar origin may almost all have escaped persecution – but perhaps they too should be held to account for the tyrannical military junta that they fled. One does not need to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome to be troubled by Donald Trump – so surely Americans living in our midst must confess his sins as their own?
The promotion of guilt by association has become widespread in Australia. For instance, if you are deemed to look Jewish, you’re held responsible by some Australians for the claimed genocide in Gaza. The only source of possible if still partial exculpation is public dissociation.
One fears that next in line for such guilty sentences might be Chinese, Indian, Russian, Myanmar, American, and any other people with connections – however innocent on their own part – to people or groups who have behaved badly.
Despite our efforts to achieve, we are increasingly defined in some social arenas not by accomplishment, experience or character, but by race, birthplace, and other “identity” categories. Unless we opt very publicly out of our identity markers, shedding connections and relationships, we are assumed to be collusive with enemy outlooks, dispositions, or simply with the enemy itself.
This applies not only to individuals but also to organisations – and thus, in addition, to those who might be associated with such organisations in any way. If an institution fails to attack publicly those deemed to be enemies of a particular peer group, then that group will demand that the institution and related individuals must be shunned.
For failure to attack publicly leaders, countries or causes with which an individual and their peer group disagrees – or the opposite – is perceived as tantamount to complicity. To fail to express, in public, concern about the impacts of climate change risks denunciation as a “climate sceptic”, even if that person does indeed share such anxiety while not sharing assuredness that a public proclamation would ameliorate the situation.
This expectation is not universal. Who is entitled – even required – to demand public space to promote their personal views on areas beyond their expertise or particular knowledge? Artists, writers, musicians, actors, academics – culture-work professionals, essentially.
We do not see a commensurate insistence from pharmacists, mining engineers or accountants, for instance, that before filling a script or shipping copper or signing an audit, they are provided online space or offline time to deliver their views on current political debates.
Last year, Doechii, a hip-hop performer, said on stage in receiving an award: “It is my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people, for black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people in Gaza.”
I might use this space to critique hip-hop, and to speak up for purveyors of traditional folk and blues music, or for Baroque recorder ensembles. But that would be beyond my responsibility.
Rowan Callick is an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.

Make of that what you will.

What did the pond make of it?

As before. If only Rowan would take his own advice, and STFU ...disappear up his fundament, head off to a black hole of his choice, and take climate change with him.

And now this ...

As always the answer lies in the detail, because kick anything out of doors to send the rats scuttling ...

And now this ... oh America ...