The pond woke this morning determined to step around the shark-feeding frenzy the reptiles were destined to offer ...
New Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has been sworn in, pledging a royal commission into CFMEU corruption and declaring he is ‘not Daniel Andrews’ and ‘not Jacinta Allan’.
By Anthony Galloway and Lily McCaffrey
Who could blame them for there ongoing comrade Dan fixation when Ben himself mentioned the ogre?
What a feeding frenzy it was ...
The truths behind Jacinta Allan’s delusional farewell
Jacinta Allan failed to mention corruption, debt and crime in delusional farewell speech
It’s what the outgoing Victorian premier chose not to mention that reveals her farewell as a giant episode of self-serving delusion.
By Damon Johnston, David Tanner and Lily McCaffrey
Bad blood: the Dan Andrews and Jacinta Allan era is over
Ben Carroll dumps on Dan Andrews and Jacinta Allan, seizes the leadership
New leader Ben Carroll says it’s a fresh start. Make no mistake: this was a brutal Labor reset. The Andrews-Allan show ended with a political execution.
By John Ferguson
Over on the extreme far right, the baying of the hounds - or should that be the chomping of the reptiles? - continued apace ...
Jacinta Allan, Daniel Andrews and their dwindling band of loyalists will make Kevin Rudd look like a saint based on Tuesday’s events.
ByAnthony Galloway
Victorian political editor
The reptiles tried to inveigle the pond into the storm by proposing a flicker of hope, as if the pond remotely cared a jot or a whit...
Victorians aren’t pleading for a grand vision. Grand visions are how governments end up buying tunnelling machines and hosing money at mates.
By Toby Ralph
Contributor
The reptiles even dragged in the craven Craven as a way of tempting the pond ...
Will she be dismissed by history as Andrews’ untalented sidekick who failed to keep the show on the road? It’s unlikely.
By Greg Craven
Columnist
But the pond could have written the craven Craven's offering in a hive mind sleep, as this excerpt shows - spoiler alert, it's the last few lines:
Unlikely. Allan will benefit from Labor’s female sacrifice theory. Failing Labor governments certainly have a record of putting in female leaders once a government is in its death throes.
This includes Joan Kirner in Victoria, Carmen Lawrence in Western Australia, Kristina Keneally in NSW and now Allan in Victoria. The argument goes that after the men had stuffed it up, innocent and compassionate women were forced to carry the can. This is complete rubbish.
Take Kirner. She was no bystander in the Cain government. She was its long-term deputy premier and education minister. She was as much mired in the disasters of that administration – the forced sale of the State Bank of Victoria, the Pyramid Building Society disaster and the catastrophic misinvestment of government funds – as John Cain. She also was a vicious and effective political operator. She may have worn frocks, but she always had a knife up the sleeve. Yet she now is remembered by Labor groupies as some sort of progressive angel.
Allan falls into the same category. She was chief facilitator of the Andrews government. Her hands have as much dung on them as Dan the Man. But doubtless she will be remembered by many progressive Victorians as a feminist martyr. The truth is, she was just as complicit.
Greg Craven is former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.
Joan Kirner? John Cain? If he's into ancient history, why not John Bannon and notables of the Bob "Slippery Sam" "run the bastards over" Askin kind?
Is it any wonder that the pond settled for a few 'toons so it could move on ...
As for those wildfires in Europe?
The pond can proudly report that there wasn't a single mention on the top page of the digital edition early this morning.
Not one. Zilch, nihil, nada ...
They'd been disappeared, and anyone interested in the world would have had to turn to the Graudian to read Almost 4,000 people evacuated from tourist sites near Bordeaux as wildfires rage in France and Spain and Past fires suggest effects of Europe and North America wildfires may linger for years.
Inter alia: ...Lara Schwarz, an environmental health scientist at UC Berkley who led the research, said: “As wildfires become more frequent and severe in the context of climate change, with California being at high risk, understanding how these harmful wildfires will affect us in the long term is critical to informing better public health action and response.”
Fergetit ... is it any wonder that the pond settled down to the quiet life with a dose of "Ned's" natter?
The header: One Nation is a thing of beauty for the Labor Party; One Nation will give Labor the electoral exemption it needs to dodge proper accountability for its flawed agenda.
The caption for the collage for which there was at last a credit, though the pond didn't linger long looking at it, so wretched it was: “Pauline Hanson is a political gift to Labor with the government now enshrining One Nation at the heart of its re-election pitch,” writes Paul Kelly. Artwork by Frank Ling.
"Ned" spent a bigly five minutes moaning about Gina's pampered pet and her implications for the beefy boofhead ...
Outgoing former ALP federal president Wayne Swan’s speech told the party the mantle on the conservative side had now passed to One Nation. Hanson’s party was the new enemy. Swan said Labor’s history had been a series of battles – against Malcolm Fraser, John Howard, Tony Abbott and now “a new battle awaits” against Hanson.
His contempt was undisguised: the conservatives had chosen to “confer legitimacy on a charlatan who walks into the Senate wearing a burka for shock value”. Warning that “the stakes are high”, Swan said Labor was now engaged in a new struggle, aware Hanson directly threatens some Labor seats. Indeed, Labor’s loss of primary votes has flowed heavily to Hanson.
The reptiles for some reason inserted a snap of the Cold Chisel man ...Outgoing ALP President Wayne Swan
Perhaps unable to discern the social relevance of Don Walker's lyrics, "Ned" kept on brooding, determined to play down the impact of Gina's pet ...
In Albanese’s keynote address to the national conference he offered a startling account of Labor’s strategy to win the 2028 election: “In every way that matters, the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation are already a coalition. It’s not just that they need each other to form government. They agree with each other about what they want to do in government.”
Albanese said the differences between Labor and its political opponents were now greater than ever. It didn’t matter who led the Liberal Party; it didn’t matter that One Nation would be plagued by “personality clashes, policy confusion, conspiracy theories and candidate chaos” – the Liberals and One Nation were tied together.
Albanese seizes the logic from the current opinion polls. With the centre-right vote fracturing, neither the Coalition nor One Nation has a sufficiently strong primary vote to form federal government in their own right.
For Labor, this polling situation is a double bonus – not only can’t the Coalition win but it can be depicted as needing One Nation to govern.
No imagination is needed to predict Labor’s 2028 election message: “A vote for the Liberals is a vote for One Nation – and a vote for One Nation is a vote for the Liberals.” The more that message resonates, the more forlorn is the Liberal prospect of winning votes in urban Australia.
Just to rub salt into "Ned's" bleeding wounds, the reptiles flung in another snap, Anthony Albanese during day three of the ALP national conference at the Adelaide Convention Centre. Picture: Matt Turner.
That only compounded "Ned's" grief at the unfairness of it all ...
There is a further devastating consequence. As Labor’s economic policies are increasingly seen to fail the country over the next 18 months, One Nation can deliver political immunity for Labor from full electoral accountability for its failures. The more the centre-right looks illegitimate, the more Albanese can purchase an exemption from a public backlash at the 2028 poll.
The extent to which Labor has already redefined the next election was revealed by ALP national secretary and campaign director, Paul Erickson, in his interview last week with News24. Erickson said: “At the next election, the choice will be between a Labor government that’s delivering real change … or an alternative of a chaotic and divided Coalition-One Nation government. That’s the case that we have to build and set out over the next two years.”
Albanese is busy on the job. He contrasted Labor’s commitment to practical action and social cohesion with a Hanson-driven agenda that rages against the system, blames people who can’t defend themselves, but represents a movement that can’t build anything, can’t change anything and doesn’t help anyone “find a job, pay their bills or put a roof over their heads”.
This is now the embedded Labor mantra. What justification did Victorian deputy premier Ben Carroll offer when challenging Jacinta Allan for the premier’s post? It was no surprise he said: “The stakes at the upcoming election are simply too high. The prospect of a Liberal-One Nation government that will cut schools, health and frontline services is simply too high a risk to ignore.”
Well yes, after all, Gina's pet is just espousing the policies that have been at the heart of the lizard Oz these past few decades, and it's a bit rich for "Ned" to try to row this back ... and blame the Labor party for seizing the moment ... Labor national secretary Paul Erickson
In desperation, "Ned" reverted to a litany of despair about wayward lefties...
But there is a wider lesson for the Labor Party from its crisis in Victoria. The longer this state government survived the more it was exposed as dishonest, incompetent, obsessed with state power and governing in the interests of the party, not the Victorian public. Herein is the trap for modern Labor.
Across America, Britain and Australia the parties of social democracy are moving decisively to the left, often driven by activists who seem to replicate the tactics of Donald Trump.
Consider the ALP national conference. While Albanese was proud of its unity, this conference was a trip into a grassroots Labor fantasy land where activists promoted their pro-Palestinian obsessions, public ownership in the energy sector, strategic distancing from the US, extending euthanasia provisions and backing even more powers for the union movement. At a time when Australia is facing unprecedented national challenges, the conference operated as a left-wing fringe pressure group, an insight into the Labor heartland.
Palestine?
There's been some action of late.
A reading from Haaretz ...
At yet another meeting, Trump and Netanyahu – both facing critical elections – found themselves indispensable to each other, even as their visions for the Middle East increasingly diverge (*intermittent archive link)
And another one, as the ethnic cleansing goes on apace ...
Defense Minister Katz's statements followed Friday's clashes in the village of Tell that left two Israelis and four Palestinians dead. Earlier on Tuesday, Palestinian media reported that the IDF carried out raids in several West Bank communities, including Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem (*intermittent archive link)
And so on and on, and there's nothing like an ethnic cleansing to be way more interesting than "Ned", especially when it's a reminder that there are many areas of the world ghosted by reptile coverage, as they keep insisting the hive mind, and the pond, should stay focussed on Gina's pampered pet, and the beefy boofhead ... One Nation leader Pauline Hanson; Liberal leader Angus Taylor
Disclaimer: the pond didn't co-join Gina's pet, and the beefy boofhead, the reptiles did, and it was the reptiles that selected the snap that showed him looking like a startled ferret...
"Ned" granted himself one last sob into his teacup ...
The Liberals now see rays of hope coming from Victoria, where party leader Jess Wilson is gaining votes and stature, now leading One Nation 31 to 19 per cent, with the One Nation vote expected to fall further before the state election.
This highlights, yet again, the conundrum for the pro-Hanson political, cultural and media warriors still calling for more co-operation, even a coalition or partnership of sorts, between the Liberals and the Hanson party. This is the perfect message for Albanese and Erickson. It plays seamlessly into Labor’s song book and declared strategy to win the next election.
It is a truly beautiful and rare thing when your opponents validate your strategy.
Its deeper beauty lies in giving Labor the electoral exemption it needs to dodge proper accountability for its flawed agenda at the next election.
Oh I know, I know ...
And that's almost a wrap.
The pond will be aware some might be outraged at the pond passing by yet another manifestation of the Lehrmann matter (always re-labelled by the reptiles as the Higgins affair), especially as it had the Rice boiling over yet again ...
The Albanese government fought Fiona Brown every step of the way
Labor’s treatment of Brittany Higgins and Fiona Brown could not have been more different. Higgins got $2.4m. Brown was forced into the fight of her life.
By Stephen Rice
The pond has always avoided the Lehrmann matter, even when Dame Slap hasn't teamed up for another frying of the rice ... even when there's an easy chance to take a snip at SloMo, who started the government mayhem surrounding the mess (as if Liberal staffers were worth all the fuss).
Instead the pond thought it should offer up Dame Groan, a day old and reheated to a tepid level of squawking ...
The header: Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock warns further interest rate rises needed to tame inflation, Australia’s economy has shrunk per capita for eight of the past 11 quarters – yet the Labor conference celebrated its economic record as if the good times were rolling.
The caption, without any kind of credit for that masterly visual concoction. Come on down AI, let the planet die so you can perform miracles for the reptiles and keep mad King Donald in meme heaven: The economic conundrum that now faces economic policymakers such as Treasurer Jim Chalmers and RBA governor Michele Bullock is how to fix the problem of unacceptably high inflation
Dame Groan only spent three minutes explaining that we'd all be rooned, but there was some fine entertainment to be had in the rooning ...
Rose-coloured glasses were universally in use as the Labor Party congratulated itself on achieving better outcomes for everyone, as well as unravelling the evil effects of the unfortunate time when the Coalition was in government.
Here’s the thing: it requires the verbal gymnastics of Jim Chalmers to cherrypick the data to show that the Australian economy is travelling well. Concentrating on absolute economic growth – enlarged by excessive immigration – only gets you so far.
The real facts are that per capita GDP has declined in eight of the past 11 quarters, and real wages are more than 4 per cent lower than in the first quarter of 2021. Bear in mind that some other economies have been enjoying higher real wages – Korea and the UK, for example – and the average for the OECD is slightly positive. Living standards in Australia are clearly slipping, even if the Treasurer prefers to deny this.
Here the pond must interrupt to note that reference to the "real facts". Some might think this tautological, but in reality, it's important to distinguish "real facts" from "unreal facts" or even "alternative facts" of Kellyanne fame ... and perhaps only Humpty Dumpty has the time to explain "surreal facts".
The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction, and all the pond could wonder was when the Sky Noise down under rebranding might come to pass ...On tonight’s episode of Paul Murray Live, Sky News host Paul Murray discusses the RBA’s warning of government spending, political polls, Iran war and more. Mr Murray said RBA Governor Michele Bullock “spoke truth to power” about government spending. “She’s not afraid of displeasing the government in order to keep her job.”
For a moment the pond thought Dame Groan might mention EVs - for some reason she thinks that we're less dependent on oil - but no such luck ... her reasoning must remain arcane and mysterious ...
In her speech to the Annika Foundation Fundraising Lunch, Bullock outlines the impact of supply shocks on the economy and the way in which inflation can be controlled. She makes the obvious point that in days gone past, external shocks often made a strong impact through the economy, particularly before we had a floating exchange rate.
Our lower dependence on oil also means that we are less susceptible to oil price shocks than we once were – although we shouldn’t assume that we are immune. We are potentially about to enter a new round of higher oil prices, with countries’ reserve supplies partly depleted and the trick of lower excise rates unlikely to be repeated.
The key message of Bullock’s speech came at the very end: “It’s important to remember that inflation and capacity pressures in the domestic economy were already too high prior to the recent shock … Against a backdrop of ongoing capacity pressures, the board remains focused on preventing elevated cost pressures from entrenching inflation. This does mean that some further easing in the growth of demand is likely to be required.”
At this moment the reptiles inserted a series of Bullock moments, a bit like inserting a Hitchens speech on atheism into a sermon from the groaning papal mount:
Those dire intrusions forced Dame Groan into dot point form.
How else to explain the complete and utter ruination of the country no later than Xmas?
Stand by for a kicker or four ...
The bottom line is this:
- The Reserve Bank can’t do anything about the supply side of the economy but is very worried about the low/zero rate of productivity growth.
- Demand continues to grow too quickly given the spending activities of the federal and state governments – OK, this is written in invisible ink but it’s a clear implication.
- It’s not clear whether the three increases to the cash rate implemented this year have done enough to slow the economy and dampen the rate of inflation.
- The board will not hesitate to further raise the cash rate, which will quickly flow into higher mortgage rates.
Four kickers, four bottom lines!
That must be something of a bottom line record, as Dame Groan wrapped up with a final word on the country's utter roonation ...
The one area that should be carefully watched is the current wealth effect on the economy. Falling house prices and lower real estate activity can have quite widespread negative economic consequences as people become spooked by the uncertainty.
The combined effect of higher interest rates and the budget tax changes may end up spreading well beyond the real estate market. The end result could be the dreaded stagflation – rising unemployment with unacceptably high inflation.
Yep, it's a disaster, and even worse for the pond, there's no escaping the Victorian saga by way of a relieving 'toon ...
Hang on, hang on, the pond knows where the infallible Pope is going with that one ...you just have to look at the small print down in the bottom right corner.
Fond, fond memories, back in the days when the ABC was what saved Tamworth folk from running down Peel street in a foaming frenzy of madness ...
It's a tribute to the Goodies and to the ecky thump man ...
And this one's an "in memoriam" for anyone as old as the pond and who can remember the good times when the Goodies offered a cross between Python and Benny Hill ...
