... but if anyone scrolled down to the bottom of that tale of the apocalypse, they'd discover it was a pick up from the Sunday Times, with not a single mention of climate change, ghosted in a way worthy of the local reptiles ...
Speaking at an advance firefighters’ command post west of Madrid, the prime minister warned that Spain and Portugal were experiencing the varied consequences of the climate emergency, from fires and storms to heavy snowfalls. “The entire Iberian peninsula is suffering the effects of the climate emergency in a very specific way,” he said.
And this ...
...The blazes are the latest episode in a summer of wildfires that threaten to burn an unprecedented expanse of land. Europe has endured a series of heatwaves since the spring, fuelled by the climate crisis, including the hottest-ever June, leaving vegetation tinder dry. The EU commissioner for crisis management, Hadja Lahbib, told the BBC it was likely that damage from wildfires would exceed previous records. “Last year, one million hectares burned during the summer and so we are expecting to face another historic, sad record because the season has started earlier in the year,” she said.
If assorted European countries followed the lead of mad King Donald, Faux Noise's favourite leader, it'd be tariffs at ten paces for all.
Please stick with the pond, because eventually Lord Downer will provide a payoff to the apocalypse.
Meanwhile, at the top of the page, the Australian Daily Zionist News went about its usual jihads ...
EXCLUSIVE Policy flawed: Marles’ private admission on Hamas stance Richard Marles knew Labor’s Israel-Palestine platform wording was flawed before throwing his factional weight behind it, as the daughter of a Bondi massacre victim slams the wording of the platform. By Greg Brown and Noah Yim
They really do their best to ensure the pond will privately allocate its vote elsewhere ...
Even this sobbing about data centres - won't someone think of the tech bros? - dropped a mention of the main Daily Zionist News business for the day ...
EXCLUSIVE Revealed: the radical policy demands Labor kept behind closed doors Secret files reveal Labor faction demands: data centre tax, union-run companies, people’s bank Labor’s tightly scripted national conference hid a far more radical agenda – with unions pushing to strip CEOs of power and tax AI data centres. By Noah Yim
... with link back to the lead yarn to make sure the hive mind didn't miss it ...
These same documents revealed the depth of anti-US, anti-AUKUS, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine sentiment in the party’s rank-and-file. The Australian can now reveal the radical left-wing policies that party delegates argued for at the national conference that leadership killed off before they could be presented on the conference floor.
... and which in one iteration began with a wild-eyed Ed terrifying the reptile readership ...
Meanwhile, over on the extreme far right, simpleton Simon added to this reptile chorus.
Nah ... not Crosby Textor, so it's the intermittent archive for him ...
Meanwhile, also over on the extreme far right, the usual reptiles were hard at work expanding the jihad in the usual way ...
Hamas ‘journos’ fool usual media suspects The terror groups spoke. The journalists didn’t. Hamas has admitted some of its dead ‘reporters’ were fighters, yet the world’s biggest newsrooms have refused to correct the record. By Chris Mitchell Columnist
By this time the pond was fully into sampling the smorgasbord and quickly moving on ...
A lesser member of the diaspora of the Kelly gang decided to add to the Major's jihad ...
With the paywall limiting the intermittent archive, the pond felt the need to show more data and a handy graph tracking the ethnic cleansing ...
And having used up all that space serving up the smorgasbord, the pond decided it only had room for one full appearance, and luckily that was Lord Downer himself ...
The header: We’ve turned against the beliefs that made us a rich country; Everybody has their own pet theory for why Australia has performed so poorly over the past two decades. There are two key factors.
The caption for the snap: Anthony Albanese during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
His Lordship spent a bigly four minutes rambling through a golden past, as ancient warriors are wont to do, and the pond found it all quite soothing and relaxing ...
It’s easy to ascribe Australia’s poor economic performance over the past two decades to a broader malaise throughout the Western world. We were all affected by the global financial crisis and Covid. We were also affected by the Ukraine and Iran wars. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the West abandoned liberal economics and retreated to the sclerotic policies of the 1970s: heavy taxes, an expanding welfare state, public, not private, investment, and the return of trade union power. Needless to say, this has led to a decline in the growth of productivity and slow economic growth. In many cases, there has been a decline in real living standards. No surprises there. If you adopt the policies of the 1970s, you’ll get the same results. And so we have. This is a global phenomenon. But what is particularly chilling is the relative weakness of Australia. Let’s remember that through the first decade of this century, Australia’s economy was seen globally as an outstanding example of success. From the mid-1980s until the mid-2000s, we deregulated our economy, scrapped tariff protection, privatised government enterprises, reformed the tax system, paid off all government debt and ran budget surpluses. Everywhere I went in the world as the foreign minister during the first decade of the century, people wanted to know about the Australian economic miracle. We had economic growth rates of between 3 per cent and 4 per cent. Our unemployment rate by 2007 was around 4 per cent. Inflation was negligible and real living standards were growing.
Please, fawn on His Lordship, though for some terrible reason, the pond decided to interrupt the Adelaide hills loon with a snap of bloody lefties, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating during Premiers Conference. Picture: Chris Pavlich
Enough of all that - there's not a single mention of Hawke or Keating in His Lordship's text - and back to Lord Downer waxing full lyrical, in a way which might be described as Dame Groan-lite...
By 2010, Australia’s per capita GDP was slightly above that of the US. We were fractionally richer than the Americans. We were some 20 per cent richer than the countries in the eurozone, and around 30 per cent richer than the UK. What is alarming is to see how we have done relative to those countries over the past 15 years. Let’s start with the US. We have gone from being slightly richer than the US to our per capita GDP being just over 70 per cent of America’s. In 2010, America’s per capita GDP was around $US48,000 and Australia’s was $US52,000. By 2025 the US per capita GDP had grown to $US90,000, yet Australia’s had only grown to $US65,000. The point is a very simple one. America’s economy has performed much better than Australia’s over the last 20 years. So what about the eurozone? In 2010, Australia was approximately 20 per cent richer than the eurozone countries on a per capita basis. By 2025 it was only 9 per cent richer. So, for all the talk of slow growth in Europe and its lack of economic dynamism and entrepreneurship – which is by the way completely justified – Australia has been performing less well than the eurozone. But surely you’re thinking we would have done much better than the UK. We’re always being told that the UK’s economy is broken, that it is in permanent crisis, that it was devastated by Brexit and that immigration has plunged the country into penury. Well, don’t be too hasty in drawing that conclusion. In 2010, we were approximately 30 per cent richer per capita than the UK, but now that gap has been reduced to around 13 per cent.
The reptiles had a solution. If only the mug punters in the hive mind were lured in by this fabulous collage to break out the purse and tip in a few shekels ...
PREMIUM 'Nobody’s interested in Australia anymore': Inside the war reshaping global power Become a member to access our premium video content
With a mad King Donald sighting, how could the pond resist a 'toon celebrating the WSJ shaking hands with their persecutor?
His Lordship then decided to have an argument with himself, much as the pond finds itself shouting at the TV on occasions ...
Now you can argue with these figures. You can claim, for example, that the Australian dollar has weakened substantially over the past 15 years, and that distorts comparisons.
Oh don't be silly, of course that was only so His Lordship could produce a billy goat butt or three, dressed up as an "However":
However, even if you make the comparisons on the basis of purchasing power parity, you will find that Australia’s economic performance per capita has been substantially worse than that of the US, the eurozone, and, incredibly, the UK. On a PPP basis, we were 15 per cent richer than the UK in 2010, and now we are about 9 per cent richer. I think this is a shameful thing. After all, Australia is richly endowed with resources and energy; there is no excuse for its weak economic performance. We have also benefited substantially from the economic rise of China and, more broadly, the Indo-Pacific region. Despite all of that, we are performing less well than America, Europe and the UK. Yet 20 years ago, we were admired for our outstanding economic performance. Well, maybe you think there’s some upside to this. Australia, perhaps, has become more egalitarian as private sector investment declines and public sector investment soars. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case either. The measure of inequality is known as the Gini coefficient. Over the past 20 years, it demonstrates that inequality based on household wealth has increased. This is almost certainly a function of the rapid rise in house prices throughout that period. No doubt everybody will have their own pet theory for why Australia has performed so poorly over the past two decades. There are two key, if not sole, factors. The first was the reaction to the global financial crisis, which led to a loss of confidence by the establishment, as well as the general public, in the liberal market. It is a model that had served Australia so well in the previous two decades. This model has been replaced with a social democratic model, which involves huge increases in unprofitable public investment and a rapid expansion of the welfare state. All of this has been funded by a combination of increasing taxes and heavy public borrowing. Common sense tells you this is not a formula for rapid economic growth.
As a sign that the reptiles thought His Lordship was off in cloud cuckoo land, they flung in a distracting snap ...A visitor walks past a giant Euro sign inside the headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main.
And that's the only mention of the European Central Bank you'll find in His Lordship's offering ... and right on cue, as the perfect follow up to the massive apocalyptic destruction currently being wrought in Europe, His Lordship came up with these noble lines ...
Secondly, the overall obsession by the political class with climate policies has been crippling for Australia. Not only has there been eye-watering amounts of public money pumped into the so-called energy transition, but by establishing a dual system of renewables and conventional fossil fuel electricity generation, there has been a pronounced decline in productivity in the energy sector and a commensurate substantial increase in electricity prices. According to the Productivity Commission, investment in electricity generation since 2001-02 has grown by 126 per cent, and output has grown by 14 per cent, so it’s hardly surprising there has been an astronomical increase in electricity prices.
How's that rain not falling on the plain in Spain? Fancy a smoke-laden Bordeaux?
And so it turned out that His Lordship is as obdurate and as sublimely stupid as he ever was ...
So, it’s as simple as this: if Australia wants to return to high rates of growth and improvements in living standards, it has to re-embrace liberal market economics. People tell me the public are resistant to that. I’m not so sure. Once it’s explained to them it is the only path to rising living standards I think they can be persuaded. After all, we’ve tried the present economic formula in the 70s and 80s, and look where that got us? We tried the liberal market formula in the late 80s to the mid-2000s, and that was a glittering success. We should learn from history.
What did the pond learn from history? His Lordship was a frivolous twat ...
... and nothing has changed.
But what of the quarry whispering Caterist, the pond can hear some correspondents cry?
Sorry, by this point in the early morning, the pond was well over it.
Surely there was enough blancmange in the smorgasbord, and besides, the floodwater whisperer's Labor bashing was too tedious to contemplate.
And why is it that the reptiles are always moralising about moralising, in essence acting as a kind of tedious thought police for anything outside their monoculture world?
At least the pond now understands why the reptiles wanted to insert a snap of Hawke and Keating in His Lordship's piece ... talk about a pair living rent free in the hive mind.
Besides, for those disappointed this cavalier treatment of the Caterist, be consoled - there's nothing in the quarry whisperer's piece that couldn't be summed up in a few 'toons, because they always disappoint ...
And speaking of security, this one's just for fun ... though if you happened to be an Iranian interested in regime change, you might think it a quadruple bogey ...
And speaking of mad King Donald and state regime media, there's always a rant to be found ...
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 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.
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.
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.
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 herefor more). The pond checked that out when ordering one for its backyard (soon to arrive, just like the Trump phone).
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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 ...
...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 ...
