You are invited to a Monday morning brunch with a reptile ...

The pond realises that the concept of a brunch is hopelessly middle class, but in the revised schedule the pond is operating on, needs must, and the only dilemma is whether to chose a hearty heart attack meal laden with breakfast bacon or focus on a rabbit food lunch menu.

Naturally the pond chose the saturated bacon suitable for a reptile feast, with the swishing Switzer showing how to serve up a splendid pile of tosh.

The pond has made some sacrifices to go there.

The reptiles were cock a hoop this morning at the One Nation-isation of the country and the lizard Oz, with Geoff chambering an exclusive round.

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in front of Labor, Anthony Albanese gets worst ever rating
In a watershed moment for Australian politics, core support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is ahead of Labor as Anthony Albanese hits a record low.
By Geoff Chambers

Geoff chambered a double barrelled serve...

Commentary by Geoff Chambers
Mad as hell voters not going to take it anymore
Newspoll: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation revolution has exploded far beyond the populist’s dreams
Pauline Hanson has led an uprising many of her detractors believed was impossible.

The pond scurried past like a white rabbit, leaving it to the intermittent archive, pausing only to note that the reptiles' new heroine was on the march, and more importantly, that the swishing Switzer heard the call, ran up the white flag, and rallied to the cause ...

The header: Libs’ political reality means deal with Hanson only pragmatic; The longstanding sentiment that One Nation should be resisted could be outdated.

The caption for the bottled redhead supporting an alleged war criminal in a birds of a feather moment: Pauline Hanson attends event in support for Ben Roberts-Smith, Seventeen Mile Rocks, Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen / The Australian

Before proceeding, the pond couldn't help noticing once again the astonishing similarities between Pauline and Martin, as identified on the weekend by the Ughmann.

How could the pond have missed it? 

Thank the long absent lord for the astonishing insights available to the hive mind.

And now on with the ongoing One Nation-isation of the lizard Oz and the hive mind, with the swishing Switzer showing the way ...

Former Victorian Liberal premier Denis Napthine is hardly alone in harbouring doubts about closer electoral co-operation with One Nation.
His intervention reflects a longstanding sentiment within sections of the Liberal establishment that Pauline Hanson’s party should be resisted even on a seat-by-seat basis.
Yet as One Nation’s support continues to grow, an increasing number of conservatives are beginning to ask whether that debate belongs more to the political circumstances of the late 1990s than to those of today.
True, preference co-operation is not cost-free politically or reputationally, especially in metropolitan electorates. But politics in preferential voting systems is ultimately about addition, not subtraction. Unless the broader centre-right learns to coexist electorally, it risks Labor remaining in office because its opponents are divided against themselves.
This is hardly an unfamiliar lesson in Australian history. After the Labor split of the mid-1950s, the fractured centre-left materially assisted Coalition dominance federally until the early 1970s. Robert Menzies was probably our nation’s greatest prime minister, but he and the Coalition undoubtedly benefited from a divided Labor movement and Democratic Labor Party preferences.
The same dynamic assisted long-serving Liberal premiers such as Thomas Playford in South Australia, Henry Bolte in Victoria, David Brand in Western Australia and Robert Askin in New South Wales. Today, there is a growing risk of the inverse occurring on the Australian centre-right.

What a wondrous sell-out and quisling this Vichy lad is, as the reptiles interrupted with a snap of Malware: Malcolm Turnbull has been vocal in bagging his old party. Picture: Martin Ollman

It's all Malware's fault! Now back to the apologetics, worthy of a Jesuit defending the Inquisition:

Hanson voters are not extremists. 

Of course they aren't. They're just climate science denying bigots afraid of furriners and pesky, uppity blacks, and therefore entirely in accord with the lizard Oz.

Most are former Coalition voters who increasingly believe the Liberal Party stopped listening to them years ago. They saw Malcolm Turnbull – today an almost daily presence on the ABC bagging his old party – as embodying a breathtaking born-to-rule leadership style detached from the instincts of the Liberal grassroots.
No wonder he squandered the political capital won under Tony Abbott’s landslide in 2013. Coalition voters were later disappointed by Scott Morrison’s embrace of net zero and by the significant expansion of state authority during the Covid years.
Andrew Neil, the distinguished British journalist, has argued that centre-right parties across the democratic world cannot renew themselves until they acknowledge how deeply many traditional supporters feel they were let down while conservatives were last in power.
There is an uncomfortable truth in that observation; and it helps explain why so many former Coalition supporters have utter contempt for the likes of Turnbull.
The challenge facing Angus Taylor is therefore larger than simply refining the Coalition’s budget message or sharpening parliamentary tactics. It is whether the Liberal Party can rebuild trust with voters who increasingly see One Nation not as an aberration, but as a vehicle for frustrations they believe the Coalition ignored for too long.

Poor old beefy windmill fearing boofhead from down Goulburn way. Fancy dragging him into this mess ... Opposition Leader Angus Taylor must convince voters the Liberal Party can rebuild trust with them. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond had wondered whether a "billy goat butt" would come and what form it might take, and at last the question was answered.

The swishing Switzer dressed it up as a "none of this means" but quickly followed that billy goat with another butt about "recognising political reality", as any sell-out king would do:

None of this means the Liberals should become One Nation. But it does mean recognising a political reality that sections of the Liberal establishment still appear reluctant to confront: a divided centre-right may simply entrench Labor dominance for another generation.
To say the stakes are high is an understatement. After four years of Anthony Albanese’s government, a clear majority of Australians fear the country is moving in the wrong direction. Australia has experienced weak productivity growth, stagnant living standards, housing unaffordability, persistently high migration and still-high energy costs.
Canberra’s fiscal approach has also fuelled unease among middle-income voters. Having already targeted successive pools of private savings – from superannuation to investment assets – there is growing concern that the family home itself may eventually come within the reach of an increasingly revenue-hungry government.
At the state level, the long Andrews-Allan era has similarly left many Victorians deeply disillusioned. The government’s record has been marked by repeated financial blowouts, mounting debt and costly infrastructure mismanagement.
Many Victorians also remain troubled by the severity and duration of the state’s lockdown regime during Covid, which became the longest anywhere in the democratic world.
Then there’s energy policy: Labor’s lengthy restrictions on onshore gas exploration reflected an ideological certainty that increasingly collided with the practical realities of tightening energy supply and rising prices across eastern Australia. Add to this the astonishing explosion in crime in Victoria, and it is no wonder the Garden State is widely seen as a national embarrassment.

Of all the wretches and miscreants to enlist in this blather ... Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett says a divided centre-right risks entrenching the left by default. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

And then came a remarkable assertion, to which the pond could only think "pig's bum":

Jeff Kennett is right: One Nation should be part of a broader electoral effort to defeat both the Allan government later this year and the Albanese government within the next two years. The Coalition parties have yet to decide whether to pursue a preference arrangement with One Nation but, if the goal is to defeat Labor, the strategic logic is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: a divided centre-right risks entrenching the left by default.
After all, Labor has never hesitated to co-operate electorally with the Greens, a radical left-wing party, in pursuit of power. It is becoming harder to argue that different rules should apply to parties on the conservative side of politics.

At the very end, there came a forlorn credit for the quisling hack.

Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland podcast.

Never listened to it, never will.

The pond now must pause to celebrate Pauline's dream, one long shared by the reptiles at Faux Noise ...

The Caterist was also on hand to help...

The header: Labor’s productivity neglect like rocket fuel for One Nation; The scene is set for a three-cornered contest. It would be a brave person to predict who has the last laugh.

There was no caption for the snap, so it was on with the quarry whispering Caterist spending four minutes doing his best to pump up the volume for One Nation:

Day 22 of the operation to salvage Jim Chalmers’ budget gave Katy Gallagher her chance to prove her worth as Finance Minister.
She squandered it, stonewalling the Senate Economics Committee with the weaponised indifference of a surly teenager. Like Pauline Hanson, a serial absentee from Senate committees, she clearly didn’t want to be there. Unlike Hanson, however, she had no choice.
Matt Canavan began with an easy question: “What elements in your budget help increase productivity?” Gallagher rolled her eyes dismissively. “There is a glossy A4 there,” she said. “There are 14, ah, 16 different measures. I was wondering whether or not you had read it?”
Labor’s best hope is that no one cares about productivity anymore, that the TikTokification of the policy debate has robbed the word of any meaning it once had. Reform is anything you say it is, neither more nor less.
A 15-minute exchange before the morning break on Thursday revealed the structural weaknesses in Labor’s economic management. A politicised Treasury and an uninterested Finance Minister have robbed the government of the institutional backstops every Treasurer and PM needs, leaving its economic policy exposed to groupthink and whimsy.

The reptiles flung in an AV distraction ... Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Nationals Leader Matt Canavan have traded barbs in a fiery Senate Estimates clash over whether Labor's tax reforms will improve productivity.

Then it was on with the flood waters whispering Caterist channeling the Canavan caravan, because black coal matters ...

Canavan gave the Treasury secretary every opportunity to give a fearless and frank assessment of Chalmers’ budget when he asked whether the department had modelled the productivity impact of changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing and the tax treatment of trusts.
“Our assessment,” Jenny Wilkinson began cautiously, “is that, taken together, the reforms announced in the budget should help Australia move towards the long-run productivity assumptions that we have in the medium-term forecasts.”
How so? Until this government took office, the minimum requirement for economic reform was to reduce the overall tax take or spend it more efficiently.
Chalmers’ budget does the opposite, diverting an additional $80bn from the productive private economy into general review in the unproductive public sector.
The Finance Minister’s glossy brochure fails to explain this basic inconsistency. At least four of its 12 points (not 14 or 16) are basic housekeeping, reducing red tape and streamlining compliance. Others, such as accelerating foreign investment and environmental approvals, are pure wishful thinking.

Cue a snap of the man himself ...Nationals leader Matt Canavan.

The clueless Caterist didn't seem to understand, or care, that his celebration of the potency of Pauline might have some implications for the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way and Freedumb boy. It was enough that Jimbo was under the reptile hammer ...

Productivity figures reported in the National Accounts last week confirm the dismal trend in productivity that has accelerated under the Albanese government. Opposition Treasury spokesman Tim Wilson issued a press release pointing out that productivity had declined by 5 per cent since Labor came to power.
Chalmers saw the opportunity for a gotcha. “I checked out that number,” he told parliament. Wilson’s figure had included the March quarter of 2022 when productivity had fallen 2.3 per cent, he said. Labor wasn’t elected until May. In fact, productivity rose in the March 2022 quarter to a record high. The 2.3 per cent fall was in the June quarter. It is a moot point how much of the fall occurred in the first 10 days of April, before the Morrison government entered caretaker mode, or in the 40 days of the quarter from May 22, when Labor was in office. The substantive point is the same.
The four years of productivity decline under Labor are deeply alarming. Three decades of steady jobs growth and an almost unbroken rise in GDP have masked the structural declines in an economy that is running on the fumes of the genuine economic reforms in the 80s and 90s.

Quick, a snap of the villains, as a reminder that Pauline and the lizard Oz know who the real enemies are ...Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher in Canberra on budget day. Picture: Martin Ollman

The quarry whispering Caterist continued to make the case for One Nation ...

Productivity data offers a reading on what has been happening under the bonnet. Between 1995 and 2005, productivity growth averaged 2.2 per cent, comfortably above the 1.6 per cent 60-year average. Between 2005 and 2015, average productivity growth fell to 1.3 per cent. Over the past decade, the average is 0.3 per cent.
Much of this has been attributed to the relative growth of the service sector, where productivity tends to be lower. The growth of government, however, particularly over the past five years, has put a significant drag on the productive economy.
The compounding effects of inflation have increased government tax revenue through bracket creep. Strong commodity prices have delivered an unexpected windfall, much of which has been foolishly frittered away. The budget measures are an ill-disguised tax grab, framed as reform solely for the sake of the narrative. Their practical effect will be the very opposite of the economically liberalising, pro-competition measures introduced at the end of the last century.
While Paul Keating continues to bask in the glory of those reforms, he was greatly assisted by independent, economically literate advice from Treasury and by finance minister Peter Walsh, who belonged to a generation of reformers who believed productivity was earned through competition, investment and efficiency. Their focus was on removing barriers, reducing protection and restraining spending. Today’s policy debate starts from the opposite end: how government can redistribute the proceeds of growth before asking where the growth itself will come from.

Finally there came a snap of the reptiles' new heroine herself ...Pauline Hanson.

The pond expects everyone will immediately spot the resemblance to Martin Luther, as the Caterist wrapped up proceedings with a sudden realisation that he was helping Pauline and selling his old comrades down the river...

The Coalition and Labor face opposite challenges. Angus Taylor must turn a dry reform agenda into an appealing political narrative. Albanese and Chalmers must adapt a social equity narrative to something approximating genuine reform. All the while, the party ahead of both is banking on the idea that no one cares about this stuff anyway and that Labor’s casual broken promises are symptomatic of the political class as a whole. There is little sign that Pauline Hanson’s studied absence from Senate committee hearings has damaged her standing. Indeed, it may have enhanced it.
The scene is set for a three-cornered contest between a Labor Party on the populist left, the economically conservative Coalition and One Nation, with its rudimentary policy development but devilishly good satirical cartoons.
It would be a brave person to predict who has the last laugh.

Hopefully we'll all have the same Gina laugh they're currently having in those disunited States ...

And now to continue the One Nation-isation of the lizard Oz and the hive mind with the help of Major Mitchell:

The header: Climate activists lose their voice in the face of facts; Australia’s climate media has ignored a landmark IPCC shift scrapping the doomsday warming scenarios that underpinned decades of costly government policy and public scaremongering.

The caption for one of Satan's renewables loving minions: Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: Martin Ollman

Major Mitchell helpfully prepared a position paper for One Nation on the matter of climate science.

One Nation has long been saturated with climate science denialists and so has the lizard Oz, and so it was inevitable that the two would join forces.

(The pond understands that Major Mitchell's scribbles might well become part of One Nation's platform on climate change).

The Major began by citing that well-known and reliable in-house resource, Lloydie of the Amazon:

Being a climate activist – whether scientist or journalist – means never having to say you’re sorry.
On May 14, The Australian’s Graham Lloyd reported on a new scientific paper that challenges worst-case scenarios on possible future climate change, and dramatically cuts the forecast warming of the planet by the end of this century.
The new pathways put forward by the scientific paper will feed into the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR7 assessment, due in stages by 2029.
Incredibly, more than five weeks after the new pathways were accepted by the IPCC, most climate writers and government-backed climate bodies in Australia have not even mentioned the changes, which eliminate the doomsday scenarios many have been pushing for decades.

Sorry, the pond must interrupt here to note a brazen lie, a distortion and a fraud. 

The Major's headline blathered about "a landmark IPCC shift", but on a closer reading, the Major modified this to blather about one scientific paper "feeding into" the IPCC.

Contemptible really, but entirely fitting for One Nation and the Major:

Lloyd wrote: “It does not suggest that climate change is not happening but it is a reality check for how climate science has allowed itself to be hijacked by what has resembled a death cult of catastrophe.”
A couple of scientists in Australia, including one who wrote a piece on The Conversation website, tried to spin the scrapping of the most extreme pathways – known to scientists as RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 – as a sign that actions taken globally, especially the rise of renewable energy, were working. It was self-serving rot.
The truth is that most people who closely follow the arcane world of the IPCC and its feed-in science groups knew the extreme warming scenarios were always a fantasy.
The so-called business-as-usual scenario, RCP 8.5, involved an eight-fold increase in coal burning for power, which at the time the pathway was accepted was five times proven global coal reserves.
Nor did this scenario take account of the rise in gas globally as a cheaper, less carbon-intensive source of power than coal, especially after the rise of fracking for shale gas in the US in the early 2000s.
The scenario was based on the population increasing from the present eight billion to 12 billion by 2100. It now seems global population will hit 10 billion mid-century and fall to as low as seven to nine billion by 2100.
So why is all this important?
Most scaremongering by global warming catastrophists such as King Charles, Greta Thunberg and our own Energy Minister Chris Bowen was built on predictions drawn from RCP8.5. This includes predicted sea level rises of 1.1m and a rise in average global temperatures by 5C by 2100. Results from the latest scenario modelling suggest about 2.5C of warming since pre-industrial times.

The reptiles decided to fling in a snap of King Chuck, because everyone knows talking tampons don't do science: King Charles has been vocal about global warming. Picture: Getty Images

Before proceeding to the next Major gobbet, the pond would like to drop a few notes on the Major's sources.

First there's this ...

Article by Michael Shellenberger mixes accurate and inaccurate claims in support of a misleading and overly simplistic argumentation about climate change

And way back when Damian Carrington wrote The four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them all for the Graudian, which began this way ...

A new book, described as “deeply and fatally flawed” by an expert reviewer, recently reached the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for environmental science and made it into a weekly top 10 list for all nonfiction titles.
How did this happen? Because, as Brendan Behan put it, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. In an article promoting his book, Michael Shellenberger – with jaw-dropping hubris – apologises on behalf of all environmentalists for the “climate scare we created over the last 30 years”.
Shellenberger was named a hero of the environment by Time magazine in 2008 and is a loud advocate of nuclear power, but the article was described by six leading scientists as “cherry-picking”, “misleading” and containing “outright falsehoods”.
The article was widely republished, even after being removed from its first home, Forbes, for violating the title’s editorial guidelines on self-promotion, adding further heat to the storm. And this is why all those who deny the reality or danger of the climate emergency should be ignored. Obviously, I have broken my own rule here, but only to make this vital point once and for all.
The science is clear, the severity understood at the highest levels everywhere, and serious debates about what to do are turning into action. The deniers have nothing to contribute to this.

Hopefully that helps decontaminate what follows from the Major ...

As American author Mike Shellenberger wrote on the Public website on May 27, “the worst-case scenario that has anchored climate science for 15 years describes a world that cannot exist. Scenario RCP8.5 and its successor SSP-8.5 generated more than half of the references in the 2018 US Fourth National Climate Assessment.
“They accounted for 60 per cent of the references in the IPCC’s Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere.”
The hysteria generated by a scenario many people argued was impossible when it was adopted has made many countries poorer. The UK and Europe have committed to net zero by 2050 on the basis of predictions the IPCC now accepts are way off kilter.
Europe has lost much of its industrial base to China. Much manufacturing in Australia has also moved to China, and taxpayers are forking out billions to keep metal smelting operators open because they are unviable with high power prices driven by the renewables transition.

Regarding the next Major source, he's been around for a long time. See this recommendation in Grist back in 2009 ...

The fantastical falsehoods of Roger Pielke, Jr.

Now that they’ve shut down his original blog, Roger Pielke, Jr., is desperately trying to remain relevant in the blogosphere.  Pielke’s preferred strategy – as it has always been – is to utterly misrepresent what people say and then attack that misrepresentation in the hopes of garnering media attention.  Baselessly smearing the professional reputation of hundreds of leading U.S. scientists means nothing whatsoever to him – if it gets him press coverage (see details here).
These days, the main “media” paying attention to Pielke, Jr. (as with Pielke, Sr.) are the global warming deniers (see “Uber-denier Inhofe gives big wet Valentine’s kiss to Pielke – go figure!“).  So it’s no surprise that Pielke Jr.’s latest distortion was immediately picked up by Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano, much as the main person pushing Pielke Sr.’s climate disinformation is anti-science blogger Anthony Watts (see “Like father, like son: Roger Pielke Sr. also doesn’t understand the science of global warming – or just chooses to willfully misrepresent it“)...

See the original for links, see Skeptical Science for "Climate Misinformation by Source", and now see the Major...

Roger Pielke Jnr, a former professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado and a controversial analyst of the economics of climate action, explains the impact of RCP8.5 in a Substack post of April 29. The abandoned scenarios “are not just academic constructs”, he writes. “They are embedded in the policies and regulations of most of the word’s largest economies, found across the world’s most important multilateral institutions, and used in climate stress tests that govern hundreds of billions of dollars of bank capital.”
Yet from our alarmist climate writers in mainstream media, this column could find not a single word. After years of overheated forecasts in their news and opinion pages, only crickets when the scenario on which those scares were based fell over.
Pielke published the new climate pathways on The Honest Broker site on April 29. On May 9 he surveyed the global media’s response.
The Dutch and German media were out front, not unexpectedly given Dutch scientist Detlef van Vuuren was lead author of the paper that announced the new scenarios. But nothing in The New York Times, Guardian or BBC.
The Conversation published an op-ed by Andrew King, associate professor of Climate Science at the University of Melbourne, on May 27.
He noted President Trump had taken an interest in the scrapping of RCP8.5.

Mad King Donald is also enrolled in the Major's science team? US President Donald Trump has taken an interest in the scrapping of RCP8.5. Picture: Getty Images

That's got to be worth a climate 'toon...

What else to say, except to suggest that this will suit the Major's position paper for One Nation, so that we might make Australia grovel to the mad king yet again ...

“But the removal of this high-emissions scenario isn’t, as Trump and other climate sceptics have claimed, a sign of failed modelling.” Rather it was testament to the success of the policies already introduced to mitigate against climate change, King argued.
It was the line Van Vuuren et al used in the paper to explain the dumping of the extreme scenarios.
Never mind Pielke and others had published papers pointing to the overblown assumptions that underpinned the high emissions scenarios.
Never mind fossil fuels still dominate global power, and never mind emissions of CO2 from those fossil fuels are still rising globally.
Anticipating the blowback from the lowered climate scenarios, Van Vuuren et al wrote: “High emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emissions trends.”
Journalists have been talking about the need for governments to act against “misinformation” and “disinformation”. Yet they say nothing about the stream of false prophesies trotted out by climate scientists.

And now those familiar with the pond knew it was coming.

How could the Major resist quoting the Bjørn-again one, a legend in his own lunchtime but otherwise largely irrelevant, unless you happen to be reading the lizard Oz:

Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg last month showed how the latest European statistics on heat-related deaths in the elderly represented no more than the increase in the numbers of elderly as life expectancy rose. Lomborg has showed many times that cold weather remains a bigger threat to life than heat.

The reptiles thought so highly of this reference that they threw in a snap ...Bjorn Lomborg is a Danish political scientist, author, and the president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Centre.

The pond has already covered the Bjørn-again so many times that ennui would ensue if the pond contemplated his irrelevance again, and so to the Major's denialist wrap.

The Major can say with some pride that it's a perfect summary for One Nation, a Major position paper for the ages ... or at least until next week, when the Major will either by Zionist Central, or continue as the Klimate King ...

Shellenberger said the IPCC now needs to correct the record on other climate scare campaigns, namely “sea level rise, hurricanes, fires, polar bears and extreme weather”.
Yet reporters happily quote politicians or the UN attributing every fire, flood or tropical storm to climate change.
Lomborg has shown how the historical evidence proves land lost to fires has fallen since the start of the 20th century. Tropical storm numbers are declining even if there is some evidence some are becoming more intense. Much flooding is linked to changed land use near coastlines and rivers.
There is no evidence polar bear numbers are falling.
And let’s never forget we were told by the UN Environment Program in 2005 that sea level rises would create 50 million climate refugees by 2020. An Auckland University study in 2018 found many South Pacific atolls were in fact growing.
But climate activists – journalists and scientists – are never accountable. It’s about their good intentions, not the facts.

The facts? As always, the Major and facts aren't one, but rather two ... and never the twain shall meet.

And so to wrap up by catching up with the immortal Pope, who happens to be foreshadowing the pond's post tomorrow ...

You are invited to a Sunday morning tea with a reptile ...

 

Now where were we?

Colbert? Long gone, though some say they saw him in Monroe. Whatever, CBS and Paramount were dead to to the pond in 60 seconds, made easy by the intertubes being dead to the pond for some time.

Gaza? The pond felt the urgent need to shriek about well-meaning activists, which in terms of Australian media produced a new formula: one maltreated activist equals 10,000 Palestinians (and Lebanese people) displaced, brutalised, starved, murdered people, subject to ethnic cleansing and life under apartheid rule. White phosphorus anyone?

Benji's government and King Donald's war on Iran? Think that song lyric, same as it ever was.

The United States under mad King Donald? Just a long slide into dementia, surrounded by sycophants, dropkicks and losers.

Ukraine? Vlad the Sociopath also scored himself a never ending war.

While away, the pond didn't take a single squiz at the lizard Oz, and what a relief that was.

Instead the pond spent its days moving as far south as it could before getting nosebleed, which is to say to the mighty 'Gong, home of awesome Aunty Jack, plucky bleeder Norman Gunston and other luminaries (younglings, ask your elders).

As a result, the pond has gone full rustic. How rustic? Consider this: on signing the lease, the real estate agent gave the pond a box of Cadbury Roses Chocolate. 

The real estate agent! A box of chocolates! (cue Forrest Gump).

The pond was swept back to its earliest days, growing up in Tamworth, once the centre of the known universe. 

In those ancient times, men would rock up with beers, while the women always had the fallback of a box of chocolates, Roses of course. The size of the box was carefully determined by the occasion and the status and relevance of the recipients (the pond was given a twenty buck box!) The pond's married maiden aunt would swoon at the sight of a box, and always kept one handy for the guests who arrived, at least one a decade.

What else?

Well while the pond was away, several Tonys came out to play.

The pond was particularly drawn to the savvy Savva's assessment in the Nine rags Abbott’s ineptitude meant he didn’t last two years as PM. Now he’s back, with four new slogans (*intermittent archive link).

Inter alia:

...Abbott came prepared with four new slogans. Stripped to the bare bones, or down to the budgie smugglers if you prefer, they were: stop taxes, demonise migrants, wreck the planet and only ever wave one flag.
OK, so he didn’t say that exactly. That’s my interpretation of what he said, given 75 per cent of his plan is built on culture wars over patriotism, welcomes to Country, migration and climate change, and the other 25 per cent is a scare campaign on tax, a formula unlikely to regain old heartland seats including the one he lost in 2019.

Indeed ...

And Tony Bleagh hovered back into view, as the pond squinted at its phone and read a cracking Crace:

‘Worry no longer, I am back’ – Tony Blair’s Why I Have Always Been Right About Everything, digested by John Crace

Inter alia:

...Politics is about power. And since I left No 10, the UK has become a second-class global power. So we need to stick close to the US. We need to be partners, not in opposition. Donald Trump is a great guy when you get to know him. Probably the best president since George W Bush. Someone who will be fully worthy of his Nobel peace prize. Just as I treasure the replica one I awarded myself. No one has done more to stop the wars he started.
Have I mentioned that I am the only Labour prime minister to have won a full second term? Not that I am in any way needy
I am deeply honoured to be a member of Trump’s Board of Peace along with many others from the world’s most eminent list. Keir made a huge mistake by not joining the US in bombing Iran, because it can never be wrong not to go to war along with the US. Can it? There were weapons of mass destruction. I’m sure of it. There has to have been, we just haven’t found them yet.
It is also time to rethink our relationship with Europe. Now is not the time to relitigate Brexit. That ship has long since sailed. Instead, what we should do is become much more powerful than Europe and then get the EU to come to us begging to join the UK. And we can only do this if we deregulate everything I once regulated, and grasp the benefits of AI. I won’t say here what the benefits of AI are, mainly because I don’t know what they are, but all my tech bro pals are making shedloads of money, so it has to be a good thing.
We also need to rethink the way we do politics at home. Voters want politicians who are prepared to crash into brick walls. To challenge the very orthodoxies for conventional. Have I mentioned before that I am the only Labour prime minister to have won a full second term? Not that I am in any way needy. Or condemned to the purgatory of all yesterday’s men. Just that I feel obliged to answer the call when the country I quite like, though not as much as the US and China, is in need.
The change needed will be radical. First we have to get rid of all workers’ rights. No country ever achieved economic growth by worrying about them. We have to accept that if some people are broke then that is a price worth paying. Likewise, Labour needs to realise the welfare bill is far too high. There must be an end to a culture of state support. And maybe we should think about getting rid of pensions altogether. If people don’t have the capability to set up their own global institute then they deserve every misfortune that comes their way.

Indeed, and what a hoot from a man doing his best to resemble the Joker...

And so on, and what is it with Tonys, how do they always end up sounding like prize loons of the first water?

'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. (in full here).

And so to another note on life in the 'Gong surrounded by raucous cockies, perhaps chortling at the two Tonys ...

The pond has undergone a lifestyle change, what with the escarpment looking like the Tamworth hills on steroids.

As a result, with unpacking still to be done, and order restored to the world, (fat chance), the pond isn't that keen on getting up early to check out the reptiles and do a full survey of their follies.

Instead the pond thought it might step gingerly back into the swamp by inviting people to enjoy a morning tea with just one reptile: Kinkara (if only you could find it - perhaps Bushells or Griffiths, née Robur, as subs?), scones with blackberry jam and cream fresh from the cow, just like the 1950s ... which approximates the picket fence times of the reptile hive mind.

But when the pond dived back in, it was appalled and astonished to see that somehow the reptiles had managed to get even worse over a few short weeks. 

It was a veritable den of disrepute, a swamp of mugwumps...

How could the pond stick to just one reptile, when the rag had transformed into the the perfect embodiment the One Nation paper of choice, what with Pauline filching all her best forms of bigotry from their insightful analyses? (Climate change isn't real, it's all the fault of migrants, and what's this vax crap?)

Of course, the reptiles still performed the duties required to be the Australian Daily Zionist News (henceforth ADZN).

This weekend Julie held up that flag for all to see ...

Blaming and vilifying Jews – it’s as easy as ABC
A week full of strange and hypocritical cultural moments shows how institutions have applied a dangerous double standard when Jewish people are targeted.
By Julie Szego

But the real marvel was the way the reptiles had lurched towards One Nation, what with Pauline being the perfect embodiment of everything the Murdochians had campaigned for over the years.

Unsurprisingly, the MAGA-cap-donning Dame Slap was front and centre with the shift ...

No wonder voters want Hanson when AHRC spouts such lunacy
Our institutions are now so infested with the radical ideology once seen only at university ­orientation weeks that One Nation seems like the logical ­answer to many.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Dame Slap spent many words explaining why Pauline was right about everything, before concluding ...

...The Coalition failed completely, over many terms, to do anything about the ABC thumbing its nose at mainstream Australia. Hanson’s rise in the polls suggests a desperate yearning among voters for someone who will at least try to put the cleaners through the taxpayer-funded mess of government bodies who seem to regard mainstream Australia with contempt. Nobody knows if Hanson will have any more success than the Coalition at hosing out the radicals feasting on the public teat. But increasing numbers seem to think she can’t do any worse, and she just might do better. “Worth a shot?” they ask.

Indeed ...

But the most astonishing effort was performed by the Ughmann, with a truly bizarre comparison, a descent into mugwumpery of the first water, such that even the pond's partner noticed ...

The header: Australia’s new reformation is a growing revolt against a detached governing elite; Australia’s woke elites have sparked a backlash, just as the Catholic Church’s Curia did in 1517.

The remarkable caption featuring that uncanny likeness: The rise of One Nation is not simply a rebellion against the political class. It is a revolt against the permanent governing caste of progressive elites that inhabits the state and federal bureaucracies, universities, courts, commissions, NGOs and much of the media. Like the Curia of old, this clerisy sees itself as the arbiter of modern morality.

Talk about an exact match. How could the pond have missed it? 

The died orange hair, the glowering black eyes, the whimsical, mischievous look dancing on the lips.

There's even a hint of black in both their garbs, though Pauline has updated her gear to reflect a Manichean dance between black and white, good and evil, without any shades of grey. (Possibly they also share similar thoughts on international banking conspiracies).

Best to slip in that reference to a heresy, so the pond could get down and dirty with the Ughmann in full blown stupid Xian fundamentalist mode.

What a irresistible theological marvel he is ...

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
The question was probably never seriously debated by 15th-century Catholic theologians, but it neatly satirises a Church that is so absorbed in Byzantine theological and legal disputes that it lost the trust of the people it claimed to serve.
An institution-wide infection of legalism, self-interest and intellectual arrogance had spread through what is known as the Curia, the vast permanent bureaucracy that advises popes, interprets doctrine and enforces orthodoxy to this day.
But alas, as the century turned, it was a dangerous time for a complacent clerisy.
Europe had been brutalised by famine, plague and the Hundred Years’ War. The Church had endured a schism that produced three popes. Labour shortages and heavy taxation weighed down societies struggling to recover from generations of turmoil.
The symbolic nadir of the Church’s decline was the sale of indulgences, a cash-for-salvation racket run by clerics more intent on filling their coffers than tending their flocks.
Rage grew in the hearts of a people who lacked the language to describe their plight and the means to escape the suffocating atmosphere of oppression.
Into this cocktail of discontent, the dissident Augustinian theologian Martin Luther hurled his Ninety-Five Theses, demolishing the notion that forgiveness could be bought and damning a Church that had abused its spiritual authority.
Luther also harnessed a new technology, the printing press, spreading his ideas at unprecedented speed, giving voice to a rage that had brewed for generations and unleashing the revolution that was the Protestant Reformation.

Lordy lordy, did that seminary get into his head, and screw his mind forever, or what? 

The reptiles decided to compound the madness with another snap celebrating the WASP way of life... Martin Luther, the original rebel against institutional repression. Picture: News Corp

As for the actual scribbling, there's no need to comment. 

It's simply too bizarre, too surreal, and is the sort of drivel that would have André Breton or Jean Cocteau rolling Jaffas down the aisle. ("L'oiseau chante avec ses doigts.")

Luther’s true genius was as a master communicator. His pamphlets were laced with coarse language and dripped with sarcasm, ridicule and fury. He mocked popes, humiliated bishops and treated scholars with contempt. He translated elite failure into the language of ordinary people, and they loved him for it.
The Church’s response was to declare its unimpeachable authority in the slogan Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus: outside the Church there is no salvation. Luther’s revolutionary riposte was: Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide, Scripture alone, faith alone.
Luther argued that the institution held no monopoly on truth. The people did not need the clergy to interpret the Bible when they could read it for themselves.
The Reformation was not a revolt against a single pope, bishop or king. It was a decision to demolish institutional repression. It was a rage against the machine.
There are echoes of that revolt in what looms as the reformation of Australian politics. The rise of One Nation is not simply a rebellion against the political class. It is a revolt against the permanent governing caste of progressive elites that inhabits the state and federal bureaucracies, universities, courts, commissions, NGOs and much of the media. Like the Curia of old, this clerisy sees itself as the arbiter of modern morality.

Now what did the pond say about going full Hansonite, or full Killer Creighton of the IPA? You know, vax, masks, and how to cultivate a plague (waiter, a little hantavirus if you please):

In a deep irony, Covid unmasked the secular Curia. For more than two years Australians were exposed to the unfiltered instincts of the governing caste and the experience left a vivid mental scar on many. Experts, bureaucrats and regulators authorised absurd interference in daily life while insisting every decision, no matter how draconian or irrational, was based on “science” and for our own good. Choice was not an option.
The Curia spits out orders. It is impervious to argument because there is no one to argue with. It never pays for its mistakes. It rarely explains itself and never apologises. Dissent is evidence of ignorance or bigotry and there are objective punishments for subjective crimes.
It decides. You comply.

Oh dear, it's that seminary thing all over again, as the reptiles did their best to join RFK Jr. in the hunt for a racoon penis ... Covid testing at Sydney airport in 2021: an example of the secular Curia’s unmasked interference in daily life. Picture: Getty

Measles, polio, whatever? Just live with it. What matter if a few of the herd are culled?

Even better, what if we cull the entire planet?

For a long time, the Curia pursued the impossible goal of Covid Zero. Now it demands Net Zero. As the energy analysts at Doomberg like to say, zero is an emotional number. Our secular Curia is deeply attached to a zero-sum game that will deliver zero jobs, zero growth and zero measurable benefit for the planet. It also has zero chance of becoming a genuinely global policy, which is the only way it can materially affect the climate.
No matter. Decarbonisation targets are set and pursued with bloody-minded determination as ends in themselves because they are a faith. The assumptions are never revisited, the premises are never challenged and every agency of government exists to reinforce the creed in a profound institutional betrayal of the people.
But there is a revolution stirring in the regions, where vast wind farms, transmission lines and the bureaucratic contempt shown to local communities are breeding a fierce resentment. When the suburbs eventually draw the link between wind and solar and higher power prices, the politics of this transition will turn toxic.

The pond should note a conflict of interest here. 

The pond's new (hopefully temporary) residence had, to the pond's surprise, solar installed, and so the very first bill showed the pond handsomely in the black.

But none of that for coal-loving reptiles, as yet again the reptiles trotted out a snap designed to instil fear and terror in the hive mind... Rural Australia’s landscape reshaped by the secular Curia’s Net Zero agenda. Picture: Supplied

All that did was remind the pond of a conversation with a cocky who explained that sheep actually enjoyed the shelter solar panels provided.

Enough of the destruction of the planet, it's time for a little transphobia, as only a reptile bigot of the narrow-minded kind can do.

Usually the pond would trim this sort of bigotry, but hey, it's the Ughmann, so let the bigotry flow...

Elsewhere, the Curia pursues its other passions in decisions that mock reason.
Reading Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr Anna Cody’s defence of her role in relegating biology to a technicality conjured images of a cabal of scholastic theologians counting angels on the head of a pin.
Cody could have mounted the perfectly respectable argument that no one should be discriminated against because they identify as transgender. Instead, she makes a more radical leap. She argues that a change of gender on a government document overturns the biological reality of sex written into every cell of the human body.
Cody concedes that a trans woman cannot become pregnant because she is biologically male but, in perfect legalese, argues that an employer might mistakenly attribute a uterus to the job applicant, perceive the possibility of pregnancy and deny that person a job. That would constitute discrimination.
The problem with Cody’s argument is not that it is simplistic. It is that it is so legalistic that it elevates classification above reality.
This is not a minor matter. It strikes at the roots of reason itself. If sex is erased, if a legal designation can outweigh a biological reality, then words no longer describe the world as it is. They become instruments for reshaping it. Many ordinary people instinctively understand that something has gone wrong. They know reality is being bent to fit an ideology but are powerless to change it. This breeds frustration and resentment.
It is a symptom of a wider institutional pathology. Increasingly, our bureaucracies, universities, courts and commissions begin with an ideological objective and then construct baroque intellectual frameworks to justify it. The debate is no longer about what is true. It is about constructing arguments to support what the clerisy has deemed to be true.
Anyone who objects is gaslit as starting a culture war when they are simply returning fire. The war began when institutions set about redefining long-settled understandings of sex, identity and nation without seeking public consent.
No one was asked. No one got a vote. One day, Australians were told that a man could become a woman, that three flags were better than one, that our history was shameful, and that disagreement was a hate crime.
But the culture wars are only one front in a far larger war. The deeper problem is a state that grows relentlessly while the private economy that sustains it struggles under its weight. More taxes beget more officials and more agencies that impose more rules, regulations and interference.
Eventually people begin to ask a dangerous question: who exactly is serving whom? If the purpose of government is to serve the people, why does it increasingly feel as though the people exist to serve the government?
And if the only way to get change is to start a revolution, then dangerous choices begin to look rational.

You see? It's exactly the same conclusion as Dame Slap ...

...increasing numbers seem to think she can’t do any worse, and she just might do better. “Worth a shot?” they ask.

Rational? Worth a shot? The reptiles are going all in ...they're more than Pauline curious, they're ready to celebrate a woman who espouses their notions on epidemics, climate science, transphobia and other splendid policies...

How could the pond stop there?

Have another scone. (The best meal the pond can recall ever having was having fresh baked bread, with nicely blackened crust, hot straight from a bush wood-fired oven, with hand-picked, home-made blackberry jam, and cream straight from the cow, separated out and nicely thickened. Not likely with Barners in the kitchen).

In the before times, Sunday was always prattling Polonius day, and he too was deep into the perils of Pauline ...

The header: Pauline Hanson’s surge in polls makes fools of sneering lefties; The ABC’s sneering dismissal of Sky News meant it completely missed the historic wave of voter anger driving One Nation’s rise.

No need for a caption for that snap. The parallels were simply too obvious, the identity already established by the Ughmann ...

The pond has always fancied itself as a Polonial whisperer and just knew that by the end, Polonius would establish that it was all the fault of the ABC (though to be fair, the old dotard gave that game away in the header):

It’s a time of advancing polls and retreating sneers.
Writing in the Australian Financial Review on June 2, election analyst John Black, a former Labor senator for Queensland, had this to say: “On Monday’s Redbridge Poll, taken after a federal budget which has slugged small business and investors, the Coalition parties would lose every House of Representatives seat they now hold – but their preferences could elect Pauline Hanson as prime minister.”
There would be an almighty shock if the Liberal Party and the Nationals held no seats in the House of Representatives after the next election. But perhaps a bigger shock would be if a second-term Labor government were replaced by One Nation. With, possibly, Pauline Hanson as prime minister and Barnaby Joyce as her deputy.
Sure, the next election is not due until May 2028. However, on primary votes, One Nation is scoring 31 per cent on Redbridge, 27 per cent on Fox & Hedgehog, and 29 per cent on Sky News Pulse/YouGov. This compares with Labor at 28, 29 and 26 per cent and the Coalition at 20, 25, and 20 per cent respectively.
The authoritative Newspoll is awaited with interest when it next appears in The Australian. For the moment it is clear that, unlike a year ago, One Nation is likely to be a key player in determining which party will prevail in a couple of years’ time.
And that’s why members of the left intelligentsia, who self-indulgently regard themselves as “progressive”, have had to desist from sneering at Hanson and her team. With support for One Nation at about a third of Australians, Hanson has to be taken seriously by critics and supporters alike.

Taken seriously? Like mad King Donald?

Nah. If the country wants to go to hell in a handbasket, the pond reserves the right to keep laughing all the way. 

So instead of this sort of snap of a toad in action... Election analyst John Black, a former Labor senator for Queensland.

... the pond will always go the 'toon ...

Unlike the Lutheran Ughmann and the MAGA-cap-donning Dame Slap, there was a little tremulous fear in Polonius's scribbling, as he looked around for others to blame ...

There are exceptions, to be sure. For example, Nine newspapers columnist Peter FitzSimons posted on June 2: “I repeat: One Nation is a circus, Senator Hanson is the ringmaster, and Barnaby Joyce the clown. #Discuss.” This is undergraduate hyperbole. Whether you agree with them or not, Hanson and Joyce are among the best communicators in Australian politics.
As I wrote in these pages on May 30, the surge in support for One Nation occurred over the Christmas holiday period. In mid-November Newspoll registered the One Nation primary vote at 15 per cent. By early February, it had risen to 27 per cent.
In between, the terrorist attack took place at Bondi, aimed at the Jewish Australian community, a part of Australian society. This was the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil. And it was followed by the return of what have been called the “ISIS brides”. Reminding all Australians that there are some radical Islamist individuals in our midst who do not – or perhaps did not – accept the values of democratic Australia.

Actually there are plenty of reptiles around who'd settle for an authoritarian government, just like the Murdochians at Faux Noise ... Australia’s worst terrorist attack at Bondi preceded the return of ‘ISIS brides’.

Now note how, in the following litany, how Polonius conveniently leaves out the onion muncher's one true love and provider of funds, Hungary ...

It’s true that the increase in support for the populist One Nation is consistent with what is happening in such Western democracies as Britain, France, Germany, Italy and more. A large number of citizens of such nations, especially those outside the inner city, believe their standard of living is declining and that their elected leaders are not interested in their plight. In part, they maintain, this reflects too large an immigration intake.
John Howard’s memoir, Lazarus Rising (HarperCollins, 2010), contains a perceptive chapter titled “Pauline Hanson”. He recounts how, in 1996, Hanson won the former Labor seat of Oxley in Queensland with a massive swing. She benefited from being on the Liberal Party ticket – despite the fact that shortly before the election, Hanson had been disendorsed for inaccurate comments she made about Australian Aboriginals.
On September 10, 1996, Hanson made her first speech in the House of Representatives. This contained the infamous statement: “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians” who, Hanson said, do not assimilate. She also claimed that Indigenous Australians were not the nation’s most disadvantaged group. Howard was critical of Hanson with respect to both statements. But he acknowledged that she “echoed community sentiment” on many issues such as multiculturalism.

Or is that reptile sentiment, as the reptiles flung in a snap of one villain for the hive mind to hiss and boo ... Nine newspapers columnist Peter FitzSimons.

And so the chastened Polonius admits to an error. 

Perhaps he too should get on the Pauline gravy train...

At the time, I wrote that, in his capacity as prime minister, Howard could have been more confrontational in this approach to Hanson. However, with hindsight, I believe his approach was essentially correct.
Hanson’s instant success was followed by total failure. As the editors of The Rise and Fall of One Nation (QUP, 2000) wrote: “Pauline Hanson’s One Nation was a shooting star that blazed spectacularly across Australia’s political skies during 1997 and 1998 before crashing to Earth in 1999.”
But Hanson came back and she learnt a lot along the way. In Lazarus Rising, Howard spoke respectfully of Hanson as an “Aussie battler who had run a fish-and-chip shop in Ipswich”. He mentioned her “faltering manner” when speaking on occasions. But Howard saw this as part of Hanson’s popular appeal. These days Hanson’s faltering manner when speaking is a thing of the past.
On February 23, ABC TV Media Watch presenter Linton Besser referred to Hanson as a “one-time peddler of fish and chips from Ipswich”. It’s unlikely that he will continue with such intellectual snobbery.

Why? If listening to Pauline sometimes feels like being in a fish and chips shop in Tamworth in the 1950s, why not remark on the phenomenon? Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson. Picture: Tom Parrish

And so to establishing that it's all the fault of the ABC, while celebrating Sky Noise down under (still no re-brand?)

ABC types at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster are also known to sneer at what they call “Sky News After Dark”. Meaning when the subscription television’s opinion programs commence at 5pm (AEST).
If ABC journalists got out more (as the saying goes), they would understand the impact of Sky News – before and after dark – within Australian society. Over recent years, Hanson has appeared regularly on Sky News and spoken directly to Sky subscribers, as well as Sky News Regional (which is free to air) viewers.
Unlike the ABC, Sky News presents contesting views. On the voice referendum, Chris Kenny (for Yes) disagreed with Andrew Bolt (for No). Currently, Paul Murray is in One Nation’s corner while Peta Credlin is in the Coalition’s corner.
The tendency of the ABC to dismiss Sky News led to a situation whereby it missed a big story in Australian politics. Namely, the growing disenchantment of many Australians with politics – particularly after the Bondi massacre on December 14.
On the current figures, the short-term political outcome will turn on the distribution of preferences – which all parties will take seriously. One Nation may, or may not, falter.

What a bold prediction to end on ...

May, or may not, whatever the future may be, que sera, sera ...

The pond was so enchanted that it plunged a week back in time, because the ancient dodderer had taken up the same topic ...

The header: Polls, preferences unseat traditional political prophecies; Redbridge’s bombshell poll predicts One Nation as Australia’s opposition, yet the pollster’s own track record raises serious doubts about the prediction’s reliability.

The caption: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is benefiting from the support of voters who are disappointed with the major parties. Picture: Richard Dobson

The pond was still haunted by that uncanny resemblance spotted by the Ughmann. How had the pond missed it?

Spitting images ... as Polonius turned to that vexatious poll that turned the reptile universe on its head:

A problem with insightful sayings is that they soon become cliches due to overuse. I was reminded of this last Saturday when the front page of the AFR Weekend ran a story titled “Is This Our Political Future?”. At least there was a question, I suppose.
The reference was to a Redbridge Group/Accent Research MRP poll that declared what the House of Representatives would most likely look like if an election were to be held now. An MRP poll occurs when a national survey is combined with demographic data from previous elections on a seat-by-seat basis.
The Labor Party was ahead on 76 seats, followed by One Nation on 53 seats, the Coalition on 12 and Others on nine. The poll of some 6015 voters was held between April 29 and May 14, with most of the research being undertaken before the May 12 budget.
In itself, the timing should have alerted some of the crystal-ball gazers in our midst. The Newspoll conducted on May 13-15 revealed that the 2026 budget was rated worst for the economy in recent Australian history – exceeded only by Labor’s 1993 budget.
No one knows how a similar poll would look if it were held in the two weeks after Jim Chalmers’ budget. Kos Samaras, director of the Redbridge Group, was interviewed by ABC TV 7.30’s presenter Sarah Ferguson last Monday.
Asked to describe the scale of the result the Redbridge poll had picked up, Samaras replied: “We’re clearly seeing a collapse of the Coalition. The medium result for them in terms of seat count is about 12. And One Nation’s clearly snatching up the bulk of the seats from the Coalition and a portion of the Labor base as well.”
Ferguson put it to Samaras that he was talking about One Nation becoming the official opposition. To which the reply was “that’s right”. He went on to suggest that Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor would lose his seat of Hume in NSW and frontbencher Andrew Hastie would be defeated in his Perth seat of Canning.

Is it all the fault of the ABC? 

They're clearly guilty, but strangely Polonius didn't drive the point home. So the ploughed past the next illustration in a state of nervous anxiety, wondering what Polonius might do with this ABC perfidy, interviewing a heretic ... Asked to describe the scale of the result the Redbridge poll had picked up, Kos Samaras replied: ‘We’re clearly seeing a collapse of the Coalition.’ Picture NCA NewsWire / Aaron Francis

Luckily Polonius was not for turning, and this is where another 'maybe' or 'maybe not' construction came in terribly handy, as it has done for seers and prophets down the ages...

Well, maybe they will. Or maybe not. For Samaras was asked another question. Namely, what would happen if the Liberals and the Nationals increased their primary vote by a few points? The Redbridge pollster responded: “That’s right, if they improve their primary vote by about 3 or 4 per cent or 5 per cent they would save them a lot of these seats … well in excess of 20 seats if the figure is 5 per cent.”
The special post-budget Newspoll, commissioned by The Australian, has the primary vote as follows: Labor 31 per cent, One Nation 27 per cent, the Coalition 20 per cent, Greens 12 per cent and Others 10 per cent.
If the Coalition were to win back votes from One Nation to the extent that if its candidates get ahead of Pauline Hanson’s party, then its candidates can win seats off the back of One Nation’s preferences – presuming that One Nation preferences the Coalition ahead of Labor, the Greens and independents.
When preferential voting was introduced in the House of Representatives before the 1919 election, it favoured the non-Labor parties. This was the case into the 1950s and 1960s, when the Coalition benefited from preferences from the Democratic Labor Party, the members of which had broken away from, or been expelled from, the Labor Party.
However, since the emergence in more recent times of the Democrats for a while and then the Greens, preferential voting has primarily benefited Labor. Now, the Greens will always put Labor ahead of the Coalition and One Nation. But if the latter two parties can arrange a preference deal, preferential voting will benefit both.
The task of the Coalition – under the leadership of Angus Taylor and the Nationals’ Matt Canavan – is to build up its primary vote. It’s a difficult task since One Nation is benefiting from the support of voters who are disappointed with the major parties.

Still no major carry-on about the ABC, but the reptiles managed to dig up a snap of that Orbán tragic, the onion muncher ... Newly elected Liberal Party federal president Tony Abbott. Picture: Getty Images

He's baaack ...

Polonius kept on brooding, and amazingly managed to forget about the ABC...

Writing in Nine newspapers last Monday, George Brandis (who, once upon a time, was associated with those Liberals who presented as moderates) commented: “Taylor’s budget reply speech could have been given by John Howard or Peter Costello, steeped as it was with the Liberal Party’s core values.”
The appointment of Tony Abbott as Liberal Party federal president puts the organisation’s best communicator in a prominent role and is likely to assist with fundraising. And Canavan is the best-equipped National to challenge One Nation’s Hanson and Barnaby Joyce.
It’s not impossible for the Liberals to win back a seat or two from the teals – particularly Bradfield on Sydney’s north shore. After all, a lot of teal voters will not be all that impressed with Labor’s broken promises on capital gains tax and negative gearing.
Allegra Spender is a fine, intelligent politician. But the teal member for Wentworth in Sydney’s eastern suburbs has had scant input with her taxation policies. After all, the teals have only six seats in a 150-seat parliament.
Minor parties and independents usually only have real influence in the Senate. Hence the proposal by some teals to form a political party of sorts – seemingly with the encouragement of Malcolm Turnbull.
The former Liberal Party prime minister enjoyed his occasional (soft) interview on ABC Radio National last Monday and, once again, used the occasion to criticise the Liberal Party. But he advanced no proposal to revive the teals or establish a new party.
In any event, the next election is a long way off. It’s possible that One Nation will continue to surge. It’s possible that the Coalition parties will hold on. It’s possible that Labor will continue as the dominant party despite its low primary vote. No one knows.
It’s much the same with Redbridge. In 2024, Redbridge-Accent conducted an MRP poll between October 29 and November 20 – around six months before the May 2025 election. It estimated the Coalition would win between 64 and 78 seats, Labor between 59 and 71 seats and the Greens between three and five seats. The final result was Labor 94, Coalition 43 and Greens just one. Enough said about political prophecy.

Oh the onion muncher will help in so many ways ...

And here's what the pond really missed while being off air. 

The 'toons, there should have been 'toons. Looking at the 'toons on a phone is like looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope with the Ughmann ...

Take it away infallible Pope and immortal Rowe. Celebrate the return of the onion muncher ...

And now, as the pond mangled a couple of infallible Popes, the originals in full as a reminder of great times... sure to come again...