Talk about an overload. This day the reptiles went into overdrive, with many of the pond's favourites out and about, and the pond's chip fried, like a transistor radio left out too long in the Tamworth sun.
Luckily the top of the "news" story could be dismissed to the intermittent archive ...
It's news that Faux Noise's devotion to sexy blonde attire is shared by tech bros?
So too could the bouffant one, nobly pursuing the 'melongate' jihad ...especially as the brave warrior could only wring a two minute read out of the crisis.
But still that left the bromancer, the quarry-whispering Caterist, Dame Groan and Lloydie of the Amazon.
Where to start, what to do?
The reptiles made a big splash for Lloydie, featuring a gif that showed the reef moving from dismal desert to triumphant blooming flower ...
Besides, the pond rarely hears from Lloydie of late, and had been unduly disturbed by all that idle talk of droughts, wildfires, and sundry other climate disasters.
What the pond needed was reassuring words, with Lloydie of the Amazon and the Riddster triumphant ...
The header: Great Resilient Reef: reports of wonder’s death have been wildly exaggerated; New data have revealed Great Barrier Reef coral cover has rebounded to near-record levels across all three regions following a recent mass bleaching event.
The caption for the lead still, which disappointingly didn't replicate the grand animated gif on the main digital page: Coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is at near-record levels across its 2300km length from Cape York to Bundaberg. Picture: The Australian Institute of Marine Science
It was time to put all those doomsayers and neighsayers in their place, and the Riddster was the perfect guide ...
Despite decades of scientific consensus that it is facing a catastrophic climate change triggered demise, the Great Barrier Reef is refusing to die.
The latest results from the Australian Institution of Marine Science shows that coral cover on the reef has bounced back from mass bleaching in 2025 and early 2026 and remains at near record levels across its 2300km length from Cape York to Bundaberg.
The AIMS long-term monitoring program confirms the GBR maintains its resilience and ability to recover from disturbance, saying coral cover across all three regions of the reef, the northern, central and southern GBR, increased slightly or remained at similar levels to those recorded last year.
AIMS does not report a combined figure for total reef cover but marine physicist Peter Ridd said the results showed that for all of the past five years, the raw cover on the reef had been higher than in any of the previous 35 years.
He said five bleaching events – in 2016, 17, 20, 22 and 24 – had not produced a major drop in coral cover.
Dr Ridd said the AIMS data showed that the major cause of temporary coral loss over the decades had been from cyclones and crown of thorns starfish plagues, both of which were entirely natural. “There is no evidence that these are any worse than in the distant past,” he said.
Everything's fine, everything's hunky dory, the planet's never been in better shape, and there were graphs ...
Some might think that Lloydie and the Riddster were in the grip of a heady triumphalism, but after all those slings and arrows from "experts", it was time for them to strut in the tropical sun ...
The results follow a major global study by Macquarie University that used machine learning to evaluate decades of real-world observations to identify 165,992sq km of potentially climate-resilient reef locations spanning 71 countries and 100 territories and jurisdictions.
About one-third of the Great Barrier Reef was judged to be resilient to the impacts of climate change.
According to the latest AIMS survey, an annual snapshot of coral cover on the reef showed that in the northern region from Cape York to Cooktown, it had increased by 16.7 per cent relative to 2025 levels (from 30 per cent to 35.1 per cent).
The central region from Cooktown to Proserpine increased by 10.2 per cent relative to its 2025 levels.
However you cut it, it was good times for reefs and planet ...
As for those bloody useless neighsayers ...
The southern region from Proserpine to Gladstone decreased by 2 per cent from 26.9 per cent to 26.4 per cent, which is within the margin of error. Announcing the results, AIMS said the GBR was in a comparatively better condition than many reef systems worldwide, which had been heavily impacted by the fourth global bleaching event and other pressures.
“However, the increased frequency and extent of bleaching events in the last decade are unprecedented,” AIMS said. “Climate change remains the greatest threat to the reef, along with other pressures from more localised sources.”
Scientists have been warning about a collapse for decades.
In 2007 they warned that under conditions expected in the 21st century, corals would become increasingly rare on reef systems.
A 2024 paper in Nature, Benjamin et al, said climate model analysis confirmed that human influence on the climate system was responsible for the rapid warming in recent decades.
Nonsense, climate science is just a cult, the sort of secular replacement for declining belief in old fashioned religions. Time to put those preachers in their place ...
Did silly cultists hearken to these fools? Hear thou the words of Lloydie and the Riddster...
“This attribution, together with the recent ocean temperature extremes, post-1900 warming trend and observed mass coral bleaching, shows that the existential threat to the GBR ecosystem from anthropogenic climate change is now realised,” it said.
A 2026 paper in Nature communications, Eakin et al, said the impacts of ocean warming on coral reefs were accelerating, with the “near certainty that ongoing warming will cause large-scale, possibly irreversible, degradation of these essential ecosystems.”
“With heat stress levels during this event surpassing those observed previously, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration developed more extreme Bleaching Alert levels that are now being used during the ongoing Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event,” the paper said.
After UNESCO declined to put the reef on the World Heritage “in danger” list last month, Greenpeace said “the reality is that this global icon is still in deep danger from runaway climate heating, coral-killing deforestation run-off, ocean acidification and coral bleaching”.
What would those greenies know, with their minds full of climate science?
Why with a bit of luck, Australia will be blessed with a stupendous bushfire season this summer, so that the bush can be cleansed and made right, just like the reef ...
And so to the final part of the homily, with all shipshape, present and correct, and the Riddster singing his sweet song of reef joys...
“With these compounding pressures and a record El Nino around the corner, action to protect the reef has never been more urgent,” it said.
Releasing the latest data, AIMS said the findings showed many reefs retained the capacity to begin recovery after major coral loss, when given the opportunity. “Unlike the impact of the 2024 mass bleaching event, the 2025 mass bleaching event resulted in limited coral loss,” AIMS said.
“This likely reflects its lower intensity and shorter duration, highlighting that bleaching events do not always have the same consequences.”
AIMS Long-Term Monitoring Program leader Mike Emslie said the reef had experienced a summer of above-average sea temperatures, but the late summer monsoon activity, which increased cloud cover and reduced sea temperatures, likely limited the severity and extent of bleaching in the 2025-26 summer.
The reef faced other impacts from flooding and two tropical cyclones, including Narelle, but most of the surveys for the latest report were completed before its passage as a category 5 system over the northern region in March.AIMS does not give a reef-wide average for coral cover because Dr Emslie said it would be an “overgeneralisation of what is going on on the reef”.
“Our view is we should be looking at things on a smaller scale to get an appraisal of how different parts of the reef are fairing,” he said.
Dr Ridd said the latest data on the GBR indicated it was in good shape.
“It happens to have a great deal of coral in 2026 because there have been few major mortality events over the last five to 10 years,” he said.
“The five bleaching events since 2016, which have been widely reported in the media, could not have killed much coral otherwise the 2022-26 statistics would not be so good.
“The data since 1986 shows every region, every sector and most reefs have had periods of very low coral cover. This is entirely natural. The data collected by AIMS shows that the GBR is a robust system with rapidly fluctuating coral cover.
“We must expect that sometime in the future, a sequence of events will cause the coral cover to halve, as it did by 2011. We must then remember that this is almost certainly natural.”
Dr Ridd said recent bleaching events had killed very little coral, and that the institutions had been exaggerating the impact of those events.
What a relief, and with the reef never having been in better shape, the pond could quickly move on to the salvation of the country.
The pond skipped past Ben, packing it in his usual way ...
A teaser trailer would suffice because there was only one important note in the piece ...
The pond had been operating on the notion that there'd be a war with China by Xmas, but it seems that the war will now take place in 2027 ... and with war just around the corner, who better to show the way than our very own Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches?
The header: US nuclear-armed boats based in WA will make us more secure; The US plan to send 2300 personnel and up to four submarines at a time to Perth is the best news Australia has had in defence for decades.
The caption for a stern-looking loser: Defence Minister Richard Marles at the 50th National Labor Conference in Adelaide Picture: NewsWire / Brenton Edwards
After mad king Donald's stunning defeat of Iran, his splendid peace initiative for Gaza, and his incredibly able repelling of Vlad the impaler, is it any wonder that the bromancer would seek shelter in those broad, if somewhat bruised, arms?
The revelation that the US plans to send 2300 personnel to Perth to support its Submarine Rotational Force, that it could rotate up to four submarines at a time through Perth and that the length of these rotations will be entirely up to Washington, is the best news Australia has had in defence for decades.
Frankly, I’d much rather entrust Australia’s security to the US Navy than to the Albanese government. Indeed, the only part of the entire defence and national security portfolio the government has handled really well has been developing the relationship with the Pentagon.
Defence Minister Richard Marles is good at defence diplomacy. He’s terrible at everything else.
The areas where he has demonstrably failed are legion – delivering capability, delivering budget resources, addressing urgent deficiencies, producing a coherent sense of what ADF operations may look like, producing budget transparency and coherence, meaningfully reforming procurement, injecting urgency into the bureaucracy or the military. Unauthorised drones penetrating our undefended air force bases is a classic illustration of our unpreparedness across every domain. On all that, he’s a dismal failure. But on the critical question of US alliance management, he has done quite well.
And he’s better than Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy. The sheer size of US resources to be deployed in Perth makes Conroy’s wacko comment that nuclear weapons in US subs after 2032 would not be a problem because the sub rotations would come to an end in 2032, which comments he had to recant a few days later, even more mystically indecipherable. If there are to be tactical nuclear weapons on some US subs, we should welcome this.
Indeed, indeed, let's nuke Perth, heck let's nuke the country, and why not think big and nuke the world?A US nuclear submarine during military exercises in the Atlantic Ocean in 2022.
Where once the bromancer was inclined to be malcontent, this day he was super content and happy ... a realist ready to blow up the planet if that's what it took ...
We actively and happily shelter under the US extended nuclear umbrella. Occasionally we have to face reality.
There has been much talk about whether the US subs in Perth will constitute an American base. ALP policy is against foreign military bases during times of peace. But as a simple matter of fact, US subs and their supporting structures won’t become a formal base. In reality, the status of a US base would make no real difference to Australian control anyway. Host governments have full knowledge and concurrence. A number of European US NATO allies prevented Washington using its own bases in those countries to prosecute war in Iran.
However, if the US has two or three submarines in Perth at any time, that’s a formidable force and they’re not just there to train Australians. As usual, the Albanese government is utterly incoherent.
Occasionally Marles talks about Australia participating in US-led deterrence. Very occasionally, Foreign Minister Penny Wong says something similar. Mostly she talks about strategic equilibrium which implies deterrence, which implies US and Australian forces acting together. Anthony Albanese almost never talks of deterrence, and never allied deterrence.
Unlike US NATO allies, Australia has no common battle plans with the US, though it’s widely reported the Trump administration, particularly Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon leaders, want such plans. These would not remotely compromise Australian sovereignty. Any nation can decide to join, or stay out of, any military action, whatever contingency plans exist.
But if the US and Australia are to mount joint deterrence they ought to plan how they might work together in the event of conflict. Obviously the only candidate for adversary in such a conflict is China. But it’s the beginning of wisdom to recognise that effective deterrence is the most likely way to avoid military conflict.
Within the government, Marles would be the most likely to want to develop such plans. He has sometimes spoken of the role Australian geography plays in US military planning. But Albanese, and presumably Wong, would be against such joint planning as it might provoke the Labor Left and activist base. Naturally Marles would be unable to deliver.
In the meantime the left’s critique of AUKUS is even more barmy than the government’s constipated, spasmodic AUKUS defence. Gareth Evans’s contribution to Peter Garrett’s AUKUS inquiry is a classic.
Why not get on board with Kegsbreath? His incredible performance in Iran is just the sort of thing to create confidence when we go up against China in 2027.
Talk about the joys of AUKUS ... Former foreign minister Gareth Evans. Picture: AAP
Now in the past the bromancer has been pretty gloomy about AUKUS.
Here's one example from quite a few:
AUK-ward truth: the sinking feeling behind our subs pact, Australia has paid the US another billion dollars for submarine manufacturing capability despite AUKUS facing production delays and Britain’s naval crisis threatening the entire partnership.
But all that's forgiven and forgotten ...
Evans was a fine foreign minister but, like many good Labor ministers, out of office he has drifted ever leftward. He advances four propositions common in the left’s attack on AUKUS that are laughably wrong.
One, he repeats the claim that eight Australian nuclear submarines would make no difference to the military balance. That’s rubbish. The US has about 55 nuclear attack subs it must deploy all over the world. Eight is a significant difference. If you have eight you can reliably deploy only two or three. If you have 55 at best you can deploy 15 or 20. The problem is not the number of our subs but that they will take so long to arrive.
He argues that the only strategic purpose of our nuclear subs would be to track and attack Chinese ballistic missile nuclear weapons-carrying subs.
And what's wrong with a war on China, as if they had any sort of kit that would match the skills of Pete Kegsbreath and his incredible ability to stash away missiles for future use ... People walk past an illustration of a Chinese nuclear submarine at the Military Museum in Beijing in 2024. Picture: Greg Baker / AFP
Let's hear it for the subs...
That’s completely bonkers. Submarines are one of the most versatile military platforms. It’s true the best counter-submarine force is submarines, but they are critical in a thousand other contexts.
As Julia Gillard once explained, despite their expense subs have an asymmetric quality in that they can attack so many different military assets in so many different locations that they’re very hard to defend against.
Evans asserts that beyond Taiwan, China would never mount territorial aggression against anyone else. That’s ludicrous. Evans seems to contradict, or be unaware of, the statements of China’s President Xi Jinping, who routinely tells his own troops that they must prepare for war. Beijing’s pattern of aggression in the South China Sea and north Asia, its grey-zone conflict, its cyber attacks, its political interference campaigns, its descent into one-man dictatorship, its massive armament-building, all apparently convince Evans there’s no realistic chance of Beijing engaging in military aggression.
It’s possible to argue Chinese military attack on another nation is unlikely, but it’s not so unlikely that it shouldn’t influence military planning.
And then he rejoices in the fact that ANZUS does not automatically commit the US to military action in defence of Australia. As Evans surely knows, no military alliance is legally enforceable. The depth of the US-Australia alliance and the presence of US forces in Australia make mutual assistance much likelier.
Alliances are two-way streets. We get enormous benefit from the US alliance. We need to contribute as well.
It was a great relief that the bromancer had been distracted, and so was Dame Groan, and so there'd be no reptile squawking about gambling ads, what with the News Corp tabloids reliant on footy, and footy in love with gambling, and Labor in love with the whole damn thing ...
And so to the ancient Groaner, and no matter the length of this post already, including Dame Groan was obligatory.
There was no way the pond could disappoint her massive fan base:
The header: Labor must bite the bullet on its immigration mess; The Albanese government declared Australia’s migration system ‘broken’ nearly two years ago, but is yet to fix it, with temporary migrant numbers now approaching 10 per cent of the population.
The caption for the snap of a grinning deviant sent to torment the old biddy: Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship Tony Burke MP Picture: Richard Dobson
Sure it's just more of the same, bees buzzing in the old biddy's noggin about the dangers of all those furriners ruining her lunch, but it's important to be aware of the cumulative impact of incessant repetition on the hive mind:
There was a great deal of information in last week’s decision by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to cancel his speech at the National Press Club. It was widely anticipated that he would announce a series of changes to the migration settings that would have the effect of lowering the migrant intake. The Albanese government’s migration policy is in disarray, it would seem.
We had already learnt that Burke had instructed his department to prioritise onshore over offshore applicants for permanent residence, thereby reducing the observed figure on Net Overseas Migration, the difference between long-term arrivals and long-term departure.
Recall here that the Albanese government has consistently failed to meet the NOM targets set down in each budget, overshooting them in each case.
In the 2022 October budget, it was stated that “NOM is assumed to continue in line with pre-pandemic trends at 235,000 from 2022-23.” The actual figure for 2022-23 was 536,000.
This financial year, the NOM target as set down in the budget is 245,000, with the most recent NOM figure coming in at 306,000. A lot of work will be required to achieve this outcome as well as the target of 225,000 for the following financial year.
The fact is that both Burke and the previous minister, Clare O’Neil, have been aware of the weaknesses in the migration policy settings for a very long time. The increasing irrelevance of the permanent migration program has been apparent to everyone. Demand-driven temporary visas are the main source of new migrants and many of them seek to game the system to prolong their stay in the country.
The point we have reached is that there are nearly three million temporary migrants in Australia, although we should probably subtract New Zealanders who have a legal right to come here. Even so, temporary migrants make up close to 10 per cent of the population, an all-time high.
O’Neil had gone to the trouble of commissioning a former senior bureaucrat, Martin Parkinson, to write a report on the migration challenges. In March 2023, she declared “Australia’s migration system is broken, it is unstrategic, it is complex, expensive, it’s slow … it’s not delivering for the nation.”
She allows Kiwis to stay?
That's mighty big of her, even if they can't talk English, what with blather about fush and chups, and here's a snap designed to send Dame Groan right off ... Clare O'Neil MP, then Home Affairs minister, addressing the National Press Club in Canberra in 2023 Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Dame Groan was sounding just like Alice, falling beneath a pack of furrin cards ...
These were strong words but were never followed up with practical solutions. The most telling indication of our broken system is the alarming rise in the number of people on bridging visas. Prior to the pandemic, there were around 100,000 people living in Australia on bridging visas. In March of this year, the number was 432,000. This was an increase of 14 per cent on the previous year.
The flood of international students, a proportion of whom are not motivated by receiving an education but obtaining permanent residence, has been one of the main reasons for the surge in migration.
This trend had become apparent prior to the pandemic but, even so, the numbers have continued to rise. There were more than 600,000 student visas in March this year, compared with 460,000 in December 2019. Associated with these numbers has been the rapid increase in the numbers on temporary graduate visas, which now number around 260,000.
Less widely recognised is the surging number of Working Holiday Makers, with current numbers around 237,000, a rise of 6 per cent over the previous year. Special concessions for UK citizens have contributed to this trend.
At this point, some might be wondering if anyone could or should be let in.
The pond is glad you asked, because the reptiles provided a snap of the right sort of furriner, British visitors dress up for Australia Day celebrations around Sydney Harbour.
You see? They're just visitors, they can turn up and drop some cash, and then they can bugger off home ...while Dame Groan must grapple with the way we'll all be rooned by Xmas (and not just from China bunging on a do, but because all those bloody Chinese keep turning up):
The number of temporary resident (skilled employment) has also been rising strongly, currently numbering around 256,000, an increase of a quarter over the previous year.
The overall picture is of a program that lacks proper controls and is driving excessively high intakes while dissuading departures. The proliferation of migration agents with detailed knowledge of the legal provisions of the visa system has led to many migrants stringing out their stay in the country while bringing in potential partners on tourist visas who then apply for bridging visas. Bridging visas entitle holders to access Medicare.
Without the benefit of Tony Burke’s speech, we can only speculate on what policy changes he would have outlined to reduce the net flow of migrants. Three have been mentioned: swifter action on onshore asylum-seekers; reduced residence times for WHMs; and offshore application for family visas.
In terms of asylum-seekers, it’s worth quoting former immigration official Abul Rivzi: “The total number of asylum-seekers in Australia under Labor increased from about 94,000 in May 2022 to 121,000 in February 2025. The number of asylum-seekers refused at primary stage and still living in the community increased from 68,000 in May 2022 to 93,000 in February 2025.” A great many of them do not come from countries that would be deemed to be a risk to citizens – for example, Malaysia.
One approach is to classify countries according to this risk and to create a fast-track means of dealing with those from safe countries. This would involve rapid enforced departure.
One proposal for dealing with WHMs is to introduce a lottery for extended stays. There is also a case for removing the preferential treatment for UK citizens, although there may be some impediment to doing so because of the intergovernmental agreement struck some years ago.
The final method of insisting on offshore application for family visas may seem harsh, but bear in mind that most migrants, permanent and temporary, are currently entitled to bring secondary applicants, which covers spouses and children. In the UK, undergraduate international students are not entitled to bring partners with them, a restriction that doesn’t apply here. Any change must be seen in an overall context.
The real conundrum is why the Labor government has taken so long to clean up the migration program and to ensure the NOM settles at a manageable (and politically acceptable) level. There is no doubt that pressures from the education sector, parts of the business community, property developers, even state governments have weighed on the decisions made or not made by the government.
The Treasury has also been playing a role in providing misleading figures on the fiscal costs of reducing the NOM, as well as overstating the economic and budgetary benefits of high migrant intakes. Even on Treasury’s own figures, the only two types of migrants to make a positive lifetime fiscal contribution are employer-sponsored skilled and independent skilled migrants. All others generate a drain. In turn, these two groups make up a small proportion of the total intake.
With productivity and real wages essentially stagnant and voters feeling cost-of-living pressures, the political climate that is conducive to high rates of immigration simply no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for quite some time.
The Albanese government has finally woken up to this fact, but it will be a difficult road to achieve effective adjustments. Targeting a precise NOM figure is difficult enough but dealing with the massive number of temporary migrants living in the country is an even greater challenge.
Is there no end to the old biddy's suffering?
Finally, the pond must confess to being more than usually irritated and miffed by the late arrival of the Caterist.
He missed his Monday deadline, where there was plenty of room to indulge him in a seemly style, and then he turns up the next day and expects to be included in the host of reptile luminaries strutting their stuff?
The pond decided to reduce him to an intermittent archive link. Intergenerational bargain broken in name of fairness
Anyone wanting to do a copy and paste of his verbiage would have go go there, leaving the pond able to dispose of him with a few screen caps ...
So there's nothing to see there, at least for those who think that the Caterist thinking he understands the laws of economics is as risible as the notion that he understands the movement of flood waters in quarries...
The next gobbet was just as silly, with the Caterist getting into Labor mythology as a way of celebrating the joys of feral capitalism in the 1890s ... because this British black sheep loves his jumbucks ...
Indeed, indeed, Gina'spet is all the fault of the Labor party, though there was something about her glowering presence that the Caterist seemed to envy.
Perhaps he should get out a suitable hair dye?
There was only one bit of the entire text the pond deemed worthy of mention and it came in that final gobbet...
Angus Taylor has elevated raising productivity as the nation’s primary lever for raising living standards and highlighted the folly of using immigration as a Band-Aid for deeper problems.
The seemingly inevitable decline in household living standards under Labor is likely to move the debate in his favour before the next election. The challenge of conducting a serious conversation above the noise, however, is not inconsiderable.
In the event that Albanese wins a third term, Labor will own this decade.
The Caterist just ran up the white flag, surrendered the next election in a massive sulk?
Albo will likely own the decade, and the jig is already up, and that leaves the poor old beefy boofhead to stare into the immortal Rowe's mirror...
Friends of Dame Groan at play ...
