Wednesday is the day that the pond usually shuns the MAGA cap-donning Dame Slap, and there was nothing in this day's serve of bile that saw any need to change the ritual.
If the intermittent archive hadn't been working, maybe the pond might have reacted differently to the predictable outing, but a serve of transphobia? Forget it ...
COMMENTARY by JANET ALBRECHTSEN ‘Has-been’ leaders Gillard, Ardern revive the politics of the past Ex-leaders remind us why they’re ‘has-beens’ It’s the same old lecture. Julia Gillard is championing pregnant women’s rights at the pre-COP31 conference – but her own laws erased the legal definition of women.
A has been or more to the point, a never was, instead playing the role of a screeching harridan on a weekly basis, dismissing other women as has beens?
Forget it Jake, the pond has a limited to
lerance for bitchiness.
If you want an interesting read about a TG woman, why not try The New Yorker?
The reptiles later downgraded Dame Slap and made her an adjunct to their "climate change" story ...compleat with a snap of Gillard caught in a "funny" leer:
After years of denying its existence, they dare to talk about this thing they dare to call "climate change"?
Shouldn't they be celebrating Albo's failure, because what's the point doing anything about something that's not happening?
Thank the long absent lord that Golding is back to bolster the feeble 'toon coverage in the Nine rags...
The pond also quickly passed on the latest, inevitable offering from the Australian Daily Zionist News.
How a compromised Australia has failed its Jewish community Compromised nation has failed Jewish community The country that once prided itself on multicultural tolerance has watched antisemitism surge unchecked for three years since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. By Paul Kelly Editor-at-Large
Will "Ned" ever scribble a piece titled "How a compromised Murdochian press has failed in the duty of writing about a major bout of ethnic cleansing as it unfolded before their eyes"? Likely not.
Stewie gloated...
Three years after October 7, Hamas, not Israel, in ruins How the October 7 massacre backfired on Hamas Hamas wanted to destroy Israel with the massacre in 2023. Today the terrorist group lies in ruins while Israel stands as the Middle East’s dominant superpower. By Cameron Stewart Chief International Correspondent
But wait, there was more, an upstart Yank turned up ...
EXCLUSIVE US envoy says Albanese neglected antisemitism report ‘Deaf ears’: Trump appointee claims Albanese ‘neutered’ Jillian Segal before Bondi attack A prominent appointee of US President Donald Trump has questioned apparent security failures before the Bondi massacre and says Anthony Albanese had a ‘deaf ear’ to antisemitism. By James Dowling
You want deaf ears? No, the pond's not going to bite, and reference a piece about Benji's abject failures in relation to October 7th.
Instead, here's another alternative read, this ethnic cleansing piece from Haaretz ...
If scribbling for the lizard Oz is the solution, someone forgot the problem...
And then there was the topic de jour, featuring an assortment of fatuous offerings, with Brownie leading the way ...
COALITION POLICY Taylor on economic tightrope as business baulks at migration pitch Business leaders have warned Angus Taylor’s plan to slash net overseas migration by two-thirds risks significant economic damage and worsening Australia’s skills shortage. By Greg Brown
The pond offers the first couple of gobbets because the intermittent archive seemed to have trouble with the layout ...
That was the prelude to the alleged "vision" - the pond uses the word loosely to evoke the beefy boofhead in craven, cowering pose, tugging his forelock to the fake ranga ...
Here's the crunch bit in the Brownie outing ...
...Business leaders were unconvinced by Mr Taylor’s claim his plan would bolster economic growth through a higher focus on skills. Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said the Coalition’s plan to bring the NOM to a low not seen since 2004 “could risk a significant hit to the economy and workforce”. “The significant reduction in net overseas migration to 100,000 will very likely risk Australia’s economic growth and stop businesses across the economy accessing the workers they need,” Mr Black said. “There are many unanswered questions as to how a cut of 650,000 temporary visas will be achieved without creating economic damage.” Mr Black said political parties should “avoid a race to the bottom based on an arbitrary migration figure that could hurt Australia’s economy while worsening the skills shortage”. Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said the “scale of these cuts will hurt our economy”, also urging a reset of the political debate on migration. “Business rejects the false binary that Australia must choose either fewer migrants with higher skills or more migrants with lower skills,” Mr McKellar said. Property Council of Australia chief executive Mike Zorbas said it would “tip a big bucket of cold water over businesses across Australia”. “Just when the Albanese government was busy proving they were best placed to tax the life out of investment in housing supply over the next year, along comes this flat tyre of a policy,” Mr Zorbas said. “That Australia needs a migration system we can rely on, and that faith in the system has deteriorated, agreed. “But this limbo-dancing under One Nation’s migration bar will end in tears.” Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy said the policy would lead to a “significant reduction” in international students at a time of skills shortages. “Restricting post-study work rights also risks making Australia less competitive for talented students and graduates at precisely the time we need more skilled people contributing to our economy,” he said.
Well yes, he's just a simpering coward ...
...but why should the reptiles care? The beefy boofhead has just promised to enact what various reptiles have been endlessly clamouring for, with Dame Groan leading the charge ...
Sure enough there was the bromancer playing little Sir Echo ...
While the pond ensured he had a place in the intermittent archive, the bromancer is worth contemplating, if only for the way he wrapped up his offering.
First there was a bit of navel gazing of the first water ...
The pond's first flush of nausea came with that invocation of a tyke scribbler in a billy goat butt ...
But the opposition is trying to reassert, and re-establish, the traditional nature of Australian society, not its ethnic nature, but its civic, social and economic nature.
It is taking radical action to preserve a longstanding social good, reminiscent of Chesterton’s conservative insight; for a fence post to stay the same, it needs to be constantly repainted.
Several key figures underlie the opposition’s policy impulse. One in 10 of Australia’s 28 million people is on a temporary visa. Three years ago, for every eight Australian workers, there was one on a temporary visa. Now, for every six Australian workers, there is one on a temporary visa.
It's a "policy impulse"?
Is that what they're calling a pathetic, shameless, desperately needy attempt to cut off the fake ranga at the pass?
But the real bout of nausea came with the billy goat butt which began the second paragraph in the bromancer's closing gobbet ...
...When the Australian colonies first federated in 1901, one of the first laws they passed was in support of the White Australia policy. The racial elements of that law were offensive. Australia has rightly had a racially non-discriminatory immigration policy for more than half a century, and we are now one of the most diverse societies on Earth, with one of the highest percentages of foreign-born residents and citizens. But underneath the racially offensive elements of the old White Australia policy was a dynamic commitment to social egalitarianism. Australia’s founders were determined that there should be no permanent underclass in Australia, that everybody who could work should work, and that every family should enjoy a living wage. That remains a very good social ideal. Immigration policy should support that ideal. So many visa categories in Australia now lack integrity. The higher education sector is built on access not to education but to visas. The Australian welfare system is so generous that it is a huge magnet, whereas the much more socially beneficial magnet is one of economic opportunity and civic inclusion through the unifying power of citizenship. It’s also perfectly reasonable to slow immigration down for a while. I remain a very strong supporter of a big Australia built in part on immigration. Immigration has been overwhelmingly beneficial to Australia, but the program certainly got too big in recent years. Immigration is sometimes like a boa constrictor swallowing a cow. A big intake needs a bit of time to digest. Slow down a bit, redesign the program towards skills and citizenship, radically reduce the guest-worker economy. The details may need work, but these are good policy principles.
He's finding virtue in the White Australia policy?
By golly, a devout white Xian nationalist of the basest kind couldn't have put it better, with a dash of Chesterton here and a flash of bigotry there ...
And then came the lizard Oz editorialist, acting as an echo to the bromancer's Little Sir Echo ...
Bigotry is suddenly dressed up as an "economically rational stand", even as the reptiles report the discontent provoked in business circles?
Thank the long absent lord for the immortal Rowe ...
And then as a final slap in the face, as the reptiles and the beefy boofhead bow down to the bigotry and stupidity of the fake ranga, a certain Henry had the cheek to offer this ... and not even the ritual uncredited collage of Jimbo in triptych form could appease the pond ...
ECONOMICS ‘Good while it lasted’: Deloitte calls time on Australia’s golden era Deloitte has again downgraded its economic growth forecasts for Australia, as consumer confidence cratered to its lowest level in three decades following the latest interest rate rise. By Thomas Henry
A 30 year golden era?
Life under the onion muncher, Malware and the liar from the Shire was a golden era?
So it seems...
Warning that the “king tide” of structural changes and “cyclically serendipitous” property and construction booms responsible for bolstering growth for more than 30 years could not carry Australia through its next economic era, Deloitte economists declared supply-side reforms were “no longer optional”. “It was good while it lasted,” Deloitte partner Stephen Smith said.
2008 was good while it lasted? That little dust-up happening to happen within the said 30 years, followed by a series of singularly incompetent leaders...
The contempt that the pond has for the likes of Deloitte could occupy a tome the length of the bible ...
They can go preach their "golden era" tosh to suckers willing to take the bait.
Even a comedy piece couldn't temper the pond's irritation ... not even the deploying of a chook ...
But if anyone feels the need to head down the rabbit hole with the mad King ...
HEATED DEBATE Why daylight saving rules the roost As regular as clockwork, here comes another fight about the health of daylight saving. But this time it’s political – and Donald Trump is picking a side. By Matthew Condon
Bah humbug to the lot of them ...
And so to a real dilemma. The reptiles had dropped AI like a hot potato, what with the rag being all in on AI in house, so the pond had no way to segue to this day's infallible Pope on the subject.
What the heck, the pond will do it live anyway ...
Speaking of AI, with the pond wondering how The Daily Show mob (and John Oliver for that matter, dissing the US Security Service this week in fine bounding dog style), will last under the wretched mega-merger, the final straw in the move of the US to gigantic monopolies, there came this ...
The reptiles never-ending jihad against - or relentless, morbid, never-ending fascination with - comrade Dan reached a new peak early this morning ...
It was all there, glowering photo, and Liam Menzies, "reporter-at-large", doing Amazing Investigative Journalism in his own lunchtime, and luckily that's what the intermittent archive is for ...
This was a painful step for the pond, what with the bromancer being a perennial favourite, but the pond is well over all offerings from the Australian Daily Zionist News and the relentless refusal to acknowledge or track the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon.
The pond didn't even have enough enthusiasm to turn to Haaretz for a balancing story, but will offer a teaser trailer... spoiler alert, it's just a serve of the bog standard, ritualised flood of rhetoric, tinged with a kind word for a different religious cult.
How the bromancer, and the reptiles in general, love cults, but then, being in the cult of the lizard Oz, why wouldn't they?
Roll on ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, the bromancer's got your back.
But did this leave the pond short?
Fear not, there were old faithfuls, gushing like geysers ...
The header: By Nick Cater Digital safety law risks overreach into censorship
The cry to listen to a bot: Listen to this article 6 min
The caption for the coupling which with extraordinary visual cleverness features logos and Grant: With social media in mind, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has been allowed extraordinary powers. Picture right: NewsWire
The plea for attention in the intertubes jungle: Make us preferred on Google
It might startle correspondents, but the pond has a little sympathy for the quarry whisperer in this outing, because it's the pond's considered opinion - no defamation intended - that Julie Inman Grant is barking mad, with many bees incessantly buzzing in her noggin. (The pond's partner's personal contacts with her informs this view).
The Caterist took to his task with the vigour of a man who knew which way water rolled:
There’s little evidence that parliament had a clue what it was doing when it passed the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill in 2015. Its scope was relatively narrow: our children against cyber-bullying, a modern phenomenon parliament unanimously agreed was a very bad thing. After more than a decade of mission creep and two substantial legislative amendments, the eSafety Commission now faces a far more ambitious task: promoting “safer, more positive online experiences”. The eSafety Commission’s architects were not blind to the risk of institutional overreach. In his second reading speech, minister Paul Fletcher explicitly warned against creating a regulatory system that was “excessive or heavy-handed”.
The reptiles dropped Fletch into the mix: Former communications minister Paul Fletcher warned against a system that was ‘excessive or heavy-handed’. Picture: Matthew Poon
The Caterist took up the Fletch cry, and as an anonymised blogger, was the pond the right candidate to stand in his way?
Yet for all its qualifying clauses and soothing rhetoric, this well-intentioned legislation contained the seeds of its own expansion. An agency with an $11m annual budget to tackle a well-defined problem has morphed into a $60m-a-year behemoth, with the ambitious goal of making the internet safe for everybody. The “sock puppet” clause in the proposed Digital Duty of Care legislation would further expand the agency’s powers. The eSafety Commissioner would be granted unchecked authority to assume false or fictitious online identities. Effectively, the regulator would become a law unto itself, run by unelected officials accountable to parliament in only the loosest sense. The original legislation set clear boundaries between the regulator’s role and the police. The proposed legislation busts the lines wide open, granting the commissioner the powers of investigator, judge and executioner. These extraordinary powers are granted, apparently, to protect our “safety”, one of the most elastic words in the political lexicon. Nobody can reasonably declare themselves against it, which makes it a potent justification for state power. A positive online experience can be anything the commissioner decides it should be. Negative online experiences, on the other hand, are anything the commissioner decides we should be protected against. The danger lies not merely in the extraordinary powers parliament is being asked to give the eSafety Commissioner, but in the boundless remit within which they might be used.
Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant compares Digital Duty of Care to seatbelt legislation in the 1970s. “The car industry pushed back,” she said. “But Australia stayed the course.” Yet a product safety regulation with a clear engineering solution differs from regulating the flow of information. A law that insists you buckle up to protect against the consequences of a crash differs greatly from a law that tells you where you may drive.
There came another reminder of the subject of the flood water-whisperer's ire ... Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant compares Digital Duty of Care to seatbelt legislation in the 1970s. Picture: NewsWire/ Tertius Pickard
The quarry whisperer, aroused by the sighting, embarked on a lengthy final rant:
Naturally, the commission’s expanded role requires hiring more staff. The commission’s headcount has almost doubled since Labor entered office, from 116 in 2022 to 222 in 2024-25. If parliament agrees to the proposed expansion of power, we can expect the number to rise further. Few would challenge police investigators’ right to adopt a false identity to investigate potential criminal behaviour, provided appropriate checks and balances are in place.
When federal police assume a false identity under Part IAC of the Crimes Act, each identity requires a separate written authority. Its use must be recorded, periodically reviewed, and audited at least every six months, with the number of identities and their use ultimately reported to parliament. Under the government’s eSafety draft, the commissioner requires no outside authorisation to create a sock puppet. The legislation requires no register of the identities, no audit and no reporting to parliament on how many have been deployed. There is no restriction on numbers. The commissioner, or anyone to whom the powers are delegated, could create as many sock puppets as they wish. A police officer who misuses false identities commits an offence punishable by up to two years in prison. A sock puppeteer authorised by the commissioner need only show they acted “in good faith” to gain immunity from civil action or any other proceeding. Grant’s second five-year term expires next year, presenting an opportunity to pose the question parliament has conspicuously failed to ask: Why do we need an eSafety commissioner at all? That is not to say criminal activity committed online should be unpunished. Yet fraud, intimidation or the distribution of intimate images without consent are matters best left to the police. Unlawful behaviour wherever it occurs should be dealt with by the courts, where the rules of evidence and rights to appeal are established by common law, not an unaccountable bureaucracy. Parliament is perfectly capable of updating the criminal law when technology creates new ways of committing old offences. Beyond that point, however, we have every reason to be nervous about outsourcing responsibility for our wellbeing to the state. The draft bill has no trouble defining serious harms: child sexual exploitation, grooming, incitement to extreme or sexual violence, suicide and self-harm, terrorism and criminal offending. Yet it is less clear on the content that might be described as lawful but awful, material that might be offensive or morally repugnant to many but may reasonably deserve protection under the principle of free speech. Other jurisdictions have wrestled with this challenge, to which there is no obvious answer. Yet leaving it to the discretion of the minister of the day through the power of legislative instrument, as the draft legislation does, is hardly a satisfactory solution. Adults can decide for themselves what they wish to read, watch and hear. Parents should have the principal responsibility for deciding what their children encounter. Technology companies should be encouraged to develop so-called “middleware”: filters, parental controls, blocking tools, privacy settings and third-party software for organising feeds. If popular concern about online safety is as widespread as the government seems to think, market demand will be strong. The Digital Duty of Care bill has served an important purpose by demonstrating that top-down regulation of digital content is impractical and dystopian. Better to take our chances with the occasional online bully, crank or fanatic than with a state that claims the power to protect us from them all.
Only one note.
There was a link at the start of that last paragraph, and for a fleeting moment, the pond's heart leapt.
Had the reptiles actually provided a link to the outside world? Would the hive mind be taken to the actual Digital Duty of Care bill?
That note? The reptiles are constantly pleading for Google's attention.
Never mind the debilitating paywall, if they insist on carrying on like a religious cult of the Amish kind, shunning the world, staying inside the hive mind, why should anyone care?
And now credit where no credit is due:
The pond had to quickly step past Fergo, doing his best to maintain the lizard Oz climate science denialist rage ...
Forget Bowen’s pre-COP ‘A-team’ … this mob’s an F-team Chris Bowen promised to bring the world to the Pacific for pre-COP. But the speakers in Fiji and Tuvalu look more like the Melbourne Writers Festival than the G20. By Richard Ferguson Canberra bureau chief
Writers? At a Writers' Festival?
As the real header made clear, it was bloody interfering womyn that were the problem:
Julia Gillard, Jacinda Ardern? Chris Bowen’s set-list of speakers for pre-COP is not up to scratch
How could those useless harpies, those irrelevant harridans, compete with the infinite wisdom of Fergo and the lizards of Oz?
Here, have more of a 'toon break, have an immortal Rowe celebrating a sojourn with a womyn:
And speaking of womyn, the pond turned with salivating expectation to the treat of the day, a serve of the Groaning ... (closely related to the Shining):
The header: Commentary By Judith Sloan Bragging rights to relatively low government debt are all Costello’s; Labor has made it worse
The plea to listen to a bot: Listen to this article 7 min
The caption for the opening snap of Petey boy looking stern and Jimbo looking bewildered: Peter Costello must wonder why he bothered; Jim Chalmers thought he had all the answers when he claimed he could reinvent capitalism. Pictures: News 24
The plea for relevance: Make us preferred on Google
The pond must begin by confessing disappointment.
Sure the pond did the usual build up, and attempted to lather up the crowd, but it was a bit like the way the mad King has seen falling crowd numbers and a marked lack of enthusiasm in his recent speechifying.
This was just a bog standard rant about why everything was wrong, grist for the lizard Oz mill, but unexceptional stuff for Dame Groan ...
On the upside, the pond could avoid notes, and end it quickly so it could get on with a serve of Weet-Bix ...
There must be days when former treasurer Peter Costello wonders why he bothered. Why repair the budget and deliver 10 surpluses? Why rein in government debt, pay it off and leave a legacy of negative net debt? He must even wonder why he established the Future Fund, given the threats to this sovereign wealth fund that have emerged since the Albanese Labor government was elected. When the current Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, brags about Australia’s relatively low government debt by international standards, Costello must surely be choking on his Weet-Bix. Look at the figures – it was all Costello; Labor has made it worse. When Costello became our top money man, Australian government net debt stood at $96bn or 18 per cent of GDP. When the Howard government was voted out in 2007, net debt was minus $40bn or minus 3.4 per cent of GDP. It was a tour de force that was never supported by the Labor opposition.
Naturally Jimbo was the least of this trio. Just look at his hand-waving and the supercilious grin on his mugwump face. No wonder the hive mind cowered in fear ... Jim Chalmers’ changes to the Future Fund were denounced as 'fiscal vandalism' by John Howard and creating 'a political slush fund' by Peter Costello.
Dame Groan was starry-eyed about Petey "have a spawn for me" Boy, and way down on Jimbo, but the chanting of "we'll all be rooned" exceeded even Hanrahan's expectations ...
Costello also introduced the Charter of Budget Honesty that ensures that newly elected governments are no longer surprised by dishonest financial statements issued by displaced administrations. The Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook has improved the quality of election campaigning – all parties are working off the same figures; it is a model that has been copied by the states. (Mind you, the quality of all PEFOs is not the same. The one issued for the 2022 election was a shocker, forecasting a budget deficit for 2021-22 of $80bn when the actual figure was a deficit of $32bn, for example. The Albanese government has attempted to feast on this rotting carcass ever since it has been in office.) The Intergenerational Report also emerged from the Charter of Budget Honesty. To be released every five years – Labor has shortened this interval for political reasons – the aim of the exercise is to look at the budgetary pressures likely to emerge over the next 40 years. Costello never saw the IGR as a bragging exercise, but rather as a means of imposing fiscal restraint to ensure future pressures on the budget could be headed off at the pass. It was never a reflection of his “meanness” but rather his strong ethical position that it is inherently unfair for the current generation to rack up debt for future generations to pay off. Let’s not forget that vocal advocacy for some of the government’s biggest current programs was around in Costello’s day – think here the NDIS, the Gonski school-funding model and the like. His firm response was “no”, followed by the obvious point that funding for disability, education and many other matters rests with the states.
The pond has noted before the tendency to feature Albo and Jimbo in gloomy postures, but the thumb snap for this AV distraction outdoes Pravda in its hey day, what with Albo looking befuddled and bemused, and some unhappy warrior lurking behind, hands on head. Jimbo, is that you?
Next video thumbnail Support for Albanese and Chalmers collapses in wake of rate hike Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers' popularity has taken a hit in the wake of last week's interest rate decision.
Between ecstasy and despair is a thin line, and after the exaltation of Petey Boy came an even fuller flowering of "we'll all be rooned", possibly by Xmas ...
So, what has been Costello’s legacy? Nearly two decades later, net government debt stands above $600bn, with gross debt hovering around the trillion-dollar mark. As a percentage of GDP, our federal government position – we shouldn’t forget state government debt, however – is still low by the standards of advanced economies. But the point here is that this outcome has nothing to do with the efforts of Labor governments. The Rudd/Swan duo spent up big during the Global Financial Crisis (2009 to 2012), adding to the debt. The four budget surpluses that Swan announced came to nothing. During the pandemic, Labor supported even more spending than the Coalition government splashed to deal with the situation. Since assuming office in 2022, Labor has thrown out the fiscal rule book. Chalmers refuses to set out a strict set of numerical fiscal rules – even his former boss, Wayne Swan, had rules, though he failed to meet them. Sound fiscal rules could have ensured that the budget would currently be in surplus, an outcome recommended by important luminaries such as former Reserve Bank governor, Phil Lowe, and former treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson. Chalmers also declined to impose a global tax cap on the budget. According to his thinking, “we’re not attracted to the government’s tax cap, and the reason we’re not attracted to it is because it seems to us like quite an arbitrary cap imposed for political reasons rather than good economic reasons.” The Coalition’s cap of 23.9 per cent has now been exceeded under Labor and it is still running a budget deficit! Prior to Covid, government payments were under a quarter of GDP. This financial year, they are expected to come in at 26.8 per cent. This is a massive change, making the size of government larger than it has ever been outside war or a pandemic. Annual government spending is now well over $800bn, having been less than $500bn before Covid. Government spending on the so-called “care economy” has risen by more than 50 per cent since the Albanese government was first elected.
The reptiles' choice of thumb illustrations is now beyond Pravda, almost comically Der Stürmer, with this AV distraction featuring a downcast Jimbo...so that the dog botherer could insert himself into Dame Groan's rant ...
Next video thumbnail Chalmers called out for his ‘addiction to spending’ as Aussies prepare for a rate rise Shadow Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Dan Tehan says Treasurer Jim Chalmers has an “addiction” to spending that is driving interest rates up. “Everything points to Jim Chalmers' addiction to spending,” Mr Tehan told News24 host Chris Kenny. “As for the Labor Party and Anthony Albanese’s concern, that spending is just going to continue. This is really going to hurt Australians at this time. “They’re struggling as it is. The last thing they need is another interest rate rise.”
Dame Groan joined Jimbo in being downcast in her final gobbet of gloom and despair...
Don’t believe the budget forecasts of future government spending: growth of 0.7 per cent in 2027-28 and 0.9 per cent in the next financial year. As the say, pigs might fly, even if there is some success in restraining the growth of spending on NDIS. Labelling NDIS spending by another name, Thriving Kids, doesn’t reduce aggregate spending necessarily. As for the Prime Minister’s claim that the government has achieved $178bn of budget savings, some other animals are needed to join the pigs in the sky. He earnestly tells us that “every single economic statement that we have handed down has had savings”. This is just arcane budget trickery that shouldn’t convince anyone. The most credible estimate of the net addition that Labor has made to the budget comes from economist Saul Eslake, who puts the figure at just above $100bn. And don’t you just love a bit of budget “reprioritisation”? It’s like Kim Kardashian bragging that she bought the expensive black handbag rather than the tan one. It’s irrelevant to the budget bottom line. As hard-pressed householders sit around the kitchen table figuring out how they are going to afford higher mortgage payments, higher fuel costs and higher expenses generally, they must wonder how we got to this point. As a firm believer in big government, Chalmers thought he had all the answers when he claimed he could reinvent capitalism. What he didn’t count on was the persistence of inflation and the role that excessive government spending plays in that outcome. The cost of government debt is about to escalate. He talks about boosting productivity but can only cite trivial measures while avoiding the main game – energy and industrial relations. We are stuck with sub-par economic growth and no way of escaping. It seems a long time since Costello held the fiscal reins.
Cheer up Dame Groan, if the reptiles keep on going on this way, soon enough Pauline will be PM, and what good times we'll see then ...
As for the credit where no credit is due? Sorry, there wasn't one. For some reason, the reptiles cut the Dame Groan thumb ...
The pond had to look elsewhere in the lizard Oz to ensure that attention was paid ... she's not to be allowed to fall into her grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.
Go team... and the pond might have featured this one before, but it seems a nice capper for the Groaning...
...I want to call on the novelist and critic, Umberto Eco, who provided one of the most helpful guides to this kind of politics in his great 1995 essay, “Ur-Fascism.” (*intermittent archive link) Eco provides a list of certain key elements or features of Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. A couple of these are particularly relevant to the emanations of our secretary of defense: Irrationalism, and machismo. Here’s Eco on irrationalism:
'Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. . . . Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.”'
And it’s no accident, Eco further points out, that “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” And side-by-side with Hegseth’s embrace of irrationalism is his exaltation of machismo. As Eco explains,
"Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise."
Eco makes clear that his essay was not intended as merely a historical or diagnostic enterprise. Eco wrote in order to warn that fascism is not a thing of the past. Fascism is a permanent human temptation. It speaks to certain human passions and exploits certain human weaknesses that are always there to potentially be activated.
Why open this way? What's Pete Kegsbreath, and the rest of mad King Donald's craven minions got to do with herpetology studies?
For some reason, not so ineluctable, the pond was reminded of the reptiles of the lizard Oz ...
And so to Lord Downer ...
The header: By Alexander Downer Slick political machines are driving us nowhere
The promise of a bot voice: Listen to this article 7 min
The caption: Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Ben Carroll in West Footscray. Picture: NewsWire / Ian Currie
The pitiful plea for attention: Make us preferred on Google
Of all the fatuous topics by the most fatuous of politicians, why did Lord Downer decide to blather about "slick political machines"?
Is he just some innocent rustic from deep in the Adelaide hills? Or is he a comely slick dresser with no time for machines?
Whatever, one thing is sure. Lord Downer won't be taking the opportunity for some self-reflection and copious apologies for his past life as a failed politician ...Why the Iraq war was right (sssh, don't mention WMDs)...
Do begin, please do ...
Over the past two decades, politics has become more professional, but the same cannot be said of government. Politicians and their minders have become extraordinarily sophisticated at winning elections and rather less accomplished at doing anything worthwhile once they have won.
Political parties can identify swinging voters, discover their anxieties and deliver carefully tailored messages to their phones. They can test a slogan before breakfast and discard an unpopular policy before lunch. The machinery of persuasion has never been more impressive. But to what purpose? Increasingly, the purpose is simply to acquire power and retain it. Improving the country is something to be considered afterwards, provided the focus groups approve. I doubt there is any retreat from these techniques; no party will abandon technology that might help it win. But we should recognise what happens when research ceases to inform judgment and starts to replace it. We get government by perpetual opinion poll. We get populism. By populism, I mean the habit of telling people what they want to hear rather than explaining what they need to understand. Conviction becomes a liability. Difficult reform becomes an electoral risk. Leadership gives way to the endless recitation of reassuring platitudes. Consider the politician who announces a listening tour. Really? With all that polling, research and social media monitoring, are we supposed to believe the party has no idea what people think? The listening tour is just a stunt. Perhaps the more useful expedition would be an explaining tour. None of this is an argument against listening. It is an argument for exercising judgment afterwards. The public have jobs, families, mortgages and lives to lead. They cannot spend every evening studying budget papers or assessing infrastructure proposals. Representative government exists precisely because we elect people to undertake that work on our behalf. Their responsibility is to make sound decisions, explain difficult choices and sometimes resist popular demands. Otherwise, we might as well replace cabinet with a market research company.
Really? At this point the reptiles decided they'd provide the needed focus ...Workers on the tracks at the Tottenham Rail Yards after Anthony Albanese and Premier Ben Carroll announced the Airport Rail Link project. Picture: NewsWire / Jason South
That's it? There are much better examples whereof His Lordship speaks ...
At this point His Lordship veered off into croweater matters, as if what happens in Adelaide - oh Adelaide - is of earth-shattering relevance ...
Instead, voters are encouraged to believe that governments can provide ever more benefits, tax somebody else and borrow the difference indefinitely. The bill is always somebody else’s problem, preferably after the next election. Infrastructure offers a particularly revealing example. Everybody likes a new road, a railway or a bypass. Politicians like them especially. There are announcements, photographs in fluorescent jackets and, eventually, ribbons to cut. The benefits are visible. The costs are more conveniently dispersed. Take Adelaide’s South Road. The Torrens-to-Darlington project carries a price tag of $15.4bn. That is an enormous commitment. Now consider how such spending is presented. A state government can announce an operating surplus while borrowing heavily to build infrastructure. The construction cost is recorded as an asset, with depreciation charged over its useful life, rather than being treated immediately as an operating expense. That is conventional accounting. The political sleight of hand comes when an operating surplus is presented as proof that the government is living within its means, without comparable emphasis on its cash requirements and rising debt. Nor should we confuse state operating balances with the commonwealth’s cash balance. Federal infrastructure grants generally affect its deficit when paid. The distinctions matter. But none of these accounting treatments makes the resources free. A road cannot pay the government’s interest bill merely because it appears on a balance sheet.
His Lordship desperately tried to extract a more universal juice from the parochialism:
The scale extends far beyond Adelaide. Infrastructure Australia’s 2025 assessment identified $242bn in major public infrastructure projects over five years. That is a pipeline, not an annual spending figure, but it illustrates the magnitude of the commitments being made. Borrowing for productive infrastructure can be justified. A well-chosen project may reduce transport costs, improve productivity and generate benefits for decades. The question is whether those benefits justify the costs, and whether building it now represents the best use of scarce resources. Popularity cannot answer either question. There is another cost that rarely appears in the announcement: what cannot be built because government has commandeered the people and materials. Engineers, electricians, concrete suppliers and construction machinery are not available in unlimited quantities. Public projects compete with private investment and, where their requirements overlap, with housing construction. When governments accelerate enormous building programs in a constrained market, they drive up wages and material prices, delay other projects and make new homes more expensive. Announcing a housing target does not conjure another electrician into existence.
Might not examples be culled from the time when His Lordship strutted the roost? Why only that ranga? Pauline Hanson at the One Nation campaign in Melbourne. Picture: NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui
She can't be blamed for recent cost rises, but there's no mention of who can be ...
There remained one final outburst from His Lordship, with a desperate attempt at economics, never his strongest suit ...
Of course, infrastructure spending is not the only cause of expensive housing. Planning restrictions, regulations, land availability and weak construction productivity matter too. Nor does every tunnelling worker become a house builder if a road project is postponed. But these qualifications do not abolish competition for resources. Governments should stop promising to build everything simultaneously and then claiming some war thousands of kilometres away is the cause of prices rising! The Reserve Bank has highlighted renewed capacity pressures in construction. Politicians should take those constraints seriously before announcing the next grand scheme. What is needed is a return to economic rationalism: rigorous assessment, realistic sequencing, transparent borrowing and the courage to defer projects that cannot justify their demands on the economy. The test of leadership is not whether a premier or prime minister can announce another project. It is whether they can explain why another worthy proposal must wait its turn for funding. We also need leaders willing to explain that a project can be desirable without being affordable today. There is nothing heartless about setting priorities. The alternative is allowing inflation, higher taxes and debt servicing costs to chew up more of our resources. That’s what’s happening now. Lionel Robbins famously placed scarcity and competing uses at the centre of economics. Politics does not suspend that reality. Winning an election does not increase the supply of skilled labour or repeal the cost of capital. Australia needs politicians with convictions, including the conviction that prosperity must be earned through productivity and sensible choices. Let us make economic rationalism popular again. Otherwise, the choices we refuse to make voluntarily may eventually be imposed by creditors and circumstances. That would be a miserable verdict on a political class so accomplished at winning power and so reluctant to use it responsibly.
As for the copious thumb career the reptiles provide for their contributors? This was the one accorded His Lordship. Alas and alack, here it is in full ... Alexander Downer Contributor
Have an immortal Rowe for making it this far, with Freedumb boy featuring ...
One of the revived joys of the pond's posting is that the intermittent archive has been restored,and so the pond can reference Mein Gott without going into him at great length.
This is the sort of simplistic time waster and Albo basher that the pond might match by proposing that Simpleton Simon is not the most unpopular lizard Oz scribbler ... yet ...
The presence of the liar from the shire reminded the pond that it's better not to look back ...
That clearing of the decks allowed room for the pond to cope with Major Mitchell ...
Michael Shellenberger?
A reminder of a couple of his achievements, per his wiki (links and references at the original):
On April 3, 2024, Shellenberger published the "Twitter Files – Brazil", resulting in a formal Congressional inquiry, and two Congressional hearings, at which Shellenberger testified.Investigative journalists subsequently highlighted multiple errors in Shellenberger's reporting. In September 2024, Shellenberger appeared with Bill Nye at an event entitled "Can Science Save the World?" hosted by New College of Florida. The event "seeks to advance civil discourse and engagement through facilitating events that foster open discussion and debate on relevant public policy issues." Shellenberger has faced accusations of "bad science" for his comments on climate change in Apocalpyse Never; he has also been criticized for arguing with prominent climate scientists on social media and "apologising" to the world on the behalf of environmentalists. A panel of scientists organized by Climate Feedback analyzed the claims he made in his "apology" article, concluding that they were "inaccurate or mislead readers by contradicting available evidence or using scientific data out of context."A Snopes article, which consulted multiple scientists that Shellenberger had cited, was similarly critical; Michael Mann called one of Shellenberger's central arguments "completely wrong," and found it was also contradicted by the very IEA source Shellenberger used to support it.
There's the Major again, always referencing the dubious, and while talking about payouts and corporate responsibility, must the pond go there again?
Despite its pretensions to lecture Australia about its values and how it should be run, the Murdoch family’s News Corp really has nothing to do with Australia. It is a foreign company, and it serially pays no tax here, despite earning billions in revenue on our shores. In 2024-25, according to the Australian Tax Office’s corporate tax data released today, News Australia Holdings — the official name of News Corp’s Australian subsidiary — racked up 10 years of paying precisely zero tax. For that year, it earned $1.89 billion in revenue, made more than $300 million in profit (a record for the past decade) and paid nothing in tax. Indeed, there’s a peculiar steadiness to News Corp’s tax dodging. For the past four years, it has earned around $1.8 billion in revenue and paid no tax on around $300 million in profits in 2023-24 and 2024-25, and $200 million in profits in 2021-22 and 2022-23. You can go all the way back to when the first corporate tax transparency data was released for 2014-15 — the result of a Rudd-Gillard government initiative (opposed by the Coalition) — and find News Corp’s main company has paid no tax across those years, on revenue of, in total, $23.9 billion and profits of $1.38 billion. The only News Corp entities to pay tax in that time were an investment company, which paid $200,000 (sic) in 2017-18 on $291 million in profits, and a pay TV financing arm, which paid $8 million in 2015-16. Real estate listing oligopolist REA Group, which News Corp part-owns, paid $246 million in tax. Otherwise, News Corp’s only contributions to Australia are social division and the fostering of hate and resentment.
To be fair, exceptionally keen Keane, they also like to foster panic, fear, and alarm on a daily basis ...and quote loons who like to put in a good word for Vlad the sociopathic invader ...
Here we go again. The pond is constantly irritated by the way that the reptiles plead for Google attention, and then resolutely refuse to stray outside the paywalled hive mind by providing a link.
If you want that link the pond is happy to oblige. If reading the both siderist NY Times is your thing, here you go ...
Heck, the pond will even throw in a teaser trailer. Could it be any worse than spending time with the Major?
Sigh, back to the Major ... (remembering that it was the feeble efforts of the NY Times and their like that helped produce mad King Donald's age of lead)
What, no link again? Must the pond do all the work?
The pond doesn't give a toss what religious leaders think.
The pond's idea of fun is being off with loons determined to raise shekels by proposing they're about to discover Noah's Ark ...a riff that has sent Faux Noise and other Murdochians into a speculative frenzy ... and recorded with a simpering, credulous stupidity...
At this point the pond realised it had managed to filibuster its way through the Major's piece ...
Is there an irony there, that eternal bagging of the full to overflowing intertubes, what with the reptiles now pleading in each column for Google relevance, and the pond being digital, and so too the lizard Oz, save for the very few luddites that still read the tree killer edition?
But why has productivity fallen? Surely at least one reason is that punters must waste time checking on the Major's sources, when having a cup of tea and a biscuit might be more productive.
Credit where no credit is due ...
And now to that better version of the infallible Pope's weekend cartoon, promised by the pond...
And for a bonus, a reminder of what the mendacious Minns mob has produced ...
Speaking of Noah's Ark, Dan McClellan has been having a field day with mind-numbing details ...
