In which the Caterist shows of his style, with Shanners and simpleton Simon also on hand to help out ...

 

Thrashed by Bangladesh!

The pond would love to meet proud warriors of Judaeo-Xian Western Civilisation to discuss the result, or perhaps some triumphalist white Xian nationalists proclaiming the ascendancy of the British empire, colonialism and Ming the Merciless ...

Wait, the reptiles of the lizard Oz are standing by ...

Alas, they've been distracted by the war on renewables, with Geoff leading the way with an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
Energy firms promise $40bn to win renewables scheme deals
Cash payments, Indigenous artwork commissions and free energy systems – the extraordinary price renewable companies are pledging for social licence under Chris Bowen’s secretive scheme.
By Noah Yim and Geoff Chambers

Just look at the richly comic portrait of their mortal enemy, a strategy worthy of the Reich in its glory days ...

And so on, there's more at the archive, but don't stop there, there's another reason to head off to the intermittent archive because indefatigable Geoff personally took a view and Chambered another round...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
It’s time to expose Labor’s secret renewables fund
Chris Bowen’s Capacity Investment Scheme is the most egregious of the Albanese government’s growing pile of ideologically-driven slush funds, subsidies and bailouts.

And waddya kno, as Geoff exposed away, there was another richly comic portrait of their mortal enemy at the head of the column, a strategy worthy of the Reich in its glory days ...

Wait, with just a few more lines, the pond could save a trip to the archive:

How convenient.

The other glaring problem with the CIS is the government’s omission of gas. As wind farms fail to deliver on the potential Bowen had hoped, and the “tax the gas” noise grows among left-wing MPs and supporters, Labor’s caucus is divided over the inarguable fact that affordable and abundant gas is needed to keep heavy industry and manufacturing jobs alive.

Australians, who were falsely promised by Labor at the 2022 election that their household power bills would be $275 cheaper, want reliable and affordable power generation.

If the Albanese government continues down a renewables-only path that excludes gas and zero-emissions nuclear, expect more Tomago smelter bailouts in the near future and fewer data centres.

Nuke the country to save the planet, if only the planet needed saving, what with climate science either a religious cult or a hoax! 

The pond regrets that Geoff really isn't up to much, and only knows how to regurgitate a few standard reptile talking points. Bring back the Riddster and Lloydie of the Amazon!

And so to other matters, and the pond regrets that it has become incredibly weary at the thought of tackling the Australian Daily Zionist News, so passed on by the top of the digital "news" ma ...

INSIDE STORY
Forensic inquiry or ‘tokenistic’: will Bell toll for antisemites? Will royal commission deliver solutions to antisemitism crisis?
With four months left, the antisemitism royal commission’s strongest proponents are questioning if it has sufficiently used its extraordinary legal powers – or let them go to waste.
By James Dowling

A 12 minute read?! Good luck on that journey, with the pond personally saving the outing to the intermittent archive.

The pond also passed on by Major Mitchell, if only for incessant and inane Zionism of the first water.

Hamas lies swallowed by the woke West
How Hamas outsmarted the UN and Western media in the Gaza propaganda war
Hamas strategically exploited Western media, governments and institutions after October 7 to convert Jewish deaths into Israeli guilt.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

How could the pond get past the inanity of the Major, in from the golf course, deploying "woke"?

Put it another way, perhaps substituting "Major" for "American", and "green fees" for the price of gas will do...

Luckily the pond could avoid talk of ethnic cleansing and genocide because the quarry whisperer was out and about, proclaiming his expertise, already firmly established in court actions marvelling at his credentials when it came to observing the movements of flood waters ...

The header: Few Australians see themselves in the people who sit in our parliament; Only a handful of MPs has engineering qualifications, which may explain Canberra’s naivety about energy and infrastructure.

The caption for the snap of a ragtag mob designed to trigger the Caterist: Too few Australians see people like themselves representing them in Canberra. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

For those who've forgotten the Caterist's credentials, please allow the pond to quote his wiki:

He graduated from the University of Exeter with an honours degree in sociology in 1980 and drove laundry vans for a year before joining the BBC as a trainee studio manager.

If that doesn't say rigorous scientist, expert in climate change, and yet humble man of the people, perhaps your standards are too high?

Now let the Pom import smote and smite away ...

Australia’s 48th parliament is the most diverse in the nation’s history, at least by conventional measures. The female, Indigenous, ethnic and LGBT+ communities have never had so many MPs and senators advocating their cause. Yet polling consistently shows voters have never felt so disenfranchised.
Measures of trust and satisfaction in elected representatives are at record lows amid rising anti-politician sentiment and record-low support for the major parties.
For a substantial cohort of disenchanted voters, the proclaimed diversity of parliament is bunkum. One Nation’s attacks on the so-called uniparty are gaining traction, despite the stark differences between a dreamily progressive Labor government and an increasingly hard-nosed conservative opposition.
It suggests the most important political divide is not between left and right but between the politicians and the people they claim to represent.
Yet by less fashionable measures of diversity – such as age, education and career paths – parliamentarians increasingly conform to type. More than 80 per cent of MPs and senators are university graduates compared with just 26 per cent of Australians at the 2021 census.
The focus of their studies leans heavily towards the arts, including law and economics. Only a handful of parliamentarians have engineering qualifications, which may help explain Canberra’s recurring naivety about energy and infrastructure.

Too true, the last thing we need is some bloody sociology-trained pundit blathering away with no more than a passing knowledge of applied science, especially if they don't know how to apply the science to the movement of flood waters in quarries ... Rebuilding an energy system from scratch demands more than a passing knowledge of applied science, yet Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s academic background is in economics. Picture: Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP

How disappointing is that snap? 

Sure, every reptile yarn about climate change has to have a snap of terrifying windmills, designed to put fear into the hive mind and into the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, but what an opportunity was missed to show the baleful Bowen, in a way given unto Geoff.

That's better, that's how it should have been done, unless they could have combined that snap with the shot of those infernal bloody windmills ...

Never mind, back with the sociologist for an extended rant ...

Rebuilding an energy system from scratch demands more than a passing knowledge of applied science, yet Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s academic background is in economics. MPs and senators with trade certificates are few and far between. Which leads us to the frightening conclusion that most of the politicians who legislated targets for the transformation of our energy system couldn’t be trusted to change a light bulb.
Parliament, in other words, has become a hotbed of intellectuals, defined by Thomas Sowell as “a social class of persons whose economic output consists of generalised ideas”, as opposed to those with useful skills that can be used to actually fix things. To the extent that they are problem solvers, their inclination is towards social problems – fairness, equality, diversity and the like – rather than practical problems such as saving for retirement or addressing the cost of living.
Politicians also are concentrated in a relatively narrow stage of life, from their 30s to their mid-50s, when household finances tend to be dominated by earnings and mortgages rather than accumulated assets.
As the giant cohort of Baby Boomers retires, the number in parliament is slipping. In 2013, when Tony Abbott became prime minister, 48 per cent of parliamentarians were born before 1965. In today’s parliament, the proportion of Baby Boomers and older cohorts has fallen to 20 per cent, compared with 30 per cent in the general population.
The sole representative of the Silent Generation, those born before 1946, is the magnificently un-silent Bob Katter.
The ascendancy of the narrow graduate class has encouraged a political focus that is preoccupied with intentions and abstractions – climate targets and gender identity – while paying less attention to practical consequences: cost, feasibility and the disruption imposed on ordinary lives.
On the rare occasions when the preoccupations of the political class are put directly to a popular vote, as with the Indigenous voice referendum, the gulf between Canberra and the country becomes impossible to ignore.
Yet the political class has become adept at getting its way by stealth, covering its tracks with feel-good words. The cumulative frustration over changes that most voters abhor being made without consultation – let alone a vote – is fuelling the rise of populism.
The Australian Election Survey conducted after the 2025 election revealed that the conditions were ripe for political revolt. Barely one in three Australians trusts the people in government, compared with more than half in 2007.
The proportion of the population that agreed that “People in government look after themselves” has risen from about 40 per cent late last century to about 75 per cent.
None of this would surprise American political theorist Hanna Pitkin, whose 1957 distinction between descriptive representation (who representatives are) and substantive representation (what representatives do) serves as a useful correction for identity politics.
In The Concept of Representation (1967), she argued that representation was fundamentally about acting in the interests of the represented, not merely resembling them.
In a descriptive sense, women were woefully under-represented in the blokey parliament elected in 1996, in which four out of five MPs and senators were male and only one parliamentarian was openly gay – the newly elected Greens senator Bob Brown.
Yet around twice as many voters trusted this predominantly straight white male parliament to do the right thing, suggesting the quality of political representation should be judged by the content of one’s character, not the colour of one’s skin or one’s inherited chromosomes.

Did the Caterist just attempt to show Our Henry he wasn't the only one with a reference book, while explaining the urgent need to bash womyn for ruining everything? ... The lesson for the Liberal Party is that it should reject the persistent demand for sex-based quotas and focus on recruiting members from a broader constituency of working Australians. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

Eek, a bloody woman, and isn't there another one on the far right, making life extremely hard for the beefy boofhead?

As for Our Henry, let him try to buck at the Caterist citing Burke ...

The lesson for the Liberal Party is that it should reject the persistent demand for sex-based quotas and focus on recruiting members from a broader constituency of working Australians. Neither should it become obsessed with ethnic cohorts. We hardly need opinion polling or focus groups to tell us that the No.1 issue for most Australians, whether born here or migrants, is the cost of living.
If the party wants a targeted recruitment drive, it should target people who genuinely support Liberal values and have succeeded at something other than politics – not those whose career trajectory runs from a politics or communications degree to a staffer’s desk and thence up the party ladder.
It would eschew identity politics in all its forms, recognising that it has become a gateway drug to narcissism, encouraging politicians to lean into their personal narrative rather than quotidian concerns of the anonymous Australians who sent them to Canberra.
The more parliament sees itself as an assembly of identities, the less capable it becomes of speaking and governing in the national interest. The exhibitionist displays we sometimes see in the Senate, in which the chamber becomes a bear pit for competing grievances, serve as a warning for where this leads.
It calls for a return to humility – a dying virtue in contemporary politics – that underpins an equally unfashionable notion of public service.
Parliament will never regain public trust if it acts as what Edmund Burke describes as “a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests”. Instead, it must pursue a higher goal: “a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole”.

Eschew identity politics! Embrace the humility espoused by the Caterist, a veritable monk of reticence and modesty!

Of course, how else could enthusiastic members of the white nationalist Judaeo-Xian proponents of Western Democracy stay in charge (no minorities or womyn allowed).

And what a way to stop the immortal Rowe, busy hatching eggs ...

Is there an upside to all this? Well it seems that the reptile melongate fever has finally passed, unless you mistake those eggs for melons ...

For a bonus, the pond turned to the bouffant one. Luckily he usually only lasts for a couple of minutes, as do many Australian men, so it was a quick read ...

The header: How the Nationals leader is using food security to plot a comeback; After defections, splits and Barnaby Joyce joining One Nation, Matt Canavan has pulled the Nationals back from the brink – and new polling data could hand him an unexpected lifeline.

The caption for the AV distraction featuring Rita, meter maid, offered at the start in case nobody felt up the task of reading the morally uplifting yarn: ​Nationals Leader Matt Canavan says the media made a “total beat-up” of shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg’s National Press Club address. ​“He said it could be done; he didn’t say we’re going to,” Mr Canavan told News24 host Rita Panahi. ​“At least Andrew Bragg didn’t have to cancel a Press Club speech.”

Get ready for some adoring adulation:

Matt Canavan has brought the Nationals a long way in six months.

How could he bring them such a long way? Remember, he's got a ute ...

It was inevitable a reptile had to join the Canavan caravan, if only for appearances sake, and who better than Shanners?

From two recent splits with their Liberal Coalition partners, an unsuccessful leadership challenge against his predecessor David Littleproud and a slew of defections and resignations that included Nationals MPs becoming independents, joining the Liberals and, in the most spectacular action involving former leader and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, defecting to One Nation.
At the same time, Pauline Hanson’s popularity had pushed One Nation to unprecedented levels of support in the polls, not to mention successes at the South Australian election.
But this weekend Canavan managed a unifying – at times robust – Nationals’ conference that was not afraid to back conservative causes, such as criticising Labor’s gun laws, and left MPs feeling satisfied they were heading back on track.

"At times robust"!: Senator Matt Canavan managed to push his own agenda to revive the Nationals’ standing. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman.

"Back on track"! A patriot! Staking out new territory!

And a reference to the pond's favourite poem, as the rustic from the north declared that we'd all be rooned, unless we voted for him, and if we didn't he'd be rooned ...

Canavan managed to push his own agenda to revive the Nationals’ standing, stake out a conservative territory, declaring he was not afraid to say he was a patriot, and, perhaps most importantly, raised a new and vital debate about food security, water policy and the prospect of Australia becoming a net importer of supermarket vitals such as chicken, pork and dairy.
Munching on an apple in his opening speech, Canavan demonstrated no fear of the theatrical and flair, declaring apples would be on the import list as well.
“By the year 2040, Australia may not produce enough cheese, eggs, butter, chicken, pork and apples to feed ourselves,” he warned his colleagues and the public.
“The reasons for this are all the same. Production levels staying still but population rapidly growing,” even as farm production should hit $100bn a year for the first time this year.
Canavan was doing more than whingeing and declaring “we’ll all be roon’d” because he was linking what is a decline in food and fibre production in Australia’s food bowl to the crucial political issue of population growth and immigration.
Just as Angus Taylor has linked the housing crisis to immigration levels, Canavan has linked food security to population growth.

Quick, another snap, so punters in the hive mind might have the foggiest about the mortal enemy rustics should fear: As he campaigns without talking about Pauline Hanson, Matt Canavan may have another boost to his otherwise dismal outlook – the absolute Labor and Greens rejection of One Nation. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

Let them reject Gina's pampered pet! Let the Canavan caravan hit the road with Pauline!

And so to a final flourish of triumphalism, hitting the hive mind with Shanners' best shot:

As he campaigns without talking about Hanson, Canavan may have another boost to his otherwise dismal outlook and one that has not been recognised – the absolute Labor and Greens rejection of One Nation.
New qualitative polling from Australian Institute for Progress has found that when asked about preferences after casting their first preference, 99 per cent of Labor and Greens’ supporters will refuse to put One Nation ahead of the Coalition.
This opens the scenario of compulsory preferential voting federally actually giving Coalition candidates victory even if they finish below One Nation on preferences.
This is a long shot for Canavan but, at the moment, he is taking all the shots he can.

Splendid stuff, but the pond decided it hadn't reached peak thrills, and decided there should be a bonus to the bonus, while managing to give property prices a rest ...

Instead of having an anxiety attack about falling house prices helping out vulgar youffs - shed tears for property investors - the pond turned to simpleton Simon acting as advisor and coach to the beefy boofhead, in his hour of Pauline peril.

The header: Labor has used the Greens to stabilise the power of the Left; The Liberals’ failure has been spectacular. It is as if it hopes its hero Robert Menzies will one day provide an answer from the grave.

The caption and credit for another splendid outing by Emilia: Anthony Albanese, Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson are trying to come to terms with their popularity with voters. Art: Emilia Tortorella

Simplistic Simon took a bigly four minutes to help the struggling boofhead from down Goulburn way, and for those who doubted the pond's invocation of the 1950s and Ming the Merciless, Simon was on hand to wash away their saucy fears ...

One would have to cast one’s mind back to what seems a distant time to recall when either of the major political parties had a four in front of their primary vote while in government.
For the Coalition, it was June 2021. For Labor it was more than 16 years ago.
There have been sporadic episodes since when both have managed to achieve this benchmark in opposition, but these have been oddities; fleeting in their longevity and rare in occasion.
Today the Coalition struggles to get a two in front of its primary vote and Labor can barely muster a three. It is questionable that either side will ever get to the 40s again.
The ALP worked out long ago that to contrive a path to government meant an accommodation on the left and inner-city voters lured by its radical affiliate.
As much as the Greens have proven problematic for Labor, so too have they become its useful idiots. This is now a well-tested mathematical proposition considering for the past two elections only a third of voters have got the government they claimed as their first choice.
The Liberal Party’s greatest failure has been its inability to foresee that it too would one day face an analogous schism. And its failure has been spectacular as it persists in a beleaguered belief that Robert Menzies will provide an answer from the grave.

Take that, Bangladesh cricketers, there will be a second coming, have no doubt of it, The Liberals are hoping that Sir Robert Menzies will guide them from the grave.

But was Ming the saviour, the redeemer speaking from the grave, telephoning down from a heavenly Cinque ports?

How simpleton Simon brooded ...

The circumstances or events that have led to the recent collapse in support for the Coalition are still contested. But the foundational decay that allowed it to happen in the first place has come with plenty of warnings. How this has come as a shock to the Liberal Party reveals the depths to its delusion.
It would be absurd to assert that Pauline Hanson could suddenly become popular by a singular event such as Bondi and in a time frame that defies logic. By her own admission, Hanson says her views are unchanged over 30 years.
So is it Australians who have changed, a response to the circumstances in which most people find themselves – poorer and ignored?
Last week’s Newspoll showed support for Labor dipping below 30 per cent for the first time since the Gillard era, proving Labor is facing a new challenge as well. Having established a franchise model of electoral power on the left, it must make adjustments to stop leakage to populism.
The key to electoral success now depends on which side has the greater comprehension of, and the ability to manipulate, a simple fact: Australians live in a preferential political world. This is why Labor’s primary vote of 29 per cent would indeed appear abysmal if not assessed by normative standards.
The latest Newspoll heralds a new yardstick for Anthony Albanese. Under his leadership, primary support has fallen to levels that characterised the level of contempt voters held Labor in following the deposition of Kevin Rudd. It should be noted that under Julia Gillard the primary vote for Labor at one point was higher than it has ever been under Albanese.

Sheesh, not Juliar, did the reptiles run out of chaff bags? The primary vote for Julia Gillard was higher than it has ever been under Mr Albanese.

And where would the hive mind be without a simplistic history lesson, filled with alarm and trepidation?

The more important measure is what Labor’s primary vote was compared with the other side. When Labor’s primary vote was last at 29 per cent, the Coalition’s primary vote was at 48 per cent. The Liberal-Nationals combina­tion could be assured victory even before preferences were counted.
Today, against a primary vote of 29 per cent for Labor, the Coalition is at 18 per cent. The picture has fundamentally altered. And it demonstrates that while Labor’s primary vote appears dangerously low in isolation, context is everything. It looks bad, but when compared with its traditional opponent it is far less so.
Labor’s primary vote was as low as 26 per cent in 2012. In April that year, the Coalition went as high as a 51 per cent primary vote against a Labor primary vote of 27 per cent.
The absence of One Nation was not a significant factor considering before that its primary vote was less than 5 per cent.
By 2017, with One Nation’s re-entry, the minor right-wing party was polling as high as 11 per cent, which was higher than the Greens. Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister and Labor’s primary vote was higher than the Coalition, in the mid to high 30s, getting as high as 41 per cent in the immediate aftermath of Morrison-Turnbull leadership spill.
By the 2019 election, the Coalition had settled under Scott Morrison and One Nation’s primary vote dropped back to about 3 per cent. It is a different story today, obviously, but there were signs some time ago of the potential for a dramatic change in direction for the broader body politic because of an emerging instability in the electorate.

Want a reminder of the glory, or should that be gory, days? How about a snap of a clap happy? the (sic) Coalition had settled under Scott Morrison by the 2019 election. Picture: Getty Images

What a chance to drag an infallible Pope out of the archives ...

Then came a final gobbet, and dare the pond say it, the notion that the reptiles' hero might be rooned, at least for the moment ...with the pond's appetite for a bout of relativism on a Monday finally sated ...

These signs, ignored at the time as the Coalition began to obsess about the teals, were evident in the post 2022 election review by the Liberal Party. It wasn’t the size of the One Nation vote that was concerning, although it had increased 60 per cent on the 2019 result; rather, it was where the votes were coming from and how they were being returned in preferences.
The review found 36 per cent of One Nation preferences flowed back to Labor. This tilted more in favour of the Coalition in 2025 but not by a significant margin.
The point is that the pool of conservative voters being harvested by One Nation was already starting to grow years ago but more than a third of them ultim­ately helped Labor. This is not the case for the centre-left, where Greens preference flows have been steadily rising across the past three decades and peaked last year at 88 per cent to Labor.
In other words, the preferential system offers electoral reward for strategic voting behaviour, which is evident among Greens voters who know they end up with a Labor government anyway.
This is the fundamental difference that denies the Coalition from replicating on the centre-right what Labor has achieved on the left. The One Nation voting motivation is self-evident; they dislike both major parties and preference only because they have to. There is ample evidence of that when preferential voting is optional – as it is in NSW, where it will be tested in March next year – and where most Greens voters are still disciplined enough to preference Labor but One Nationvoters are much less obedient.
The problem for the Coalition is potentially aggravated also by Liberal voters refusing to preference One Nation and potentially even putting Labor ahead of it.
Unless the Coalition can reverse the tables as they stand today and get ahead of One Nation on primary vote, it will be its prefer­ences that get distributed rather than the other way around. While Labor would appear to be in trouble with a primary vote so low, the fact is that this is structurally mitigated by conservative voters refusing to play by the rules.

Structurally mitigated!

What a simple lesson from simple Simon. Do a deal with Gina's pampered pet, swing to the mad far right, or perish ...

And so to end with a remarkable tribute to a remarkable Xian ...

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Matthew 19:18

He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 1 John 2:4

And how goes Vlad the sociopathic invader's world? (Steve can never resist a tinkle)

In which Polonius does a far left Tootle, while the dog botherer joins yesterday's catastrophists ...

 

It's finally a meditative Sunday, so the pond can be more expansive and indulgent.

Monday will be time enough to get back to standard lizard Oz lentils and beans, with the pond wanting to have a little variation in its diet.

Why not start by referencing a compelling read in the Financial Times?

Israel’s campaign to make southern Lebanon ‘unliveable’
Israeli forces have systematically destroyed homes, roads, farmland and forests despite ceasefire with Hizbollah
Raya Jalabi in Beirut and Aditi Bhandari in London

An excerpt will serve as a teaser trailer ...

An FT visual investigation with journalism non-profit Lighthouse Reports found systematic destruction across Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, including tens of thousands of homes, schools, farmland and forests.
Analysis of satellite imagery, open-source data and verified footage shows that much of the damage occurred after Israeli forces established control over emptied villages in mid-April. It has rendered large areas uninhabitable, destroying systems needed for civilian life, from water and energy infrastructure to medical care, a tactic rights groups and legal experts say appears designed to prevent residents’ return.
“It’s an extensive, long-lasting and organised attack on the people of southern Lebanon,” said Kristine Beckerle, a deputy director at rights group Amnesty International. “If you raze everything to the ground, critical infrastructure and healthcare, if you scorch the earth, you are creating effective wastelands that are unliveable and making it very difficult for people to return to southern Lebanon.”
Southern Lebanon has long borne the brunt of Israeli bombings and invasions, including before the rise of Shia militant group Hizbollah and the threat it posed to Israel’s northern communities.
But weeks into the latest conflict, defence minister Israel Katz invoked a different approach, one used with devastating consequences after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack: the “Rafah and Beit Hanoun model”, a reference to Israel’s wholesale levelling of cities in Gaza. “All homes in Lebanese villages near the border will be destroyed,” Katz said.
By July, Katz claimed his threat had been carried out. “Twenty-four Lebanese villages, hundreds of years old, we destroyed all the buildings,” he said, boasting that up to 20,000 homes had been demolished. “Not house by house, but entire villages.”

And again ...

In Lebanon, the wreckage extends beyond combat damage or sites Israel claims are Hizbollah infrastructure to the broad clearance of villages under Israel’s effective control. This type of destruction would be governed by the more restrictive law of occupation, said Janina Dill, an Oxford university expert on the law and ethics of war.
Under this, an occupying power may destroy civilian property only where required by “imperative military necessity”. A general claim that Hizbollah might return and use civilian structures in the future would not be enough, Dill said: “It’s deeply implausible that imperative military necessity applies to every house in a particular village.”
Preventing the return of civilians who have been forcibly displaced would also amount to a war crime, said Amnesty’s Beckerle. More than 400,000 displaced people have returned south, according to Lebanon’s government, but many remain displaced and others were “staying with friends, family or in damaged structures with lacking services”, Beckerle said.
For months, Lebanon and Israel have been engaged in US-brokered talks, with an ostensible goal of IDF withdrawal and eventual peace. But these have made little difference on the ground, as Israeli forces continue to demolish villages and set orchards ablaze, unfettered.
The negotiations have also enraged many Lebanese, who feel the state is helpless to stop the destruction of their homes. Bazzi, meanwhile, is still waiting to learn how much remains of hers.
“Our people used to say long ago: ‘If only a bird would bring me news,’” she said. But “even the birds are no longer there above the south and above Bint Jbeil. There is no one left to bring us news.”

Speaking of birds not bringing any useful news, Polonius was out and flapping about this weekend, and in his usual way, meandering down ancient history:

The header: The 1996 Parliament House riot: The violent attack on Australian democracy we choose to ignore; While the January 6 Capitol Building attack dominates global memory, Australia’s own parliament was stormed three decades ago and history has largely forgotten it.

The caption for a collage best left uncredited, and only useful because Bill will appear way down this page: The Capitol Building riot in Washington DC on January 6, 2021; ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, inset left, and prime minister John Howard, right, in 1996. Pictures: AFP, Suzanna Clarke, Michael Jones

Polonius wasted four minutes of the pond's time on a trip which might appeal to a certain hive mind demographic, though the pond hasn't the foggiest idea why.

Please join Polonius in his time machine, and remember this isn't H.G. Wells:

Next Wednesday is a day to remember – if not a memorable day. It is the 30th anniversary of what has been called the Parliament House riot of 1996.
Many Australians are aware of the riot that took place on January 6, 2021, in Washington DC. Supporters of President Donald J. Trump stormed the US Capitol Building to express their view that Trump was “robbed” of victory in the November 2020 US presidential election.
It was a dangerous affair – as most riots (whether indoors or outside) invariably are. However, the most serious casualty occurred when a Capitol Hill police officer shot and killed an unarmed female protester who happened to be a returned veteran.
As is known, congress was sitting as it was about to authorise the election of Joe Biden as US president to come into effect on January 20. The event is reported in The New York Times’ published book The January 6 Report, consisting of the findings of the select committee set up to investigate what it called “the attack on the US Capitol”.
And now back to Australia. The John Howard-led Coalition government came to office in March 1996, having defeated the Paul Keating-led Labor government in a landslide. Prime minister Howard’s first budget was set down for August 19.
The Howard government was elected on a platform of bringing the budget back into surplus, reducing Australia’s net debt, industrial relations reform and more besides. This upset the Australian labour movement.
There is very little written on this event, presumably because the trade union movement was involved in the protest that became a riot. It is my experience that most commentators on Australian history are on the left – as are most of those who write about industrial relations in their capacity as journalists or academics.

Now please stand by for that bee hive which keeps on buzzing in the old Polonial noggin:

So do not expect to find much in the left-of-centre mainstream media (Nine newspapers, the ABC, SBS, Guardian Australia) covering the event. It was, after all, a public relations disaster for the organisers.

Oh dear, and even worse the reptiles wheeled out the lying rodent, Former Prime Minister John Howard remembers Australia's waterfront dispute, 20 years later.

At this point Polonius turned to an unexpected source, a certain Luke Deer:

Unexpectedly, I have found an online article by Luke Deer titled “The Parliament House Riot of 1996” (which is based on an honours thesis at the Australian National University in 1998) to be the best contemporary account. Unexpected, since his work presents as something written from a left-wing perspective. The key point being that it is based on facts – and not driven by theory.

What's a classic reptile ploy with this? They didn't provide a link, though the essence of it could be found here. (Yes, it's a Marxist Interventions site!)

The reptiles never want any punter to leave the hive mind. They want them trapped in some kind of alternative reptile universe from which they can never leave.

What's a typical example of this? Well the reptiles did provide a link in the next paragraph to matters deemed relevant to Bill Kelty:

Before the 1996 election, Bill Kelty, the ACTU secretary, had threatened an “industrial war” if a Coalition government was elected and, as prime minister, Howard was intent on breaking the power of the trade union movement.

Some mug punters - not hardened pond herpetologists experience in the ways of the reptiles - might have clicked on that link, only to have discovered it was just another way of discovering they could never leave...

What's interesting about that? Well it shows what happens when ancient lefties get a taste of billionaire lettuce leafs.

Suddenly Bill is pretty much okay in the reptile universe because he's a Fox man:

Kelty was a responsible and talented trade union leader but inclined to militant hyperbole at times. As it turned out the protest was counter-productive.
Liberal Party MP Bob Halverson was Speaker of the House of Representatives in August 1996. Halverson was a strong Howard supporter who acted with professionalism.
Halverson reported that “the protest started peacefully enough” but soon after “a separate group of marchers entered parliamentary precincts”. This group refused to accept directions from police. They were supported by some participants in the main rally.
Both groups of protesters, some fired up by alcohol, charged at the main door of Parliament House. After a time, they both broke through and got inside.
As Deer described the occasion: “Once inside the area, demonstrators used weapons including a large hammer, wheel brace, steel trolley and stanchion torn from the internal doors to break down the internal doors.” Another group broke into the Parliament House shop and looted it.
The demonstrators dispersed within a couple of hours but not before some police were injured. Deer described the occasion as “the most forceful physical attack on the federal parliament in Australia’s history”.

Where would we be without a sign of another old unionist who's developed climate change denialist syndrome, and so has also become part of the reptile Valhalla ... Jennie George at her official appointment as ACTU President elect with then-ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty in 1995.

Two turncoats, two rats in the reptile ranks, in the one fell swoop or snap... as Polonius developed signs of the disease that the pond noted yesterday. 

It was a catastrophe, of a kind ...

Initially, Kelty supported the demonstration – apparently unaware of the violence that had occurred at Parliament House. Jennie George, the ACTU president, was reported to have looked devastated at the outcome. Some CFMEU members played a prominent part in this riot.
The current Parliament House opened in 1988. What is now called Old Parliament House, or the Museum of Australian Democracy, operated in Canberra between 1927 and 1988.
It, too, was the subject of an extreme left attack. On December 30, 2021, a fire was lit at the front of the historic building, which was severely damaged. There were staff members and visitors inside at the time.
Scott Morrison, then prime minister, and Anthony Albanese, the opposition leader, condemned the attack. But senator Lidia Thorpe, then a Green, who identifies as Indigenous, put out this message: “Seems like the colonial system is burning down. Happy New Year everyone.” Fortunately, the fire was extinguished without casualties.
Both the extreme left and the extreme right have been involved in acts of violence since the creation of the commonwealth in 1901. However, it has been slight compared with many other democracies.

Then came an AV distraction designed to terrify the hive mind ... younglings in the street, trying to do a Modi ... Sydney school-aged students were seen protesting Pauline Hanson, One Nation and the party head's policy stances.

Shocking stuff ...and naturally Polonius bolted, and provided a little nugget entirely lacking in data or substance.

The main culprit has been the extreme left. During World War I the radical Industrial Workers of the World engaged in acts of arson and murder.

Actually to be fair to right wing thugs, they've managed a pretty fair share of violence, from the glory days when Captain Francis de Groot charged up on a horse to try to slash the ribbon at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the cavortings  of the NFA and the likes of Ross "the skull" May to the recent carry on of assorted neo-Nazis, such that the 47th parliament felt the need to issue a briefing paper on Right-wing extremism in Australia.

But don't let actual data get in the way of a single Polonial experience:

I remember a violent demonstration in Melbourne in July 1968 against Australia’s commitment to defend non-communist South Vietnam in its conflict with North Vietnam. The target was the US consulate-general in Melbourne. Journalist Jack Darmody reported that “demonstrators fought savage street battles with police”.

And don't let actual data in the way of Polonius doing a free association routine and downplaying the neo-Nazis:

And now there is some evidence of a link between radical Islamists and the traditional extreme left.
In recent times Victorian Police is investigating an arson attack on a Melbourne defence manufacturer as a possible “act of terrorism”. Similar concerns have been expressed by ASIO director-general Mike Burgess in his 2026 annual threat assessment with respect to what he described as “antisemitic arsons”.
It is fashionable among the left intelligentsia to focus on alleged fascists or those claimed to be “neo-Nazis”. Certainly neo-Nazis in our midst are threatening and at times dangerous.
But concern about violence and terrorism should focus on the extreme left. For the moment at least.
It’s time to remember that the one specific attack on Australian democracy took place at the hands of the extreme left at the seat of government in Canberra three decades ago.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Polonius can focus on the extreme left all he likes, but the pond will remain focused on the biggest ratbag in the business, prone to violence on a daily basis:

Meanwhile, other catastrophists were out making melongate hay, just like the ones noted yesterday ...

Garrulous Gemma, in her grating way, joined the hive mind throng ...

Albo’s refusal to own Melongate proves the denial is worse than the sin
What he did was sexist, crude and juvenile. If a man did that in front of me, I’d walk away after possibly first baptising him with whatever beverage I had handy.
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist

The pond didn't want to go there, if only because it would have meant leaking a Leak Jr. cartoon out into the blogosphere.

Luckily the immortal Rowe was handy to evoke the sort of peril that plucky Gemma offered Albo ...

Between garrulous Gemma, safely tucked away in the archive, and the dog botherer, the pond decided his carry on should be given preference:

The header: DJ Albo’s latest spin can’t hide the rot at the top; Anthony Albanese’s pretence at infallibility exposes his judgment and character; Whenever reality does not suit this Prime Minister, he confects another version of events.

The caption for the AV distraction that started proceedings, here reduced to screen cap: Source: Nikki Osborne on YouTube

As a catastrophist of the first water, the dog botherer took yet another reptile deep dive into the affair:

Until Anthony Albanese humiliated himself, his wife Jodie Haydon, Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Rhonda Burchmore, Sanae Takaichi, Japan and Australia, I had never heard of Nikki Osborne and the Bush Deep podcast.
It seemed inconceivable that the leader of a significant country such as ours would voluntarily diminish himself and his office in such a tawdry way, so I figured he must have been caught by surprise to some degree.
Checking out the podcast, it did not take me long to ascertain that apart from its crass sexual reference the title was oxymoronic. It was oddly deflating to discover that our Prime Minister was so needy or pathetic that he had offered up himself and his office, and even the official residence, to such a platform. The first episode that came up in my search had been published only weeks before Albanese’s – it was his warm-up act, if you like, or should have been his warning sign.
Osborne interviewed Annie Knight, who has made a small fortune by bedding large numbers of strangers, including barely legal schoolies, and publicising her antics. Minutes into the podcast Osborne was discussing Knight’s session with 583 men (using the term loosely) over six hours.
Lying across a couch, legs akimbo, Osborne was re-enacting the action under instruction from Knight, who explained how she would have “one guy inside me while I was getting other people ready with my hands and my mouth”.
A few weeks later Osborne was on a couch in the Lodge interviewing our Prime Minister.
Albanese has not merely been reckless with his own standing but with the dignity of his office. We have all cringed and wondered how a married man could think it was OK to discuss his own sex life in public – most husbands and wives I have spoken with agree this would be seen as disrespectful, triggering instant discord.
Yet the Prime Minister then went on to canvass a puerile game of “shag, marry, date” involving three accomplished Australian women. Inexplicably, he capped it off by engaging in a conversation about “crap gifts” and offering up his now infamous melon story involving the first female Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi.
Gaslighting the public
Since then, he has spent considerable time and political capital denying what we all have seen, effectively gaslighting the public. His inability to be frank and contrite has led to the excruciating spectacle of his leading female cabinet ministers – the strong women helping to run the country – sacrificing their honour on the altar of Albanese’s idiocy, defending his actions and denying any disrespect or insult.
These are the same political players who ran a false and vicious campaign wrongly accusing Coalition women such as Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown of a political cover-up over the Brit­tany Higgins rape allegations.
This version of the #MeToo movement, now practised by Penny Wong, Katy Gallagher and Tanya Plibersek, seems to include a shared commitment to denying disrespect against women if it is delivered by your male superior.

Oh dear, not the Lehrmann matter for the umpteenth time. 

The reptiles are still calling them "allegations"? But billy goat butt, the matter went all the way up to the High Court, where an appeal was dismissed.

...In his judgment, Justice Lee said he was satisfied that it was "more likely than not" that Mr Lehrmann was "so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins's consent and hence went ahead with sexual intercourse without caring whether she consented".
Justice Michael Lee said that Mr Lehrmann was "so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins's consent".
In their ruling more than a year later, the appeal judges went even further than Justice Lee over the question of whether Mr Lehrmann had knowledge of Ms Higgins's lack of consent.
During the 2024 defamation trial, Justice Lee found Mr Lehrmann's conduct amounted to "non-advertent recklessness".
But the appeal judges accepted a contention from Network Ten and Ms Wilkinson that the primary judge ought to have found Mr Lehrmann had "actual knowledge" that Ms Higgins did not consent to sex.

You don't have to be interested in the behaviour of Liberal staffers - the pond's tends to nil - to see that the matter went beyond the allegation phase, partially because of Lehrmann's behaviour.

But that's a long time reptile ploy, all the more ironical for berating Albo for an inability to be frank and contrite, when the reptiles resolutely refuse to name Lehrmann, while reducing the matter to Higgins' "allegations".

There was doubled up dog botherer with the AV distraction:

News24 host Chris Kenny reacts to Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek providing cover for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comments on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s diplomatic gift. “Anthony Albanese is getting smaller every day,” Mr Kenny said. “Sadly for his colleagues, they now diminish themselves providing cover for him. "You only had to see the minister for social services on television this morning, defending what any self-respecting feminist might call indefensible."

The dog botherer followed up that with an infinite jest:

To be fair to Albanese, he will always be regarded as a Labor hero. That is a status earned for keeps by taking power from opposition and then winning a landslide re-election.

To be fair? Such an excellent fancy, as if the current melongate jihad was in any way fair, with reptiles piling on in a way that makes many of their other jihads seem like kindergarten affairs.

Yet it's such a one note saga that inevitably the dog botherer got tired of the game, and like other reptile catastrophists, began searching for other matters with which to develop a litany:

Yet across the country now he is a greatly diminished figure. Albanese has become our incredible shrinking Prime Minister.
On the night he first took office he surprised the nation with his first grand promise: to deliver an Indigenous voice to parliament. He took a detailed proposal built on years of hard-won consensus and trashed it through political arrogance.
His hubris manifests time and again as denial. Whenever reality does not suit this Prime Minister, he confects another version of events.
When he fell awkwardly off a stage during last year’s election campaign, apparently the eyes and cameras of the nation had deceived us. “I stepped back one step, I didn’t fall off the stage, just one leg went down,” Albanese said, “but I was sweet.”

You see? From a moment of silliness to national disgrace, with Dania wheeled in to repeat her "falling off the stage  routine: Sky News host Danica De Giorgio has taken aim at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for attempting to downplay his fall of a stage in Cessnock. The Prime Minister told ABC Radio that he did not fall, but instead ‘stepped back one step’. “He fell off the stage, then lied about it,” Ms De Giorgio said. “This is the guy who wants us to trust him?”

Still with ancient history? That's what you need when doing a reptile jihad by way of litany.

From there it was just a matter of expanding the litany into a catastrophic recitation of sundry dooms:

Playing a name association game, he responded to the name Grace Tame with “um, difficult”. But when Tame suggested this answer conjured sexism, the Prime Minister said, “She has had a difficult life and that was what I was referring to.”
In March this year during a visit to Lakemba Mosque in southwestern Sydney, Albanese was heckled vigorously by men inside and others yelled abuse outside when he was escorted to his car under heavy security. Later he said reports of this strife were “simply not accurate” and that “overwhelmingly the reception was incredibly positive” as he dismissed the negative reaction to “a couple of hecklers inside”.
Each time he denies the obvious it is like putting the woollens through the wash; the Prime Minister shrinks. His pretence at infallibility exposes his judgment and character.
And then there is his reliability. His honesty.
Albanese promised not to meddle with the legislated tax cuts he inherited from the Morrison Coalition government. Then he changed them, undoing the cuts at the top marginal rate.
He promised not to fiddle with negative gearing or adjust capital gains tax. But he has done both, increasing the tax burden on everyone except those, like him, who had already taken advantage of the rules.
Repeatedly Albanese promised to cut electricity prices – by $275 a year. Instead, they have gone up by about three times that amount and he sheeted home responsibility not to his broken promise but to RepuTex’s failed modelling.
Last year the Prime Minister attended the Garma Indigenous festival in northeast Arnhem Land and vowed to attend “every single year that I have the great honour to be Australia’s Prime Minister”. This year, the first year after making the promise, he did not go – he had a week off instead.

Every thought crime in the reptile playbook came tumbling out ... Anthony Albanese at Garma in 2024. Picture: Yothu Yindi Foundation/Leicolhn McKellar via NewsWire

And so to the final bout of catastrophism:

Rinse and repeat. Our incredible shrinking Prime Minister is no longer fit for purpose – it is like they have discovered an Ozempic for character.
I am conscious that what I am saying amounts to a personal attack, a detailed assault on the political character of our leader.
Yet this is warranted, is borne out by the examples I cite, and it matters.
The policy failings are clear: record spending, record debt, record public sector growth, high inflation, low growth, disappearing productivity, self-imposed energy harm, weak on antisemitism and Islamist extremism, expanding union power and diminished standing in global affairs.
To right all this demands leadership credentials, sound policy instincts and a capacity to level with the public to take them with you on your chosen course of action.
It is all unfolding at a time of worrisome strategic circumstances in eastern Europe, the Middle East and the East Asian hemisphere. And the social and economic impacts of the digital age and artificial intelligence continue to confound us.
Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard and Peter Costello showed the gravitas and built the trust to tackle imposing tasks. Albanese gets smaller every day, juggling melons and double entendres on a couch in the Lodge.

To mangle Sam Johnson, "A quibble poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra melon for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it."

And now, this being a Sunday meditation, to hell with length.

What's torturing the soul of the lizard Oz editorialist, heart of reptile darkness?

There was the tragedy of white men ...

Um, cancel that. They need a reptile perspective.

So much suffering, but yet came more because the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to help out the Canavan caravan ...

Of course. It's all about climate change, and the reef in splendid shape, and never anyone mind all that talk of Europe on fire, and sundry other countries ablaze. 

If you live in bizarro world, none of that's happening.

And finally there was a bleat worthy of Dame Groan herself ...

We'll all be rooned by Xmas, please allow the beefy boofhead from Goulburn to show the way. Why with treaties abandoned, we'll soon be able to build substandard homes and send furriners packing, and won't that be a fine thing.

In the interim, perhaps the reptiles could show the way by sacking the lizard Oz editorialist, because the pond can't understand how the three outings above in any way enhanced the nation's productivity.

On the other hand, it could be worse, at least if you look at a country where its unhinged ruler is cultivated by Faux Noise:

Hope and indignation springs eternal in the hearts of Lord Haw Haws ...

Quelle catastrophe. The bromancer and the Ughmann provide most excellent examples of the lizard Oz's catastrophic ways ...

 

As well as being professional jihadists, the reptiles at the lizard Oz are professional catastrophists ... and all hands were on deck this day to do their duty ...

Top of the digital "news" page ma came this ...

It’s official: Albanese has hit rock bottom
The crown of Labor’s modern-day emperor is slipping as he approaches a moment of reckoning.

The pond regrets that it was quickly dropped down to second place by the news of Jason Arday's death - didn't that jihad produce a satisfyingly catastrophic result? - but still that image of the skulking ratbags will haunt in the hive mind...

What a disaster, quelle catastrophe, but what made it "official"?

Geoff Chambers had deemed it so, and if Geoff says it, it must be true, but when you read the full piece, not once was "official" actually mentioned...

The actual heading? Albanese’s moment of reckoning will define Labor’s long term direction.

So it's official, the art of the reptile sub-editor as jihadist has defined the lizard Oz's long term direction.

With the Chambered round safely in the intermittent archive, the pond could quickly move past an offering by a boiling over Rice ...

EXCLUSIVE
Trial of Bornstein and Labor: ‘secret, unfathomable betrayal of whistleblower’
A botched Labor plan to sideline a whistleblower has entangled some of its most influential figures – and high-profile lawyer Josh Bornstein – in claims of betrayal and cover-up.
By Stephen Rice

Want stories of the ICAC follies?

Sorry, that's only to be found outside the lizard Oz's top "news".

Car park chaos and Dallas’ dictionary of lost words: Two days of ‘iterations’ at ICAC

Want stories about the world on fire? There's an abundance of them out in the real world ...

How did you get lost and land here?

Any of those other places will do for signs of genuine catastrophe ...

Counting the cost of Europe’s summer of fire, drought and lost harvests

Back to the professional catastrophists, and today the pond turned to just two of the lizard Oz's best exponents of the art (some say it's a science)...

This required walking past snappy Tom, who in a moment of reptile madness, pretended he wasn't in the catastrophist game ...

Get a grip, people, mini hit to house prices not the ‘main game’
Buying and selling property is not the country’s path to prosperity
It’s time to get over this collective mania with the up-escalator of residential property and focus on the real changes and sacrifices needed to deal with our economic funk.
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist

You need the occasional heretic to confirm even more deeply the catastrophist faith, and there is no better exponent of that faith than the bromancer ...

The header: Albanese fails to learn the key apology lesson mastered by Hawke and Howard; Anthony Albanese’s stubborn refusal to apologise over the Bush Deep podcast scandal has turned a simple mistake into a self-inflicted political catastrophe.

The caption for a man looking completely bewildered and in urgent need of a correctional homily straight from the bromancer: Anthony Albanese will look to revive his standing as PM as parliament enters a new sitting period. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

The bromancer began his piece with an impeccable quotation up there with Our Henry's devotion to Thucydides:

“Oh, it seems to me that sorry seems to be the hardest word.”
– Elton John, 1976

There followed a six minute or so exposition on the theme.

The pond makes only a few preliminary observations on the art of the professional catastrophist.

First, keep on making a mountain out of a molehill.

Sure, the discreet Japanese had attempted to go minor key, as reported in the Graudian.

Japanese ambassador to Australia downplays Albanese melon gaffe as Taylor claims PM has ‘stuffed up’; Coalition demands police investigate apparent leaking of diplomatic cable to newspaper but Labor calls it a ‘silly political stunt’

Ignore the farcical quality of the melongate jihad. Keep on pushing that wheelbarrow.

Second, remember that these are the worst of times. There has always been a golden age, just not now. Drag in as many examples of long lost golden ages as you can find, and no matter if it features Bob Hawke, once the victim of many reptile jihads, or John Howard, the man who lost his seat and government all in one go. 

You can't go on a catastrophistclubbing day without a golden age club or three.

Third, make sure you dig through the art of the apology, perhaps even turning to the likes of Jane Austen. You yourself might never have apologised for the many stupidities, contradictions and rampant hypocrisies in your own pieces, but never mind, righteous indignation is your stock in trade and you must maintain the rage.

Say what? Jane Austen? Surely not? Ah, the pond sees, grasshopper, that you still have much to learn about the ways of the professional catastrophist, the astonishing range of references they bring to their task.

With that in mind, let's see how the bromancer performs ... and remember, it helps to have "catastrophe" in the headline and in the opening sentence, even if the catastrophic abuse of the English language and any sensible definition of "catastrophe" must be apparent to anyone standing outside this current catastrophegate...

Everyone makes mistakes, including prime ministers like Anthony Albanese. Stubbornly refusing to apologise for them, as Albanese is doing, turns mere mistakes into epic catastrophes, morally and politically.
Albanese’s bizarre refusal to apologise over his frankly incomprehensible remarks about Japan’s Prime Minister, in the smutty, crass, juvenile and utterly wretched Bush Deep podcast he did, in which he also chose Kylie Minogue from a list as one he’d like to “shag, marry or date”, casts grave doubt over his judgment.

Quick, shift any disqualifying disclaimers into the small print in the attached AV offering ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he apologised for “elements of the podcast” and insists he doesn’t do interviews with his arms folded. “That characterisation is not right, and if you look at any interviews I’ve done, I don’t do them with my arms folded,” Mr Albanese told News24. “I apologised for elements of the podcast; I gave an unequivocal apology. “But there is nothing I have done with the Japanese prime minister, importantly, whose visit was a really warm one … we got to know each other and build a really strong relationship through that.”

Did the man hint that he'd given an unequivocal apology? Strike that out at once ...

If as PM you can’t navigate a smutty podcast, how can you navigate war and peace? Albanese has embarrassed not only himself but the nation, as well as the leader of our closest friend in Asia, but also all his sad female ministerial colleagues who have had, one after another, to immolate their credibility and integrity on the funeral pyre of his insecure political ego.
Whereas a simple apology early on would have been clean, clear and, given how forgiving Australians are, probably politically effective. Albanese seems astonishingly stubborn about not apologising, and stubborn in the dumbest possible way. (I have adult sons and advised each at their wedding to master seven words: Yes dear, I was wrong, you’re right. If seven was too many, two could also do the trick: I’m sorry.)

After that touchingly silly personal touch, time for the golden age mantra, with a list of those who might - or might not - be a part of a golden age parade ...

Apologies are a big deal for successful political leaders. Two politicians Albanese has thought a lot about, Gough Whitlam and Donald Trump, famously didn’t apologise. It’s a pathology in both men, two of the most arrogant figures democratic politics has known.
The most successful democratic politicians master apology. Bob Hawke, John Howard, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Peter Beattie, Bob Carr – all immensely successful government leaders who used apology strategically and tactically, which is not to say their apologies were insincere.
Albanese has described Hawke as Australia’s greatest prime minister. That might be overstating things but Hawke was certainly very good. If Albanese thinks Hawke the greatest, it’s strange that it’s Whitlam’s policies Albanese implements while rejecting pro-market deregulation, supply-side reforms and balanced budgets as Hawke produced.

Cue a once reviled bloke, now elevated to golden age pantheon, at least if he can be used to club the current incumbent ... Former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke in 1990.

Once you've established a golden age hero, mine it for all its worth and more ...

Until near the end, Hawke’s approval ratings were mostly stratospheric. Albanese’s are disastrous. Hawke was the supreme master of apology, in small things as well as big. Once, in the 1980s, he imitated and lampooned the upper-class accent of John Spender (Allegra’s father), then a Liberal frontbencher. Hawke realised that was crass and wrong. He came back to the House of Representatives and apologised. Spender accepted and said the apology did Hawke nothing but credit.
Hawke apologised over big things, too. As he prepared for national leadership, he told the Australian people he’d drunk too much. But he intended to do better.
Across the board, Australians admired him for this. I remember my father, an instinctive supporter of the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party, who became very conservative, deeply respected Hawke for just those honest admissions.

Drag in an example of the golden age god as a family man ... Hawke with daughter Rosslyn Dillon in 2013. Picture: AAP

Weep along with your golden age hero ...

Like all national leaders, like all human beings, Hawke was a complex, contradictory mix. He publicly wept over his daughter’s drug situation and his failures as a parent. In his memoirs he wrote of learning of Rosslyn’s heroin addiction: “I felt numb with guilt now as I wondered whether she would have exposed herself to the dangers of the drug culture if I had been more available.”
That’s not a humble-brag. That’s genuine regret. Hawke had a quality Albanese seems to lack – tremendous psychological security. To apologise is not an act of weakness but an act of courage. Hawke had courage.
Albanese’s backers sometimes try to promote him as a Labor version of Howard, the underestimated everyman. The political comparison is misplaced because Howard, unlike Albanese, enacted economic reform that made Australia wealthier and stronger. Howard had the courage to take controversial tax changes to an election rather than simply reverse all his previous commitments.
The comparison falls down in another way, too. One of Howard’s great strengths was that he spoke directly, in plain language. Albanese these days barely manages a straight answer to even the most mildly disobliging questions.

You see? There's simply no way he can match up to those golden age warriors, even if the plainly spoken lying rodent managed to lose both seat and government, a tad careless in the Oscar Wilde sense.

Now quick, offer an AV distraction ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has detailed what was discussed in his recent call with US President Donald Trump.

Now use mad king Donald, Faux Noise's favourite, to berate the local ...

Albanese certainly doesn’t model himself on Trump but he or his minders seem to have taken two very bad political technique lessons from the US President. The first is to seek out low-engagement voters through edgy, sometimes strange podcasts and the like. This has been central to Trump’s success, but that’s because voting isn’t compulsory in the US. Getting people to the polls who don’t usually vote is a big part of Trump’s winning formula. In a parliamentary system, such behaviour can easily make a prime minister look shabby and duplicitous.
And don’t forget even Trump won once, then lost decisively, before winning again. His approval rating now is about 34 per cent.
The other lesson Albanese takes from Trump is to shape endless content for social media. It’s likely some of what seems a neurotic, if not manic, unwillingness by Albanese to answer questions is a deliberate decision not to furnish certain images and sounds that could be used against him on social media. Thus his office issued a one-line apology to Minogue, but Albanese never spoke the apology in front of cameras.

Mined mad king Donald enough? Return to that other ancient hero, and remember never to practise what you might preach ...

His social media advisers are no doubt telling him not to furnish a moment of weakness for the cameras. That’s strikingly bad advice. Apologies that are straightforward, personal, unambiguous, take responsibility and promise better in the future are often extremely effective.
In Howard’s first, unsuccessful leadership stint he too was stubborn and hated admitting mistakes. But he grew in leadership. He made a silly remark in 1988 suggesting Asian immigration was too high. Among many others, I was critical of his remarks. Howard recognised the mistake straight away but was reluctant to correct his position. It played a role in his losing the Liberal leadership. By 1994, Howard was preparing to come back as leader and defeat Paul Keating at an election.

Throw in some nonsense about the lying rodent being sensible, an abuse of the English language, unless you think that "sensible" actually means bigoted ...‘I can’t for the life of me see why we can’t have a sensible debate about the level of immigration’ … John Howard in his Sydney office. Picture: Adam Taylor

Throw in another personal touch, and remember to cite Bill as an exemplar ...

He wanted to put the 1988 incident to bed. He got in touch with me and, at his suggestion, we did a big interview. It was a huge front-page story under the banner headline: “I was wrong on Asians, says Howard.” In his memoirs Howard recounts all this and says he’d gone the whole distance to erase hurt feelings over “my (Howard’s) serious error of judgment back in 1988”.
Incidentally, Howard handles all this with supreme graciousness, and frank self-criticism, in his memoirs. The dynamic is that Howard recognised his own mistake and far from running from it, hiding, getting others to take the flak, he came and dealt with it directly by apologising and learning the episode’s lessons.
Clinton apologised profusely for lying about the Monica Lewinsky episode. Earlier in his career he apologised for his unsuccessful first term as Arkansas governor. Having lost office he didn’t defend a poor record but said he’d learnt from his mistakes. He then won back the governorship and never lost again.

This is how it's done ... score a blow job and become a reptile hero ... Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky.

And so to quiet the noise emanating from all those sceptics and disbelievers.

Why did you doubt the bromancer's ability to wangle Jane Austen into this tale of a "catastrophe"?

Not all apologies work. They’re not effective if forced out of someone at the last minute. Apologising for someone else’s historic crimes is just patting yourself on the back. Apologising “if anyone took offence” is also pathetic. You’re apologising for other people’s hypersensitivity.
It’s difficult for Albanese to apologise now because so many of his ministers have defended him. But as long as footage of the grotesque podcast continues to be shown, the sheer ridiculousness of his position will remain unresolved. Better if he now said something like: “I’ve thought a lot about this episode and I now see that doing that podcast was a serious error of judgment. I meant to convey no innuendo in my remarks about the gracious gift of the Japanese Prime Minister. But I now see my words were clumsy, ambiguous and easily open to misinterpretation. The fault was mine and I take full responsibility for it.”
The greatest literary apology came from Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen so enjoyed the spectacle of a powerful man apologising over his treatment of a woman that she has Darcy apologise by letter, as well as in person, and repeatedly. Darcy says at one point: “I am sorry, exceedingly sorry …” He doesn’t let himself off lightly: “My behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”
Darcy won Elizabeth with his apology. Everybody loves him now. Imagine if he’d begun instead: “I don’t accept the assertion …”

Quelle catastrophe ... and for those who don't understand, AI will explain ...

Put it another ways, that AI might better understand catastrophes d'origine reptilian ...

For the second example of a professional jihadist at work, the pond will turn to the Ughmann ...

Early this weekend the Ughmann was out and about co-authoring an EXCLUSIVE, second from the top in the "news" section ...

EXCLUSIVE
Wong’s edict to universities: axe China research links
Just weeks after the Pentagon blacklisted Shandong University, the Foreign Minister has axed the Australian National University’s joint venture with the Chinese institution on national security grounds.
By Natasha Bita and Chris Uhlmann

Again you actually had to read the real headline to get the context...

Penny Wong axes ANU joint venture with Chinese university linked to nuclear weapons

But having a bit of Bita in that beat up ruined the art of the professional catastrophist.

To admire the Ughmann in his native habitat, he must be studied alone ... and sorry, it's melongate again that's the springboard...

The header: Albanese’s melons joke risks $160bn Japanese investment — and opens a path for Canada; As Anthony Albanese puts his foot in his mouth, Canada is poised to eat our lunch.

Just in any case anyone in the hive mind had forgotten the saga, the reptiles thoughtfully provided a reminder: Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi gifted Anthony Albanese Japanese melons and it’s been a diplomatic disaster ever since. Picture: X / @takaichi_sanae

The Ughmann also managed to wring some six minutes of hysteria out of the notion that Canucks were a dire and immediate predator threat.

"Poised", so to catastrophist speak.

Elbows up Canada, you've got your problems with mad king Donald, but apparently they're minor up against the dire threat you pose to us (or so the Ughmann says).

The pond should have added a fourth item to the art of the skilled catastrophist.

That's the litany.

You take a simple affair, such as "melongate", and wring it until the pips squeak, but you also use it as a trigger for a litany of disasters ...

Travel is a great leveller and one of the things it levels is any notion that most of the world gives much of a toss about what goes on in Australia.
Last year the two stories that really resonated worldwide were the shocking massacre atBondi Beach and the social media ban for those under 16. The Albanese government’s stab at trying to unplug children’s brains from online toxins is the one domestic policy that other nations are copying or monitoring. Beyond that our dangerous wildlife usually gets more coverage than our politics. Shark and crocodile attacks almost always make news overseas.
At the time of writing the local story that appears to have travelled most widely this year is Queensland’s proposal to host the 2032 Olympic rowing events in the “crocodile-infested” Fitzroy River. By luck or design this move is a stroke of genius as it has raised the profile of Rockhampton in a way no tourism campaign ever could. The story was picked up by international newswires and sprayed around the globe.
Hopefully there is a team tasked with ensuring there are semi-regular updates about the development of the course and baroque plans to keep the rowers safe. Maybe float the idea of building crocodile fences, release pictures of surf lifesavers armed with crocodile stun guns, provoke a fight over crocodile culls and then parade our green energy superpower credentials by announcing plans for a solar-powered submersible drone fleet steered by artificial intelligence to safely herd the creatures away from the athletes.
Or maybe lean into the danger. Given there are already kayaking events that include rapids and numerous obstacles, someone should pitch the notion of inserting a crocodile pool just before the finish line. There are years of stories here.
Beyond that, in several weeks travelling Europe in July, I can report only two Australian stories ran prominently in the offshore media: Barnaby Joyce yelling at his dog during a TV interview and the Prime Minister saying he would shag, marry and date Kylie Minogue.

Again make sure that any talk of an actual apology only appears in the small print accompanying the AV distraction ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has apologised for comments he made about wanting to “shag” pop star Kylie Minogue during a podcast last week. Mr Albanese took part in a game called “shag, marry, date” on the programme alongside comedian Nikki Osborne. His office later issued a statement saying: “I apologise unequivocally for the comments.”

Now do your best to turn common gossip and fleeting headlines into a catastrophe, and to help out the reptiles will strip you of any illustrations ... quelle ennui ...

This is obviously not a scientific study given I was reading only the news in English but it’s a fair bet there was little talk of Australia in Europe’s many tongues. That these two stories did echo overseas is a poor reflection on both the state of our politics and what animates the media, and the public, worldwide.
The Joyce dog story falls into the curiosity category of international media interest in our affairs. It fits the stereotype of Australia being a remote, quaint and often bemusing outpost of quasi-civilisation. And the shagging story got a run only because Britain has an abiding interest in all things Kylie. If Albanese had confessed a secret desire to bed some obscure domestic starlet the story would have sunk at Sydney Heads.
Are we being served, Australia?
Intrigued at how Albanese came to disclose this nugget, I rummaged through Australian news sites to find the source of the revelation. As everyone now knows it was on a videocast with comedian Nikki Osborne titled Bush Deep. A cursory glance at the content of pre-Albanese interviews was enough to discern that this show’s DNA is drawn from the Mrs Slocombe “my pussy” school of comedy.
Trapped in a show he should never have been on, Albanese was asked what was the “most crap” gift he had ever received on an overseas jaunt. Scrounging for an amusing anecdote, his mind clutched at the “pretty strange” offering of perfect Shizuoka Crown melons from Sanae Takaichi. Endearingly, Osborne did not seem to know that the Japanese Prime Minister was a woman. “She brought two, as you do,” Albanese rhymed, juggling imaginary melons, channelling his inner Benny Hill and nailing the ethos of the podcast.
Just in case some innocent missed the dubious double entendre, Osborne underlined it, “She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson”, as the whole experience went tits up for the Prime Minister.
Let’s pause here and consider mitigating circumstances. It is perfectly understandable that any modern leader would seek to engage with all manner of new media because the old ones have been bleeding audience share for nearly two decades. If you want to speak to young Australians it is not on conventional news programs.
But in making a decision about where the Prime Minister should spend his precious time surely the first consideration is risk and reward. Respect for the dignity of the office should also be somewhere high up on the list. Maybe taste? These are matters of judgment and everyone makes mistakes. Albanese admitted to one by issuing an unequivocal apology to Minogue.

At this point, the reptiles broke into italic print for this insight ...

What’s galling about his endless equivocation on the Japanese gift gag is not just the original sin but the litany of lies and hypocrisy that followed.

So it was just a venial sin, and now it's become an immortal sin? That's a fine example of the unreformed seminarian at work, and meanwhile you've avoided all mention of actual catastrophes ...

Remember, we're dealing with the art of the catastrophic litany. 

How many catastrophes would you like?

The Labor Party closed ranks to back the Prime Minister’s claim that any smut seen was entirely in the eyes of the beholder. This is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has watched it and yet more evidence of a government assuming we are mugs.
Apply this simple test: what would Labor’s panzer division of female MPs have said if Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton had uttered anything approaching what Albanese said about Minogue or Takaichi? How would the taxpayer-funded discrimination industry have responded? What would the earnest evangelists in the progressive media have done with the story?
Labor has pioneered weaponising any real or perceived slights against women by conservative men. Remember how Tony Abbott’s wink during a talkback call with a phone sex worker was interpreted? Or the storm that followed the puerile “meow” uttered by Tasmanian senator David Bushby at Penny Wong during a Senate hearing?
So spare us the whining about getting flak over this far more substantial lapse of judgment.
Japan has demonstrated how much store it sets in the relationship with Australia by throwing Albanese a lifeline, but the wording of the first paragraph of its official statement on the incident speaks volumes: “We have been informed by the Australian side that Prime Minister Albanese did not make the comments in the way that has been reported.”
This shows a commendable mastery of English and diplomacy: we will take the Prime Minister at his word.
The dinner that helped make us rich
Words and deeds matter and Tokyo’s list of concerns about the kind of friend it has in Canberra is piling up. It also has noted Albanese’s decision to prefer a gig with Spotify over a gala dinner in Parliament House to honour the 50th anniversary of an Australia-Japan treaty that transformed the relationship between the two nations.
That relationship helped make us rich. The latest figures show Japan was the second largest direct foreign investor in Australia ($159.5bn) in 2024. Japanese money and Japanese customers helped build Australia’s liquefied natural gas export industry. It is also a major customer for our black coal exports. Albanese leveraged these supplies when he toured the region to shore up our liquid fuel supplies when the third Gulf war flared.
When a cash-strapped Queensland raised its top royalty rate on coal from 15 per cent to 40 per cent without consultation, a shock wave ripped through corporate Japan.
For the first time Tokyo began to wonder about sovereign risk in Australia and the move brought a rare rebuke from the then Japanese ambassador, Shingo Yamagami. Now, the plan for a domestic gas reservation and talk of a federal gas tax has Japan wondering about whether it should hedge its bets. Other markets beckon. The Australian Financial Review reported this week that Australia “risks missing out on lucrative new gas contracts with Japan as uncertainty over Canberra’s energy policy and pressure from Washington to buy more American LNG reshape the competition for Japan’s future energy supply”.
Australia is the largest supplier of LNG to Japan but across the next 15 years the contracts that underpinned that relationship will expire.
This column has reported before that after he spoke in Australia’s parliament in March Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney flew to Tokyo, where he pledged that “Canada is in a position where we can double our LNG exports by the end of this decade, and double again by the end of the following decade.”
Carney was feted here for his leadership on middle-power diplomacy as the world deals with the growing military might of China and the trashing of alliances by Donald Trump. He said Australia and Canada should work together as “strategic cousins”. But our Canadian cousin wants to pick the Japanese fruit Australia spent a half-century cultivating. And there are only so many melons to go around.

And there you go. Expiring contracts and LNG, and never mind the genuine catastrophe, a world in fire.

Want other examples of bamboozling the hive mind by suggesting catastrophe when it's actually a kind of distilled essence of performative comedy?

Easy ...

Want an example of a catastrophe working its way through the system, as shown by the pond's cheerful use of AI?

Easy ...

Remember, all this is as easy as brain surgery to a reptile expert in the art of catastrophe ...