In which the pond gets personal with big Mal and says farewell for the moment as Melbourne in mid-winter calls ...

(Above: the pond has no idea of the provenance of the above image but thanks the correspondent for forwarding it, combining as it does a natural disaster and the Catholic Church's attitude to useful birth control devices).

Dear Malcolm,

I hope you don't mind the familiar first name. We once talked and though you wouldn't remember, you were even then the convivial, scheming and ambitiously self-aggrandising ponce you've stayed true to ever since.

But now you're a little longer in the tooth, have you ever wondered at your legacy? You are, at the moment, participating in the most hate-filled, fear-mongering, divisive and offensive government in many a decade.

Do you imagine that by participating, you ameliorate and soften the blows, and help provide good governance?

That's the sort of logic that sustained the quislings and the participants in the Vichy government.

Have you ever wondered what you will do when you turn, as inevitably happens to roosters, when the political feather duster calls, to post-political life?

Will you become a Malcolm Fraser, driven by guilt further left than many lefties, trying to expiate your many political crimes while in office?

Will you do a Bob Hawke and turn to business, and perhaps do deals with dictatorships such as the one in Burma, while applying a peg to nose?

Will you become a wan angry letter-writing aesthete like Paul Keating and assist in producing abominations like Barangaroo, and its mighty casino complex?

Perhaps you might turn into a Gra Gra and start scribbling for the reptiles and become a Swiss bank account loving reptile television personality?

Or will you, irony of ironies, become a resident wet at the ABC, like Amanda Vanstone, and blather on about various matters, knowing that your words are now irrelevant and useless, and that what you did in office will be your true legacy?

One thing seems certain to the pond. You have spent your time facilitating this government, in the hope that at some time the crown will slip from the current king and you will be able to snatch it up and put it on your own head.

But the odds are extremely high that you will never wear the crown. All that you have done - debasing the NBN, consorting with climate denialists, assisting with the ruination of education, promoting foreign adventurism, fellow travelling with gay haters, and now launching a vicious assault on the ABC - will have to stand on their own, without any redeeming gestures you might have been able to apply if you had become king.

Instead you will be known as the man who would be king, and who sold his principles for a mess of thick, tasteless pottage, and in the end, you will be judged for having committed many very, very serious errors of judgment.

No doubt you will have plenty of time to reflect on all this. Perhaps you could share your wisdom, acquired too late in life to be useful, with Bill Shorten, another man whose ambition vastly out-vaulted his integrity and his ability.

yours in sorrow,

The Pond

And now, since the pond is off to Melbourne, this will be the last post for a number of days, depending on how well the pond survives the culture shock. Melbourne in mid-winter? And they wonder why it's called loon pond ...

Silly delusional Melburnians, some of them Billists, and just as aggrandising and self-promoting as big Mal:

Yes, there's a lot more at Fairfax here, and that's where interstate rivalry gets you, somehow thinking that biggest is best, when all it means is a terrifying urban sprawl of a limitless kind which the pond will shortly be driving through, marvelling at the jungle horror.

The prospect is even more terrifying than the agitated reptiles at the lizard Oz.

The reptiles were up to their old and predictable form this day. Look big Mal, $330 million for the castle you will never rule in:

Ah, the good old days of Versailles still live and walk amongst us ...

And look big Mal, down there at the bottom of the page, a headline you've helped promote, you've helped deliver:

Is that fully sick or what?

Of course online they've shortened it a little, but look how they dance and mock at the notion of free speech. How remote, how lost was that campaign about 18C:

Yep, you won't find any jokes about the reptiles routinely allowing extremists of the right wing hack kind to litter their pages with vile rhetoric and outrageous claims, because you see, like an eastern suburbs ponce, it's the devine right of bolting Murdochians to be as outrageous and extremist as they can, and no one should mind.

Never mind, the pond dutifully followed the link to Gra Gra - well it's easier than locating the average Swiss bank account - and found a lot of hand-wringing and worrying about the children, before these two concluding pars:

As feeble and as pathetic as ever, but whoah, Mallah. Have you thought about using the pond as your agent? We'd have to insist on 20% because of all the Murdochian-inspired death threats, but we could make a fortune flogging your interviews to the Murdochians as the resident mad Mallah ....

But now for a special treat. You see big Mal the hapless dumb Victorian Liberals - too dumb really to be allowed to conduct a chook raffle, let alone a decent fund raising - really belled the cat, and revealed the genuine reasons for the current hysteria:

Scurrilous, outrageous, pathetic, nakedly obvious, but the special treat is that the AFR has for the moment let Laura Tingle step outside the paywall, and so the hoi polloi can read The Coalition has found that fear is a powerful weapon against Labor.

Now that header might seem like the bleeding obvious, but with big Mal also playing the fear game, it's good that there's an alternative read, instead of having to endure yet another round with the reptiles.

Regarding the Victorians, amongst whom the pond will shortly be, though happily not cackling Victorian Liberal geese doing their hysterical chicken little routines. Can geese be chickens? Where can you park an ostrich at the climate change talks?

Do you have a sense of apparent irony big Mal?

How does it feel to be part of a government that has relentlessly used fear and fear-mongering as its primary tactic?

Terrorism bingo!

Was there ever a more tragic photo op, misusing and abusing national security than that very recent effort?

But you're one of the players, big Mal, of terrorism bingo.

Now look the pond in the eye. Are you man enough to admit it? For heaven's sake, man, face it, the poodle is your colleague!

Or are you too wrapped up in your quisling, facilitating lifestyle, still yearning for the crown that will never come your way?

Look at the photo above. You're not in it, but you're just out of shot, because, you see, you're one of the mob standing behind the fearless leader saying you've got his back, and as a result, you look and sound as pathetic and as tragic as any punter running their coins through the slot machines of life ...

Aren't you supposed to be one of the adults? Do you know what the child is doing when you turn your back?

Have you taken a look at today's Pope cartoon? And remember, you can look through his back catalogue at his gallery here...

And so with a yippee ki yay, the pond is off to Melbourne: