In which the pond worries about the Devine's descent into madness but is saved by the bouffant one's safe pair of 'do nothing' hands ...

(Above: and more David Rowe here).

It's the business of the pond to measure the temperature in the herpetarium on a daily basis. Too much heat and the reptiles are likely to go mad. Too little and the blood begins to chill.

There are signs that the Devine is becoming increasingly rabid, weird and demented. Her response to the distressing NT footage?

Drug-addicted, hopeless mothers having babies they can’t look after to a string of feckless, often violent men, is a recipe for intergenerational disaster. It’s not as if radical solutions aren’t on the table. It’s just no one in government has the courage or interest in taking them seriously.

And what might these radical solutions be that we need to take seriously?

Jeremy Sammut, from the Centre for Independent Studies, made the moral case for adoption to rescue Australia’s abused underclass children in his book last year, “The Madness Of Australian Child Protection”. 

Indeed, indeed. What we need, above all else, is another stolen generation. That'll really fix things. Not that there's ever been a stolen generation, the pond hastens to add ...

In another searing recent book, “No contraception no dole: tackling intergenerational welfare,” former Labor minister Gary Johns, says the child abuse crisis is so urgent that contraception needs to be compulsory for those on welfare, “to help crack intergenerational reproduction of strife.” Both authors have made a serious study of how to arrest the seemingly intractable crisis of child abuse. Yet their prescriptions have been ignored or damned as illiberal.

Indeed, indeed, But when will the pond's prescription - contraception needs to be compulsory for those employed by News Corp - be taken seriously rather than ignored or damned as illiberal?

Just think about it. The reader abuse crisis is now so urgent that surely contraception needs to be compulsory for those living on Chairman Rupert welfare payments.

Both Gary Johns and the pond are only following in the immortal steps of Jonathan Swift's 1729 A Modest Proposal ...

If you're not certain about Swift's solution, might the pond suggest the addition of a little garlic, ginger, pepper and chili?

Somehow - it could only be done with a leap and a Devine bound -  we then move from events in the NT to the live cattle trade to the Devine rabbiting on about greyhounds, and won't someone think of the greyhounds and ...

It’s a sweet vocation to campaign for the welfare of animals. But we have distorted the soft-hearted compassion of teenage girls into a moral cause greater than any other, except perhaps climate change. 
The problem is that animal rights groups have moved into extreme territory where animal rights are equal to human rights, where animal life is as precious as human life, where animals and humans can have sex as long as it is consensual, where animals are equal to people.

So suddenly distressing events in the NT are conflated with climate change, and animals and humans having consensual sex?

The Devine ends with an impassioned cry, a howling at the moon ...

The burgeoning of animal rights law as an industry fuels this madness. The result is that outrages against human children rarely get the attention they deserve, and if they do, it’s all too late.

Indeed, indeed, it is simply impossible to chew gum and rub the tummy at the same time, and all this talk about animals and cruelty simply distracts attention from the munchkins.

Remember, if you happen to feed your dog or cat, it can only be done in a way that puts your mite in mortal peril ...

If that isn't full-blown weird, the pond would like better examples. And then, at the bottom of the Devine outing, came this defence of the Devine's most recent bout of epic madness - well she does toss around 'madness' like a Scot tackling the caber.

It should be remembered that the Devine was encouraged in that madness by the Terrorists, who featured her on the front page, backed her with an outraged editorial and lavish reporting ... and now her defence of that outrage comes down to this tragic dribble of pedantry ...

There's a joke in there somewhere, but is it wise or proper to make a joke about the Devine's gradual descent into madness, haunted by images of humans consensually fornicating with animals? You know, because climate change, because greyhounds ...

This is the sort of thing that sends the Devine into a frenzy ... (more in pdf form here)

And yet every day the pond applies these simple guidelines in relation to TG friends, and no doubt the reptiles manage to do the same to their new star columnist, Catherine "just call me Cate" McGregor ...

But where were we? Suddenly, thanks to the foam-flecked frothing of the Devine, we're jumping all over the bigoted homophobic place, when we started off in the NT ...

Thankfully, there was one solid, safe pair of reptile hands available to give a sensible response ...

Yes indeed, the pond always thought that the royal commission into child abuse in sundry institutions was a profound mistake, a classic example of politicians acting without a real appreciation of what they'd begun.

The subsequent suffering of the institutions has moved the pond greatly, and such suffering should surely be deplored ...

So everybody knew, for at least 18 months?

Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion says he was not aware of allegations of abuse within the Northern Territory juvenile detention system, because it had not "piqued his interest".

"I wish I'd known what I know today, or I knew yesterday afternoon, some time ago, but the facts of the matter were I didn't know," Senator Scullion told reporters in Canberra.

"Yes, this is my patch, and the last time, just for clarity, I can recall back in October vaguely last year, there was some commentary in the media about this, but it was all about 'this has all been taken care of', 'there is another investigation and we are adopting recommendations' and that sort of thing," he said. "And I made an assumption … that the Northern Territory Government were taking care of this matter and that I didn't take any further action in that. (And more here).

And so on and so forth. So everybody knew about it, except those who say they didn't, and nobody did anything, and the most appropriate course of action is to keep on doing nothing, because in time, with a bit of luck, it might all go away. Or it might not, but that'll be then, and certainly not now.

But at least the bouffant one got one thing right. By involving the NT government as a leading player in the inquiry, Malware has once again made a fatally flawed move.

Remarkably the NT News has this day decided to turn itself into a newspaper.

Well at least the reptiles of Oz have stayed solid, cluck clucking about how it's all the fault of the lumpenproletariat, and worrying that an actual inquiry might lead to unforeseen consequences. And anyway, where's the news, because everyone knew and nobody did nothing and that's the way things should stay.

Do something, anything? Next thing you know, institutions and politicians will be suffering, and how unfair is that ...

And so to a Pope cartoon, and more Pope here ...