In which the pond hails the hit on Abbott and hits up reptile Rowan Callick in the process ...

With the pond declaring this day "back in the kitchen and do the ironing, dear carer" day, it was unfortunate that the reptiles should attempt to distract from this important new national day, which will allow men to return to the six o'clock swill and a life of domestic indolence.

We all need to get back to the 1950s, the world where theoretically the onion muncher should be most at home, but then along came Rowan Callick, offering up a timely reminder that the reptiles and the onion muncher just don't get the 1950s ...

Now this isn't by way of singing a song of sadness for the wayward Sam, a young pup in the tone deaf brigade, but rather it's to marvel at the way that Callick attempts to re-write history, courtesy of Sam.

The pond thinks this might be Callick's first appearance on the pond, but we should celebrate, because in recent times there's surely been no better attempt at redeeming the wall punching onion muncher.

Uh huh. But it wasn't only the Chinese, or Bob Carr or slamming Sammy that mocked Abbott's speech, a truly rich and pathetic attempt at pandering which back fired.

Abbott's irresponsible comments initiated criticism and condemnations from all walks of life in Australia, and some of them even made it into a News Corp publication ...

Well yes, the pond can still remember the shock and horror in certain sections of the family, who'd been up close to the war, when the pond acquired a Japanese-made vehicle ...

The pond still drives a Hiroshima-manufactured vehicle - no need for residual bitterness and animosity - but that wasn't the way it was in the 1950s.

The news of the epic tone-deafness of Abbott on tour spread far and wide ...

Ah those were the days. And no doubt the onion muncher and Rowan Callick hope such days might come again ...

But back in the day the diggers were much agitated by the indiscreet wording ...

Well yes, Abe has fallen well short of an apology on a number of occasions. And then came a listing of some of the "honourable deeds" committed during the second world war ...

Without wishing to diminish the suffering of the Diggers - some within the pond's family - that was nothing up against what the Japanese army visited upon China during the second world war. A record which Japan has never come to terms with ...

So why on earth did Callick attempt a very long bow and try to use Dastyari's  current capacity for foot, money and Grange in mouth as an excuse for an intemperate and silly Abbott?

Sadly the rest of Callick's piece offers no clues ...

So it's all a socialist and commie plot?

And Bob Carr responded? But how did he respond? Well he suggested that Australia needed to be wary of being seen as the United States deputy sheriff in the Pacific region (SBS here). 

But you might as well balance that by remembering that Stephen "a great big internet filter for everyone just like the Chinese government has got" Conroy was at the same time running around wild-eyed and telling anyone who'd listen that the federal government needed to stand up to China's bullying ...

And then you might like to recall the more temperate response of the government, which right now doesn't need a case of the cowboys and cowgirls in international relations ...

Like most complicated issues there's been a variety of responses to Chinese aggression in the south China sea, and uncertainty as to how to respond, and on both sides of the aisle.

The one thing that can be said with certainty is that back in 2014, slamming Sammy was well within bounds, and the onion muncher, in attempting to pander to Japan, and later in his desperate attempts fit up Japan with the submarine job, proved to be singularly inept.

This doesn't mean there's any need to pander to China and its current aggressive activities which have got a lot of its neighbours' noses out of joint ... it just means that talking of honourable Japanese soldiers in the second world war was always going to strike a nerve ...

Well yes, and there's more here, but this closing gobbet is worth quoting because it's a reminder of why Abbott sounded so tone deaf back in 2014  ...

Yes indeed, and so it was not just slamming Sammy who slammed Abbott's Japan speech.

Callick's piece is at one with other attempts by the reptiles to rehabilitate the onion muncher. 

But Sammy making a doofus of himself doesn't alter the unalterable judgment of history that in this matter Abbott was a tone deaf doofus deserving of a slam job ...

At least by anyone who had the faintest memory of the second world war. Funny that, for a bulldog worshipping Churchill lover like Abbott ...

Meanwhile, with Chinese land-holdings in the news and the parrot squawking about how it was a whitewashed travesty, the pond is pleased at the way everyone else took the news with equanimity. 

The country is in the safest of British hands, a nice set-up for this Rowe cartoon - and more Rowe here ...