In which the pond is distracted by many barras to fry, but still manages to fit in a groaning and a bromancing ...

 

The pond should set the record straight and say it is all for fact-checking the reptiles, it's just that the pond over the years has grown tired, and lazy, and can't be fucked, and in any case, assumes that its leet readership already knows that anything in the lizard Oz requires a packet of salt, and a straight face, before consuming, such is the reptiles' truly* unique capacity for lies ...(*ABC approved)

It's a never-ending story, and in that spirit the pond offers this day a groaning much like many other groanings before it ...

You see? As if the full capital costs invested in a fucked-up network could ever have been recovered, thanks to the malingering failure of Malware's truly stupid multinodal Malware ...

But typically the Groaner tries to lumber former Chairman Rudd, even though people warned at the time (yes, the pond was one of the peeple at that steeple) that future governments would have to pay a price in upgrading from the Malware's massive failure of imagination ... apparently unaware that the full to overflowing intertubes might not just be used for streaming, but for working from home during a pandemic ...

So it goes, and there's another irritation from the get go, in that headline warning of "Labor's off-budget fund sleight of hand".

It's not just Labor, though when you're as one-eyed as the Groaner, surely Wells' kingdom of the blind beckons.

The pond immediately became nostalgic for the assorted deeds of the Dominator, and before him, Dame Gladys of Wagga and the rest of the crooks ... as celebrated in this 2021 magic water paper report ...

The NSW government has attempted to cover up how it artificially inflated the state’s budgets by tens of billions of dollars after it shifted the rail network’s costs onto a corporation that still hasn’t been able to properly operate six years after it was launched.

A trove of highly confidential documents and testimony of whistleblowers reveals NSW Treasury pressured accounting giant KPMG to delete or amend aspects of a report commissioned by Transport for NSW that found the plan could end up costing the state’s coffers more than it saved.

Whistleblowers fear the new structure will fragment accountability and could eventually lead to train disasters on the scale of the Waterfall or Glenbrook tragedies, which claimed the lives of 14 passengers.

The corporation, known as the Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE), was part of a plan hatched in 2014 to set up a shell corporation to shift billions of dollars of expenses off the state budget and into a new rail body.

NSW Treasury was able to use the corporation, with the approval of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, to inflate the budget to help mask the government slipping into deficit in 2018.

The KPMG report last year caused a deep rift between Treasury and Transport for NSW. On November 17, Transport for NSW secretary Rodd Staples was sacked “for no cause” after 15 years in the department.

Former NSW auditor-general Tony Harris estimates the entity’s reclassification from a government body to a commercial entity meant the government’s operating result has been bolstered by more than $30 billion over the last six years.

“It’s a financial mirage because you are seeing something that isn’t there,” Mr Harris said. “It was designed to avert the prospect of the state losing its AAA credit rating by creating an apparent surplus through an accounting gimmick.”

There's more here, and after noting the pleasing way that the streaming of the inquiry posed no danger to NBN capacity, it was still good fun, with the magic water paper making the most of it ...

Even the reptiles had to take note, though the rule of reptile lying is that it's what they leave out, omit or disappear that is as revealing as what they trot out to misrepresent ...

Yes, we're barreling along with hapless victim Barilaro, but more telling was what was agitating the reptiles in the tree killer edition ...

Not poor old Clive, and spare a thought for the poor reptile forced to put inverted commas around 'clean', as if there might be some dire implication that clean, innocent, pure, sweet, dinkum Oz coal might somehow be dirty ...

The digital edition led with the notion as well ... and again the inverted commas came out to play ...

Oh dear, it would have been much simpler to say clean, dinkum, pure, sweet, innocent Oz coal without those fear-mongering inverted commas, yet for some reason the reptiles got stuck on 'clean', as if there was some bald-faced, Clive-sized, monstrous abuse of the English language sticking in their craw ...

And after all that the pond realised it had strayed far from the groaning, and should return haste, post, haste, as only modern delivery services can do ...

The pond is glad that it slipped in that mention of the off-budget cooking in NSW, because it knew that the story would slip past the groaner, what with her memory being somewhat dimmed by all those years ruling the country of the blind ... and so to a short final gobbet, and given the tragic news about "clean" coal this day, and Clive - let's face it, he kept the lizard Oz afloat with advertising back in the day - of course the groaner would rail at all that wretched talk of solar and wind ...

Others are free to chip away at the groaner, but all the pond could do was let out a nostalgic sigh ...

Ah rent-seekers ... funny, the immortal Rowe ran with The Rent Seekers yesterday, and this day is offering salad or chips with the Barra Catch of the Day ...

Speaking of prayers and barras and mundi, after that lesson from the groaner, please join the pond in an Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

And so to the search for a bonus, and what a dismal feast there was on offer in the comments section ...

Three lizard Oz editorials in a row! 

Can't the reptiles afford to pay contributors any more?  What happened to the Caterist, last seen scribbling New Puritans will realise the last laugh is on them back on 25th July?

The pond wanted another laugh, and damned if it would get that from ancient Troy, apparently unaware of Dame Groan's dire warnings ...

Sure there were other yarns floating about, in the form of "regrets I've had a few", and "where are the clowns, there ought to be Malware clowns ..."

The speaker in tongues the biggest issue? But hadn't "Ned" spent the weekend explaining and expounding on his grand vision and his war with China?

And speaking of the war on China, that's all the pond has got for a segue because the bonus is that stale old packet of chips, the bromancer at war with China ...

It seems the pond's correspondents are mainly interested in when the bromancer will return to nuking the subs, and perhaps nuking tanks while he's at it, but what fascinates the pond is the way that the bromancer has completely lost interest in that other war, even as Vlad the invader still tries to fuck Ukraine ...

Wary of the examples of Napoleon and Adolf, the pond sometimes wonders at the wisdom of opening another front when there's already a cruel invader to hand begging for a sound thrashing, but no, much like any good barra lover, the bromancer has other fish to fry ...

Thar the bromancer blows again, apparently unaware that he's working for News Corp, an American company that did much to celebrate the mango Mussolini, elevate him and keep him in power, even when out of power, and is still, even after the attempted coup, unable to extricate itself and the GOP from his authoritarian snake oil con artist embrace.

It's almost like that story of the multiple personalities of Eve, the way the reptiles can think that one part of the house has no relation to the other ...

And meanwhile, there's the unfinished business of Vlad the impaler and barbaric war mongering invader ...

It seems Wilcox is on high repeat cycle, but the pond is happy to repeat with her, because the bromancer doesn't seem to have the slightest interest ...

Is that the bromancer's justification for Faux Noise? Allegedly rational actors leading to the terrible strategic miscalculation of the Donald?

Never mind, the pond knows that only the pond's irrational actors - you have to be certifiably mad to be a student of herpetology, just check out the pond's ranting north by north west - will have stayed the course so far simply for a mention of tanks and subs. 

Unhappily, the bromancer failed the tank test, but still found time to deliver on subs, and blather about "meaningful military capabilities in the shortest possible time" ...

Meanwhile, go Vlad, you'll cop no trouble from the bromancer, fixated on his war with China by Xmas.

And so to the infallible Pope of the day, and here the pond must do a little explainer, because some might have missed the magic water paper's story, summarised in Crikey here ... (paywall) ... with the original story at the magic water paper here ... (soft paywall, just erase your history)

Of course the wretches tried to fight back, but in a story designed to be positive - by saying they've been open about their delusions for a long time - Wheels couldn't resist adding ...

....Meanwhile, Electric Vehicle Council and climate change experts say the FCAI's voluntary scheme is a failure and should not be used as part of creating a mandated emissions target.
“The FCAI's proposal to retain the existing voluntary emissions scheme will retain the status quo of Australia having the highest car CO2 emissions compared to the leading countries of Norway, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands – noting that Norway will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2025, with the UK and the Netherlands in 2030," said Dr Diane Kraal, Senior Lecturer in Business Law and Taxation at Monash Business School.
“We won’t be able to rely solely on improvements in car technology to lower CO2 emissions without taxation assistance to lower the upfront cost of EVs.”
The industry is focusing on its own EV supply issues, but we need to address consumer demand problems for EVs, including upfront costs and CO2 levels.
The EV Council said that because Australia is one of the only OECD nations not to have fuel-efficiency standards, EVs are difficult to purchase and there are long wait times for delivery – with consumer demand significantly outpacing supply.
Overseas, fuel-efficiency targets require manufacturers to pay a penalty for exceeding carbon emissions targets set for the average number of new vehicles they sell. This means there is an incentive for manufacturers to ensure they sell enough low-emission and zero-emission vehicles to avoid raising their average – as opposed to the voluntary standard which bears no penalties.
In 2021, only a third of carmakers selling vehicles in Australia hit their industry-led emissions targets.”
The only fuel-efficiency standards that will make a difference are standards in line with those that exist in the US and Europe," said EVC chief executive Behyad Jafari.”
Australia missed the boat by 30 years in introducing fuel-efficiency standards, making us the world’s dumping ground for dirty vehicles today. If we finally get around to it and then introduce standards that don’t work that would be a tragedy.”
Car manufacturers sell the bulk of their vehicles into markets with fuel efficiency standards because that helps avoid penalty. There is currently no such incentive in Australia, which relegates this market to a lower order priority.”
If we want to see larger and more frequent shipments of EVs to Australia, Government should ignore the weak standards some in industry are lobbying for.”
There is no path to net zero by 2050 unless Australia stops selling emitting vehicles by 2035. Cars in Australia have a 15-year average life span. If we’re still selling a significant quantity of combustion engine vehicles in 2036 we fail on net zero. It’s that simple.”
In 2020, the FCAI introduced a voluntary emissions reporting scheme for the industry, with manufacturers each set individual targets, as well as overall ones for light SUVs and heavy SUVs/light commercial vehicles. However, in both 2020 and 2021 most carmakers did not meet said goals – only 12 out of 39 hit the 150g CO2/km target in the first category and nine achieved the 190g milestone in the latter.

And so on and on ...  just think of the FCAI as another form of groaning and it'll all make sense ... and thankfully that's more than enough to set up the infallible Pope for the day ...