A complete and utter disaster. Perhaps even a deep state conspiracy.
Using the advanced mathematics that the reptiles apply to climate science, the pond has calculated that at any given time 87.77% (repeating) of lizard Oz columnists could rely on dictator Dan to provide useful space filler in the endless quest for angertainment.
And he's gone, as a correspondent wistfully noted, an absurd thing for a dictator to do. Resign, when a reptile tar and feathering was the only decent way to go ...
The pond has heard a whisper that when the Ibac report drops there might be another week of comrade Dan related news, but these are the stories the pond will be ignoring today ...
Yes indeed Rachel, the cult of reptile abuse of a southern dictator is now over.
It will be noted that the reptiles have caught the departing dictator's family making a Satanic gesture, and Fergo holds out some hope for the comrade Dan industry by suggesting that comrade Dan has ruined everything, so decades can be spent brooding about it. This might work for a few years, but alas, the likes of John Cain and John Bannon suggests the half life for this angle is limited ...
Still the Satanic gesture was good for the tree killer edition ...
Down at the bottom there was a piteous reptile pitch for subs, a cry that you could save and unlock so much more, but what? There was Dame Groan delivering a groaning ...
Good riddance?! Her astonishing ability to sound like a frump in a Monty Python sketch continues to amaze and be celebrated by her fans, but with comrade Dan gone, all that's left for her is a weekly column on furriners rooning the country. Sure she's hinted she has hopes she'll be able to have Jacinta Allan to kick around, but can it ever be the same.
And look, beside her on the far right, there's Slamming Joe, but are the thoughts of professional fundamentalist Catholic bigot Joe a good enough substitute? The pond suspects not ... the number of people interested in Joe slamming anything is, according to the reptile mathematical model used for climate science, verging on 0.01%.
Down below in the comments section was where it hit home the hardest ... look at them all, soon to be lost souls, enjoying a last moment fulminating at the führer, not realising the pitiless, pitiful future that faces them without a certified dictator on the horizon ...
It's true that the oscillating fan proposes we'll be haunted for decades ...
Of course the departure of the dictator - the pond still can't get over a dictator resigning - also leaves the pond in a parlous state, what with reptiles no longer endlessly tormented by a comrade reigning in the south.
Luckily, Dame Slap today abandoned her railing against activist judges and endless contemplation of navel and the Lehrmann matter, and had something of a return to form ...
There was the keen Keane ranting away in Crikey ... If Mike Pezzullo doesn’t like parliamentary democracy, he shouldn’t work for one ... (paywall)
He told Briggs at the time he thought he could have “turned” Smethurst and got her to produce “a great story for the government”. Pezzullo later saw no irony in claiming Smethurst had already been subjected to similar treatment by someone else: “Why do you think her handler picked her, rather than say an experienced national security journalist.”
Pezzullo has previously called for journalists to be jailed — something that even hardened Coalition right-wingers blanched at — and claimed that he “steered, assisted and worked with” certain journalists. As part of his plan to reimpose national security censorship on the media, Pezzullo told Briggs a D-notice scheme could be negotiated with “the hard headed and realistic media business leaders”.
That is, for Pezzullo, journalists are either handmaidens to power or “bottom feeders”, tame pets who can be “steered”, “turned” and “assisted” or (at best) victims of “handlers” with agendas, who should be jailed and censored.
That all of this was in relation not to a genuine national security matter but simply to the revelation of something embarrassing to Pezzullo only further proves that national security establishment bureaucrats primarily want more power so as to prevent themselves and their political masters from being embarrassed.
And the embarrassment has kept on coming for Pezzullo, with the scandals and debacles that have plagued Immigration and Home Affairs on his watch continually being revealed. Is that, in the end, what made Pezzullo so anxious to silence the media and get rid of that “concern for democracy” estimates hearings?
Pezzullo’s political antics, posturing and big-noting of himself might have been more tolerable if he was the successful head of a competent, high-performing agency. But Home Affairs is a mess, and has always been a mess. No agency or department is more in need of a sceptical parliamentary committee system and a media determined to do its job.
If Pezzullo doesn’t like those basic features of democracy, he should resign forthwith and spare the government further trouble.
So naturally nattering "Ned" had to distract and invite a rant about the RBA ... and naturally there was ire and agitation about always being reviewed ...
At this point, in their usual way, the reptiles began their parade of stills culled from the cheapest sources ...
They all seemed to prove that the big Mac was no longer the big cheese, and perhaps that was his main beef ...
Shocking. The notion that a Guv shouldn't be able to assure the public that there'd be no rise in interest rates is clearly wrong, and an abuse of the ability of a wise ruler to offer insights and advice to the masses ...
That sort of leadership conforms to the latest mathematical principles embodied in this graph ...
Back to the moaning Mac, in congress with nattering "Ned" ...
And so on and on, and just that one story did more for the RBA than "Ned" and the good 'burger could do in a lifetime, and now there's just one gobbet of "Ned" and the good burger to go ...
Must be addressed? Sorry, the pond is plumb out of envelopes, but it does have a Wilcox for a closer ...
Ned - “Given Australia’s media culture, any divided votes will guarantee stories along the lines ‘bank board splits’ “.
ReplyDeleteAnd which organisation has been the greatest contributor to that media culture, Neddy?
Almost makes me nostalgic for that old News standby headline that was dragged out for any contentious issue - “Labor Party split looms!”
Dame Slap: "We talk about this often in my home..." Ooh, who's the "we"? Slappy plus three 20s-something offsprung maybe ? But is there a man to sit at the head of the table as a rabid anti-femaleist such as Slappy would require ?
ReplyDeleteAnd then: "We had leaders like Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Howard. Love them or loathe them, these men had a clear set of beliefs." The wingnut takeover of Hawke and Keating continues, they are now referred to in the same breath as that great hero - famous for a landslide election defeat and losing his own seat - John Winston Howard. When will Menzies get a mention too; or is he just another forgotten yesterday. Oh, and Thatcher and Reagan too.
Still, welcome back to normal reptile mundanity, Slappy.
So, Ian Macfarlane as rendered by Ned: "I would have no case to argue if the review had proposed a model along the lines of the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Bank of Canada or the bank of Norway." All of which, as we know, have always got things right - especially the Bank of England. "But they've a model that falls between two stools..." And as we know, there's no worse place to be.
ReplyDeleteBut about Macfarlane, Wiki has this to say: "In 1992 he was appointed Deputy Governor by the Keating government, and in 1996, he was appointed Governor by the Howard government. On taking up the position, he signed a memorandum of Agreement with Treasurer Peter Costello which introduced Australia's inflation-targeting monetary policy regime." And hasn't that all been a wondrous success. And that wonderful hero of wingnut politics, J W Howard reckons that "Macfarlane was the stand-out economic official in the lifetime of my government. His advice and sense of balance was far superior to that of anybody else who provided economic advice to us." And JWH would know all about that, wouldn't he.
Well now we know, the economic good times in Australia were all due not to Howard-Costello but to Macfarlane: "The ten years during which Macfarlane was Governor was a period of good economic growth and low inflation..." [Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Macfarlane_(economist) ]
Australia is so lucky to have such economic geniuses. Maybe Chalmers should petition him to come back and fix us up one more time.
Macfarlane was very much the Howard-Costello Governor of the Reserve Bank. He, and they, made that clear, early in his appointment, with the Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy with Costello which introduced Australia's inflation-targeting monetary policy regime. The accounts in (non-Murdoch) newspapers describe that document as being only between Costello and Macfarlane, virtually as a condition of Macfarlane's appointment.
ReplyDeleteI have never been sure quite how that fits with the simple and clear directions in the Reserve Bank Act on the duties of the Board - always the Board. To dissect 'inflation' out of the duty of the Board to attend to the 'stabiity' of the currency is to ignore much of why the RBA was established in 1959, the more so during any of our claimed economic booms.
I have no doubt that Macfarlane would have been able to quote the Act, chapter and verse, before he was offered the position of Governor. If he could so readily ignore it during his tenure begs the question - why did he not urge the Howard administration to amend it? Since he 'stepped down' from his seat, J Winston Howard has told several interviewers that he wanted to do wonderful things with the economy when he was treasurer, but that nasty Fraser wouldn't let him. Seems he had no problem with his treasurer and the governor of the Reserve Bank skipping along in tandem, with their own interpretation of the legislated duties of the Board of the Bank.
He was prone to accusing others of 'lacking ticker' - so it could not have applied to him, could it? Could it?
I am on record here as observing that this most recent review of the Reserve Bank is consistent with what the legislation requires. The hope is that the current government will seek wider representation for the board than 'business leaders' or virtual lobbyists; and remind them, regularly, that they are signing on to a legislated 'duty'.
Hope springs eternal, you reckon Chad ?
DeleteBut anyway, just a reminder from Henry Ergas of what money is:
"money is a social construct underpinned by a complex of social and institutional conventions".
If Ned were to read The Conversation regularly, he would have noticed Peter Martin's article yesterday The Albanese government blew its shot at setting a historic new unemployment target:
DeleteIn 1996 Treasurer Peter Costello and the man he appointed Reserve Bank governor, Ian Macfarlane, signed what became the first Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy, an agreement that’s been updated six times.
As with all of the agreements since, that first statement set out an inflation target (“between 2% and 3%, on average, over the cycle”) but not an employment target – even though both are meant to be objectives under the Reserve Bank Act.
As a result, Governor Macfarlane was able to step down ten years later, secure in the knowledge that on average he had hit the middle of the target band: 2.5% inflation. His successor Glenn Stevens stepped down ten years further on, quietly boasting the same thing.
But neither could make any boast about hitting the employment target – because there wasn’t one. ...It would be open to Chalmers to put a specific target for unemployment – making the RBA as accountable as it is now on inflation.
Tim Dulop on Dan and the media:
ReplyDelete"increasingly, the conservative-rightwing continuum of Australian politics—of the Australian political class—is less concerned with legitimate discussion than it is with flooding the zone with bullshit and relying on abuse, outrage, conspiracy theories and outright lies to keep them in the game."
https://tdunlop.substack.com/p/a-quick-word-about-daniel-andrews
Dunlop: "The media and the Opposition’s treatment of Daniel Andrews was a textbook case of the way in which conservatism is increasingly slipping into an anti-democratic authoritarianism that holds even their own audience, their own voters, in utter contempt."
DeleteHoocoodathunkit: after all, the wingnuts and reptiles have never done that to anybody else ever before, have they. And they're not doing it now to Albanese et al, are they.
Dame Slap talking about the political machinations of some - only some - TV shows 'at home'. Does that 'home' still include Kroger? In a Westminster system, the quality of government is greatly sharpened by the quality of the opposition. A claimed master-mind of the Victorian opposition during the Dictatorship was that same Kroger, and there are many, often almost incoherent, interviews with him on Sky News. The few I watched for entertainment did not contain a single cunning plan for the opposition to be heard, let alone have some prospect of moving to the government side of the house. Was Kroger more like the Baldrick of the liberals in Victoria?
ReplyDeleteDon't underestimate the Deeming-Kroger effect.
DeleteNever: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4877736/
Delete'Deeming-Kroger Effect' - nice one, Anonymous.
DeleteSome (many?) of us are old enough to recall when a young Kroger was the subject of numerous puff pieces proclaiming him to be the future of the Liberal Party. Decades later, what has he actually achieved? Still, given the recent fortunes of both Kroger and his party, perhaps those prophecies were correct?
DeleteReckon that might just qualify as bbo (bleedin' bloody obvious), Anony. But then, he's got a lot of mates too.
DeleteDown here in Massachusetts, we are basking in the light of another Dan success - how he slipped away without the local reptiles even laying a finger on him, or as GF used to say - never touched me! So you can understand the undisguised hate from the reps who have endured humiliation of premium quality over the past nine years, and to make it worse, Dan leaves us with three more years of Labor before the Coalition can even climb into the ring for another go. I hesitate to call them the coalition, more like a shambles, and I wouldn't put any money on libs leader Pesutto surviving those three years given his tenuous hold on things. You really have to wonder at Greg's effrontery - 'one of our worst premiers' - yet one that Victorians voted overwhelming for at three straight elections. So first we had Tony calling us absent-minded voters, now we have Greg telling us we are voting for the devil incarnate. It really is a bit insulting; whatever happed to 'listen to the people'. I suggest Greg sit down with 'How to win friends and influence people', or perhaps I might suggest 'make love not war'. Anyway, we're keeping the home fires burning down here. AG.
ReplyDeleteOne of the few pleasures of the pandemic was watching Dictator Dan take on all the reptiles simultaneously and leaving the ring unscathed. I'm not sure how they got Rachel Baxendale on her feet for the next bout though.
Delete