In which there's no Henry, no Thucydides and just a bunch of red cards follow ...

 

It eventually had to happen, it's been brewing for weeks. 

The pond has decided to go on strike. It started with the hole in the bucket man's refusal to front to give the pond its weekly dose of Thucydides, Hume, Mill, Kant, whatever. 

It's either a dereliction of duty ... or paranoid conspiracy theory time, has he been disappeared the way the reptiles disappeared the Oreo, Gracie and sundry others?

What was left behind was a bit like the lot left roaming the earth wild-eyed after the Rapture. Take Dame Slap ... go on, someone, anyone take Dame Slap ...

Just based on the splash, it was such a preposterous, belly-wobbling, snot-snorting line that the pond simply couldn't proceed. 

Say it again: Firm Liberal hand will sort out big business.

It was so egregiously bald-faced nonsensical that the pond will admit that for a moment the pond was tempted ... but it stuck in the craw to give it the dignity of gobbets. Still there was a reference to Conrad along with standard blather about virtue signalling. Perhaps a compromise, because there are some quotes in it for the ages, and if they don't turn up in the pond's comments section, then all is lost ...

If it weren’t for their nauseating virtue-signalling and their stupidity, you could almost feel sorry for big business. As the second wave of the government’s industrial relations legislation, the dishonestly named Closing Loopholes Bill, lands on them, the full enormity of their folly must be hitting big business like a hammer blow.
Few business leaders may have read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but the famous phrase “The horror! The horror!” is the best literary summary of how they must feel. Having cosied up to the ALP and to every progressive cause available in the hope and pious belief an ALP government would stick to its promises of moderate policy changes, corporate Australia has been dumped in favour of the ALP’s real owner, the union movement.
Wresting back policy settings to somewhere more centrist in areas ranging from IR to energy will take years – and a change of government. This is both Peter Dutton’s big opportunity and big challenge. While the Coalition will always, and must always, vigorously support small business and entrepreneurs, it owes absolutely nothing to big business.
Big business has ignored, even mocked, social policies favoured by Coalition voters such as religious freedoms and opposition to the voice, and makes a virtue of not donating a red cent to the Coalition without an equal and opposite donation to the ALP.
So just as unions extract a huge policy quid pro quo for every dollar they give the ALP, the Opposition Leader should be telling big business unless there is a historic realignment of interests, they can forget about being rescued from Tony Burke’s IR reforms next time the Liberals are in office.
Dutton should then proceed to extract the toughest deal he can from the Business Council of Australia and its fellow travellers. It shouldn’t be too hard – we know from the state of play in IR that big business couldn’t negotiate its way out of a paper bag.
Of course, in an ideal world, “cash for policy” would be illegal. It is, after all, the brutish first cousin of the sort of pork-barrelling the teals once upon a time complained about so bitterly. However, as the central feature of the ALP’s business model, it’s hard to see it being challenged.
Who could forget, for example, the way in which the Albanese government had only just finished unpacking the boxes in their new offices when they started paying off those who had helped them into power. First off the grid, Stephen Jones thanked industry super funds, and their union sponsors, by killing off requirements that the funds disclose details of any payments or benefits they or their affiliates give to unions or their affiliates. Then came the reward to litigation funders and the plaintiff law firms in the form of an exemption from the managed investment scheme regulations. Then came multi-employer bargaining rules. Now, of course, comes the biggest thankyou of all, again to the union movement – the Closing Loopholes Bill.
If this business model is here to stay, the Coalition needs to embrace it as effectively as the ALP. Alas, it would be too gauche for the Coalition to actually demand money from big business – even though, by contrast, unions have no qualms donating cold, hard cash to the ALP. After all, BHP, Rio Tinto and many other corporations have codes of conduct banning political donations. They say, dripping with sanctimony, that their various stakeholders all have different political perspectives and they must stay apolitical out of respect for those varying perspectives. But lo and behold, it is OK for many of them to dive into the single most divisive issue in Australian political life in years – the voice debate – with powerful support, often financial, for one side of the debate only.
Coincidentally, the Yes campaign is on the opposite side of the debate to most of their individual shareholders, if polls are to be believed. Simultaneously, many of the most prominent directors of these corporations are stomping around the country signing letters of support for the voice, and some are even pestering other companies to give money to the Yes campaign. If the boards of big corporations can argue their fiduciary duties require them to give money to the Yes campaign, it should be child’s play to find justifications for supporting Coalition policies come election time.
They may have to grow a bit creative about it and use more subtle techniques than the unions; for example, by putting serious money into the BCA and directing it and other third-party vehicles to campaign long, loud and hard on issues that matter to a company.
No doubt Dutton will be very well-mannered in extracting assistance of this kind, but he should not be too subtle. The ALP playbook should be all he needs.
Dutton should not stop at money. If big business wants support from the Coalition to roll back the tidal wave of new IR legislation, big business will have to stop laughing at the social and cultural values of the Coalition and its supporters.
In the US, the backlash towards woke corporations has started in earnest and is being adopted by politicians starting with, but by no means limited to, Ron DeSantis. Disney has every right to disagree with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law but it had to expect consequences when it jumped into the middle of a hotly contested political issue, with the elected governor stripping Disney of its longstanding Florida tax concessions as payback. In Austral­ia, you don’t have to be a cultural conservative or an evangelical Christian to have grown heartily sick of the progressive discipline enforced by doctrinaire HR departments and their corporate communications colleagues, where diversity doesn’t stretch to diversity of opinion.
Dutton will not want to wade publicly into what will be portrayed as the culture wars. And he won’t have to. After all, nobody finds the fingerprints of industry super funds on the corporate policies of Australian listed companies either. However, wouldn’t it be nice for Coalition supporters to find that Australian corporations no longer sneer at their social or cultural values? And if that happens at the same time as the Coalition rolls back the ALP’s IR extremism, that would be a very happy coincidence indeed.

It was made even worse by its early placement right next to the alleged firm Liberal hand ...

When Dame Slap was kicked up the page to the top far right, as befits her, the trio left down below in the triptych were even more pathetic ...

There was Paige deploring "squabbling", and right next to her was the lesser member of the Kelly gang accusing Langton of "form" ... as if the lizard Oz didn't have form as Langton bashers ... while over in the Graudian, you might read Marcia Langton to seek legal advice over Dutton post quoting 'absolutely not true' voice headline ...  or at the ABC, Marcia Langton refutes allegations in The Australian ... oh, it's getting beyond ugly, and yet, look, over on the far right, there was the mutton Dutton still tackling big business.

Naturally top of the digital edition there was another word from The Price is Wrong ...

She hopes getting rid of Aboriginal voices will mean governments will take greater accountability for improving the lives of First Nations people? Just like governments have done for the past few centuries?

Here, have an immortal Rowe ...

Meanwhile, the pond decided to red card Killer ...

Now the Republicans have dug up an unnamed whistleblower saying it was the CIA wot done it? Wouldn't we be better off talking about the CIA and drugs? You know, for the mutton Dutton's sake ... so he can tackle big business ...

Down below, it was just as bad, and the pond realised how much it relied on our Henry for Friday filler ...

Langton deserved it? Nobody deserves the lizard Oz, and most of all, nobody deserves a pious hypocritical righteous deeply up himself bouffant one going the Langton bash ... and as for the lizard Oz editorialist blathering about the need to "rediscover love", piss off hippie wannabe ...

As for wasting space on the fush and chups folk, or Allegra? Not really the pond's speed, so the pond turned to the lizard Oz on the US ...

McCarthy reportedly was under pressure from hardline Republicans? Amazing really, as if the reptiles had no contact with HQ and were unaware that there was a bull at the Gaetz ...

Good old Google ... still calling X Twitter ...

Here, have a Luckovich ...

Ah and as for the climate ... at least that's a cue for the pond to mention recent news you'll never see in the lizard Oz ... what with Lloydie of the Amazon still MIA ... per the Graudian, Antarctica may have entered ‘new regime’ of low sea ice as global warming ramps up... Study conducted by Australian scientists describes a ‘breakdown’ in link between sea ice and atmosphere as coverage reaches record lows

“Over the past seven summers there have been three record [sea ice] minimums,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Ariaan Purich of Monash University and the Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future program.

Antarctic sea ice had increased over multiple decades to peak in 2014, before transitioning to a low sea ice state in mid-2016.

A minimum record set in February 2022 was broken this year on 19 February, when Antarctic sea ice was observed to cover 1.77m sq km – 36% less than the 1979-2022 daily minimum sea ice coverage.

“In 2022 and again this summer, the hemispheric winds [linked to a positive phase of the southern annular mode] suggested there should have been higher-than-usual sea ice, and yet we had two record low sea ice summers,” Purich said. “Sea ice doesn’t seem to be responding to the atmosphere in the same way that it used to … suggesting something else is at play.”

The researchers identified that subsurface warming of the Southern Ocean was closely linked to sea ice loss.

“We’ve found that the ocean – particularly 100-200m below the surface – started warming really noticeably a year or two before we saw this change in the sea ice system, and has stayed warm ever since,” said study co-author Dr Edward Doddridge from the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership at the University of Tasmania. “The sea ice loss lined up with areas where warming happened most.”

It was at the ABC too ... Antarctic sea ice levels entering 'new low state', climate researchers say, with action urged on emissions

There were handy dot points ...

In short: New research has found Antarctic sea ice levels appear to be changing, with lower levels becoming the new normal.

Scientists say warming ocean temperatures are having an impact that will be a "struggle to recover from".

There is currently 1.5 million square kilometres less Antarctic sea ice than typically seen at this time of the year.

There was another story the pond wanted to mention ... another story that disappeared into the void if you only read the reptiles ... Afghanistan: Human rights in ‘state of collapse,’ warns Türk

After all this, the pond decided the best it could do was provide a little bland pap as space filler and pray to one of 4,000 gods for the return of the hole in the bucket man next Friday...

The bromancer is sure to have words about this, and what's remarkable is that where there's a  Will, there's a way, but there's no explanation as to how Will became part of the junket ... and agreed not to report anything seen or heard inside the wall ...

Oh bromancer, to think this is where it's all ended, with grovelling fellow travelling and lickspittle consorting, and yet they gave Will the space this Friday, with a set of dot points ...

"Bejing wants"? 

Oh bromancer, has your war on China by Xmas come to this? A supermarket shopping list handily copied down by Will? Sure, he adds a few minor, token reservations, but it felt like the lizard Oz had transformed into an outpost of The Global Times ...

Speaking of open-door dialogue, there was another event that was tucked away in the lizard Oz's business/aviation section, far removed from the pond's normal duties ... and so it was left to the infallible Pope to celebrate ...