In which the Caterist romps home in the pond's silly season Hunger Games, only to see a protest from Lord Downer's devotees ...

 

The pond is at a loss. The judges keep on getting distracted from the pond's hunger games by the three ring circus going down in the States, as does the pond's NJ correspondent ...

But dammit, what a fine circus it is, what a fine distraction ...Trump Finally Takes Sides in The Civil War Tearing MAGA Apart.

All those dollar investments paid off for the unofficial President* (*credit Benji), Trump defends foreign worker visas, siding with Musk amid MAGA backlash.

Faux Noise did its best to sooth troubled waters, MAGA Civil War Puts ‘Fox & Friends’ in an Awkward Spot (Beast paywall)

Hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy, Charlie Hurt, and Will Cain reflected on the online meltdown over the visas, which are backed by close Trump allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The issues, they said, were in abuses of the system that prioritized cheaper labor over Musk-type prodigies.
“The idea of having a program that allows an Elon Musk to come into the country, I don’t think anybody has a problem with that, and certainly Donald Trump doesn’t have a problem with that,“ Hurt said. ”The problem with the program is that it’s been so abused and turned into a system where it is designed for big tech employers to get, maybe not cheap labor, but cheaper labor.”
...Trump told the New York Post he supported the visas, saying they helped staff many of his properties. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump said on Saturday. “That’s why we have them.”

The trouble with this line? Per CNN, Trump vows to ‘hire American.’ His businesses keep hiring foreign guest workers.

Just this year, Trump’s businesses received approval from the US government to hire 209 foreign workers, nearly double the number of such laborers his companies received permission to hire about a decade ago.
The workers include cooks, housekeepers, servers and desk clerks.
Trump has said the seasonal nature of some of his clubs necessitates some temporary jobs that Americans looking for full-time work are reluctant to take. Forbes first reported on Friday Trump’s businesses hired more foreign workers than ever in 2024.
Some former Trump club staffers who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity said Trump could attract more Americans to those temporary roles at his properties if his businesses raised the positions’ wages or offered other perks.

Yes, he's a bigly exploiter, making America great again with cooks, housekeepers, servers and desk clerks ... which made it even funnier when Steve Bannon vowed to fight to the death on the matter, and abused Uncle Leon, as reported in WaPo, Trump backs H-1B visas, aligning with Musk on immigration. (paywall)

Earlier on Saturday, Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, slammed Musk’s defense of the program in a post on the social network Gettr, calling him a “toddler” in need of a “wellness check” from Child Protective Services. He was responding to an X post in which Musk used an expletive to insult H-1B opponents and threatened to “go to war on this issue.”
“The Trump White House has the danger of turning into a snake pit when different factions within Trump’s world compete for his attention,” said Tom Warrick, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked at the Department of Homeland Security under both Trump and Barack Obama. “Many people during the first administration feared that whoever talked to Trump last before he made a decision, that’s what he would do. I can say firsthand this actually does happen.”

In danger of becoming a snake pit? 

Surely it's always been a pit of snakes dressed as clowns, or undressed as the case may be ...

 ... but at this point, the pond simply had to interrupt and force the judges to turn their attention to the local reptiles, valiantly competing for the top Monday score...

Once again the pond could celebrate the absence of the Major as a way of narrowing the field. 

The wily old bird had ducked off, leaving behind the usual assortment of ne'er do wells...

Simplistic Simon at the top of the extreme far right reptile world, ma, doing a standard bout of Jimbo bashing? Nah.

The swishing Switzer teaming up in a desperate bid forattention? Nah, double nah.

While one highly esteemed correspondent had attempted to divert the judges' attention with talk of comely young Freya Leach (caution, black shirt loving Snail link) ...

... the judges argued that there was no need to pay attention to MRC minnows when there was the Caterist MRCgiant to hand, better still with an ample assortment of bold projections, of the sort lizard Oz scribblers resort to at this time of year ...

From energy politics to global security, here are my big predictions for 2025, Forecasting is an inexact science. Writers who succumb to the seasonal temptation of turning to the crystal ball for inspiration can expect to dine on broken glass by the end of the year.

The pond confidently predicts that the Caterist will celebrate dinkum, genuine, virginal Oz coal, piss on renewables from a predictable Caterist height, and have absolutely nothing to say about the likely worsening of the planet's climate situation

The pond also confidently predicts that the predictions will begin, not just with an escape clause, but with a hideous illustration, so bad it must be attributed to AI, especially as no reptile graphics artist stood up to take credit, and sure enough, Writers who succumb to the seasonal temptation of turning to the crystal ball for inspiration can expect be dine on broken glass by the end of the year, writes Nick Cater.

It was so bad that the bond was tempted to enlarge it, but decided anyone wanting to have their face eaten could click on it and be dazzled by the art and the splendid use of a star filter effect for maximum visual impact.

The best thing about the Caterist making predictions was that the pond had nothing do do but sit back and take it easy. 

Who knows if any come to pass? It's true that the Caterist has a fantastic, astonishing record predicting the movement of floodwaters in quarries, but really, you'll need to check back at the end of 2025, and the pond predicts, with absolute certainty, that it will not remember to do so ...

Forecasting is an inexact science. Writers who succumb to the seasonal temptation of turning to the crystal ball for inspiration can expect to dine on broken glass by the end of the year.

“Why Trump won’t win,” Hussein Ibish wrote in The Atlantic last December. “Biden will beat Trump, and Kamala Harris will play a huge role,” predicted Juan Williams in The Hill at the start of January.

“Trump is really going for a particular kind of voter,” Waleed Aly told Channel 10 viewers. “The problem he has is that they are not people who typically turn out and vote.”

Forecasts tell us more about the conceit of commentators than they do about the future.

So, at the risk of beclowning myself in the style of Ibish, Williams and Aly, I’m setting out the following sure-fire predictions for 2025.

1. Global coal production will hit a record high in defiance of the International Energy Agency’s 2015 assertion that the world had reached peak coal.

2. Black coal production in Australia will provide 10,580 petajoules of energy next year, a reduction of 0.88 per cent, the average fall over the past decade. Most of it will be exported.

3. Solar energy will generate 178PJ, and wind energy will generate 130PJ if this decade trend continues. None of it will be exported. Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s dream of a renewable energy superpower will be put on hold for another year.

At this point, the reptiles inserted a snap of the man they most hate, Chris Bowen. Worse, he was still pointing his finger ...

Then it was back to the predictions:

4. The Australian Public Service will keep growing, as it has done every year since approximately 1788. If the 15-year trend continues, we’ll be paying more than 2.5 million public service salaries by next Christmas across three levels of government, up from 1.8 million in 2009.

Here the pond must interrupt with an explanation. 

All those bloody cardigan wearers are required to process applications for grants for taxpayer cash in the paw:

So many closed, non-competitive grants, so hard to keep up with them, but do carry on predicting ...

5. The most significant growth will be in public administration and safety, where 14,780 new jobs will be created if the 15-year trend is maintained. The second-most significant increase will be in healthcare and social assistance, including the NDIS (13,850 new jobs), followed by education (11,830 new jobs).

6. Outside Victoria, the fastest growth will be in the commonwealth public service, which will grow by 3.5 per cent compared to a 2.3 per cent rise in state and territory government employees. In Victoria, the opposite applies. Judging by the 15-year trend, the ranks of the Victorian public service will expand by 11,700 employees or 3.8 per cent.

7. Two out of three Australians will not watch ABC TV broadcasts for five consecutive minutes or longer in an average week. Australia’s population has increased by 23 per cent over the past 15 years, while the size of ABC TV’s broadcast reach has shrunk by 86 per cent.

8. Twice as many people will watch ABC on YouTube than over the airwaves, casting doubt on the retention of the word “broadcasting” in the organisation’s name. Hits on ABC’s YouTube channel increased by 350 per cent in the past five years, while broadcast audiences have fallen by 20 per cent. This begs the question: Why are taxpayers spending $190m a year to run energy-intensive transmitters?

9. Benjamin Netanyahu will accomplish the goal he announced back on October 9, 2023, by changing the balance of power in the Middle East. Iran’s influence will stop at Israel’s borders and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be glancing nervously at his pager.

At this point the reptiles produced another snap: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu take part in an announcement of Trump's Middle East peace plan in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

It's a pity, because it reminded the pond that real power lies elsewhere...

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought Elon Musk’s guidance on the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence, hinting that the tech billionaire is more powerful than the US president.

“I said to my wife Sara, ‘this guy really knows what he’s talking about’, I said ‘he’s the Edison of our time’,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said during a discussion with Mr Musk on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.

“You can’t be president of the US last time I checked, but assume you are.”

The tech billionaire, who is currently the world’s richest person, interjected: “Not officially.”

President Netanyahu responded: “Not officially. OK, so you’re the unofficial president.”

Okay, okay, it's likely Uncle Leon will produce peace in our time, but the pond must learn to stop interrupting the unofficial reptile president of predictive prescience ...

10. Incoming US president Donald Trump will reinvigorate negotiations to bring Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords, normalising relations with Israel and raising hopes of restarting the process leading to the two-state agreement with the Palestinians that seemed all but dead this time last year. But Netanyahu and Trump won’t be honoured with the Nobel Peace prizes they deserve.

Indeed, indeed ... so many Nobel prizes to be won ...

Sorry, sorry ... Trumpian triumphalism is all the go in floodwaters in quarries land ...

11. Iran’s demise, Russian exhaustion and the inauguration of Trump will be serious setbacks for the Axis of Evil. China’s hand will be weakened. With the cards stacked in his favour, Trump will seek a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

12. In February, German voters will throw out the hapless, ineffective and ideologically mismatched coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and elect a hapless, ineffective and ideologically mismatched coalition led by Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz. The European Union’s 2025 growth forecast of 0.7 per cent for the German economy will be exposed as hopelessly optimistic.

13. Germany’s wind turbines will operate at between 20 and 25 per cent of their full capacity next year. They will generate a meagre 110 TWh of electricity. When this power will be produced is impossible to predict.

As for the planet? Here have another snap ... German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Almost at the end, but there's still time to slag off Uncle Leon's business model ... though it's tricky, Trump says he has 'no choice' but to back EVs after Musk endorsement ...

14. Sales of electric vehicles will overtake conventional vehicles in China, where EV sales have been rising at 20 per cent a year thanks to aggressive targets, subsidies and regulations. In the free world, however, EV sales will plateau. In June, researcher company Jeffries slashed its 2030 forecast for EV sales in the European Union from 8.9 million to 6.8 million. In November, it downgraded its forecast further to 4.7 million.

15. Alexander Lukashenko will be elected president of Belarus on January 26, as he has been at every election since 1994. The Australian government’s travel advice will remain in place. It reads: “If you’re in Belarus, leave immediately.”

16. Canada, by contrast, will become the second-most attractive destination in North America with the ignominious defeat of Justin Trudeau’s joke government. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are the second safest political bet on offer, Lukashenko being number one.

17. In Australia, Labor will record its lowest primary vote for at least 122 years. Albanese’s 32.6 per cent primary vote in 2022 was the second-lowest since Federation. The average swing against governments seeking a second term since World War II is 3.3 per cent, which would push Labor’s primary vote below 30 per cent for the first time since 1903.

Sounds grim, but strangely the reptiles decided to feature another loser rather than the cliff top man ...Justin Trudeau

Albo will be a loser, won't he? Time to turn back to the entrails man for a final decisive word, expert as he is in mapping quarry flood waterss, decoding the runes and the tea leaves, and always willing to give the I Ching and the Tarot cards a go ...

Even so, the historical trend suggests Peter Dutton won’t win the next election. The post-war average two-party swing of 1.3 per cent won’t be enough. The Coalition needs to win 19 seats to form a majority in the House of Representatives. The average number of seats gained by an opposition taking on a one-term government is eight.

But past results offer no guarantee of future performance. Forecasters must beware of hindsight bias, the tendency to view past events as more predictable than they were.

They must resist falling for the gambler’s fallacy: The belief that past events influence the likelihood of future events in random processes. They must resist overconfidence bias, the hubristic tendency to overestimate one’s ability to predict accurately and underestimate uncertainty or randomness.

18. On this basis, I confidently predict that the Coalition will be back in government by Christmas. However, which Christmas that will be is far too early to say.

Say what? What a colossal fudge. What enormous cheek. All that taxpayer cash in the paw, all those hard-working cardigan wearers and that's the best he can do?

It's way too early to say? What's the point of making the pond scrabble through chicken intestines to arrive at a "far too early to say"? 

Surely nuking the country to save the planet will see the mutton Dutton romp home a clear winner... but when even the Caterist shows signs of doubt, an unseemly caution, signs of saucy doubts and fears, what hope is there in the New Year?

At this point the pond thought the business for the day was done and dusted. Just a cartoon as a sign off, full of hopeful predictions and sensible resolutions ...

At the very last moment, the judges received a protest. 

Apparently the Caterist had been using a weighted, battery powered whip to urge on his nag, and he was disqualified, and so the pond had to make space for the real winner, Lord Downer, furiously scribbling... Australia’s soft power reputation is bust. This is the tragedy of our modern politics, The sad fact is, Australia is losing its soft power in the world because we have lost direction. We have abandoned economic reform and replaced it with a European-style social democratic model.

The reptiles opened with an uncredited collage which really should have found a home with the Caterist, Australia is losing its soft power in the world because as a country we have lost direction, writes Alexander Downer.

When talking of the loss of soft power, a much better illustration would have featured Lord Downer's soft power in action ...

Now that's soft power, not to mention shapely ankles and saucy legs...

Way back in 2005 I accepted on behalf of John Howard the statesman of the year award from an American foundation. It reflected the enormous admiration there was around the world for the various things Australia was doing at that time.

Australia was seen, as Peter Costello put it last week, as an exceptional nation. As the foreign minister at that time, everywhere I went, ministers, prime ministers and presidents would ask me about Australia’s policies; Australia was seen as one of the world’s greatest success stories. As a leader.

This boast probably needs some explanation. What was it about Australia that triggered such admiration? Well, first, it was its economic performance. Australia had an economic growth rate of approximately 3.5 per cent, growing productivity, growing per capita incomes and, importantly, growing consumption and business investment.

What’s more, the Australian government ran a budget surplus and had paid off all net government debt. The world wanted to know how Australia had done this and in particular the types of economic reforms we had pursued and how we had done it politically.

The reptiles then interrupted Lord Downer's wandering down mammary lane with little Johnnie and Petey boy with an AV distraction, Liberal MP Keith Wolahan slams Labor’s “undermining” of Australia’s relationship with Israel. “What it is doing against the other bad faith actors in the region should be supported,” Mr Wolahan said. “To undermine them in key votes at the UN at this time … is really undermining our relationship with a key partner.”

Speaking of Gaza and key hospital destroying genocidal partners ...

Then it was back to Lord Downer, still wallowing in his glory days ... 

How could the judges have ignored all this, and mistakenly awarded the day to the battery-fuelled Caterist blathering about EVs?

Second, Australia had become a significant international player. The world noticed when we helped Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea get through the Asian economic crisis, when we helped end the Bougainville conflict, led the peacekeeping force in East Timor, saved Solomon Islands from civil war and contributed to the War on Terror. Australia also came into its own as a contributor to the geopolitics and economics of the Asia-Pacific region.

We set up the trilateral security dialogue that later became the Quad and negotiated free-trade agreements with the US and a number of Southeast Asian countries, and began similar negotiations with Japan, South Korea and even China. We had been a founder member of APEC and later of the East Asia Summit.

I well remember president George W. Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, seeking John Howard’s and my advice on how the US should deal with China. Let’s be frank. Donald Trump won’t be looking for the current Australian government’s advice on China.

And then there was immigration. We had demonstrated we could have a robust and successful immigration program yet deny access to Australia for people who tried to game the system by hiring people-smugglers. The rest of the world – particularly developed countries – were wrestling with low rates of economic growth and wondering how to counter the rise of Islamic terrorism, and couldn’t work out how to address the problem of illegal immigration. Australia had answers to all of those questions. We were a world leader.

So much glory in Iraq. 

At this point, the nostalgia became overwhelming with a huge snap of the lying rodent, aka John Howard

On and on the tiresome old Lord carried on, mumbling into his vintage port while his leather chair creaked and groaned ... gad sir, it wasn't like this in my day ...

But today there is very little international interest in Australia. Australia’s international reputation these days is much more about beaches, unusual marsupials, dangerous spiders and beautiful weather. That was the old picture of Australia before it developed a reputation for being the go-to place to see good policy in action.

This is the tragedy of modern Australia. It has lost its mojo. It’s lost its passion for innovative liberal policymaking and instead replaced it with the policy packages of Europe. We no longer lead the world in policies, we follow Europe.

Let’s take economic policy. Instead of a budget surplus and zero government debt, Australia is doing exactly what the Europeans have been doing: running deficits and building up ever larger government debt.

Debt servicing is growing as a proportion of the national budget and there is no sign that the Australian government has any plans to reverse that. Take investment, too. Australia’s focus, like much of Europe, is on government investment in all kinds of activities, few of which generate a net economic return. The most prominent of these is the renewable energy revolution.

Instead of being a land of cheap energy, which was one of Australia’s comparative advantages, our government now boasts of an ever growing level of renewables – albeit intermittently available – from wind and solar. That’s what the Europeans have been doing.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap, Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush.

The pond confesses that it hasn't had a single thought about Condy or the painter of dogs in the last year or so ... and it was too late to catch up, as the pond still had no time to spare, because it was on to Lord Downer sorting out the climate crisis ,with his top notch climate science credentials to hand...

Like many European countries, Australia has been pouring tens of billions of dollars into subsidising expensive and inefficient energy resources when it’s sitting on some of the cheapest available naturally occurring fossil fuels. Politicians think that by forgoing Australia’s comparative advantage the country will somehow become a renewable superpower. That’s what they all say!

Boris Johnson famously claimed that under his leadership Britain would become the Saudi Arabia of wind power. These sorts of claims are just absurd.

Diverting economic resources into more expensive energy sources and banning cheaper alternatives is designed to reduce global warming. We only export uranium for foreign nuclear power stations but refuse to use it at home! Yet our contribution will have almost no measurable effect at all on the global climate.

I accept we have to make a proportionate contribution to the global effort to reduce CO2 emissions. But we want to go much further, and by going much further we are damaging our economy without making even the slightest contribution to reducing global temperatures.

Then the expert climate scientist proved equally adept sorting out the middle east and Ukraine:

And then there’s security policy. Australia is no longer in the vanguard of those countries passionately embracing the Western alliance in meeting the many challenges it faces.

We have turned on our most important ally in the Middle East, Israel, during Israel’s greatest moment of need since 1948. Because we have become a half-hearted supporter of the Western alliance, what we say about Ukraine is completely irrelevant and the West barely listens to us any more on the issue of China.

The reptiles interrupted with a final snap ...Penny Wong and Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon

The tragedy in all this? The sad fact is that Lord Downer's only relevance, his only moment in the sun, in recent years, came via a meeting in a bar (generating that classic joke, "His Lordship and a Hustler walked into a wine room")....

Those were the days, and the sad fact is that we're unlikely to see them come again, especially as Lord Downer has now set up residency in the lizard Oz on a Monday ...

These days that's how we learn of the wanderings and meanderings of our treasured Ancient Mariner, as he stoppeth one or three of the hive mind for a chat ...

The sad fact is, Australia is losing its soft power in the world because as a country we have lost direction. We have abandoned economic reform and replaced it with a European-style social democratic model of big government spending, almost zero productivity growth, stagnant real living standards and GDP growth that is anaemic.

Whether I’m in the US or Europe, where I spend a lot of my time, no one anymore looks to Australia for any guidance about good policy.

Australia’s political class seems satisfied with this miserable record. They shouldn’t be. They should hang their heads in shame as we come to the end of the year and start to think about how we can rebuild our reputation as a forward-looking, dynamic country that sets an example to the rest of the world.

Alexander Downer was foreign minister from 1996 to 2007 and high commissioner to the UK from 2014 to 2018. He is chairman of British think tank Policy Exchange.

Indeed, indeed, we must nuke the country to save the planet. That'll show 'em, that'll learn 'em that this country's still got the right stuff, or at least the right mallee root ...

On second thoughts, no need to rush, best just to enjoy the holyday silly season, guaranteed to last until the end of January, safe in the knowledge that the world is in safe hands ...