In which the pond continues its search for entertainment, but is lumbered with prattling Polonius and Tom ...

 

The pond spent yesterday moaning about the way that the holyday second eleven team had drifted off into racist tropes and Zionist memes, and so there was nothing entertaining to read.

The moaning must continue today. Why is there no story about the badger wars? 

The pond grew up reading The Wind in the Willows, and so understands that stout-hearted badgers are at the heart of being British ... 

And yet if you read Anna Russell's New Yorker piece, Britain's Badger Wars, The animals are being killed in droves. Are they pests or political pawns? (paywall), there's a genocide going down, with dubious gains for farmers, cows or badgers ... inter alia:

... in 2006, a group of independent scientists published a landmark study—the Randomised Badger Culling Trial—on the effects of the badger cull, across nearly a decade, on the spread of bovine tuberculosis. It is fairly damning. It showed that though infections in cattle within culling areas decreased, they surged in the surrounding areas. Researchers hypothesized that this was because of the “perturbation effect.” Harassed badgers, who normally socialize in territorial clans, were migrating to new sites, carrying the disease with them. The study also found that while badgers could infect cows, cows could also infect badgers, and one another. Indeed, much of the transmission was happening cattle-to-cattle. The scientists concluded that the cull was ineffective, and advised officials in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to focus on the cows, and leave the badger out of it.
The case would seem to have closed there. Cows: 0. Badgers: 1. Oddly, however, the study has not dispelled arguments for the cull. (It did show a reduction of the disease in some areas, after all). In 2010, the Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, won the general election, and suddenly the badger cull was back on the table. It was popular among farmers, many of whom believed it worked. Intensive culling began again in 2013. The badgers are no longer gassed, they are mostly now lured into fields at night and shot by specialist teams of exterminators. The process is expensive: thousands of pounds per badger killed, by some estimates.

And so on and so forth, and yesterday the pond featured an hysterical lizard Oz editorial, only to then read a Graudian editorial on a much more significant matter ... Jeansgate in the world of chess ...The Guardian view on Magnus Carlsen’s power play: checking chess’s ruling body in style.

...It is because some professional chess players had a reputation for being unkempt that Fide introduced dress codes governing what they could wear during tournaments. Fide’s general rules permit jeans (at least neat ones like the pair Carlsen was wearing), but for the World Rapid and Blitz Championships, played in late December at glitzy venues on New York’s Wall Street, the regulations were tightened up to forbid them. At the heart of corporate America, the mantra was “dress to impress”. “It’s about creating a positive and inspiring image for chess,” intoned Fide. Fine, but Carlsen always dresses well; just not in Capablanca‑style three-piece suits. His jeans were tailored and expensive. He has been an ambassador for clothing brand G-Star Raw, which quickly renewed his contract after the New York debacle. Every cloud has a silver lining – for Carlsen at least.

The episode has left Fide looking absurd. A code designed to outlaw “unclean clothing, beachwear, torn pants, denim shorts and sunglasses” managed to ban a fashion model. In fact, it was worse than that. Carlsen quit the rapidplay tournament when he was barred from round 9. By his standards, he was performing poorly and had little to lose. But an embarrassed Fide relaxed the jeans rule and he returned for the subsequent blitz tournament (rapidplay is quick chess, blitz even faster), which he promptly won. Or rather he shared first prize with the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi, because, after a succession of draws, the two refused to play on and opted instead to be joint winners, ignoring the tie-break rules and in effect sidelining Fide. Carlsen 2, Fide 0.

The Graudian even managed to slip in a reference to that enjoyable miniseries The Queen's Gambit.

Why didn't the reptiles devote space to valiant Liz's efforts to erase the slurs emanating from her time competing with a lettuce? 

The pond had to hare off to a legal eagle blog to discover alleged parts of the alleged letter...A close look at Truss’s legal threat to Starmer – a glorious but seemingly hopeless cease-and-desist letter

The samples seemed to suggest it was like being smacked with a warm lettuce leaf ...

The Graudian also featured an editorial on climate change ... The Guardian view on the LA fires: Donald Trump’s denial and division fuel climate inaction.

...The Guardian view on the LA fires: Donald Trump’s denial and division fuel climate inaction

he perils of weaponising doubt should be painfully clear in the week when scientists said 2024 was the first year to pass the symbolic 1.5C warming threshold, as well as the world’s hottest on record. Mr Trump’s politicisation of climate denial has supercharged it, turning scepticism into a badge of identity. When denial becomes ideological, facts turn irrelevant. That makes concerted climate action much harder to achieve.

Mr Trump’s return to power won’t halt America’s path to decarbonisation, but it will slow it disastrously. An analysis by Carbon Brief estimated last August that his return could add 4bn tonnes of US carbon emissions by 2030 compared to Democrat plans – inflicting $900bn in global climate damage. To grasp its scale, the emissions surge would equal the combined annual output of the EU and Japan or the emissions of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries. Confronting the climate emergency demands more than facts; it requires dismantling the political machinery that breeds denialism. The link between the current model of economic growth and the depth of environmental collapse is undeniable. Yet in the face of the overwhelming evidence, too many on the political right cling to denial or place blind faith in the free market.

This is an age of “hyper agency” – where billionaires, rogue states and corporations wield almost unchecked power, fuelling climate chaos and global instability. The mechanisms meant to hold power to account are being dismantled with ruinous consequences. Without urgent action, the next disaster won’t be a warning. It will be irreversible. While not much can be expected from Mr Trump, the European “green deal” is too small to plug this year’s projected shortfall in private investment, let alone meet EU commitments under the Paris climate agreement. Climate denialism ought to be confronted with bold policies; business must be held accountable for its role in this crisis; and voters need to see through the rightwing populist parties who prioritise profit over the planet. The next catastrophe isn’t a distant threat, it’s already in motion. Only immediate and determined action can stop global heating from becoming humanity’s undoing.

Well yes ... speaking of billionaires and corporations ...

Meanwhile, the Zuck the cuckberg had set off a flurry of cartoons ...

Yet all the reptiles could offer were attempts to lather up racism in Britain, and reptiles trying to lather up a third world war with China, and seemingly endless blather about anti-Semitism in Australia.

The last is an attempt to confuse and conflate and distract from the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

It was distressing to the pond that prattling Polonius had decided to go down that tedious road, but he's a regular in the pond's Sunday meditation, and so the pond was stuck with it ...

Time for the hate enablers to hang up their skates, Why do Australian governments give in to the tactics of intimidation by anti-Israel extremists rather than push back and insist they cease with their discriminatory demands?

The saga opened with a snap,  The NSW Labor government, under the leadership of Premier Chris Minns, has done well in responding to the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia in recent times. Picture: Gaye Gerard

What a turn off, a minnsimal politician who should realise he's doing something wrong when he's favoured by Polonius.

Then Polonius set his distraction machine in motion ...

And so it has come to this. France hosted a successful Olympic Games, centred on Paris, in mid-2024. However, Ice Hockey Australia has abandoned world championship matches scheduled to be played in Melbourne in April and May 2025.

IHA officials are not saying much about this issue; neither is the Victorian Labor government, nor Victoria Police. But media leaks reveal that IHA president Ryan O’Handley advised the International Ice Hockey Federation in late December that the World Men’s Division II (Group A) championship would be cancelled on account of security concerns. The matches were to feature Australia, Belgium, Serbia, The Netherlands, United Arab Emirates and – yes – Israel.

In a leaked email, O’Handley told his international board that, in Melbourne, “anti-Israel protests and activities have escalated significantly since we were awarded the championship and there are now significant concerns regarding safety and security of the event”. Victoria Police has said that while it had provided advice about protest activity in Melbourne, the decision to cancel the matches was made by IHA.

For its part, the Victorian government, through a spokeswoman, has said the decision to cancel the event was made by the organisation. In other words, neither the Victorian government nor Victoria Police is willing to accept any responsibility for IHA’s decision.

Yet neither will say the cancellation is unwise. Victoria Police told Sky News it advised IHA about “current protest activity” in Melbourne.

The reptiles backed that up with an AV distraction:

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies Chief Executive Michele Goldman discusses the cancellation of a major ice hockey event in Melbourne due to major security concerns caused by growing anti-Israel sentiment in Australia. “This is a really disappointing and concerning outcome for people … to allow the impact of hateful and radical voices,” Ms Goldman said. “It’s very unfortunate that we’ve got to the stage where such a decision has been made, and we’re allowing those who hate … to dictate and disrupt the way we go about our lives.”

Growing anti-Israel sentiment in Australia? Whatever could be the cause of that? 

And then the pond came to realise that there was the upside in indulging Polonius, because that allowed the pond to draw attention to a recent report, Gaza: 64,000 deaths due to violence between October 2023 and June 2024, analysis suggests.

This is how the abstract read:

An independent study by researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggests the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza underreported the death toll due to violence by approximately 41%.
The LSHTM study estimated 64,260 traumatic injury deaths in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 compared to the 37,877 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The findings, published in The Lancet, indicate that approximately 3% of the population of Gaza has died due to violence with an analysis showing that 59% of these deaths were women, children, and the elderly.
The researchers used a statistical method known as ‘capture-recapture analysis’ to estimate the number of traumatic injury deaths. This method overlaps data from multiple sources to arrive at estimates of deaths when not all data are recorded. The sources included Palestinian Ministry of Health hospital morgue records, a respondent-driven online survey, and social media obituaries.
The significant underreporting of traumatic injury deaths highlights the deterioration of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure and consequent inability to count the dead amidst ongoing violence. Based on the estimated underreporting rate, the total traumatic injury death toll as of October 2024 is thought to exceed 70,000 Palestinians.
Zeina Jamaluddine, lead author at LSHTM, said: “The UN's Human Rights Office has already condemned the high number of civilians killed in the war in Gaza, and our findings suggest that the traumatic injury death toll is underreported by around 41%. These results underscore the urgent need for interventions to safeguard civilians and prevent further loss of life.”
The total death toll due to the war is likely to be higher as the analysis does not account for non-trauma related deaths caused by disruption to healthcare, food insecurity, inadequate water and sanitation, and disease outbreaks.

It's remarkable how very little of this ever pierces the alligator hide thickness protecting the reptiles from the real world.

Polonius was adept at his distraction and deflection:

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler was quoted in The Australian Financial Review on January 6 saying “if decision-makers give in to the tactics of intimidation by anti-Israel extremists, it will continue to change the face of Australia”.

Quite so. Across recent decades, France has experienced a number of terrorist attacks by Islamist radicals. But France’s central and regional governments decided to host last year’s Olympics, even after the anti-Israel demonstrations following the Hamas-Israel war. The Victorian government, however, appears to have made no attempt to encourage IHA to go ahead with its original plan.

Anthony Albanese told Nine Network’s Today show on Tuesday that IHA’s decision was an “unfortunate” one and said ice hockey was a sport most Australians were unfamiliar with. That’s true. But it is also true that the sport has a large following in North America and parts of Europe.

The current batch of high-profile anti-Israel demonstrations in Australia began on October 9, 2023 – before Israel responded to Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. This included the demonstration at the Sydney Opera House that featured anti-Israel and anti-Semitic chants. The protesters combined Islamists and green-left radicals along with supporters of the Palestinian cause. There were also large demonstrations in Melbourne that continued longer than in Sydney.

However, it should be pointed out that anti-Semitism in Australia did not suddenly come to a head in early October 2023. On September 23, 2023, this column referred to the decision of Debra Sue Mortimer, the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, in the case of Kaplan v State of Victoria.

Joel Kaplan was one of five Jewish students at Brighton Secondary College in Melbourne – a government school administered by the Victorian Department of Education – who experienced anti-Semitism by fellow students. In a withering judgment, Mortimer was highly critical of the management of this issue, between 2013 and 2020, by not only BSC but also the Victorian Department of Education. In the event, substantial damages were awarded to Kaplan and his colleagues. In view of the weight of the evidence, it is surprising that the Victorian Labor government defended the case (at considerable cost to the taxpayer) rather than settle out of court.

On August 7 last year, Melbourne-based ABC TV News Breakfast presenter Michael Rowland said that he “was horrified to read an account of a local Muslim leader in Middlesbrough (Britain) having to stand guard at the local mosque to protect it”.

Rowland seemed blissfully unaware that, for many years, there have been guards outside Jewish synagogues, schools and institutions in Melbourne and Sydney. This security has been upgraded, with some federal government funding, in recent times.

This followed the firebombing of the synagogue in the Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea that received international coverage. It was one of the reasons cited by IHA in its advice to ice hockey’s international body that the matches scheduled for autumn should not be held in Melbourne. It’s understandable why the likes of O’Hand­ley do not believe that is safe to invite sporting teams, including an Israeli one, to Australia.

The reptiles then introduced another AV distraction:

The anti-Israel movement attracts the “most extreme elements of society”, according to Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin. Mr Ryvchin’s remarks come as pro-Palestine protests continue to rage across university campuses. “To see this, it’s shocking, of course – but it’s also entirely predictable,” he told Sky News host Steve Price. “The anti-Israel movement has always attracted the most extreme elements of society because it’s a movement founded in paranoia and soaked in conspiracy theories, racial hatred and religious supremacism. “So, there’s no shock here.”

Speaking of the most extreme genocidal elements of society, when Politico wrote up that aforementioned report, Israel has killed many more people in Gaza than reported, top health study says added a few extras:

According to the study, figures produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza are an accurate minimum estimate of the death toll — but are still likely to be underreported. Officials in Gaza tallied 37,877 deaths as of June 30 last year...

...The figures come as a growing number of legal experts and NGOs accuse Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed as “false and outrageous.”

Human Rights Watch said last month Israel had deliberately cut off water from Palestinians, leading to thousands of deaths from dehydration and disease. 

Also last month, Amnesty International accused Israel of treating Palestinians as a “subhuman group” and warned that countries supplying arms to Israel, including the United States and Germany, were failing in their obligation to prevent genocide.

Israel has been waging a military offensive in the Gaza Strip since October 2023 in retaliation for a violent attack by Hamas militants in Israel that killed more than 1,100 Israelis. It has crippled the leadership of Hamas, killing top commanders in the militant group, while leaving a swath of destruction across the coastal enclave.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s ex-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November, accusing them of complicity in crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Well yes, but in the lizard Oz, all that gets despatched to the cornfield, and instead the reptiles feed the hive mind constant talk of the state of things in Australia ...

The NSW Labor government, under the leadership of Premier Chris Minns, has done well in responding to the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia in recent times. The same cannot be said of the Victorian Labor government of Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. The reaction to the international ice hockey decision was weak. The Allan government could have instructed Victoria Police to provide a safe environment for the occasion. The evidence suggests that this did not occur.

Labor has been out of office in Australia for much of the time since the end of World War II. One of Labor’s most significant contributions during this time was the role played by prime minister Ben Chifley and his attorney-general and external affairs minister Bert Evatt in the lead-up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

On Tuesday, the Prime Minister announced that Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would soon make an official visit to Israel. Dreyfus, who is Jewish, spoke out against anti-Semitism during a speech at the Sydney Institute on September 5 last year. He said it was “the responsibility of every part of Australian society to fight against anti-Semitism” and acknowledged that “more needs to be done”.

The Dreyfus visit has raised some criticism, with suggestions that Albanese or Foreign Minister Penny Wong should go instead. But the trip has been welcomed by Australian Jewish leaders such as Colin Rubenstein and Alex Ryvchin. Who knows? It could help to repair the Australian-Israel relationship, which has deteriorated since Israel’s current defensive war against its many enemies – led by Iran.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

More needs to be done? How about ending the current genocide in Gaza?

And now in the spirit of needing a Sunday soporific of the nattering "Ned" kind as a way of driving people back to bed, the pond turned to Tom Dusevic for what the reptiles assured the pond was a seven minute read:

The fiscal crunch is coming from rising pension, health and aged care costs, Australia’s economic model and social compact will be tested in coming decades as it searches for a policy consensus that can deliver quality service and not impoverish younger workers.

As usual, it began with a bland stock image, handy if you wanted to drive down productivity, The cost of an ageing Australia will burden younger workers. Picture: Getty Images

Sheesh, that's dull, and then Tom got stuck into it. 

The pond should note that the pond has rarely, if ever, featured Tom, but these are desperate times and the quest for a dull Sunday never ends...

Our national anthem was changed in 2020 from rejoicing about being “young and free” to “one and free” because it was seen as ignoring the history of Indigenous Australians.

Still, there are also demographic and fiscal reasons to justify the tweak ahead of the coming transformation: Australia is becoming older and far more expensive to run.

Intergenerational strains will shape our politics and policy debates.

The nation’s future growth depends on making the most of the three defining Ps: population, participation and productivity.

Australia’s economic model and social compact will be tested in coming decades as it searches for a policy consensus that can deliver quality services off the toil of future generations, who will struggle to approach the material wealth and mobility of their forebears.

Most rich nations are experiencing the fiscal crunch, where rising costs for health, pensions and aged care are outstripping growth in revenue, as well as stagnation of living standards from a slowdown in productivity growth.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, published in October 2024, the International Monetary Fund says the global economy has endured a long period of structural weakness and across the coming decade “prospects under current policies remain bleak” because of ageing populations, weak investment and a lack of economic dynamism.

“In this context, policymakers are urged to advance structural reforms – that is, to update the rules and policies that shape how an economy operates – to boost productivity, employment and growth,” the IMF report says.

According to Treasury’s latest Intergenerational Report, demographic ageing is estimated to account for about 40 per cent of the increase in federal spending across the coming four decades, concentrated in health, Age Pension and aged-care spending.

At this point the reptiles introduced a flurry of graphs, designed to make an ABC Finance report go green with envy ...

You can click on them if you must, but in the pond's experience there are damned lies and then there are statistics and graphs.

Tom was big on the stats ...

The number of workers in the so-called care economy has more than doubled across the past 20 years and is estimated to double again across the next 40 years.

There is often a perception that the ageing of the population is a temporary episode, due to the greying of the baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964.

But that’s not the case according to Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, who says as long as the fertility rate is below replacement, which is 2.1 babies per woman, successive generations will be smaller.

The latest figures on births from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show a record low total fertility rate of 1.5 in 2023. At the peak of the post-war boom it was 3.5 babies per woman.

“Combine this with Australians living longer lives, and the share of Australians aged 65 and over will just keep rising, albeit more slowly over time,” Kennedy said after the release of the IGR in 2024.

“A permanently higher share of older people underpins the importance of the design of aged-care services, and the tax and superannuation systems.”

To make sure that the illustrations were as dull as the text, the reptiles introduced Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then it was back to the anxiety attack and the suffering of vulgar youff:

Total government spending on aged care, including residential care and support at home, is expected to more than double across the coming decade.

The IGR, which tries to measure long-term fiscal sustainability, estimates that across the next 40 years real total health spending on those aged over 65 is expected to increase about sixfold and ninefold on those over 85.

People aged 65 or older currently account for about 40 per cent of health spending, despite being about 16 per cent of the population.

Across time, population ageing is projected to lead to a narrowing personal income tax base, meaning younger workers are likely to bear a greater burden.

The IGR projects that the old-age dependency ratio – which measures the number of people aged 65 and older for every 100 people of traditional working age (15 to 64) – will increase from 26.6 per cent to 38.2 per cent across the next 40 years.

Only 18 per cent of Australians aged 65 and older and 12 per cent aged 70 and older pay income tax, so there are likely to be more calls for the heavier taxation of consumption or wealth taxes, given the steady rise in the value of retirement nest eggs and housing.

The public cost of the Age Pension is actually going to fall as a share of the economy during coming decades (unlike in most OECD countries, where it is expected to keep growing) because of reforms and the growth in superannuation balances.

Although the gradual increase in the eligibility age and changes to Age Pension means testing have improved fiscal sustainability, there could still be a push to change the treatment of the family home in the assets test for benefits.

Cue another snap, Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells has landed a package of reforms to shift the cost burden to the users of service. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Here's the thing, and the pond speaks with some feeling. Vulgar youff have a singular treasure, which is to be young. You can't buy it, you can't earn it, you've got it until it's lost, and then it's lost for ever.

The pond looks at the sweet young things roaming the streets of Newtown, lively, full of youthful vigour, completely unaware that while young now, they too will age ...

The pond could see a simple solution to this whole intergenerational fuss. 

A tax on the young for simply being young, and yet too stupid to realise that they're in their 'daffodils in the field' phase ...

Naturally Tom couldn't comprehend such a simple, yet bold, taxation strategy ... perhaps Wordsworthian insights were beyond him ...

But Treasury warns that trends in life expectancy and home ownership could present riskd to sustainability of the retirement incomes system. Simply, home ownership rates are falling among younger cohorts; owning a home or not is the great determiner of financial comfort in retirement.

Longevity risk – where retirees worry about running out of money – means many people draw on their savings at only a minimum rate and generally have a quarter of their savings at death.

Funds are modifying their product offerings to smooth out spending in retirement.

Treasury warns that the drop-off in home ownership among younger people is seen as a key risk for fiscal sustainability and may affect patterns of how superannuation is drawn down.

The Albanese government is targeting tax breaks on superannuation, especially for higher balances, and seeking to impose higher costs on those with the means to contribute more to their aged-care costs, with a set of far-reaching reforms put forward by Aged Care Minister Anika Wells in September 2024.

Two dozen OECD countries levy an inheritance or estate tax, although they raise, on average, less than 1 per cent of total revenue in those that do.

Former Treasury chief Ken Henry has highlighted how younger workers are confronted by higher education debt, accumulated public debt, the consequences of climate change and the diminishing prospects of ever being able to afford a home of their own.

Given the rising costs identified by the IGR and increased average tax rates, Henry, who chaired a tax review for the Rudd government, is calling for an overhaul of the tax system.

“The intergenerational tragedy confronting Australia is of our own making,” he said in April 2024, launching a book on the mixed history of tax reform.

“And it is of a magnitude that threatens the social compact. Somebody has to grab this thing and get on with it.”

Grattan Institute chief executive Aruna Sathanapally says the federal budget’s structural problem can be tackled by reducing spending, increasing revenue and growing the economy.

“Growing the economy is the easiest solution to sell but it is the hardest to achieve in practice,” Sathanapally told the National Press Club before the federal budget in May 2024.

The reptiles supplied another snap, Dr Aruna Sathanapally from the Grattan Institute. Picture: Supplied

She looks young. Tax her ... her youth is a daily reminder of mortality and the nearness of death. Tax her until the lemon's pips squeak ...

Australia, like other advanced economies, is expecting much slower economic growth across the next 40 years than we’ve had across the past 40 years.

Productivity growth expectations have been wound back by Treasury, yet to many analysts they appear optimistic.

Research by the e61 Institute shows there has been no productivity improvement in the burgeoning care sector – which includes disability services, aged care, health and childcare – during the past two decades.

Productivity Commission chairwoman Danielle Wood has said growth in the care sector means other parts of the economy will need to deliver a higher productivity dividend if we are to fund services at the level the community expects.

But Grattan chief Sathanapally says even if productivity growth exceeds expectations, it is still unlikely to close the structural budget gap

“As a relatively low-tax country we can afford to raise more revenue, but of course there are better and worse ways to do this,” she told the press club.

“Broadening the tax base and reducing tax concessions tend to be much less economically damaging than simply raising the headline rates of tax.”

Economists of all persuasions tend to agree that wealth in housing and superannuation get particularly generous treatment.

The reptiles kept rubbing it in with their snaps, Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood. Aaron Francis / The Australian

Tax her, and in the spirit of the corn tax, tax anyone wearing purple or having orange-dyed hair ...

Let there be a tax on tatts - more than ten tatts and you move into the mega tatts tax bracket - in the same spirit as that tax on windows.

Tax the reptiles too. Oh wait, the reptiles never pay tax, and they have graphs and charts to show why they shouldn't ...

Superannuation tax breaks cost the budget almost $45bn a year, predominantly benefiting top income earners, and are projected to cost more than the Age Pension by 2036.

Sathanapally points out that the combination of capital gains tax breaks and negative gearing “encourages speculation in the housing market, in place of other more productive uses of funds”.

“We know from experience that governments baulk at these types of politically difficult choices around tax,” she told the press club.

“Because it gets pretty noisy when there are any losers to be found, as though there is some world where we don’t have to countenance any trade-offs.

“But, frankly, we are sitting on a wretched generational bargain and it has gone on for long enough.”

Although Jim Chalmers asked his department to model the impact of changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, the Treasurer has killed off policy changes in that area because he was not convinced changes would boost housing supply.

Labor’s 2019 election platform included curbing the tax breaks on property investment which, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office, cost the $12bn a year in forgone revenue.

Better targeted migration policies also will provide a fiscal and productivity dividend.

Older workers – with their experience and wisdom – are not necessarily less productive. Treasury says planning for the needs of an ageing Australian population also may require reducing the barriers to labour force participation for older people who may wish to work, women and historically under-represented groups.

“At the same time, policy settings can reduce barriers for families to have the number of children they would like to have,” the IGR says.

“Employers can make themselves more attractive to older workers by being more flexible about when and where they work, and providing training and development to ensure skill sets remain up to date.

“This will help realise the potential older workers have to offer. Existing infrastructure and ser­vices can be adapted to better meet the needs of older Australians.

“This could include adopting emerging technological developments such as automation, making public areas and public transport more accessible, and building new housing and adapting existing stocks to meet the needs of older people (including to support downsizing).”

Without lifting our growth rates, fixing our tax system, keeping older workers engaged and modernising our economy the evidence is clear: we’ll succumb to decades of deficits, rising debt and expensive social services.

The pond isn't interested in that kind of sop about older workers still being productive, or other token gestures. 

Vulgar youff have youth on their side, at least until they don't, but the pond won't be around to see them wake up old and enfeebled and tottering off to Aldi in search of a bargain, so the only solution is to make them suffer a little more in the here and now ...

And so to wrap up with another matter not featured by the reptiles ...

Heck, just as the pond was wrapping up, that My Fair First Lady review reminded the pond of another story not mentioned,  Melania Trump Documentary Scores Massive Amazon Payday,Brett Ratner, who has denied sexual misconduct allegations made by several women, will helm the Melania film.

Amazon is forking over $40 million for the licensing rights to a documentary about incoming First Lady Melania Trump directed by alleged sexual harasser Brett Ratner, according to a report.

The as-yet-untitled film will receive a small theatrical release before it appears on the e-commerce giant’s streaming platform, Prime Video, Puck reported, citing three sources familiar with the deal. Amazon will also gain the rights to a follow-up docuseries on Trump that will run two or three episodes.

Amazon said the project, which began shooting last month, will offer an “unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look at First Lady Melania Trump.”

Puck reported that potential buyers of the project were told Ratner came attached—how he came on board is unknown, as is how much he and Trump will make from the Amazon windfall.

Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos has been among a stream of executives to visit the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks, as businesses and Wall Street have begun jockeying for an in with the incoming administration.

Amazon also reportedly plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, a move that mirrors donations by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and a personal contribution from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Sheesh, first cancel vulgar youff, then cancel everything else ...