In which the pond is proud to advise of the return of the bromancer, while "this column" also makes a contribution ...

 

Meanwhile, the carnival of clowns continues in the US; Gaza reaches a new level of ethnic cleansing - it's in final solution stage; and Trump’s Ukraine Peace Envoy Parrots Putin’s Favorite Lines. (paywall)

You won't find much of any of this on the front page of the digital lizard Oz, more concerned with a wrap-around promoting the "renewable", transitioning, gassing of the country ...

What you will find over on the extreme far right "top of the digital world ma" is that warrior of woke, Dame Slap, off on yet another crusade, the recent news of her facilitation of corruption shoved deep into the reptile closet ...

Apologies, the pond knows it has herpetology duties to perform, but it simply hasn't the stomach for that form of bastardy, that inane brand of compulsory far right loony radicalism...

Speaking of Dame Slap, most amusing understatement of last week? 

The pond has to hand the award to Anthony Whealy KC in the Graudian, in the course of scribbling Former judges were once considered the bastion of integrity. The Sofronoff findings have upended that

The Sofronoff report was officially published by the ACT chief minister on 7 August 2023. It was scathing of Drumgold’s behaviour in a number of respects. Drumgold then initiated proceedings to invalidate the report and overturn the adverse findings. On 4 March 2024 acting Justice Stephen Kaye found that the conduct of Sofronoff – in particular his interactions with an experienced lawyer and journalist from the Australian newspaper, Janet Albrechtsen – amounted to conduct giving rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias. This finding effectively vitiated the legal validity of the adverse findings which had been made by Sofronoff.
Kaye’s findings revealed some startling assertions. Soffronoff and Albrechtsen had engaged in 51 private telephone conversations – over six hours in all – discussing the case; documents were supplied by Sofronoff to the journalist when requested, and views as to the inquiry and sometimes aspects of the evidence were discussed between them. It was clear that Albrechtsen was by no means an avid advocate for Brittany Higgins. For that matter, she was also shown to be highly critical of Drumgold as a prosecutor in the trial.

It was the pursed lip KC line It was clear that Albrechtsen was by no means an avid advocate for Brittany Higgins which meant Whealy took home the prize, and makes him a hot contender for the end of year ceremony, though the pond is likely to forget to stage it ...

After that ceremony and with the Caterist seemingly MIA, it was lucky and timely for the pond that this day featured the majestic return of the bromancer to the front lines ...

It was back on 12th March that the bromancer last got things hopelessly wrong and produced a hopeless muddle in Someone has to be Ukraine’s midwife to history: it may well be Trump, The shape of any Ukrainian ceasefire has been the case for months, more than a year. Donald Trump certainly never lacks energy and it may possibly be that he gets a decent outcome here.

Uh huh ... Trump’s Ukraine Peace Envoy Parrots Putin’s Favorite Lines. (paywall)

And before that, the slacker had only managed a 26th February outing, Australia, not Europe, is the big freeloader of US power, The real lesson for Australia to understand is that every tough bit of scolding Trump has applied to feckless Europeans applies to us only a hundred times more strongly.

How the pond had missed his mindless stupidity while he junketed amidst feckless Europeans, and so the pond welcomed his return...

The bromancer offered a sturdy five minute rant, or so the reptiles clocked it, featuring that favourite weird reptile saw, This article contains features which are only available in the web version Take me there...

Relax, the pond will go there, to Dutton as weak as Labor if he doesn’t commit to higher defence spending.

The bromancer wasn't interested in any white flags. He lay down a demand for immediate surrender, in "this column's" sub-header Dutton, more than Albanese, faces a critical moment of truth this week. In his budget reply speech, he must commit to increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP within one parliamentary term. 

There was no need for a secondary target, the opening visual splash featured his prime target, the mutton Dutton was in his sights, Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton delivers an address to the Lowy Institute in Sydney. Picture: John Feder

True, the bro's opening salvo was a tad weak, and relied on nattering "Ned"...

Peter Dutton, more than Anthony Albanese, faces a critical moment of truth this week.
In his budget reply speech on Thursday, Dutton must commit to increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP within one parliamentary term or, sadly for us, we’ll have to conclude the Liberals are nearly as flaky and hopeless on defence as the Albanese government.
My colleague Paul Kelly recently asked: What are the Liberals actually offering in terms of reform and substance at this election? Nowhere is this question more urgent than defence.
This entire term, the Dutton opposition has criticised Labor for military cutbacks, but not given any commitments of its own.
This was partly remedied when the Coalition announced it would buy a fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, and commit at least $3bn extra to that end. That’s a good, long-overdue decision. But it’s one small part of the bare minimum.

Hmm, the F-35?

Of course no one should deny that the bro is a top notch defence expert, no matter what Mein Gott says and scribbles...

But perhaps the bromancer hasn't caught up with news of buyer reluctance, what with rumours of a software kill switch - hastily denied - and many still wondering if getting into bed with an authoritarian loon was the answer, as in Trump Moves Prompt Some International F-35 Buyers To Reconsider

...The Canadian review has reverberated among F-35 operators in Europe. Denmark in particular is caught in the geopolitical crossfire; Greenland, a Danish possession with self-rule, is another annexation target for Trump. Copenhagen has signed orders for all 27 F-35s in its program of record, but some Danish politicians are having second thoughts.
“As one of the decision-makers behind Denmark’s purchase of F35s, I regret it,” Rasmus Jarlov, a conservative member of parliament, posted on X, suggesting Trump could cut off the fleet’s weapons and spare parts in the event of a refusal to transfer Greenland to the U.S.
“Therefore, buying American weapons is a security risk that we cannot run,” Jarlov stated. “We will make enormous investments in air defense, fighter jets, artillery and other weapons in the coming years, and we must avoid American weapons if at all possible.”

What the pond knows about jet fighters could be written on the back of a postage stamp, but it seems the Swedish Gripen might be a handy alternative to that being flogged by the Cantaloupe Caligula's mob ... and even down under has managed to provide a triumphant technological alternative ...

...The impact of Trump’s rhetoric and actions could extend beyond the F-35 in Canada’s security relationship with its neighbor, NATO ally and partner in the binational North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). In a possible case of coincidental timing, Carney announced on March 18 the selection of Australia’s Jindalee Operational Radar Network to bolster surveillance gaps in NORAD’s North Warning System. The award passed over a rival U.S. option—the RTX Next Generation Over-the-Horizon Radar.

The reptiles tried to distract the pond with an AV featuring weaponry in vogue in WWI days ... and still handy in Ukraine (but sssh, don't mention tanks in the bromancer's company)

Increases in defence spending are expected to be fast-tracked in the federal budget next week, according to Nine Newspapers. Under the Albanese government, spending is projected to rise from 2.02 per cent of GDP to 2.33 per cent by 2034. Government sources say it would accelerate the current spending timeline to speed up military purchases. Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie has proposed an increase to 2.5 per cent by the end of the decade. The focus on defence follows a call out from the Trump administration for Australia to boost spending.

Reduced to quoting the Nine rags?

Meanwhile, the bro was still excited about the F-35s, even as Google's wretched AI info section tried to subvert the pond's understanding of the world ...

Damn you mindlessly moronic bot, shouldn't you be off providing happy endings to incels? 

Get out of the way, let an expert handle the matter ...

The opposition didn’t even make it clear that this means a substantially bigger air force, though that’s the case. The new F-35s won’t lead to the retirement of the Super Hornets squadron. The air force will expand from four squadrons to five. Dutton, Andrew Hastie, Sussan Ley and David Littleproud should be shouting this from the rooftops. Instead they don’t seem to have understood its significance themselves.
Dutton has been tongue-tied on what Lenin rightly judged the only question that matters: What is to be done? The Libs have made no case for specific defence capabilities. Dutton must commit to immediately raising defence spending from its paltry 2 per cent of GDP to at least 2.5 per cent within three years, and 3 per cent by the middle of a second term. Media reports suggest the Liberals are thinking of 2.5 per cent by 2029. That’s an unbelievable, pathetic fudge, which would demonstrate the Liberals are not much better than Labor.
The Albanese/Marles fantasy commitment is to raise the defence budget to a dismal 2.33 per cent of GDP by 2032-33. Some 2.5 per cent by 2029 is so little different as to be meaningless. More importantly, by running beyond one parliamentary term, with money doubtless back-loaded to the end of the forward estimates, the Liberals would continue the Albanese/Marles practice of monstrous defence funding fudges, worthless commitments beyond electorally meaningful time frames.
The bulk of Marles’ claimed defence spending increases are in the distant future. ABC interviewers are utterly clueless in letting him get away with claiming future daydreams as though he’s taking action today. If the Liberals don’t commit to 2.5 per cent inside one term, they’re as big a fraud as Labor.
The Liberals have been crippled on defence policy for four reasons. The shadow cabinet is deeply divided. Free-market dogma is gravely misapplied to the strategic situation. The Coalition can’t work out how to deal with its own appalling defence record over 10 years in government. And for all its talk, it doesn’t yet seem to really take the strategic crisis seriously.
Dutton, Marles and others routinely say these are our most dangerous strategic circumstances since World War II. This is now the strategic welcome to country ceremony, a vague theological ritual with no meaning or consequence in the real world.

Indeed, indeed, best piss money against the wall in a frantic hope that the mango Mussolini won't pursue the conquest of New Zealand, or join forces with secessionist sandgropers. 

Would the offer of Tasmania appease his imperialist zeal? 

Who knows, time for the reptile theological ritual of featuring the enemy, Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles hold a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

Meanwhile, the bro was getting ready to resume his war on China, perhaps still due by Xmas ...

Coalition free-market types are already unhappy with Dutton’s free-spending ways. They don’t want more money for defence, on top of Dutton’s efforts to match almost all Labor’s profligate social spending.
The free-market types have got defence badly wrong for a long time. They tend to think fuel security, supply chain security and a merchant fleet that a government could command in a national emergency are a big waste of money because markets provide these things more cheaply.
Given that their main interpretative tool for political analysis is money, they can’t believe international actors will allow the market to be fundamentally disrupted. They still think market considerations guarantee no serious conflict with China. They also privately hold, very conveniently, that Australia can’t actually do anything significant to provide for its own defence.
They’re dead wrong on all these propositions, of course, and deeply unhistoric.
They also believe Defence spends money so incompetently it shouldn’t get any more.
It’s true Australian defence is staggeringly wasteful and inefficient. But a government must provide for national security straight away. The Liberals must change the nature of Defence. That surely means changing the leadership of Defence. On all of this we hear nothing from the Liberals except cliches.

At this point the reptiles decided to show off a liar from the Shire, the notoriously incompetent happy clapper Scott Morrison

That inspired the bromancer to go off the deep end ...

We desperately need to fix and increase our defence effort. China’s militarisation and regional assertiveness grow by the day. The Trump administration has made it clear old US security guarantees can no longer be taken for granted and that allies must make a serious effort in their own defence. Yet in 2023-24 our defence budget was a dismal 1.99 per cent of GDP. The Australian Defence Force has atrophied to a pitiful state.
We have faux-passionate, utterly meaningless defence debates – will we send peacekeepers to Ukraine – to avoid having the real, hard debates on the need to rapidly acquire deterrent capability. AUKUS itself is a sideshow beside the urgent need to create an ADF with serious deterrent power, an issue neither side of politics engages substantially or honestly.
No one could accuse this column of being soft on the Albanese government on defence. But almost every criticism it makes of its Liberal predecessors is true. The Liberals in 2013 inherited a shocking defence budget from Labor of just 1.56 per cent of GDP. Over 10 years – 10 years! – the Coalition increased that to 2 per cent. An increase of 0.44 per cent of GDP over a decade is just about as slow and hopeless a record as the Albanese government’s performance now.

"This column"? Did he mean "this columnist"? Or is it simply "this column" that's hard, hard as Tesla stainless steel, or as soft as the glue that binds?

Perhaps this pond shouldn't be asking this question, but the use of the third person is something the pond blames on the reptiles ...

When Scott Morrison announced AUKUS he didn’t tell the Australian people that in order to buy nuclear submarines and simultaneously develop a credible defence force we would need to raise defence spending to at least 3 per cent of GDP.
Indeed, when the Coalition lost office its plans were for the first nuclear submarine to appear in the 2040s and navy officers were briefing Senate estimates that the Collins-class subs could have not one but two successive life of type extensions. The current shambles in the LOTE program reflects on both the Albanese government and the governments that preceded it.

Then the bromancer turned even more deeply weird, inspired by a snap of Jim "Jimbo" Molan ...

The bro went right off ...

Morrison should have made Jim Molan defence minister and Mike Pezzullo secretary of the Defence Department. That might have got results.

What a relief that the bromancer is stuck writing columns and fuming away in the lizard Oz. With results like that, who needs third prize?

And so to the rousing finale. Over the top, me lads, and never mind the incoming...

But the Liberals were scared of Molan’s honesty, passion and commitment, and treated him appallingly. The Liberals produced poor defence results. Only rhetoric and politics were strong.
Dutton’s brand is security. He must stand for something. The nation desperately needs powerful defence forces.
There are billions needed straight away just getting the ADF deployable again. Then there’s missile defence, new surface ships, massive work on drones and missiles, supply ships, countermining ships and much, much else.
These require genuinely tough decisions. Left-wing British socialist Prime Minister Keir Starmer took 0.2 per cent of GDP, real money today, away from the aid budget to immediately increase defence to 2.5 per cent of GDP (a minister resigned in protest).
Dutton must care as much about Australian security as Starmer cares about British security. If he doesn’t, the case on defence policy for voting Liberal is very feeble.

Meanwhile, Wired continues to provide amiable distractions ...

Nearly All Cybertrucks Have Been Recalled Because Tesla Used the Wrong Glue,Tesla says it will fix the sticky issue—which could cause panels to detach from trucks while driving—with a new adhesive “not prone to environmental embrittlement.”

You might also like Elon Musk and Donald Trump Have Chosen Chaos, Elon Musk secured his choke hold on the mechanics of the federal government weeks ago. Along with Donald Trump, he has already standardized chaos across the US.

Heck, you might enjoy any of these ...

... in much the same way that barking mad Xian fundamentalists enjoy reading about the apocalypse, the end times, Armageddon, cataclysmic calamities, and a relieving rapture ... beam us all up Scotty.

The pond however is chained to the lizard Oz, and so must turn to the Major. 

Others share this thankless task.

Last week the Major even managed to attract the attention of the venerable Meade, who noted a deep weirdness:

The former editor-in-chief of the Australian Chris Mitchell has written a media column since he retired in 2015. He is usually laser-focused on the perceived failings of leftwing journalists, in particular on the ABC, or on how the climate emergency is overblown.
But this week he wrote a column about golf, which had nothing to do with the media. We kept reading and there was no link with the media at all.
But that wasn’t even the weirdest thing about it.
“This column plays golf three times a week,” Mitchell, who refers to himself in the third person as “this column”, wrote.

Ah yes, the "this column" disease, what with both the bromancer and the Major infested with verbal thrips ...

That noted by this pond, the venerable Meade will perhaps be vastly relieved to find the Major back on his usual course, firing off his usual bogeys ... and taking five minutes to do it, or so the reptiles say ...

Reform-free Labor let off the hook by lazy ‘race-call’ coverage, Today most journalists run a race-call version of reporting, in which the political winner is the side offering the most free giveaways.

It wouldn't be a Major outing without first identifying the enemy ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Tertius Pickard/Getty Images

Blessed with astonishing insights - the Major already knows all the budget's ins and outs - and loaded with an envious amount of generational wisdom, the Major was ready to explain it all to vulgar youff ...

Unfortunately for younger Australians, Tuesday’s federal budget and the May election will be much ado about nothing.
The latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia study, released this month, shows inequality across Australia is now worse than at any time in the survey’s 19-year history. The young yet to enter the housing market are feeling the pinch more than most.
Former Coalition prime minister John Howard, derided as anti-worker by the left, presided over a period of relatively strong performance by lower-income demographics in the HILDA survey.
HILDA did not exist in the Hawke and Keating Labor years but their productivity-enhancing reforms certainly helped lift living standards.
Think here the deregulation of labour and capital markets, micro-economic reform in water and electricity, and cuts in 1985 to the top personal income tax rate from 61 to 49 per cent and the intermediate rate from 46 to 40 per cent.
Treasurer Paul Keating cut company tax from 49 to 39 per cent in 1988 and as PM cut it again to 33 per cent in 1993.
Imagine PM Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who claimed in 2022 that they would emulate the reforms of Hawke and Keating, ever cutting company tax or the top personal income tax rate.

The reptiles indulged the Major's wandering back in time with a cheap snap from the archive that also wandered back in time, Prime minister Bob Hawke with treasurer Paul Keating on the fourth day of the ALP conference being held in Hobart, Tasmania, July 10, 1986.

Those were the days, when the Major was an impending major force, not like the miserable mob currently doing the rounds, except for other geriatrics like the Major, such as nattering "Ned" ... 

Take heed, vulgar youff, hearken ye to the Major, as he stoppeth one of three ...

Hawke and Keating lived in a different media era. Skilled political and economics writers often led debates about tough reforms to open Australia to international competition. Today most journalists outside this paper and The Australian Financial Review run a race-call version of reporting in which the political winner is the side offering the most free giveaways.
Yet today’s giveaways are future budget imposts for young taxpayers.
Not all senior journalists were on board the reform era train. Nine’s Ross Gittins — still running the antireform lines of his past 50 years in newspapers — was always a sceptic.
Gittins last Monday told readers of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that voters don’t care about balanced budgets advocated by the “Trumpist business media”.
A brilliant analysis of Australia’s miserable economic performance over the past decade ran in the AFR the same day as Gittins’ piece. Penned by leading federal budget observer Chris Richardson, this decidedly “non-Trumpist” piece was headed “We wasted a $400bn windfall, and now we all have to pay”.
Also compelling was a piece in December on the end of “Australian exceptionalism”, by this masthead’s Paul Kelly. Headed “2024: the year Australia lost its way”, Kelly’s analysis was not “Trumpist” either.
Keating and Howard’s treasurer, Peter Costello, did not just benefit from a powerful media. They also benefited from majority government.
Teals spruikers at the ABC, Guardian and Nine newspapers should ask themselves if any of the reforms of the 1980s and ’90s could have succeeded without strong majority government.
Remember here Hawke, a former trade union leader, led an attack on the centralised wage-fixing system that had been the policy centrepiece of Labor’s political and union wings. Howard, as opposition leader, backed Hawke’s reforms.
Such a scenario is hard to imagine today – as is a government going to an election with a new tax, as Howard did when he pitched the GST ahead of the 1998 poll.
Not only will we see no budget reform this week, we are unlikely to see majority government in May. Most left-wing journalists will cheer that on, forgetting how much the reform era benefited Australian living standards.
These have been stagnant for a decade yet many young journalists dream of minority government, with teal and Greens support.

Oh you foolish young 'uns, with your aberrant taste for tacky colours. Have you learned nothing?

Kelly’s piece in December quoted Costello on budget reform: “Australian exceptionalism became a phrase used in the IMF. We were considered a model for other Western nations. This process began with Hawke and Keating but the fiscal high point — 10 budget surpluses and the retirement of all commonwealth debt — was considered to be Australian exceptionalism.”
This allowed Australia to weather the global financial crisis in 2008-09.
Given Tuesday’s budget will confirm a decade of future deficits, how will we fare if, for example, President Donald Trump’s trade wars trigger a deep global slowdown?

How will we fare? 

Did the Major, more correctly, "this column", think to ask his master, or his master's minions at Faux Noise? 

Possibly not, best just to sound the alarums, long after that might have meant something,  Donald Trump’s trade wars loom as a huge potential inhibitor to global economic growth. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Did the Major only just notice? Here's Luckovich in 2018 ...

...and here we are again ...

Fired up, the Major did a "Ned", quoted others and went on a rant ...

Coming off two decades of mining boom, Australia’s financial bottom line should be much better. Richardson nails the problem: “The bad news is we’ve done well thanks to luck rather than good management. And the worse news is that, despite the luck that’s come our way, our social compact isn’t delivering prosperity: Australian living standards stood still over the last decade.”
Richardson says last financial year’s revenue windfall more than paid the cost of “unemployment benefits, plus childcare subsidies, the capabilities of each of the army, navy and air force, federal subsidies to state schools, as well as our support for carers, fuel tax credits plus spending on public sector superannuation”.
“Spending was 24.4 per cent of national income in 2022-23 but will be 27.2 per cent next year,” he wrote. It’s the fastest rise in government spending since Gough Whitlam’s Labor government 50 years ago.
High spending might be OK if Chalmers and Albo put it into productive investments. But they wasted most of it on handouts to help cost of living, effectively trying to offset the Reserve Bank’s anti-inflation monetary policy.
The latest pre-election spendathon includes some clangers.
How about the $8.5bn Albanese announced last month to increase bulk-billing rates? This will effectively give doctors $3 for each $1 of extra bulk billing.
The policy will save patients $859m a year by 2030 but at a cost to the government of $2.5bn a year.
How about the $2.4bn to rescue the Whyalla steelworks in South Australia at a cost of $2.2m for every direct job saved?
And look at Albanese’s expected childcare bribe to entice families at the poll. It could add $8bn to the existing $14bn cost of government childcare subsidies that already go to families earning up to $530,000 a year.
Why are we spending borrowed money to subsidise such high-income families?
And these are just the initiatives of the past few months. What about the National Disability Insurance Scheme that threatens to blow out to $100bn a year mid-century? Or Gonski school funding that can’t improve school results despite $32bn a year in federal funding on top of what the states – which run the schools – already pay?
What about all the billions in off-budget measures adding to the nation’s borrowings?
Does anyone think wiping $20bn of student debt for people – who will one day be high-income earners – is a good idea?
Consider, too, the economic wisdom of the $20bn “Rewiring the Nation” project to build new poles and wires across the continent for the green energy transition the rest of the world is abandoning.
Or the money set aside to make solar panels in NSW that can be made for a fraction of the price in China?

Yes, how much better to piss an unspecified amount of money on nuking the country to save the planet...

The pond these days usually avoids The Insiders, but while doing the washing up, did listen in to the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor appears to struggle sharing cost of Coalition’s nuclear policy, Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor appeared to repeatedly stumble over the cost of the Coalition’s flagship nuclear policy. (caution, link is to a News Corp publication)

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor has repeatedly refused to directly answer questions around the cost of the Coalition’s nuclear policy, in a confusing pre-budget interview on the Opposition’s flagship policies.
Appearing on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, Mr Taylor was repeatedly questioned by host David Speers on the
cost of the Coalition’s plan to build seven state-owned reactors by 2050, with the first two reactors set to come online by 2035.
Despite the Opposition releasing its costing policies conducted by Frontier Economics in December, which said the Coalition’s energy plan would cost $331bn, Mr Taylor repeatedly avoided giving a figure.
Instead he stuck to the Coalition’s attack lines, stating: “44 per cent less than the alternative (Labor’s plan)”.
“I’m just asking what it’s going to cost Australia to build nuclear power?” said Speers, for asked Mr Taylor for the costing details 14 times.
Sharing multiple variations of the same answer during the three-minute grilling, Mr Taylor responded with: “44 per cent less than the alternative,” before comparing the costings between the two policies.

The Major doesn't like to get caught in the rough, or find himself in a bunker, he prefers an easier lie ...

Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen with the world’s first surfboard made from decommissioned wind turbine blades at URBNsurf in Sydney. Picture Jeremy Piper

Rather than tackling nuking matters, the Major always likes to hit the green in one ...

How about the funding for the green hydrogen that Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen still believes in, even after Twiggy Forrest has stepped back from the idea?

Will "this column" ever step back from the idea of nuking the country? 

This pond will likely never know, but will end with the immortal Rowe, featuring a burning of the midnight oil ...

For those wondering what he's got his paw in ...