In which the pond's nightmare begins, not helped by the bromancer, the Ughmann and the "Ned" Everest climb...

 

5 weeks. 

A nightmare played out over five weeks. As the official media organisation for the coalition, the reptiles have already been in phoney war campaign mode for weeks. Now it's on in earnest.

The pond would like to retreat, avoid it all, stay in bed under the covers for the entire five weeks. 

Alternatively the pond will favour reptiles looking beyond the bunker, but if today is any sign of things to come, it will be grum and likely to get grummer and grummer... (sorry, the pond lapses into Kiwi in times of stress).

The only thing to say about the lizard Oz's digital front page this day is that it carried an ad for 2GB. 

Yep, the reptiles are so desperate that they'll accept coin from Nine Radio, a division of Nine Entertainment (no entertainment there)...

There was simpleton Simon talking about the leaders beginning a campaign of fear, as if the reptiles knew nothing of relentless fear and loathing campaigning, when in reality it's their entire business model (is there Macquarie Law nearby to show it in action?)

Over on the extreme far right, things were just as desperate...

It was early in the day, but the pond was already haunted by that spectre. 

Later in the day, the reptiles will kick their media dog - ruff, ruff - to the kerb and the pond will kick him to Sunday, but the substitutes will be no better. 

Imagine the dog botherer in election mode ...

No need to imagine, the reptiles quickly turned over the extreme far right to the main players, and so there was an entirely new cast to contemplate ...

What a relief, there was Dame Slap doing the "woke" legal thing, there was snappy Tom, there was the dog botherer, being very doggie ... "crucial queries" ...

Query jokes aside, the pond fell on the bromancer like a famished lost soul willing to swallow anything ...

Albanese and Trump: the weird tag team destroying the alliance,Labor’s complete failure at national security combined with the US President’s high-octane diplomatic vandalism will inevitably threaten the ANZUS relationship.

This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Sorry, the pond can't convey the full effect ... it was one of those uncredited gifs full of lightning strikes, as if AI had descended from the heavens ...

As for the bro, he was in a state of abject paranoia, and he maintained that condition for an almost unendurable ten minutes ...

As Australia braces for another low-rent, policy-feeble national election on May 3, Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump are a weird mixed-weight tag team of national leaders acting to weaken, conceivably even destroy, the Australian-American alliance that has been at the heart of Australian and Asian security since 1942.
Neither wants to destroy the alliance or even damage it. But each is hurting it badly. The Albanese government has been a comprehensive failure across every dimension of national security. It’s only a matter of time before its gravely irresponsible approach causes Trump to accuse it, justly, of being a free-rider ally and perhaps even decide ANZUS is no more to be cherished than NATO.
Beijing salivates at the prospect and revels in humiliating Australia, sending a powerful naval taskforce to interrupt trans-Tasman aviation and circumnavigate Australia, choosing future military targets, while our feeble navy can’t even refuel itself because our two supply ships are indefinitely out of service. Our seven decrepit Anzac-class frigates, which the Albanese government decided not to upgrade, each with its puny eight vertical launching system cells, are no match for the musclebound Chinese destroyer, with its 112 VLS cells, which led Beijing’s task force. In response to all of which Albanese’s government adopted the foetal position, perhaps secretly relieved that Trump won’t return the Prime Minister’s phone calls.
For his part, Trump has substantially betrayed Ukraine, handing great advantages to Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin; on April 2 Trump will impose new global tariffs that will almost certainly include Australia. His national security team, in the infamous leaked Signal exchanges about US military action against the Houthis in Yemen, displayed operational incompetence, staggering contempt for allies and a never-before-seen transactional approach so extreme they want Egypt and Europe to pay cash to the US for the benefits each derives from having Houthi attacks on international shipping suppressed.
Labor’s irresponsibility is evident in every dimension of the budget Jim Chalmers just delivered. You can die under an avalanche of defence numbers, certainly become catatonic from prolonged exposure to our steroidally prolix defence white papers and strategic statements.
So skip that for a moment and consider just three telling figures. Since Albanese came to office the share of the economy taken up by the federal government has risen from 24 per cent to 27 per cent in the coming year, a historic increase so vast and fast as to be nearly mad. In that time, defence spending has stayed at just 2 per cent of the economy.
Marcus Hellyer of Strategic Analysis Australia points out that in 2022-23 defence spending accounted for 7.85 per cent of government payments.

Some might think to hell with Hellyer, the new reptile flavour of the month, but what about the narcissism involved in featuring the bromancer chatting to petulant Peta on Sky Noise down under?

The Australian's Foreign Editor, Greg Sheridan, has slammed the Albanese government for its handling of national security, calling it a "shocking comprehensive failure" in every aspect. Mr Sheridan’s remarks come as the Albanese government revealed during the federal budget on Tuesday that it will bring forward $1 billion in defence spending to boost Australia's military capability. According to Mr Sheridan, despite the government's claims of increased spending on defence, the reality is that defence spending has remained stagnant at two per cent of GDP over the past three years. “As a percentage of government spending, it's declining,” he told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “They've embraced the nuclear submarine program, but that means they're going to spend a huge amount of money on nuclear submarines, but they've kept the budget static. There've been tiny, tiny real increases, but so, so small as to be infinitesimal.”

Double the serve, as if ten minutes of the bromancer wasn't enough already ... and the reptiles kept interrupting ...

There was this short rant ...

After three years of Labor, according to the government’s budget figures, which routinely overestimate the defence effort and underestimate the general growth of government spending, in 2025-26 defence will be 7.59 per cent of government payments. Time without number, Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles and their spokespeople have told us we’re living through the most dangerous strategic times since WWII. Yet defence has declined – yes, declined – as a proportion of government activity.

And then this visual interruption ...Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles have told us we’re living through the most dangerous strategic times since WWII, yet defence has declined. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Pity the poor unidentified scrambled egg type hovering in the b/g.

In a perverse way, the pond relished the bromancer's plight ...

He has to juggle King Donald with Oz defence, and what a reptile sleight of hand feat that is ...

The government is promising paltry future increases, but after three years in office its record, not its promises, are what it should be judged on. This is a national failure, not just a Labor failure. In 1975, we had 13 million Australians and 69,000 in the Australian Defence Force. Today our population has more than doubled to 27 million and the ADF has shrunk to a pitiful 58,000.
In his budget reply speech Peter Dutton barely mentioned defence. The Opposition Leader did say: “During the election campaign, we will announce our significant funding commitment to defence. A commitment which, unlike Labor’s, will be commensurate with the challenges of our time.”
If Dutton’s as good as his word, that would be very welcome. But, and it’s a big but, even if he announces a minimum credible effort – say, reaching 2.5 per cent of GDP within one term – the Opposition has done little to prepare the electorate for this.
Last year we spent about $55bn on defence, 2 per cent of GDP. To make it 2.5 per cent would mean $14bn more a year and rising. Can the electorate accept this without ever having had the ADF’s military purpose and strategic effect explained? Without a campaign to establish its necessity? As a nation we’re living in Tolstoy’s War and Peace but think we’re inhabiting Seinfeld, where nothing happens, nothing changes and everything ultimately is a joke. Meanwhile, Trump is providing a new, bracing and very challenging international context.
Of course, Trump is not our enemy. The threats to Australian security come from China, operating in concert with Russia, Iran and North Korea. Once, Washington guaranteed a military and economic order that provided for Australian security and allowed us to flourish. Trump is redefining America’s role.

Say what?

Of course, Trump is not our enemy.

Why "of course"? 

Aren't we a large island with mineral wealth? If King Donald ever gets to hear about it, and doesn't confuse the country with Austria ...

Then the reptiles showed JD at home rather than invading Greenland ... US Vice President JD Vance at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia, on March 26, 2025. Vance is emerging as the dark version of this administration’s Dick Cheney. Picture: AFP

Come on reptiles, keep up ...

In the usual way, the Beast had ripped that story(archive link) from the Graudian's live coverage ...

The pond was perversely grateful to the bromancer for allowing a little romp in the snow, a chance to celebrate a little JD shit ...

Before listing the damaging new developments associated with Trump, there are important positives to note. Despite crippling national debt, and the Elon Musk-led drive to cut government spending, the US congress, in co-operation with Trump, just passed a budget that runs to September and increases military spending by $US12bn ($19bn). Whatever you make of Trump’s strategic gyrations, one result is that democratic NATO-Europe is rearming. Britain has announced a big immediate lift in defence spending. Germany has abolished longstanding national debt rules to massively enhance military capability. Within the Pentagon, resources are shifting to maritime, to the navy, to shipbuilding, away from army. But Ukraine, tariffs and the Signal leak constitute, or reveal, powerful new dynamics that are all bad for Australia.
In the past month, Trump has rescued Putin and showered him with benefits. Everyone understood there would need to be something like a ceasefire in place. But Trump pre-emptively gave Putin almost everything he wants: Ukraine never in NATO, no US security guarantee, no US back-up for any European peacekeeping force.
The US refused to condemn Russia’s invasion at the UN. It humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House and for a critical period suspended aid to Ukraine, including intelligence co-operation, which is vital for targeting. So far it has negotiated a limited prisoner swap, an agreement that Russia and Ukraine won’t attack each other’s energy facilities and a provisional Black Sea naval ceasefire, hugely beneficial to Russia, in exchange for which Moscow wants sanctions relief. That’s the kind of deal Barack Obama specialised in.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, after meeting Putin, gave one of the most grotesque TV interviews in diplomatic history to Tucker Carlson. In demanding Ukraine give up four provinces, Witkoff couldn’t even remember their names. He praised Putin’s graciousness, especially in commissioning a portrait of Trump and in going to a church to pray for Trump after the assassination attempt, “not because Trump might be president but because they were friends”.

Put it like that and it sounded to the pond pretty much like ... Of course, Trump is our enemy.

Putin routinely has his critics, including genuine Christians such as Alexei Navalny, savagely murdered. To hear a US presidential envoy, steeped in ignorance, utter such craven emoluments for a brutal dictator was beyond any previously plausible dereliction. It’s perfectly sensible to dial back criticism of an opponent during a negotiation but Witkoff’s words were contemptible. They should send a shiver through any democrat who might one day be sacrificed to great power relationships.

Yep, Of course, Trump is our enemy.

The pond's heretical dreaming was interrupted by another AV offering, Sky News host Andrew Bolt slams US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff’s “disgraceful” interview with Tucker Carlson which has Mr Witkoff acting like a “Putin fanboy”. “Finally, Witkoff truly shamed himself by acting like a total dupe, a Putin fanboy, I mean, how gullible is this guy,” Mr Bolt said. “This clown, Witkoff, likes him? Says he is not a bad guy? The final excerpt from this disgraceful interview, I mean let me show you how easy it is for a war criminal like Putin, to make Witkoff, this amateur, think, wow, Putin’s a nice guy.”

Et tu Bolter? Even you have had a FAFO moment?

Apparently the local reptiles are completely unaware of the diligent work being performed by their Faux Noise kissing cousins ... but no need to go there, that's what Mediaite is for ...

Quick, there's new lands above the Faux Noise Faraway Tree on the hour ...

The bromancer was now in his own FAFO mode ...

Trump has given dizzyingly contradictory signals about the coming tariffs. The latest thinking is they may not be as severe as first thought, partly because Trump is suffering a drop in popularity. Republicans just lost a state Senate seat in MAGA heartland in Pennsylvania. Trump’s addiction to psycho-drama and politics as theatre does give him a good deal of leverage but it also destroys the minimum stability that business needs, even American business.
Companies can die of overregulation under a president like Joe Biden or nervous exhaustion and chronic, senseless disorientation, under Trump.
If the US puts tariffs on Australian agriculture, or demands Australians pay US prices for drugs, or that our 12-year-olds must have access to American social media, this will cause a huge rise in anti-American sentiment in Australia.
The Signal conversation was a historic moment. It involved US Vice-President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Witkoff and several others.
That they would conduct such a discussion on Signal, including while Witkoff was in Russia, is shocking enough. Astoundingly, Jeff Goldberg, the left-of-centre editor of The Atlantic magazine, was unintentionally included on the chat and subsequently published slabs of the messages exchanged, which have been verified by the White House.

The reptiles helpfully identified the enemy, From left to right; US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, US Vice President JD Vance, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Picture: AFP

The bromancer maintained his FAFO rage ...

The discussions were revealing and disturbing. Vance is emerging as the dark version of this administration’s Dick Cheney. He’s becoming an ultra-MAGA ideologue who exaggerates every resentment, some of them legitimate enough, and authorises every crackpot conspiracy and isolationist impulse.
Trump had already decided to take action against the Houthis. Vance didn’t like that and told his colleagues: “I think we’re making a mistake … I am not sure the President is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now… I just hate bailing out Europe again.” Hegseth, though supporting Trump’s decision and arguing the need to re-establish American deterrence, replied: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, also supported military action but wrote: “We soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return … If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.” Apparently, Rubio, a long-term mainstream senator with deep foreign policy expertise, didn’t make any dumb comments. It’s a pity Trump chose Vance instead of Rubio as Vice-President. Anyone Trump can sack is insecure. Trump can’t sack the Vice-President, he can sack the Secretary of State.

It was great fun, with a repeat dose of the folly in full congress glare, Text messages by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during an annual worldwide threats assessment hearing on March 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty

How could the bromancer pull back on his FAFO indignation and save AUKUS?

It was difficult, it involved remarkable physical contortions and mental gymnastics, remarkable to behold, but he made it ...

This was crucial when push came to shove after the 2020 election and vice-president Mike Pence played a critical role in upholding the constitution. The Signal texts showed how widespread is the view in the Trump administration that virtually all allies are a net cost to the US.
They also delineated clearly some of the different camps in Trumpworld, which are often at odds with each other.
There’s the MAGA extreme, headed by Vance, who is a brilliant person, a gifted author and once held great promise but has journeyed down the rat holes of the paranoid style in American politics and MAGA isolationism.
There are the economic nationalists, represented in this conversation by Miller, who just want the money. There are Trump personality-cult worshippers vastly out of their depth, like Witkoff. There are reliable, pro-alliance China hawks like Rubio and Waltz. There are techno-believing “long-termers” like Elon Musk who think technology will in the long term solve all humanity’s problems and therefore it’s the only game in town. Trump is intermittently drawn to all these tendencies while essentially being a showman who dominates politics by dominating everything, especially every part of the media, including, perhaps especially, those parts of it that hate him.
So what do this Signal conversation and the broader Trump actions during the past month mean for Australia?

Aye, there's the rub. And the bromancer's answer? Kiss the ring, there might not be any guarantees, but all the same we must kiss the ring ...

In so far as you can reverse-engineer any strategy from the Albanese government’s incoherent actions, it seems to be the belief that Australia can have no effective military force, at least so far as China is concerned, for at least the next decade and probably much longer, and therefore shouldn’t waste any extra money on it. But, partly to keep the US alliance going, we have to put up a show of having a defence force, so we’ll keep a mostly symbolic force in place. Trump wants allies to pay the US money and, by investing in the US submarine industrial capacity to the tune of $5bn over the next few years, we can, uniquely perhaps, satisfy that requirement.
In the long run, one day, we may possibly get nuclear-powered submarines through AUKUS, this “strategy” goes, and they’ll have some military utility. But in the short, medium and long run, the US will take care of everything, just like always. Trump’s mood will change, this “strategy” holds. Or he will pass from the scene soon enough. The normal America will return and we can continue our simultaneously glacial, chaotic and ineffective approach to defence acquisition while sheltering forever under Uncle Sam’s warm shadow. This is insupportably unrealistic at every level.
We certainly should do everything we can to keep the alliance. God help the alliance if we end up with a minority government dependent on the Greens. Similarly, on the US side there’s no guarantee Trump won’t eventually react to what inadequate and lazy allies we’ve become. There’s no guarantee he’ll be succeeded by an old-style alliance Republican such as Rubio. Vance is more likely. Trump also could be succeeded by a left-wing isolationist Democrat from the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez school of the Democratic Party.
Whether you love or hate Trump, or find him both good and bad, it’s obvious an ally like Australia must do much more for its own security capability. Albanese promised an Australian merchant fleet. The number of Australian flagged vessels has declined. Nothing significant on fuel storage. We’re weaker militarily now than three years ago. We’ll spend nearly $100bn on AUKUS subs and Hunter-class frigates before the first of either comes into service.
AUKUS is good if an Australian government commits and funds it, and properly funds and expands the rest of the ADF. Instead, Labor has gutted the ADF to pay for AUKUS, setting up terrible, unpredictable, long-term dynamics.
Trump could engender severe anti-Americanism here and end up empowering the left, as he has done in Canada. The left hates the alliance. A responsible Australian government would hedge against all scenarios by rapidly acquiring independent, sovereign, deterrent capability. Albanese isn’t remotely interested. Is Dutton?

Perhaps the bromancer needs to do more Faux Noise watching ... or start taking his medication ...

Confronted by the Ughmann, what to do but offer him in silence?

Reading between the lines of spin in the unruly game of politics, Consumers are now supposed to be grateful for having their taxes recycled as “cost-of-living relief”. The arsonist demands thanks for waving a garden hose over his inferno.

No need to read between the lines.

The Ughmann is always painfully obvious.

Worse, it was a five minute read, or so the reptiles say, a bit like the five weeks of torture, with the villains immediately on parade, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher on budget day. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

The Ughmann started with a flourish which immediately set the pond's teeth on edge, and made the pond snap out of its silence..

There is spin, and then there is lying.

Put it another way. There is spin from the reptiles, official state media for the coalition, and there is lying, and as you'd expect of official state media, the reptiles are expert in both.

Back to the silence, with the Ughmann certain to let his climate science denialism out for a trot ... but it'll take time to get there ...

Spin is putting a gloss on your performance, polishing a bruised apple. All of us are guilty of it sometimes, but it is the daily fare of politics, even when the spinner knows the apple is rotten.
As a creature of the treasurer and finance minister, all budgets are political documents and Tuesday’s spun like a top from page one of Budget Paper No.1.
A numbers necromancer in Labor hit on the wheeze of measuring the Albanese government’s budgetary performance from the starting point of the forecasts in the 2022 pre-election economic and fiscal outlook.
From that mark, the paper claimed: “The underlying cash balance has improved by a cumulative $207bn over the seven years to 2028-29. This is the largest nominal budget improvement in a parliamentary term.” Surely this is fair enough. Labor is simply measuring its progress from the moment the gun went off for the 2022 election race and awarding itself gold at the finish line.
Two things. First, this is a novel approach to budgeting. Second – as this column noted last week – even budget forecasts cast out over one year are guesstimates. Across seven, they are fantasy.
The political value of the 2022 prophecy is that it was fantastically wrong, even by the forgiving standards of Treasury crystal-ball gazing, because it underestimated revenue by an astonishing $400bn. To recast the purple prose of the budget papers: this is the biggest unexpected cash windfall in any parliamentary term.
As AMP economist Shane Oliver told this paper, “This is not good management, it’s good luck … I am amazed that the Treasurer is saying they have done all this hard work, but really it’s like they have won the Lotto.”
What did the Albanese government do with all that money? It vastly increased the size of government from 24.4 per cent of GDP to more than 27 per cent. This is a pandemic level of spending, locking in deficits that roll on forever.

The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction featuring Danica, hostess from blonde hell ... As the 2025 federal election campaign officially kicks off, Liberal MP Andrew Wallace has called out Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's “disasters”. Speaking to Sky News host Danica De Giorgio, Mr Wallace slammed the tax cuts in Labor’s federal budget released earlier this week. “We have seen this Prime Minister launch from disaster to disaster to disaster,” he told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “The budget that was announced during the week, 70 cent a week tax cuts, and we have to wait for 15 months before we get them. “And if you compare that to Peter Dutton's halving of the excise tax in relation to fuel, diesel and petrol, that will be one of the first things that we move through Parliament if we're elected as our first point of order. “That will see benefits to average Australians with a car of $14 a week, around $750 a year. So that's good money, that's in your pocket.”

There's your reptile balance in a nutshell, and the Ughmann kept it coming ...

Gross debt will hit $1 trillion in the coming financial year, and the $28bn slated in interest payments is the seventh biggest item of government expenditure. With a bullet. In three years, it is expected to pass Medicare as the fifth-biggest expenditure line item, costing more than $41bn.
So, when measured against the things it can control, the Albanese government is perhaps the most profligate in history.
But judged from the mark it set itself in a game of fantasy football, it has played a blinder.
For the purposes of this argument, let’s be gracious and accept all this as fair play in the unruly game of politics. We will grumble but call no foul. This is spin. It is spin on a cycle not found on any washing machine setting made in this universe, but spin it is.
As Labor has written the rules, let’s use them to run another race based on a test it set itself. In the subjective world of politics, surely the last durable measure is to be held to account for your own words.

The villain of the moment scored a snap ...Jim Chalmers social media post ahead of Tuesday’s budget. Picture: Instagram

The caption didn't make any sense to the pond, but no point pausing to think ...

In early December 2021, Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen delivered Labor’s Powering Australia plan. Albanese, then opposition leader, promised: “It will see electricity prices fall from the current level by $275 for households by 2025, at the end of our first term.”
This pledge was based on modelling done by RepuTex. It rested on the endlessly invoked claim that wind and solar were the lowest-cost sources of generation. This ignored two glaring problems. First, that’s only true when wind and solar generate – and they don’t generate most of the time. Second, electricity is sold in a marketplace and the wholesale price is set by the highest cost of generation, not the lowest. In times of peak demand, that price will rarely be set by wind or solar. Not now, not ever – because demand and prices peak as the sun rises and sets.
So, surely any model would have an eye to what sets the electricity price. Mostly, that’s still black coal in Queensland and NSW, and brown coal in Victoria. And usually it’s cheap. That’s the assumption Labor’s modelling made, locking in the price of black coal at the equivalent of $80 a metric tonne all the way through to 2040. But black coal is export quality and linked to international price movements.

Ah, sweet black innocent virginal Oz coal, of course of course, and then came another serve of indignant Danica... Sky News host Danica De Giorgio says Labor is trying to “infiltrate” social media. Ms De Giorgio said Labor engaged social media influencers to attend the federal budget lockup. “And help spruik its tax cuts.”

Oh dear, fancy trying to communicate with punters, when they should have stuck with fair and balanced reptile coverage worshipping coal ...

Anyone with a passing interest in energy should have been well aware the black coal price had doubled between January and August 2021 – from $115 to $247. In October it spiked to $300. That meant the wholesale price of electricity was already set on a disturbing upward march long before Labor’s modelling was released.
Come February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and the price of coal and gas spiked ever higher. By the time the election was called in April, the price had hit $450 a metric tonne – more than five times the figure baked into Labor’s modelling. Before the election in May, it reached $538.
Working for Nine News, I raised the high coal price and the flaws with Labor’s modelling in separate interviews with Albanese, Bowen and Jim Chalmers well before polling day 2022. All tenaciously clung to the line that the $275 price-cutting pledge would be delivered.
After the election Labor cried foul over the fact, in late 2021, Angus Taylor as energy minister had pushed the release of the regulator-set benchmark electricity price beyond the May 21 election. This is true but, again, it was obvious that retail prices would track the wholesale prices up.
Here Labor had a choice. The Albanese government could have used the delayed release of the price data to walk away from the promise – or at least concede it wouldn’t be delivered this term.
Instead, for three years, Labor clung doggedly to the $275 pledge, even as it began subsidising the soaring cost of power.
So, if the facts change do you change your mind? Or just massage the lines?
On budget night we got the answer when this line appeared in the Treasurer’s speech: “Electricity prices went down 25 per cent here last year.”
It’s axiomatic that if power prices are falling the government wouldn’t need to subsidise them. This breathtakingly cynical claim rests entirely on the morphine of energy subsidies suppressing the real pain of actual price hikes. The commonwealth share of subsidies now stands at $6.8bn.
Chalmers’ own budget papers confirm this: “Without commonwealth and state government electricity rebates, electricity bills would have been around 45 per cent higher in the December quarter 2024.”
Using Labor’s preferred measures of measuring its performance from when it took office – and citing nominal numbers – electricity prices on the east coast have risen by 43 per cent for residential bills and 53 per cent for business.
Consumers are now supposed to be grateful for having their taxes recycled as “cost-of-living relief”. The arsonist demands thanks for waving a garden hose over his inferno.
Can even the most generous interpretation call Labor’s latest line on electricity prices spin? And if it’s not spin, how would a reasonable person describe it?
Ignore the modelling and the “lines” – believe your bill. The real-world evidence is in, here and abroad: heavily weather-dependent grids are expensive and unreliable.
One day the subsidies will end and the poor will suffer most. That’s the truth I intend to keep prosecuting.

One thing's certain. He won't ever be talking about climate science, except perhaps with the insight of an unreformed seminarian ...

At this point the pond felt like doing a Colbert. Anything for light relief ...

Texas weird ...

Or what about this exercise in kiddy porn?

As for "Ned's" natter, it's a gargantuan 10 minute Everest climb. 

Worse, the pond could define "Ned's" approach and style in its sleep.

"Ned" will purport to offer balanced, both siderist insights, but inevitably little hoppy toads will pop out showing that the hive mind is strong in this one ...

The pond did a screen cap to start off, with that weird injunction This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there, prominent, and yet the only notable feature was an uncredited gif with a nauseating wobble and rotating coins. It suggested that AI was intent on making the pond upchuck its breakfast...

The header was loaded with irony.

Albanese v Dutton: a contest over trust, This election will be loaded with negatives, and the risk for both leaders is that neither captures the Australian imagination.

The pond has no trust when it comes to the reptiles. And the pond knows the coverage will be loaded with negatives, and that "Ned" is guaranteed each week never to capture the pond's imagination.

Let the nightmare begin ...

Australia faces a brutal yet uninspiring election. This is an election that revolves around “who do you distrust least” – Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton. It is a contest between a flawed government and a still unconvincing opposition.
The prospect is that a divided nation will vote for a minority government. The Albanese-Dutton contest will be loaded with negatives – and this drives unambitious and impractical agendas. It will be dominated by a narrowcast cost-of-living contest, the fear being that Australia is locked into a holding pattern, marking time in a world moving faster and getting more dangerous.
Albanese seeks to become the first prime minister since John Howard in 2004 to be re-elected, breaking the cycle of de-stabilisation while Dutton seeks to terminate a single-term Labor government, a feat not achieved since 1931.

Part of the game is to show pollies in unflattering poses, and sure enough, Anthony Albanese seeks to become the first prime minister since John Howard in 2004 to be re-elected. Picture: AFP

Those twisted lips gave "Ned" pompous, portentous energy to bray on ...

The risk for Albanese and Dutton is that neither captures the Australian imagination and that both major parties struggle, with their primary vote support suggesting the May 3 election may become a pointer to a more fractured nation and another big crossbench. This election is more unpredictable than usual and the campaign will be more decisive than normal.
Shadows have fallen across Australia’s future. The national interest imperative for Australia today is to be more competitive, strategically stronger and more productive – but that’s not happening in this election and the nation will end up paying an accumulated price. The election dynamic is that Labor is weakened, its record is flawed, but the pivotal point of the entire campaign may settle on Dutton’s ability to project as a strong prime minister. He seeks to model himself on Howard and diminish the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison era.
Dutton’s pitch is that Australians are worse off today than three years ago, with people suffering from high shopping prices, skyrocketing energy bills, rent and mortgage stress, crime on the street, losing out on home ownership and the battle to see a GP. The Opposition Leader says the Australian dream is broken and, unless Labor is removed, “our prosperity will be damaged for decades to come”.

Look now at a smirking snap of the Duttonator, dressed in black, and with the smirk of an undertaker, Peter Dutton seeks to terminate a single-term Labor government, a feat not achieved since 1931. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

How like a crocodile he looks ... how effective he is in "Ned's" eyes ...

Dutton has an effective “back on track” slogan. He pledges a five-point recovery plan – a stronger economy with lower inflation, cheaper energy, affordable homes, quality healthcare and safer communities – yet he has failed to provide a credible economic policy, a tenable reform agenda and, so far, prioritises a halving of fuel excise over tax cuts and tax reform, signalling a cautious, even a “small target” Coalition tactic.
Albanese’s message, flashing his Medicare card, is that “only Labor can make you better off”. He invokes his 2022 pitch: “no one held back, no one left behind”. He claims people will be $7200 worse off under the Coalition and depicts Labor as the party that is “building for the future”. Albanese’s message, following Jim Chalmers’ budget, is that the “economy has turned the corner” and the worse is behind.

By way of contrast, how contrived and calculating is Albo, The PM’s message, flashing his Medicare card, is that “only Labor can make you better off”. Picture: AFP

"Ned" kept raising saucy doubts and fears, in the patented "Ned" way...

Albanese runs on his record. But is that his problem? He highlights cost-of-living relief, higher wages, more bulk billing, cheaper medicines, help with energy bills, cutting student debt and a new personal income tax cut. His weakness is offering more of the same to a pessimistic public, with many people seeing him as a weak or indifferent leader.
Hence Labor’s pivotal ploy – its effort to destroy Dutton as it destroyed Scott Morrison in 2022, with Albanese claiming Dutton will “cut everything except your taxes”. He says Dutton is the great risk to Australians but the danger for Labor is that its scare against the Liberal leader won’t work a second time.
There are two harsh realities you won’t hear about in the campaign – Labor’s election agenda and mandate if re-elected is grossly inadequate to the needs of the nation across the next three years while the Coalition assumes the spending and tax reforms it intends to implement in office cannot be successfully marketed from opposition. So don’t expect to hear a lot about them.
For Albanese, the election prospect is humiliation but survival. With Labor holding a notional 78 seats and the Coalition a notional 57 seats in the new 150-strong chamber, the idea of Dutton being able to achieve a win is his own right is remote. It would be a herculean feat.
Yet virtually every recent poll suggests Albanese cannot win a second term as a majority prime minister. To defy these numbers would constitute a stunning recovery. For Albanese, being forced into minority government after one term – a repeat of the Rudd-Gillard fate in 2010 – would represent a devastating setback, demanding all his skill to manage a minority executive reliant on a crossbench of Greens and teals.

At this point the reptiles produced a flurry of animated polls, which the pond must note, even if the methodology isn't revealed ... just admire the gloss ...

The pond swears that was all. No indication of the poll's size, or who conducted it, or what organisation had extracted it from their backside ...

Who knows what the margin of error was? It's not like the Graudian, which at least tries to offer details of the dismal art...

Never mind, back to the climb, and "Ned" in full Chicken Little mode...

While Dutton is running for victory after one term, forcing Labor into minority government would empower the Coalition after its dismal 2022 defeat and open the prospect of a substantial change of government at the subsequent poll, a repeat of the Tony Abbott story. The collective risk for Albanese and Dutton, however, is public disillusionment with the major parties caused by their mutual policy inadequacies.
Remember, it is Labor’s weak 32.58 per cent primary vote in 2022 that has limited the government ever since and driven its pervasive caution.
The fear is a 2025 election campaign of bipartisan mediocrity leading to a compromised new parliament and a weakened government.
On Labor’s side, the comparison will be made between Albanese and Jim Chalmers as to who is the best campaign performer – a pointer to the future. On the Coalition side, this is Dutton’s first campaign as leader and his test will be to curb thought bubbles and stick by precise policy positions, otherwise he will be in trouble.
With his momentum faltering Dutton, in his budget reply on Thursday night, put more substance into his alternative policy agenda but still suffers from the gulf between his promise and his policies. He pledges a stronger economy, cutting red and green tape, making Australia a mining, agricultural, construction and manufacturing powerhouse, but there is little detail on how the Coalition will realise its better economy or deliver a better budget bottom line.

The reptiles dragged in another AV distraction ... Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has delivered his budget reply ahead of the looming federal election.

The pond yearned for a different kind of visual distraction ...

That's better, that meant the pond could swallow the "Ned" raw prawn whole ...

A pivotal judgment from Dutton and opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor – at least so far – is their rejection of tax cuts and tax reform in the campaign while attacking Labor for increasing income tax by 24 per cent. They dismiss Labor’s modest tax cut for everyone in Chalmers’ budget, worth $5 a week from July 1, 2026, and $10 from July 1, 2027.
Dutton’s judgment is that people want immediate cost-of-living relief rather than tax cuts down the track. But the contradiction remains: the party pledged to lower taxes is the party opposing Labor’s election tax cut. This reflects Taylor’s conviction that tax relief is a function of spending restraint and must be tied to a new fiscal strategy implemented in office.
Energy policy offers the most dramatic differences between Dutton and Albanese, proving that the climate wars are as intense as ever and energy bipartisanship is a forlorn hope. Dutton’s more expansive policy involves ramping up domestic gas production, forcing 10-20 per cent of export gas into the east coast domestic market, decoupling the domestic price from the international price and accelerating gas investment, projects, pipelines and new fields – an ambitious agenda that will provoke conflict and commercial challenges but cannot deliver his pledge of lower energy prices in the short term.
In the immediate term Dutton offers a populist cut in fuel excise for 12 months to help people with cost-of-living pressures and nuclear power in the distant long run, though whether this is ever a realistic option in Australia remains dubious. At the same the Coalition has responded to grassroots hostility towards renewable infrastructure, with Dutton saying: “There’s no need to carpet our national parks, prime agricultural land and coastlines with industrial scale renewables.”
This is a frontal assault on the Albanese-Bowen renewables-driven climate policy that is being undermined by the experience of higher power prices not likely to dissipate any time soon. While Dutton’s policy will face resistance in the teal-held seats, it has the potential to win support in suburban and regional Australia.
Dutton promises a stronger defence budget but postpones the figures to the campaign. He still needs more details on the 25 per cent cut in the permanent immigration. He pledges to “energise” defence industry – that’s essential – but he doesn’t say how. He attacks Labor’s industrial relations policies but, apart from pledging to revert to a simple definition of a casual worker, says nothing about most of Labor’s pro-union anti-productivity IR laws.
On safer political ground, he prioritises the attack on criminality in the building industry – restoring the construction industry watchdog and de-registering the CFMEU. There is tax relief for small business, access for first-home buyers up to $50,000 of their super for a home deposit, commitments to women’s health, youth mental health and policies for a safer nation with more social cohesion.

That was a huge chunk, and immediately the reptiles only had nasty words for Jimbo, Jim Chalmers’ budget has exposed Labor’s limitations.. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

No indication of "Ned's" limitations, and worse, no limits on the verbiage.

Still, it was the final visual interruption, and the pond knew it was on the home stretch. 

Sure, it had been a two miler (3,200 metres if you will), and it was an incredibly tedious and lengthy final gobbet, but the pond has stayed the course, and has been true to its mission, which is to stay silent for five interminable weeks while the reptiles blathered away, rolled in the mud, and generally bored the pond into a state of mute catatonia...

Dutton pledges to “rein in inflationary spending” but there is little framework on how this happens. He will end Labor’s off-budget funds – the $20bn Rewiring the Nation Fund and the $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund, scrap the $16bn production tax credits and reverse Labor’s increase of 41,000 Canberra-based public servants – while pledging not to cut frontline service-delivering roles.
Dutton makes a big claim. He says: “This election matters more than others in recent history.” But why? Is that because of Labor’s failures or because of the Coalition’s alternative credo? That credo remains a work in progress.
The Coalition goes into this campaign short on the policy agenda it needs to make this a truly decisive election.
This means that Dutton, presumably, will have a lot to reveal in the campaign. That is an opportunity as well as a risk. How much fresh policy will Albanese announce? He is smart to have a short five-week campaign.
This Chalmers budget has exposed Labor’s limitations. It is locked into a social spending escalation difficult to break; a productivity outlook – the prime driver of living standards – that is stagnant; high personal income tax far into the future; and in a more dangerous world that demands a further lift in defence spending, Labor repudiates such a choice.
Yet the budget reveals Labor’s ability to offer a plausible case for re-election with the economy in recovery mode. Chalmers said: “Inflation is down, incomes are rising, unemployment is low, interest rates are coming down, debt is down and growth is picking up momentum.” Labor’s problem is that it cannot repair the substantial 8 per cent fall in living standards since it took office. If people vote on cost-of-living outcomes, then Labor loses. But they vote on a comparison between Labor and Coalition policies and, in reality, both sides are vulnerable. Labor, however, cannot escape responsibility for the flawed tax-spending legacy it leaves after three years.
The election will test whether the Australian public prioritises debt and debt reduction or if economic accountability is a forlorn political notion. Australia under Labor is marching into a new identity as a high government spending, high personal income tax nation – the significance of the budget is to confirm the trend but almost certainly underestimate its extent.
Labor’s fiscal rules are too weak. The budget for 2025-26 plunges into a $42bn deficit after two earlier years of surpluses. This is followed by a decade of deficits. The headline deficit over the next four years (including off-budget spending) totals a monstrous $283bn. Gross debt will reach $1.223 trillion in four years. Spending in real terms (taking account of inflation) increases by 6 per cent in 2024-25, an extraordinary figure outside a downturn crisis. It is forecast to rise by 3 per cent in 2025-26; that’s still high. The budget forecasts spending to settle across the next four years at a plateau of around 26.5 per cent of GDP, distinctly higher than the recent trend.
It is idle to think productivity will be an election issue. But its legacy – falling living standards – will affect nearly everybody. The Productivity Commission’s quarterly bulletin released this week shows labour productivity declined 0.1 per cent in the December quarter and by 1.2 per cent over the year. Productivity Commission deputy chairman Alex Robson said: “We’re back to the stagnant productivity we saw in the period between 2015 and 2019 leading up to the pandemic. The real issue is that Australia’s labour productivity has not significantly improved in over 10 years.”
Here is an omen – unless productivity improves then Australian governments will struggle, the community will be unhappy and restless, and national decline will threaten.

Yet budget week was a sad commentary on our shrunken policy debate. The election prelude has been a Labor and Coalition brawl over one of the smallest income tax cuts in history. The Coalition voted against Labor’s tax cut, branded it a “cruel hoax”, pledged to repeal the tax cut in office and delivered instead a halving of fuel excise with Dutton saying the proposal would be introduced in parliament on the first day of a Coalition government. It would be implemented immediately, last only 12 months and cost $6bn.
The gain is $14 a week for a household filling up once a week and with a yearly saving of $700 to $750. For households with two cars filling up weekly the saving will be around $28 weekly or close to $1500 over 12 months.
Dutton said it would help people commuting to work, driving kids to sport and pensioners doing it tough. His populist excise cut looks a winning cost-of-living ploy.
But not so fast. By opposing Labor’s tax cut, the Coalition gives Labor a powerful rhetorical campaign. The tax cut is small but, as Chalmers said, “meaningful”. It threatens, however, to become symbolic.
“Labor is the party of lower taxes,” Albanese told parliament on Thursday to Coalition jeers.
It means a Dutton government would be pledged to increase taxes for all taxpayers. (But probably would not have the numbers to repeal the tax cut anyway.) Defending the tactics, Taylor said the excise cut was “highly targeted relief, temporary but also immediate”.
Chalmers told parliament the Coalition stood for three things – higher personal income tax, secret cuts to spending and no permanent cost-of-living relief.
In this election Albanese fights on two fronts: against the Coalition and the Greens.
Dutton fights on two fronts: against Labor and the teals given their blue-ribbon Liberal seat gains from 2022. The election will test whether the Coalition still has an existential problem with both young and female voters. It is fatuous to think these burdens are expurgated.
The nation is crawling ahead, living conditions are in gradual repair and policy is locked in a slow lane. Our political system – Labor and Coalition – is running shy of the challenges that demand an ambitious response. But elections are chances to shift the nation’s mood and open new doors. Let’s hope both Albanese and Dutton rise to the occasion and the opportunity. This is what Australia needs.

Not so fast? Then why so interminably slow? Who made it through that incredible amount of gunk, like being trapped in a bog in a slo-mo nightmare?

And with the greatest disrespect, the pond doesn't need "Ned" telling it what it needs. In fact the pond doesn't need any of the reptiles for the next five weeks.

What the pond needs is a goodly supply of 'toons, and the pond prays that the immortal Rowe is up to the job of showing the circus in action ...

And there'll be the details, always the details, though the pond thinks that some of them will never make the reptile cut ...even the bromancer might flinch at the sight ...