A listicle of reptile offerings, and the Major's usual listicle, and a quick tour of Manilla is all the pond has got this Monday ...

 

The pond has been indulging in the reptile stew a tad too much of late, and there was nothing particularly appetising in this day's offering as a way of keeping the indulgence going ...

Down at the very bottom, Dame Slap and accomplice only managed to elicit a tremendous yawn as they returned yet again to the Lehrmann matter well ...

Exclusive
Linda Reynolds in bid for ‘secret documents’
The potential release of communications between Brittany Higgins’s lawyer and legal giant HWL Ebsworth raises further questions about the firm’s role in her controversial $2.4m payout.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice

Bigly pass, while above the Dame and her accomplice, poor simpleton "here no conflict" Simon had to report on ongoing ghastly poll news ...

Exclusive

Newspoll: Labor on the nose, but Coalition not ready to govern

There has been no shift in support for either Labor or the Coalition as the campaign enters its final week. This means that the most likely outcome remains a hung parliament or Labor being returned with a slim majority.

By Simon Benson

The bewildered simpleton did his best to retrieve the situation in an accompanying commentary ...

You’d rather be the PM but Dutton’s not gone yet

Less than 50 per cent of voters believe the Albanese government deserves to be re-elected so why are they poised to do just that?

By Simon Benson

Political Editor

The reptiles tried to answer their question by Chambering cultural matters in their coverage ...

Final debate

‘Fewer Welcome to Country ceremonies’: social battle hits forefront of poll race

Peter Dutton has declared that Indigenous Welcome to Country ceremonies are ‘overdone and cheapens the significance of what it was meant to do’, setting up a contest with Anthony Albanese on social ­issues days out from the election.

By Geoff Chambers

The pond is beyond over the culture wars, and beyond over the doses of the Catholic Daily that have been relentlessly distilled each day, and which reached some kind of peak yesterday ...

Tess of d'Vatican survived into this early morning's extreme far right outing ...

No Caterist, and just the bald assertion that "Human existence does not end in the tomb", which on the face of it is a passable notion, what with human existence more likely to end in a hospital, an aged care home, in an ordinary home, on the roads, or wherever else death might strike (beware the salmon mousse).

It turned out that there should have been inverted commas around Tess of D'Vatican's header, because it wasn't her saying it, it was a quote ...

Human existence does not end in the tomb, “but in the Father’s house, in a life of happiness that will know no end’’, Cardinal Giovanna Battista Re, 91, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, told monarchs, presidents, priests, worshippers who packed St Peter’s Square on a glorious Roman spring day under vibrant blue skies as he preached over his former boss, Pope Francis, in a masterful homily on Saturday.

Her piece ended on a note of optimism ...

Magnificent as it was, the Mass ended with the words that have comforted countless people around the world for centuries, grieving their loved ones in humble parish churches: “May the angels lead you into paradise, may the martyrs welcome you and take you to the Holy City, the new and eternal Jerusalem. May the choir of angels welcome you and with Lazarus who is poor no longer may you have eternal rest... and may the lizards of Oz cease and desist from their relentless proselytising. Amen.’’

The pond did at least enjoy the immortal Rowe showing King Donald squatting atop Frank ...

What else? Well the reptiles still kept flogging the dead Ruski horse, apparently unaware that Vlad the Sociopath and his accomplice, King Donald the narcissist, remain a much bigger problem to Ukraine, a problem sustained by King Donald's minions in assorted craven ways, not least blathering about the need to be realistic grown ups. Little Marco a grown up? Pass the sycophantic nausea sauce... 

It was left to the bouffant one to do what he could with the "Ruskis are coming" scare, popular since the days when Sydney devised Pinchgut to keep the Ruskis at bay...

Serious people are not buying ALP’s Loch Ness nonsense

Albanese could have reacted in so many other ways on the Russia-Indonesia issue if he had been across his brief, confident of his position and more assertive towards Russia and China.

By Dennis Shanahan

National Editor

The invocation of "serious people" left the pond seriously bemused. Do the reptiles seriously think they should be taken seriously?

If that's what passes for seriousness, give the pond a 'toon...

Speaking of China, that lot fell to the Ughmann early this morning ...

Sorry, Mr Ambassador: Beijing is no defender of the free world

While there’s every reason to be disturbed about the recent actions of Donald Trump, choosing a world run with Chinese characteristics demands a serious character check.

By Chris Uhlmann

The pond drank the Ughmann's copious supply of tears yesterday, and had little appetite for more tears this day, or for the job of choosing between dictators, and it also created a dilemma for the Ughmann, because Emperor Donald was the man giving Xi free kicks all over the place, and the Faux Noise elephant in the room must never be mentioned in hive la la land ...

...Xiao is right: Donald Trump, by temperament, inclination and deeds, is dismantling the order his nation spent decades building and defending. Trump creates a void into which deceptions such as the ambassador’s essay pour. Xiao exploits real fears and grievances. 

Actually credit to Faux Noise, because credit is due, but do carry on regardless with the delusion that someone is currently reining in an authoritarian nob...

The ambassador would have us believe Xi Jinping is a safer option than Trump. But it is not a real choice at all, only the illusion of one. There are still checks and balances on an American president; in China, only one man is truly free. Trump disrupts the order. Xi bends it to his will and wants to make us slaves to it.

Xiao would have us forget what China has done and focus only on what it says. Perhaps he thinks we’re stupid and, as a close observer, probably sees our election campaign as proof of that point. No doubt the usual chorus of useful idiots will amplify the ambassador’s talking points. No doubt our government will run its usual lame line that we will co-operate where we can and disagree where we must, as China continues to push and we retreat.

Still, it is good that Xiao was given space in a national newspaper to share his views. It exposes the strategy Beijing uses in every possible forum: take a sliver of truth, distort it and deploy it to undermine trust in open societies.

And the courtesy of free speech might give the ambassador pause to consider this: in what Chinese paper would a foreign critic be given the same freedom? Where are the Chinese publications that dare to criticise the Communist Party?

That is what makes our system and America’s better than his. The right to disagree isn’t punished with imprisonment or death. Some may see free speech as a small thing; I see it as the only thing that stands between us and tyranny. I am happy to see it extended even to someone who, if his world were realised, would take it from me.

Chinese diplomats often season their rhetoric with Confucian platitudes, the moral maxims the Cultural Revolution once tried to erase from history.

Here’s one from our side: the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. But, frankly, that is too mild. In the days when China was hitting Australia with trade sanctions, there was talk of Beijing seeking a demonstration effect – a warning to other impudent countries – captured in an old idiom: kill the chicken to scare the monkey.

In that spirit, I offer this ancient Australian riposte: I wouldn’t trust Beijing to run a chook raffle.

Sadly the behaviour of King Donald involves more than a sliver of truth, it's a great shard of lies and madness thrust into the neck of a dead chook's carotid artery ...

The Ughmann's piece did remind the pond of a colour piece for the LRB by Long Ling under the header In the new Beijing.

She and a friend headed off to explore a vision, a dream, or possibly a nightmare ...

In April 2017, reporting on the Central Committee’s decision to build Xiong’an New Area, 12o kilometres south of Beijing, the Xinhua news agency called it the ‘one thousand year big plan’. Designed to accommodate five million people and to act as Beijing’s twin, Xiong’an is a city created from nothing. The name, too, is a new construction, combining characters from two local counties. Xiong (雄) means majestic, male, heroic; An (安) means stability, safety, wellbeing. With such an auspicious name, it’s no wonder the city will live for a thousand years.

Xiong’an is being built on a stretch of nondescript agricultural land about three times the size of New York City. The site is next to a large freshwater lake whose water quality hovered for many years at ‘worse than Category V’ (water deemed Category III or below shouldn’t be drunk). Near the lake, you can smell fish and chemicals. Hydrologists tried to argue against the decision to build a city without an adequate clean water supply, on a flood plain that acts as a sewage sump. Their concerns were dismissed.

What was compelling was the Orwellian aspect...

...We arrived in Xiong’an an hour and a half later. The roads are new, with no signage at some of the intersections, and we soon got lost. When the GPS reminded us to ‘Please keep left and enter the tunnel,’ my friend obeyed. ‘Wrong turn! Keep left, not turn left.’ Fortunately, the roads were empty. There was a gap in the central barrier, so I told her to turn around. ‘No, no. I have to find a U-turn sign.’ ‘I didn’t see a camera,’ I said. ‘But here,’ she replied, ‘any violation of traffic rules is monitored in real time. Skynet’ – she pointed a finger upwards – ‘has all the information about this car, and you and me, in its database.’ Skynet, launched in 2015, has become the world’s largest video surveillance network and by 2022 more than 500 million cameras were monitoring all public urban areas. There are no blind spots.

Bizarre that the Terminator term "Skynet" should be tossed about so freely and gaily ...

And so again ...

...The architects of Xiong’an believe that information technology will be part of the solution. As the buildings continue to go up and the city expands, another Xiong’an is being built in the cloud. For every building in the physical Xiong’an, a digital twin is simultaneously created. Traffic patterns, water and electricity consumption, phone and internet usage, as well as citizens’ daily movements, are collected and monitored. Cameras equipped with facial recognition technology are constantly scanning passersby to help provide services. Every financial transaction made, every unit of electricity and litre of water consumed, every traffic infringement or illegal bit of parking, every blown-down tree, every overflowing rubbish bin or broken streetlamp is recorded and compiled in a central data facility: Xiong’an New Area’s Computing Centre.

Whatever Beijing has is going to be available here too: shopping malls, entertainment facilities, parks. The parks here are even more beautiful, and there are fewer people. When we explain how the city works to visitors, we always tell them this story. An eighty-year-old lady who lived alone was not in good health. One day, the water meter, electricity meter and gas meter in the old lady’s apartment hadn’t moved for 24 hours. The computing platform sent an alert to our staff, who contacted the local grid worker to knock on her door. The grid worker found the old lady couldn’t get out of bed due to a sudden illness and immediately called medical staff. They saved her life.’

It was my turn to feel uneasy. ‘Everything in your life here is monitored?’ Since the company my friend works for is in this field, she tried to reassure me. Things are really no different in Beijing. She told me my face had been scanned many times today, from the moment I stepped out of my apartment in Beijing. ‘Here in Xiong’an, Skynet will only be more advanced and have a wider coverage since it is built with the latest technology. The second the system scanned our faces, they recognised our gender, the clothes we wear and even our age. It can match your face with your ID number in a split second. And with your ID number they can find out everything about you.’

For the purposes of data monitoring, the city is divided into sections, called ‘grids’. Grid workers, employed at the lowest level of the civil service system, are required to know the households in the grids under their jurisdiction: they need to know which apartments have elderly people, which have tenants, which have pregnant women, which have family members overseas, which are in the middle of lawsuits, which have bad relationships between mother and daughter-in-law, which have frequent quarrels, which are rich, which are poor. Even an elderly woman who doesn’t know how to use a smartphone and doesn’t watch TV is constantly feeding data into this network by turning lights on and off, using the toilet or turning on the stove. ‘With this eye of wisdom,’ Li gestured to the building around us, ‘everyone will be looked after.’

Animal Farm now has an "eye of wisdom"?

And that's how the pond ended up with the Major, fresh in from a round of golf to dispense his infallible wisdom in Journalists failing to ask politicians the hard questions on campaign trail, After the federal election campaign was branded a cost-of-living poll, journalists have failed to explore other key issues that affect Australia.

The reptiles began with a snap of Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail.

Here the pond should explain its deep ennui ... the pond has already voted, didn't watch the last debate and was moved to tears at the thought of even having to mention this sort of reptile coverage ...

Analysis

Who won the leaders debate: our experts deliver their verdicts

Sheridan, Kenny, Bramston, Trinca, Sloan and Benson analyse the performances of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton in the fourth and final leaders debate of the election campaign.

By Staff writers 

Ain't a never no matter mind, what with the clock ticking for the hive mind, and punters could always do the academics at The Conversation instead.

The Major did his best to help out in the now bog standard reptile way, beginning his piece by invoking that ancient movie title, "The Ruskis are Coming, The Ruskis are Coming" (apologies to Alan Arkin and Norman Jewison) ...

Prestigious defence journal Jane’s reveals Russia is asking Indonesia for military access to launch planes in the country’s east, just north of Australia.

Not an issue for the election campaign here, according to most journalists.

Oh go tell it to Ukraine ...

Then came Xi ...

Three Chinese naval ships conduct live-firing exercises off the coast between Australia and New Zealand, forcing commercial airlines to change course. One ship then circumnavigates the country, probably mapping the seabed.

Journalists hardly raise the issue when questioning party leaders: this election is about cost of living.

Next up came King Donald ...

Donald Trump effectively dismantles the Western alliance that has kept us safe since World War II. He imposes tariffs on every nation, kicking off a global trade war. Not an issue for the election campaign. Treasury modelling shows the tariff effects will be small here so no threat to cost of living.

Oh go tell it to your kissing cousins at Faux Noise, still worshipping the madman ...

Then came a typical Major whimpering and whining listicle, which included a nod to nattering "Ned" ...

The Labor government blows out federal spending to the highest levels since the Whitlam government 50 years ago. It forecasts budget deficits for a decade. No side of politics promises budget repair.

Why would they in a cost-of-living campaign?

Australia languishes in a per capita recession for seven quarters before the latest anaemic quarterly growth number. Productivity growth sits at its lowest in a decade.

Journalists ignore both issues. It’s all about cost of living after all.

Affordable housing eludes a generation of young Australians.

Journalists interview the Minister for Housing and her opposition counterpart but aren’t bright enough to make the connection between all-time record immigration and demand for housing. They swallow government spin that high immigration is because of a Covid backlog, as if governments haven’t been setting migration caps since Federation. Surely that’s a cost-of-living issue?

Nor do defence or economic reform rate much of a mention in the cringeworthy leaders debates the nation endures.

Paul Kelly here on Wednesday blamed the influence of focus group research. Indeed, pollsters and the political journalists fed by them have been too keen to emphasise for two years that this election will be about cost of living.

But what if a politician had decided to break free of such thinking with bold ideas for a more prosperous and safe future? Could a leader with the advocacy skills of Paul Keating, Bob Hawke or John Howard have broken free of this retail-focused campaign?

It would have been in Peter Dutton’s interest to try, given the electorate already associates Labor governments with giving money away. Dutton has been playing on Labor’s turf by surrendering to the free-money mentality. This raises another question. Had Dutton tried serious policy, would there be enough journalists and media organisations around to report and analyse it?

Apparently the reptiles can't get enough of the mutton Dutton at the bowser, Peter Dutton has pushed hard on his plan to cut petrol excise for a year. Picture: Richard Dobson / NewsWire

Climate crisis? What climate crisis?

The pond long ago gave up expecting any attention to be paid to the lamentable state of EV infrastructure, such that on a holiday weekend you might expect a couple of hours stuck at the Tarcutta terminus discussing batteries, models, and range anxiety, and arguing with rude people about the 80% rule ... and that's on the Hume. Don't get the pond started on the bush.

Meanwhile the reptiles stay stuck in the 1960s, worrying about bowsers, petrol, the price of cigs and booze ...

Back to the Major, keenly aware that vulgar youff, if they thought of him at all, considered him an deeply irrelevant part of their media diet ...

Pollster Kos Samaras, from RedBridge, in The Australian Financial Review on April 22 wrote about Gen Z and millennial voters whose media diets are dominated by social media.

But even traditional media – broadcast and digital – without hard paywalls have been happy to ignore the serious issues. Most know Albo has been lying about Medicare, Coalition health cuts that were flagged in 2014 but did not happen and bulk-billing target rates neither party’s policies will achieve.

It’s only readers of hard paywall products such as this paper and the AFR that receive serious policy focus and an attempt to expose false claims.

Oh FFS, must we get the bias and the bigotry served with an attempt at advertising for new subscribers to the hive mind? 

You've got to pay and pay for your daily serve of hive mind bullshit?

But do go on with the listicle...

Look at ABC Radio’s prime slot – RN Breakfast – last Wednesday. Interviewing Coalition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie, host Sally Sara could not get past questions about what the Coalition would cut to pay for its proposed increase in defence spending from 2 to 2.5 per cent of GDP in five years and 3 per cent in 10.

God forbid any recipient of government largesse lose a cent of free money to help pay for the defence of our nation. Imagine the ABC with today’s staff reporting the 1998 GST election when Howard promised to increase the prices of most goods and services by 10 per cent.

Greg Sheridan here the following morning asked the right question: What defence kit does Hastie actually want?

Look at Nine’s leaders debate last Tuesday night when Dutton was asked to describe his vision for Australia: his version of Tony Abbott’s 2013 mantra “stop the boats”, “axe the (carbon) tax” and fix Labor’s “debt and deficit”.

Dutton could only mention his plan to halve the petrol excise for a year, his other plan for a one-off giveaway of $1200 in a tax rebate to about half of all taxpayers and a few other rats and mice.

Discussing housing on ABC Insiders on April 13, host David Speers did not ask the obvious question about a million migrants over two years, but he at least had the wit to keep asking Housing Minister Clare O’Neil why a federal government would want to be a home builder. Housing was once the responsibility of state housing commissions.

On ABC 7.30 on April 17, host Sarah Ferguson did her best to referee what was no better than a pub rabble between O’Neil and opposition housing spokesman Michael Sukkar but refused to accept the point on immigration, a policy blunder presided over by O’Neil in her previous job as – yes – home affairs minister overseeing the immigration portfolio.

Worse was Speers on Insiders on April 20. He tried a gotcha on negative gearing during his interview with Sukkar and seemed disappointed when told Sukkar was positively geared.

The pond did warn it was a listicle, but should have added a warning that it's the recalcitrant deviants, the class and Murdochian traitors who flee the hive mind that attract a Major form of venom.

For no particular reason, the reptiles flung in a distracting snap of Jimbo arguing with the beefy windmill-hating boofhead from down Goulburn way, Last week’s debate between Treasurer Jim Chalmers, left, and his opposite number Angus Taylor. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

The Major wasn't done with Speersie, Sky News refugee currently making the ABC unwatchable, but the pond was pretty much done with the Major ...

The interview left viewers wondering why Speers had pushed the negative gearing issue so hard with the opposition but so seldom raised it with the government.

At least Speers, hosting the second leaders debate for the ABC on April 16 and on Insiders, was smart enough to expose both parties on housing affordability measures that will do little to make first homes more affordable but are likely to boost house prices.

One debate that did touch on issues of substance was ABC 7.30’s interview with Treasurer Jim Chalmers and opposition spokesman Angus Taylor on April 14. Taylor was judged to have won the SkyNews economic debate on April 10 and held his own in the Business Council of Australia debate last Wednesday.

Sara on RN seems to have unlimited access to Chalmers but never asks about budget repair or productivity. She asked him about US tariffs in a lengthy interview on March 18 that was dominated by a follow-up of ABC TV’s Four Corners revelations the night before about sexual abuse in childcare centres. She got on to criminal behaviour by the CFMEU and Dutton’s thoughts about a referendum on deporting dual citizens charged with serious crimes. Zip on economic reform, productivity or budget repair.

To be fair to the ABC, there are few journalists at the Nine city papers, Guardian Australia or the commercial TV networks that don’t see politics entirely through the prism of government giveaways or who take defence and foreign policy seriously.

Last word to AFR columnist Michael Stutchbury on April 22: “Australia’s resources wealth has underwritten an entitlement culture that Labor feeds and the Coalition is too timid or powerless to resist.” Budget repair would be needed, defending Australia against China and Russia would prevent more social services spending, and decarbonising our energy system would push up power prices however it was done, Stutch concluded correctly.

Actually, seeing the collapse of the Murdochian empire, and with it the end of King Donald, might see climate change taken seriously, and what a correct conclusion that would be.

In the meantime ...

And so back to the pond's holiday adventure, this time off to Harry M. Miller's one time retreat, the mighty town of Manilla ... which used to have a talking cocky in its parrot cage in the public park, but this time couldn't even boast of having a Major Mitchell ....

Instead, keeping up with the times like the Major, the park celebrated the Great War ...

The town was on the move, at least for those who remembered the Bank of NSW ...

The town embraced the world ...

It was a hive of activity ...

There was a pub and a clock ...

There was also a Hopper moment ...