You're welcome ... to the wacky reptile world of the lizard Oz, hosted by the bromancer and the craven Craven ...

The pond brooded about Orwellian Xi yesterday, and it only seems fair to balance the books by brooding about Orwellian King Donald and his minions, as outlined by Ian Bogost and Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic in American Panopticon, The Trump administration is pooling data on Americans. Experts fear what comes next. (archive link). Inter alia:

If you were tasked with building a panopticon, your design might look a lot like the information stores of the U.S. federal government—a collection of large, complex agencies, each making use of enormous volumes of data provided by or collected from citizens.
The federal government is a veritable cosmos of information, made up of constellations of databases: The IRS gathers comprehensive financial and employment information from every taxpayer; the Department of Labor maintains the National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP) system, which collects the personal information of many workers; the Department of Homeland Security amasses data about the movements of every person who travels by air commercially or crosses the nation’s borders; the Drug Enforcement Administration tracks license plates scanned on American roads. And that’s only a minuscule sampling. More obscure agencies, such as the recently gutted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, keep records of corporate trade secrets, credit reports, mortgage information, and other sensitive data, including lists of people who have fallen on financial hardship.
A fragile combination of decades-old laws, norms, and jungly bureaucracy has so far prevented repositories such as these from assembling into a centralized American surveillance state. But that appears to be changing. Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have systematically gained access to sensitive data across the federal government, and in ways that people in several agencies have described to us as both dangerous and disturbing. Despite DOGE’s stated mission, little efficiency seems to have been achieved. Now a new phase of Trump’s project is under way: Not only are individual agencies being breached, but the information they hold is being pooled together. The question is Why? And what does the administration intend to do with it?

Good questions, especially given Karoline Leavitt Boasts Trump Wouldn’t Hesitate to Arrest SCOTUS Justices (archive link) and the authors spend much time providing answers, though the main answer likely is very short and bleeding obvious ... nothing good.

But enough already with the authoritarians and on with the authoritarian-loving reptiles this day, with the "news" in fervent campaign mode, at top of page evoking Joe and handing out a denialist rating ...

At the very bottom, there was standard fear-mongering about Hamas, but no note about the current Israeli government using mass starvation as a war strategy, or the ethnic cleansing currently unfolding, but there never is...

Over on the extreme far right there was the usual motley bunch...

Blossoming forth from the pits of reptile despair, the pearls of wisdom man offered ...

Coalition has failed itself and voters on Labor’s tax disgrace
You have to give it to the geniuses advising Peter Dutton in this campaign. In their desperation to minimise any political differences with Labor, they have ignored a tax policy blunder from their opponents.
By David Pearl

... but when in search of reptile despair and reptile tears,  the pond will always turn first to the bromancer, in deep despond, and fully into a "pox on both their houses" mode, with a special pox on Albo.

It was only a four minute read, so the reptiles said, as the bromancer let out a Ginsbergian howl of pain, a cry in the wilderness, An abysmal campaign of national self-harm, This is the worst campaign I’ve seen. Both sides are at fault. It’s not spiteful or vituperative, but easily the most vacuous and irresponsible.

The caption for the opening snap added to the despair, with portraits of the villains who had plunged the bromancer into an existential crisis: The Albanese government richly deserves to lose. But mere honesty compels the conclusion that there’s no way the Dutton opposition deserves to win. Picture: News Corp

The bromancer opened glumly, in full defeatist mode, before moving into a sobbing which left the pond with a surfeit of reptile tears.

It's good to drink these tears each day - who knows when the tears might run out? - but is there a danger that this might lead to a case of reptaholism? Never fear, have a drink on the house ...

The most likely outcome from this dismal election is a second term for the Albanese government. Whether that’s as a majority or minority government matters, though it’s still just theoretically possible the Dutton opposition could scrape into office as a minority government itself.
This is the worst campaign I’ve seen. Both sides are at fault. It’s not spiteful or vituperative, but easily the most vacuous and irresponsible. Never has a campaign been more completely disconnected from reality.
Endless giveaways, ridiculous quibbles about costings that are entirely speculative, policies of deep national self-harm and a resolute determination never to mention the fundamental threats and changes transforming the entire world.
These global dynamics have led many nations, including the ones we routinely compare ourselves with, to increase substantially their military and other national security efforts. The Albanese government has degraded many of our existing capabilities and is proposing a barely incremental increase in defence funding, hardly enough even to pay for the AUKUS submarines.
These actions are so perverse you have to reverse engineer a strategic viewpoint, or policy key, to produce any explanation for them. It seems the government must have decided deliberately that it doesn’t want Australia to have any significant military capabilities over the next 10 years.

Eek, not the war on China by Xmas, not the AUKUS dreaming slip-sliding away, and the reptiles compounded the misery by showing a snap of the fading dream, The Albanese government is proposing a barely incremental increase in defence funding, hardly enough even to pay for the AUKUS submarines. Picture: Supplied

The bromancer was inconsolable ...

It may be that somewhere in the labyrinthine thought processes lurks the idea that if there’s a strategic showdown in the next 10 years it will be between China and the United States. If we have no significant capabilities, Washington will be unable to ask us to do anything significant. We’ll give America our flag and our geography, nothing more. This would be a wildly dangerous approach in any circumstances. Now, in the age of the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean axis, and Donald Trump’s new alliance uncertainties, it’s an act of national insanity.

In an attempt to console the bromancer, the reptiles quickly flung an AV distraction, featuring the pastie Hastie ... Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie discusses Labor’s “shifty” defence policies in turbulent global times. “This Albanese Labor government is shifty, and the Australian people cannot trust it, but I am still shocked they have been so reckless with the truth,” Mr Hastie said. “We are living in a very dangerous world now.”

Um, the pond hates to sound like a cracked record, but aren't we living in a dangerous world now thanks to the diligent work of Faux Noise minions, though these days they're being challenged by new cultists.

Never mind, there's always the tears ...

Because of its comprehensive failure on national security, the Albanese government richly deserves to lose.
But mere honesty compels the conclusion that there’s no way the Dutton opposition deserves to win. Its defence policy, bizarrely released in the very last days of the campaign, is much better than Labor’s. But it’s nowhere near what the nation needs. Perversely, except for the welcome decision to buy a fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, the opposition hasn’t told us anything of the shape of the defence force it wants to build.
Instead, incredibly, it has talked of having a high-powered closed-door conference as soon as it’s elected, involving defence chiefs, private sector leaders and some strategic analysts, to work out what to do. Good grief, am I dreaming? Is this a recurring nightmare?

You see? Look what they've done to the poor lad, see how they've done him down, reduced him to sounding like Charlie Brown.

The reptiles quickly rushed in another AV distraction, Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell says federal governments at large have been “asleep at the wheel” on defence spending. Labor and the Coalition have continued to clash over defence spending in the lead up to the election after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton promised to boost military investment. “We just haven’t put enough into defence ... all of the governments,” Mr Clennell said. “This government is doing AUKUS, it’s taking forever, they are spending more and more on the NDIS, and I think the Coalition has a point here.”

The bromancer was still inconsolable. 

Not even the thought of bringing back disgraced Mike and Jennings of the fifth form worked for him, not when he contemplated the seat count and the campaign ...

An opposition led by a former defence minister, with a former assistant defence minister as defence spokesman, is going to ask essentially the same people who have produced two decades of utter defence chaos and failure to come up with new advice, but this time to do it quickly?
Surely the opposition knows in some detail what it wants to do. The very last thing we need is more advice. If we could defend the country with advice we’d be invincible. We have mountains of advice. National forests have been sacrificed to produce advice. We groan under the weight of advice. The nation doesn’t need a government seeking advice. It needs a government that gives orders, that gets something done.
The first thing a Dutton government should do is talk Mike Pezzullo and Peter Jennings into coming out of retirement. Appeal to their patriotism and put them both back in harness to actually get some action, unlike the 10 years of Coalition government that were almost as bad in defence as the three years of Albanese government. Assuming we get another Albanese government, what happens to the nation?
If Dutton wins a net gain of, say, even four seats, this will be overall a poor performance but better than the low ebb of expectations right now. In that circumstance he would probably stay as leader simply because there’s no good alternative. A net win of six seats and he’s secure, I would think.
If he wins no seats, or even goes backwards, Dutton is probably gone. The Coalition could then make big, self-harming mistakes. It could easily decide it lost badly because Dutton was too right-wing. In fact Dutton has not been a noticeably right-wing Opposition Leader. His only big call was to campaign for a No vote on the voice referendum, and this was forced on him by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and the Nationals.

Phew, what a relief. He didn't announce all those Trumpian strategies, or if he did, they're easily forgotten and forgiven, what with the many substantial costings that followed ...

Carry on bromancing ...

The Coalition campaign has been strategically cowardly and tactically inept at best. Dutton is the captain-coach of a team with very thin talent. He promoted one of his best, James Paterson. But that’s been his only smart decision. Other talented frontbenchers, Andrew Hastie and Dan Tehan in particular, have been all but invisible in the campaign, until Hastie’s partial re-emergence a few days ago. There’s hidden talent on the backbench, too – people such as Dave Sharma. But the Coalition frontbenchers entrusted with carrying the campaign apart from Dutton have looked like reserve grade footballers doing their best one division above their talent level. Dutton himself has made too many gaffes, repeatedly getting basic facts wrong on national security. Albanese has done the same. But mistakes are easily forgiven when you’re winning. The truth is neither leader looks impressive.

So what Dr Freud, is the real problem here? 

Why that's an easy answer ....the bromancer still yearns for his beloved bro, is still deeply infatuated with the onion muncher...how he hungers for those ancient days, when a man was a budgie-smuggling man, Dutton is a stark contrast to Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd in opposition. Picture: Herald Sun

It's the age of lead, the keys to Valhalla have been lost, and what rough beast slouches towards Canberra for a second term?

What a contrast to Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd in opposition. They were relentless, on top of all detail, worked from sun up to midnight, left no stone unturned. They worked effectively with colleagues they didn’t like. They were much hungrier for victory than this opposition has been. If the Liberals turn now to a milquetoast “moderate” alternative, they will only increase the enervating sense of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Australian politics.
Partly this is the political environment. The electorate is very cynical. We’ve had a populist campaign without demagogues. The electorate’s cynicism is so powerful the only thing it believes from politics is a fistful of dollars. It’s a self-perpetuating pathology. The electorate’s cynicism is so great it leads the parties to behave in a way that fully justifies the electorate’s cynicism.
If Albanese wins, it would be better for the nation if it’s just short of a majority. The sensible folks among the crossbenchers would readily guarantee confidence and supply. The government would not be greatly destabilised. But the political culture would at least have registered that the last three years deserved a political penalty. If Albanese is re-elected in majority status, every worst instinct in Australian politics is reinforced.
Poor fellow my country.

Say what? In the depths of his despair, did the bromancer just wish a minority government on the country, with the perfidious teals, or perhaps even worse, the treacherous, deviant greenies holding the balance of power?

Has it come to this? Have the reptiles instituted a self-harm watch on the bromancer? Perhaps the immortal Rowe could help with a 'toon ...

Oh that's not much help immortal Rowe, and so to the bonus, which unfortunately involves the craven Craven, even if the reptiles only clock him as a three minute trifle, These weaponised words will test our social cohesion, We must be careful not to overreach with seemingly petty annoyances like innumerable welcomes to country, and condescending instructions in Indigenous protocol.

Many who scribble for the lizard Oz are contemptible, but the craven Craven is surely amongst the most contemptible... Welcome to Country is performed during the 2025 AFL Indigenous All Stars match n Perth. Picture: Getty Images

Of course the contemptible Craven doesn't want to sound too neo-Nazi, so a little distancing is first in order ...

In the final days of the election campaign, welcomes to country have returned to the top of the national conversation. The neo-nothings who crashed Melbourne’s Anzac Day ceremony were beyond pathetic. They were blasphemers against the same faith they claim to protect: the very best of the Australian character as it shone in the horror of the First World War.
These try-hard fascists have no mates. They are devoid of persevering dignity. If they do not like a welcome to country at Anzac Day, fine. Protest in advance against its inclusion. Demonstrate on the steps of parliament. Write a stern letter to the editor. You have every right to fulminate before or after the event. But once something has been officially included in the Anzac ceremony, disrupting it is attacking the day itself and everything it represents.

But then comes a gigantic billy goat butt, what with pesky, difficult uppity blacks always ruining everything, and the need to say that the Duttonator is on to something ...

Of course, none of this goes to the current controversy over whether we have too many welcomes, or whether we should have them at all. There are numerous contending views. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is pretty grim. He not only thinks welcomes are “overdone”, but would quarantine them to a very small class of great ceremonial events, such as the opening of parliament and, presumably, a Carlton premiership.

Oh indeed, indeed ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction featuring the dog botherer, entirely lacking in Golding humour, Sky News host Chris Kenny says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was “all over the shop” when asked about Welcome to Country during his latest debate with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. “Peter Dutton is clear, and Albanese, again, is all over the shop,” Mr Kenny said. “The government leads the way on this stuff, and I think most Australians would side with Dutton. "At least he knows his mind and is strong enough to state it.”

Oh indeed, indeed ... there's humour of a kind.

At least he can recognise a cliff, and is strong enough to drive over it, and see if he can survive the crash ...

Back to the contemptible craven Craven ...

At the other end are those who would have a welcome to country at the instalment of a new light globe. But in the middle, there is an increasing bloc of people, utterly respectful of Indigenous people, who are starting to feel a bit welcomed out. They’re not flatly opposed to welcomes, and certainly would not be as niggardly as Dutton in having them performed. But they are sick of going to events where every single speaker – even if there are a dozen – trudges through a cookie-cutter acknowledgement of country.
They are the same people who roll their eyes when the ABC solemnly announces at the beginning of every news item that it is brought to you – for example – from Wiradjuri country. This certainly irritates me, not in principle, but because of the presumption of these talking heads acknowledging a people of whose country they have no idea, let alone their customs or language.

The long absent lord forfend that the pond should defend ABC talking heads, but by what right of supreme condescension and head up arse does this craven Craven pontificate about a bunch of people and their knowledge of people and country? 

What gives him special insights and understandings and knowledge, with which he might judge everybody else?

Was it Tony Armstrong's decision to abandon the ABC for SBS that meant every ABC talking head was completely clueless, unlike the pontificating Catholic ponce prof, with a cumbersome knowledge cucumber up his bum.

On then with some classic casuistry, sophistry if you will...

All of this may seem trivial, but it is not. Goodwill from non-Indigenous Australians towards their Indigenous compatriots floats on a sea of consensus. The overwhelming number of Australians agree they respect and value their Indigenous brothers and sisters.
But consensus is a funny thing. It can evaporate quickly. It can be pricked as much by repeated irritation as all-out assault. We must be careful not to overreach with seemingly petty annoyances like innumerable welcomes to country, and condescending instructions in Indigenous protocol.
Language matters here. Expressed one way, an Indigenous ceremonial can be an invitation. Said another, it can be a venomous dismissal, something Indigenous people have experienced themselves all too often.

However you read this, it's venomous, snake-like, compounded by the intent of the next snap, Melbourne lord mayor Nick Reece at a smoking ceremony. Picture: Jason Edwards

Time now for a little victim blaming and shaming, and a walking back of Mabo...

Critically, we are at the beginning of a new war of words and meaning around Indigenous people that will be divisive and bitter.
There’s always been difficulty in mutually adapting the English and Indigenous languages. For example, when Indigenous people wanted to express their unique connection with their land, they used the English term “sovereignty”.
But this is an expression of political philosophy, meaning total legal control. Clearly, since European incursion, Aboriginal people do not and cannot rule land in defiance of our constitutional system. “Sovereignty” is an inapt word, and it has been left to people such as Noel Pearson to redefine it as a “moral” suzerainty over land and people.
But a much worse vocabulary is now being pressed upon the Indigenous population by the same activists who lost the voice.

They are no longer Indigenous or Aboriginal people, but “First Nations”. Land is “unceded”. The Australian commonwealth is no longer a constitutional democracy, but an irredeemable “settler state”.

The Voice. 

The craven Craven didn't insist on a capital "V" but folded to the house reptile style,  and given his shameful role in relation to the Voice campaign, perhaps that's fair and so ...

The reptiles then offered another AV distraction, this time featuring the Price is Wrong... Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has agreed with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on his stance for the acknowledgement of country in Australia. “My position has always been that we have absolutely overdone welcome to country,” Ms Price told Sky News Australia. “Especially when they become politicised, sort of statements that are divisive, as opposed to feeling like it is a welcome. “I absolutely agree with Peter Dutton that it's overdone. “This is Australia; we all belong to this country.”

It's the rats in the ranks, the quislings, the Vichy mob, the lickspittle fellow travellers that are always the worst ...

Or maybe not, maybe it's the craven Cravens of the world ...

These words are not merely loaded, but radioactive. They will provoke endless friction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. They will be weaponised by enemies of reconciliation. Take First Nations. What does this imply? Australia is a nation, and you cannot have more than one nation in the same territory. Does this imply that Australia is not validly a nation? Is the Australian constitutional settlement merely one entity among many? If the other nations are “First”, is the Australian state inferior?
It is the voice debate turbocharged.
“Unceded” goes the same way. It asserts both an unbreakable, continuous authority, and an illegitimate usurper. Is constitutional Australia a mere political parasite? “Settler state” is the worst. As part of Marxist race theory, it asserts not only that a nation was settled by “settlers”, but that both the country and its contemporary citizens will never be more. On that basis, not only Australia itself, but its current citizens are simply illegitimate.
So small issues over welcomes to country can have big implications. They can be part of the slow fuse that detonates the great consensus between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that Australia is a great national project, part of which must be justice for our original inhabitants.
If the voice was too far for the average Australian, being told he or she is a mere settler in their own country will be a marathon paved with thorns.
Greg Craven is a former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University

What a bilge-load of pious hypocrisy ...the long absent lord gave him one face, and he makes for himself a fellow-travelling another.

Luckily there was a Wilcox to hand to summarise the meaning of all this contemptible drivel ...

And now back to Barraba, where gigantic works of art and Studebakers attracted multitudes ...