In which the pond does its duty, which is to say it's an our Henry Killer day ...

 

Inevitably, as the Catholic Boys' Daily with a reputation to preserve, the reptiles at the lizard Oz were wildly excited this day ... a new pope and a new wraparound ...

Never bought sodastream and now never will...

As for the pontiff, while the reptiles blathered on about his love of Tim Tams, all the pond needed to know was Before he was elected pope, Leo XIV was critical of Trump, Vance on social media, Three recent X posts from then-Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago - now Pope Leo XIV - shared items critical of Trump and Vance policies (USA Today link).

Three times? That's as good as a cock crow.

Meanwhile, with the Studebaker bump long gone, the pond looked forward to the extreme far right with a compounding sense of alienation, misery and despair. 

Not more post-mortems, not more trudges through the belly of the coalition beast ...

Luckily the pond could pass up on some of the twaddle, featuring unimaginable levels of delusion:

Labor’s mandate is much thinner than it appears
While the Coalition needs to get a clear measure on what were its policy successes and failures, I suspect Australians are still doubtful that anything in Labor’s policies will address those core challenges.
By Susan McDonald

It's going to be a long hard road back to reality for them ...

Susan McDonald is the opposition spokeswoman for resources and Northern Australia.

Steph decided to blame vulgar youff, and the pond was all for it ...

Liberals were crushed by millennial rage
For the first time in Australia’s history, there were more millennial and Generation Z voters than baby boomers at the election. The nation has just witnessed this newly formed cohort passing its judgment on the Liberals. The results couldn’t be clearer.
By Stephanie Coombes

Hang on, why do the young 'uns always get the credit for raging? The pond is into raging, has been raging at the reptiles for decades.

And so to the tedious chore. Everyone knows that Friday is hole in bucket man day, and our Henry must have been feeling his millennial oats, because he spent five minutes on his analysis, but all is not lost because the pond promises that the likes of Herodotus and Gramsci will make appearances, as is required by law ...

The header: No, the Liberal Party is not OK, As Labor and left-leaning thinking becomes hegemonic at state and federal levels the Liberal Party must either reconsider its strategy or face the risk of becoming a marginal player.

The caption for the downcast Duttonator: Opposition Leader Peter Dutton concedes defeat during a Liberal Party election night event.

The magical invocation, up there with transubstantiation: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond found it hard to feign interest, a journey through the coalition's entrails being as appetising as time spent with celebrating tykes ...

Democratic politics is a perpetual lesson in disappointment, invariably creating nearly as many losers as winners. But for those who hoped for a different outcome, last week’s result was worse than a let-down – it was a disaster.
Yes, Donald Trump’s chaotic policies contributed, inducing a preference for the devil one knows. 

Oh he's too kind, what an excuse to feature the Luckovich of the day ... devils, King Donald, the pope...

After that came a deep sense of ennui, inducing a kind of torpor ...

And yes, the Liberal campaign was ill-judged in conception and inept in execution. But Labor’s campaign was scarcely brilliant, nor could anyone claim Anthony Albanese exudes the charisma of a Bob Hawke.
It was therefore hard, watching Liberal seats crumble, not to be reminded of Montesquieu’s dictum that when a single blow fells a seemingly mighty structure, deep causes are surely at work.
What shattered the Liberals was, in other words, not like a cyclone, which emerges from the transient convergence of meteorological factors. It was an earthquake, releasing energies built up by the long-term grating of tectonic plates.
The numbers are telling. Over the past two decades, the Coalition has lost nearly a third of its electorate. Additionally, because of the distribution of the losses, successive reductions in its primary vote have exacted a rising toll in terms of seats.

The reptiles seemed to have it in for the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, if the brutal still was any guide to this sampling of the Bolter, Former NSW Labor treasurer Michael Costa slams Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor for being “lazy” and calls the whole Liberal Party “dilettante”. “He’s probably the best choice as a holding leader,” Mr Costa told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “They’re in crisis mode and they’re seeking to analyse the problem, in the way they always do, which is to blame the other faction for the policy failures, rather than the fact that they weren’t consistent. “I don’t think the next Liberal prime minister is in the parliament at the moment.”

Dear sweet long absent lord, and that's apparently when he's in a good mood.

Only the long absent lord knows what the Bolter was doing chatting with Costa, or vice versa (empahsis on vice),  but relax, as promised, our Henry immediately went into a learned discourse on the matter of hegemony, involving Herodotus, Lenin, Gramsci and Etienne de la Boétie, and are you not entertained?

On average, over the period from 1990 to 2022, a one percentage point fall in the Coalition’s vote reduced its share of MPs by 1.8 per cent; but in this election, the Coalition’s share of MPs fell by 2.7 per cent for each percentage point decline in its primary vote share, causing it to lose six more MPs than it otherwise would have. Were that trend to continue, marginalisation awaits.
To that extent, what we are witnessing – especially given the situation in the states – is the entrenchment of Labor, and more generally of the “progressive” mindset, as a hegemonic force.
Now, the concept of hegemony is notoriously slippery. The abstract noun “hegemonia” first appears in Herodotus, designating leadership based on respect. But when German philologists resurrected it in the 19th century, the distinction between consensual “hegemonia” and its more coercive counterpart, “arkhe”, had disappeared. Adopted by Lenin (a talented classicist), it was as a synonym for coercive domination that hegemony entered the Comintern’s lexicon.
However, the failure, immediately after World War I, of the attempted communist revolutions in Europe led the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to use it in his Prison Notebooks to denote the “spontaneous consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by a dominant group” – a consent based on the assimilation, virtually by osmosis, of “outlooks and moral standards” that constrained the permissible scope of disagreement.
Sustained by the ruling elite’s predominance in the media, education and religion, those perceptions shaped the “common sense” of even harshly oppressed peasants and manual labourers, making support for the dominant group the default option. The result was to place challengers on the back foot, struggling to overcome suspicion, demonisation and distrust.
Yet Gramsci never thought that the ruling group’s hegemony was unshakeable. Disputing Aristotle’s assertion that it resulted in a society in which “all men either sound the same note or else different notes in the same key”, he stressed the “contradictory consciousness” of the victims, who – in Etienne de la Boétie’s (1530-1563) famous phrase – had “not lost their freedom but chosen their servitude”.

This astonishing rebuke, this gathering of notables -Aristotle no less - should set the coalition on a right and proper and just course.

Fun fact, speaking of astonishing addictions to philosophical insights:

...Desk jockeys back at the Department of Capital Territories admired her spunk. “I hated her from the moment I heard of this legendary woman,” jokes her then co-worker, Sarah ­Engledow. “I wanted to be the star of the office.” The two shared a love of pranks and often amused each other by ringing departmental employees who had “funny” surnames.
Around this time Ley changed the spelling of her first name. “I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that match the letters in your name you can change your personality. I worked out that if you added an “s” I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would ever be boring. It’s that simple,” she says, chuckling. “And once I’d added the “s” it was really hard to take it away.” (sorry, it was in a lizard Oz profile and the pond never links to the Oz).

Shades of Nancy Reagan and Joan. 

Waiter, some tea leaves for the pond, or perhaps another snap, Bob Hawke and John Howard at the 15th Australian Jamboree for Scouts at Woodhouse, near Piccadilly, in the Adelaide Hills, 1989.

Talk about a wander down memory lane, as our Henry maintained his mainlining of Gramsci... think of it as a long march through the lizard Oz, or at least through our Henry's name-dropping, heavily referential mind ...

In that “contradictory consciousness” passive acceptance of the dominant worldview coexisted with “apathy, grudging resignation and outright hostility”, fomenting periodic rebellions. Those rebellions could, like an occasional Coalition state government, act as safety valves for the regime’s accumulated contradictions or, like the voice referendum, as checks on its excesses. In those ways, the rebellions helped perpetuate the hegemony, rather than weakening it.
But the fissures in the hegemonic order were also the cracks its opponents could exploit to wrench its foundations apart.
Compounding that potential were the vulnerabilities inherent in any long ruling elite, which Gramsci analysed by examining the caste that dominated Italian politics from unification in 1861 to the triumph of fascism in 1922. To durably retain its power, that caste had to assemble an extremely heterogeneous coalition, internalising, and seeking to resolve, a wide array of conflicts. However, that exposed it to endless demands for greater favours, forcing it to place growing burdens on subaltern groups.
And “as soon as the dominant class exhausted its function” – that is, its capacity to “expand the productive forces” to underwrite the demands it sought to appease – “its ideological hold decayed”, with increasingly bitter battles over shares of the pie weakening it further.
The relevance to Australia, where Labor’s costly promises clash with, and worsen, a prolonged productivity slowdown, is obvious. At the same time, Labor’s electoral success is increasingly reliant on second and third preferences: those preferences’ share in its two-party-preferred vote has risen more than five-fold since the 1980s. As that process continues, the pressures Labor faces, in this age of grievance collectors, to lavish largesse on potentially volatile constituencies will mount, as will its attempts to finance that largesse by aspiration-sapping imposts on the shrinking pool of net taxpayers.
But Gramsci also stressed that despite its intensifying contradictions, the edifice would never crumble of its own accord. On the contrary, precipitating the collapse required a political party that could “elaborate and diffuse” an alternative “conception of the world by working out the ethics and politics corresponding to that conception”, infusing them into its every pronouncement.

Call the pond a simpleton but WTF is he on about? Couldn't he just have celebrated the SS or perhaps the Price is Wrong?

Instead the reptiles offered a cruel snap, featuring an invisible Duttonator, an out of focus shadow up against a demi-god, A portrait of Sir Robert Menzies hangs on the wall next to Peter Dutton.

It was down hill from there for our Henry, with the final word left to Thomas Paine, dragged in like a wet cat to show off our Henry's inestimable book larnin' ...

That the Liberal Party never has been, and never will be, the tightly scripted Leninist monolith Gramsci had in mind scarcely needs to be said. It is, on the contrary, a ragbag of attitudes, purposes and intentions, whose diversity, while at times descending into Stygian factionalism, historically allowed it to appeal to wildly different supporters.
Accepting that diversity’s enduring benefits, the party, as it grapples with defeat, needs to avoid both the search for ideological purity and the temptation to retreat behind a smokescreen of euphemisms, half-truths and cliches.
Rather, it needs to build on the plinth of values, going from the emphasis on freedom and aspiration to that on fiscal prudence and moderate taxation, its differing elements share. Brilliantly articulated in Robert Menzies’s “Forgotten People” addresses, delivered in 1942, the party’s shared values were restated by John Howard before the 1996 election in his Headland speeches, marking, in each case, a decisive break from Labor’s outlook. That those shared values never surfaced in the 2025 campaign is a stark indicator of the Coalition’s problems; re-articulating them in line with contemporary realities should be the first step in the path to recovery.
Leading political parties very rarely die, particularly in two-party systems. But like old soldiers, they can fade away. And these are, as Thomas Paine said centuries ago in his aptly named journal, The Crisis, “times that try men’s souls”. Whether the Liberal Party is up to that trial will determine whether this election’s legacy is a reinvigorated liberal future or just the smouldering rubble of a liberal past.

Sheesh, all that and not a chance to segue to the hot topic in the 'toons...

And so to another current pond Friday contractual obligation, time with Killer of the IPA.

The pond doesn't get to choose, the pond just takes its lumps and goes with the Killer flow ...

The surprisingly mellow header: Labor majority a cause for optimism on tax reform, After the scale of the Liberal Party’s drubbing last weekend, the next most surprising thing for me was Labor’s tax policy offerings at the election: they were better than the Coalition’s.

The caption for Jimbo: Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The magical incantation all must know by heart: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond immediately suspected that someone had spiked the drinks at the IPA, or else Killer had decided trolling was the way forward in his four minute outing (so the reptiles said it took to read):

After the scale of the Liberal Party’s drubbing last weekend, the next most surprising thing for me was Labor’s tax policy offerings at the election: they were better than the Coalition’s.
The hyper-partisan nature of elections, fuelled by an increasingly polarised media, can often obscure the fact that both major parties are capable of sensible economic reforms in government. For those of us interested in pro-growth policies it’s tempting to harrumph at Labor’s emphatic victory, given the party of Hawke and Keating appears to have turned its back on its proud record of economic reform.
But it’s also pointless: at least for the next three years, Labor is the only game in town. Constructive criticism and persuasion rather than kneejerk opposition are more likely to produce better policy. And the election outcome could have been worse. It’s better to have a confident government with a large majority capable of pursuing an agenda rather than one beholden to the Greens or a smattering of unpredictable independents. In three years voters will be able to judge Labor’s record clearly.
On tax there are some promising signs, notwithstanding the government’s egregious proposal to tax unrealised capital gains within superannuation.
The bar for sensible, indeed any, tax reform has been very low for some time, but Jim Chalmers in his most recent budget unexpectedly promised to trim the lowest marginal tax rate by two percentage points in coming years. Yes, it was a piddling tax cut, but to Labor’s credit it didn’t choose to arbitrarily lift one of the lower-income tax thresholds – an implicit recognition that it is lower rates that improve the incentive to work and save.

The reptiles hastily tried to introduce some balance by featuring the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, Angus Taylor and Peter Dutton in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

What an unfortunate visual association, two dropkick losers together. Was there something in this that hinted at the reptiles' new found love for numerology?

Back to Killer, living in hope of a happy ending and relief ...

Labor also promised to introduce a standard income tax deduction of $1000, a complexity-reducing and time-saving benefit that all taxpayers can access, in contrast to the one-off $1200 tax rebate the Coalition had offered only some taxpayers.
We should celebrate that short-term bribes weren’t effective. The phrase “cost-of-living crisis” implies something temporary, but the problem won’t subside without permanent changes.
The Prime Minister may yet choose to tap the expertise of MPs Andrew Charlton and Daniel Mulino, both of whom have PhDs in economics and well understand what crushingly high income tax rates do to entrepreneurship, work and saving.

Strange. Not a word about other events, left to the 'toons ...

The pond was mystified, befuddled and bewildered. 

Surely this wasn't the real Killer, surely there had to be some explanation ...

Perhaps Paul Keating’s wise advice will finally resonate. “Once you start getting the top rate over, in my opinion, 39, it becomes confiscatory, and when they become confiscatory you just lose all that impetus to make a dollar and do clever things,” he said last year in an interview.
Indeed, claiming Australia is low-tax compared to a bunch of sclerotic, failing European nations on the other side of the world is cause for comfort. Our top rate is even higher than China’s, which is 45 per cent.
It’s easier politically for parties of the left to cut income tax rates.
The political rhetoric of the two major parties, both how they describe themselves and each other, often deviates significantly from reality. The Coalition’s own fiscal outlook – based on its tax and spending plans – produced a few days before the election was almost identical to Labor’s, and in fact worse for the next two years. It pencilled in total debt 3 per cent lower than Labor in four years’ time – not exactly a revolution.
For all the Labor Left’s talk about climate change, when push comes to shove Resources Minister Madeleine King has green-lit numerous gas projects. Labor governments in New South Wales and Western Australia appear to be relatively pro-development. South’s Australia’s Peter Malinauskas has even backed a domestic nuclear industry.
In May last year Greenpeace said King’s gas strategy “might as well have been written by the fossil fuel lobby … it is full of measures to ease the way for new gas … It reads like a blank cheque for the industry to drill as they please, no matter the cost to our communities, and our climate”.
That was promising; everyone in the Labor Party isn’t Chris Bowen. Talk is cheap but Chalmers recently declared Labor’s second term would be “primarily about productivity without forgetting inflation”.

Ah, of course, that's what was pleasing Killer. 

Gas the country to save the planet, what with climate science a lesser religion down there with the tykes.

The Labor party could do gas as well as, or perhaps better than, the coalition, and open a few more coal mines while they were at it, as a reminder that the word didn't just appear in the coalition ... 

And then came pearls of wisdom from Sharri, full disrespect, Former treasury assistant secretary David Pearl claims the Coalition’s spending was “not the only reason” they lost the election. “When the conservative side of our politics don’t run on tax cutting and tax reform, they play into their opponents’ hands,” Mr Pearl told Sky News host Sharri Markson. “They feel they can outmaneuver the Coalition. Mr Pearl believes the Coalition was on “strong ground” and “put Labor in a difficult position when they campaigned on lower taxes and smaller government”.

The mild and mellow Killer did his best to sound sanguine ... the pond hadn't detected a single mention of Covid or masks or what not...

That’s a good idea as long as the Productivity Commission hasn’t given him the wrong ideas. In its latest productivity update it decried the long-term decline in productivity growth but discovered a curious artefact of the past few years.
“We saw a sharp rise in productivity driven by the lockdowns, which was then wiped out as lockdowns ended and hours worked reached record highs,” the Commission said. The last thing we need are lockdowns to boost productivity!

Eek, lockdowns, prove positive it was really Killer and not some evil twin, some doppelgänger, some clone or double sent from the dark side to live in hope ...

Even better, this certified genuine, genuinely hopeful Killer of the IPA matched our Henry with an Adam Smith quote as a throwdown to end his piece...

Take that hole in the bucket man, you're not the only reptile famous for his book larnin'...

We can only hope the Treasurer pursues increased productivity growth the old-fashioned way: letting households and businesses keep more of their incomes so they can arrange their affairs in the most efficient way and avoiding stifling new regulations.
“A strong labour market was good for employment, but bad for productivity,” the Commission also found, pointing out the rapid growth in relatively unproductive “care economy” jobs was dragging down the national average.
Keating also said that when you change the government, you change the country. For conservatives, it’s been a reason to despair since last weekend. But politicians give themselves too much credit: governments have far less influence over social and economic affairs, and they can’t wreck a country in one term. A better aphorism is Adam Smith’s: “There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.” Let’s be optimistic that some sensible reforms will emerge from this government; if they don’t, it’s likely not the end of the world.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

And that was it, Killer announcing the world hadn't come to an end ... and yet, and yet, in some parts of the world, ethnic cleansing and starvation as a war crime goes on apace, with the lizard Oz paying not the slightest attention ...

After that, it's a little hard to return to the pond's slide night travelogue, but as a way of lifting spirits, back to Tamworth and the internationally famous arts trail, promoted by a council keen to inspire tourists ...

There have to be plaques, explaining the Picasso touch ...

Heck you can't get enough plaques ...

The pond didn't follow the art trail far ... but this was handy to Kable Avenue ...

The explanatory plaque ...

This was all very well, if it hadn't been for the council demonstrating that when it came to architectural monstrosities, it was way ahead of the game with a brutalist concrete nightmare that wouldn't have been out of place in Herr Hitler's Normandy fortifications ...

On second thoughts, Albert Speer might have been pleased... think of the tanks that beauty could stop.