In which the pond embarks on a reptile triptych in a meditative Sunday quest for irrelevance ...

 

Okay, okay, fair cop... 

Yesterday when featuring the bromancer celebrating the new Leo the lion-hearted, the pond really should have linked to Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark and his MAGA and the American Pope, featuring amongst others, Laura Loomer and Catturd™ ...

The pond might also have thrown in the Bulwark mob's An American Pope and the Turn of the Tide, what the promise of a new 80% tariff, which will really sort things out. (In much the same way that the pond will have to learn to get on without NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts if the mango Mussolini gets his way).

But the pond has a ridgy didge, deeply real excuse, because the pond was aiming for complete irrelevance, in the reptile approved reptile manner. 

So the pond began downsizing its doll collection to just 1 or 2, and had to throw out a lot of coloured pencils. 

From now on it's going to be just special dolls to help the pond make it through the night ...

Mayors not included!

Achieving complete irrelevance is tricky business. To get there, the pond had to ignore other irrelevancies ...

Why I’m challenging for the leadership of the National Party
This is not about protecting David Littleproud’s job or mine. This is about fighting for the jobs and livelihoods of the many people we represent.
By Matt Canavan

He has to go behind the reptile paywall to explain it, and punters must fork out their shekels to the Murdochians to learn why? Much the same might be said for this irrelevant bleat ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Dog’ act: Noel Pearson unleashes on all sides
Noel Pearson has broken his long silence since the defeat of the Indigenous voice with an excoriating critique of both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton.
By Paige Taylor

Always dudded, and how about this supremely irrelevant recommendation? 

EXCLUSIVE
Berejiklian backs Ley to restore Libs
Australia’s first female Liberal premier Gladys Berejiklian has endorsed Sussan Ley to succeed Peter Dutton as Liberal leader and ‘bring the party back to the centre’.
By Geoff Chambers and Simon Benson

That should work down Wagga x 2 way ...

The pond was starting to get the hang of this irrelevancy business, and thought it might achieve it completely with a triptych of irrelevant reptiles, beginning with the help of the splendidly irrelevant prattling Polonius...

The header: Left’s luvvies wise to stop dancing on Liberal Party grave, Without question, the Liberal Party ran a dreadful campaign in the lead-up to the 2025 election. Dutton has accepted responsibility for the Coalition’s failure. But fault should be shared around.

Does anything date poor old Polonius more than his addiction to "luvvies"?

The caption: Listening to the ABC’s Radio National Late Night Live on Monday was very much a deja vu experience in which everyone essentially agreed with everyone else in a left-of-centre way.

A note before proceeding. Long time devotees of Polonius will detect the bitterness embedded in that caption.

By all and any rights, Polonius should have been given the late night gig on the ABC. 

It was his reward for having been turfed out of The Insiders. How did that tired hack David Marr end up cavorting with a Tingle down his spine? Why is life so unfair? Have you heard that song about the boy suffering at the corner store? What about Polonius, what about him?

Oh and there was the usual magic carpet ride: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Now on with the bitterness. Oh they were all there to taunt Polonius with their cardigan-wearer ways (though judging by the vehicle the pond once saw the savvy Savva climb in to in Melbourne - a handsome dark blue four door Bentley - she's a bit beyond cardigans).

Listening to the ABC’s Radio National Late Night Live on Monday was very much a deja vu experience in which everyone essentially agreed with everyone else in a left-of-centre way. But, also, it was an occasion in which the death of the Liberal Party of Australia was again predicted.
David Marr was the presenter and his guests were Laura Tingle (ABC TV 7.30 political editor) and Niki Savva (Nine Newspapers columnist and ABC TV Insiders panellist). All three were antagonists of the contemporary Liberal Party and former leader Peter Dutton. This was yet another example of the lack of viewpoint diversity at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster.
Marr asked Savva whether the Liberal Party “is fit for purpose in today’s Australia”. He suggested “the party’s view of Australia and Australia’s view of Australia … don’t seem to mesh”. To which Savva responded: “Well, they don’t at all and the voters tried to tell the Liberal Party (this) in 2022, which was their previous worst performance, that it needed to change.”
Savva repeated that the Liberal Party either needed to change or it would die – “and the Liberal Party is now dying”. My mind flashed back to July 17, 1983 when political historian Judith Brett wrote in The Age that “the Liberal Party in the 1990s seems doomed”. This followed the defeat of the Liberals, under Malcolm Fraser’s leadership, in March 1983.

Talk about a provocation, talk about arousing righteous indignation, and not just because they were trespassing on what should have been Polonial turf. 

The reptiles hastily interrupted with a distraction featuring The Price is Wrong, Liberal MP Andrew Wallace discusses Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's defection to the Liberal Party. "Australia is served best when we have a strong united conservative side of politics," Mr Wallace told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. "The reality is that the Liberal Party needs to be in a Coalition with the National Party to form government and vice versa."

It was time for Polonial defiance, time to make a stand ...

At the time, Brett was a coeditor of left-wing magazine Arena. Writing in the left-wing Guardian on May 5, in the wake of the 2025 election, Brett declared that the Liberal Party “is in dire straits”. That’s four decades after she predicted its imminent demise.
Sure, the Coalition lost the 1983, 1984, 1987, 1990 and 1993 elections but returned to office in March 1996 under John Howard’s leadership as a four-term government.
Writing in these pages on May 7, New Zealand commentator Oliver Hartwich said the New Zealand Labour Party had won government in 2017 and swept back to office “in 2020 with the first single-party majority under our proportional representation system”.
In 2020, the Nationals, in opposition, received their worst result in decades. However, as Hartwich commented, “three years later, Labour was unceremoniously ejected”. Jacinda Ardern, the one-time radical, had stepped down as prime minister in January 2023.
Without question, the Liberal Party ran a dreadful campaign in the lead-up to the 2025 election. Dutton has accepted responsibility for the Coalition’s failure. But fault should be shared around. Moreover, it should be accepted that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese campaigned much better this year than he did as opposition leader three years earlier.
The Coalition had a poor attacking and defensive plan. Even so, it received around 32.3 per cent of the primary vote compared to the Labor Party’s 34.7 per cent. And just over 45 per cent of voters preferred a Coalition government to just under 55 per cent who preferred Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to continue in office.
On the figures, it is unlikely that the Coalition will win an election in the short term. But who knows – since only a fool would predict the economic future, especially with respect to the cost of living and reliability of energy.

That was incredibly discreet of Polonius, his failure to mention the elephant in the room ...

The reptiles helped out with a snap of freedumb boy, Liberals Tim Wilson celebrates after defeating Independent Zoe Daniel in the seat of Goldstein. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

What a glorious nuking of the country his return promises ... and it inspired Polonius. 

Perhaps all this talk of climate science might yet be defeated. Damn you greenies, damn you to an eternally hot planet ...

Those who believed the Liberal Party could not win back seats that were lost to Climate 200 teal independents have been proven wrong.
Zoe Daniel in the Melbourne seat of Goldstein lost to Liberal Tim Wilson, who performed extremely well. And this was achieved under the leadership of the unpopular Dutton. At the time of writing, Monique Ryan, the sitting teal MP in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, was in trouble, as was teal candidate Nicolette Boele in the Sydney seat of Bradfield. Daniel, Ryan and Boele all received a soft run on the ABC and in Nine Newspapers.
Labor has reason to thank Dutton since he gave a firm direction to his officials that the Liberal Party was to direct its preferences to Labor ahead of the Greens. In 2010 Adam Bandt won the seat of Melbourne for the Greens on Liberal Party preferences – having received a primary vote of 36.2 per cent. In 2025, Bandt won 40.1 per cent of the primary vote but lost to Labor’s Sarah Witty. In 2010, Bandt’s two-party-preferred vote was 56 per cent. In 2025 it was 46.7 per cent. The Liberal Party’s primary vote in 2025 was 19.3 per cent – its preferences elected Witty.

Just to rub it in, the reptiles featured one of the despicable deviants, Monique Ryan with her supporters Malvern Campaign office the day after the Federal election. Picture: Tony Gough/ NewsWire

If only Polonius hadn't had his voice stifled, if only he hadn't been exiled to Sky News down under and a job as a media dog hounding the hate media... he'd have given the greenies what for ...

It was different in the Brisbane seat of Ryan. The Greens’ Elizabeth Watson-Brown defeated Liberal candidate Maggie Forrest – on the preferences of Labor’s Rebecca Hack. Forrest attained a primary vote of 35.2 per cent as against Watson-Brown’s 28.8 per cent but got over the line with substantial help from Labor.
To some, it does not make sense for the Liberal Party to preference Labor over the Greens. For my part, I have consistently argued that it is in the Liberal Party’s long-term interest to do so. Dutton had a dreadful election campaign. But at least he can claim some credit for the defeat of Bandt, a left-wing extremist who exhibited a hostility to Israel but said little about Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack of October 7, 2023.

It would be wrong to expect Polonius to mention mass starvation as a war tactic, and ethnic cleansing - why would a right-wing extremist do that? - and so to the final snap ... Benson Saulo, Ro Knox and Scott Yung reflect on their failed election campaigns and what the Liberal Party should do next

That made Polonius rest easy. He might have been betrayed by the ABC, but the climate had been stuck back in its box. All heil Ming the Merciless ...

Interviewed on ABC RN Breakfast on May 8, the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young told Sally Sara her party’s defeat by Labor in the seats of Brisbane and Griffith in Queensland “actually came down to the fact that the Liberal vote crashed and the Liberals had preferenced Labor”. Not so with respect to Brisbane, where the Greens finished in third place. Sara did not challenge Hanson-Young’s claim.
The Coalition, Greens, Climate 200 teals and other independents went backwards on May 3. But expect all to be around at the next election scheduled for about May 2028. Including the Liberal Party – which was said to be on its way out after Labor, under Ben Chifley, won the 1946 election. But Robert Menzies prevailed in 1949 – in spite of the saying, “You can’t win with Menzies”. Politics and predictions do not go well together.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of the Sydney Institute.

Indeed, indeed, and things cold be worse ...

And so from the media dog to the dog bothering dog botherer doing his own hounding ...

The header: Libs’ road to renewal starts with a return to first principles aka Humiliation must send Liberals back to first principles, Australia currently lacks a community-based centre-right party focused on small government, personal responsibility and free enterprise. The Liberal Party has drifted away from its core mission – and is paying the price.

Please pause to admire Frank's astonishing artwork: The Coalition is in disarray and needs a root-and-branch rethink. Artwork: Frank Ling

This promised to be a good five minutes of sublime irrelevance, or so the reptiles said, with the dog botherer opening with a Trumpian flourish:

In practice, our elections are a zero-sum game. No matter how unattractive the options, there must be a winner and a loser.
So even with what looked like a nil-all draw, with roughly a third of votes respectively cast for Labor, the Coalition and the minor parties, Labor won a decisive and historic victory. The Coalition is in disarray and needs a root-and-branch rethink.

Now that's how to turn a loss into a draw, and so to the next snap ... Anthony Albanese and Labor won a decisive and historic victory. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Like Polonius the dog botherer was keen to get back to the 1950s and Ming the Merciless, apparently unaware of Ming's penchant for stealing policies, a bit like a bower bird attracted to glittery things...

Before it talks personnel, policies, organisation and tactics, the Liberals need to revisit first principles and reconnect with their raison d’etre.
This is the way to adapt Peter Dutton’s election slogan and get the Liberal Party back on track.
As it did before Robert Menzies, Australia currently lacks a community-based centre-right party focused on small government, personal responsibility and free enterprise. The Liberal Party has drifted away from its core mission and is paying the price.

Yes, it was time for an archival snap, and further evidence that the lizard Oz's demographic was trapped behind a picket fence ...Robert Menzies pictured in 1951.

What on earth would vulgar youff make of this obsession? Peak irrelevance!

The party’s electoral humiliation will see its lower house MPs outnumbered two to one by Labor. The Liberals must seize this blow as a blessing in disguise – without the expectation of storming back into power at the next election, they can engage in a fundamental realignment to put themselves into good fighting order.
Unimaginably, an outfit whose founder famously hitched his movement to the fortunes of “the forgotten people” has gradually forgotten the forgotten people. The Liberals must return to their roots because while issues, methods of communication and social norms have changed dramatically across the past 80 years, the principles espoused by Menzies remain a guiding star for national and social advancement.
Here is how Menzies described the small businesspeople, salaried workers and what we now call working families who made up his forgotten people: “They are for the most part unorganised and unselfconscious. They are envied by those whose social benefits are largely obtained by taxing them. They are not rich enough to have individual power. They are taken for granted by each political party in turn. They are not sufficiently lacking in individualism to be organised for what in these days we call ‘pressure politics’. And yet, as I have said, they are the backbone of the nation.”
They still are – and the Liberal Party has forgotten how to devise polices for them and communicate with them. It has fallen into the trap of appealing to their hip pocket rather than their good sense.
Liberals need to help mainstream voters readjust their demands. The inexorable growth of government in recent decades has created a population only too happy to put their hands out for largesse and too often inclined to look for government solutions to every problem.
The Liberals have not resisted this drift strongly enough; indeed, they have accelerated it. This conflicts with the first line of their foundational “We Believe” statement that commits to “lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives and maximises individual and private sector initiative”.

Has the world changed a little from Ming's day? Nah, not when you want to achieve peak irrelevance and nuke the country to boot, to save the planet, although there's no need to shift from fossil fuels, what with climate science a mere religion, carry on with peak stupidity, Sky News host Chris Kenny says Australia needs nuclear energy to maintain a “functioning economy”. Mr Kenny said it is a factor of “engineering and economics”. “In fact, the only reason it hasn't happened over the years is politics. “It's been in the too-hard basket.”

Oh they do love their steaming hot towers ...and so, having achieved peak irrelevance, it's time for a rant, a fit of pique, a listicle of outrage by a hot and bothered dog botherer ...

Government funding and services are available to Australians from before conception to beyond the grave. In the decades between IVF funding and a widow/er pension, public funding supports not only those in dire need but most people when it comes to childcare and preschool, university and TAFE training, or housing needs and electricity rebates.
Governments state and federal will subsidise your solar panels and help you purchase a battery. They will cut your student loan, offer you a sports voucher or send you to an arts workshop.
Government will give you paid maternity leave and even send out vouchers for meals and holidays. Government advertising tells us how to respect women, deal with sexual consent and understand primary healthcare.
Government reduced tariffs and opened industries to global competition but now subsidises renewables to reduce emissions, undermining our cheap energy advantage. The unnecessarily inflated electricity prices then act like an internal tariff so that our industries cop it from both sides – government as national self-harm.
Many citizens who struggle to support themselves in other ways know their way around government entitlements like politicians know their way around the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge. And at every election the major parties conjure up new giveaways on borrowed funds. (Yes, they plunge us deeper into debt to give us additional freebies.)
Labor is taking $16bn of debt from the shoulders of students to make it a shared burden for all taxpayers, many of whom will never earn as much as those students. It was a Labor electoral bribe that we all pay for and many applaud.
The Liberals, by comparison, offered a temporary cut in petrol tax and additional income tax rebates, putting the budget further into debt for at least two years. This is unsustainable; our budget will collapse under its own weight.
The Liberals are supposed to guard against this fiscal recklessness.
The people who will suffer most are not the big end of town, or the poorest workers who are net welfare recipients. Mainstream citizens will carry the load, trying to do more with less and being burdened by increasing levels of taxation while others drop out of taxpaying ranks.

Um didn't Ming the merciless rip off Labor policies for student loans and cash in on government programs such as the Snowy scheme? Didn't Ming always know how to slip a little cash into voters' pockets come election time?

Never fear, never mind, it's time to attack the ABC and SBS...

As Menzies said three-quarters of a century ago, too many of us have been “busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors” so we could thrive on “somebody else’s wealth and somebody else’s effort”. The Coalition parties need to stand for aspirational families, small businesspeople and all those who believe in individual freedom, self-reliance and free enterprise.
From opposition the Coalition failed to oppose Gonski funding, accepting the reach of Canberra into every school in the country. It also failed to oppose the National Disability Insurance Scheme even though it knew rorting and over-servicing would follow.
When it had the chance in government, the Coalition failed to privatise or pare back the National Broadband Network, an unnecessary federal communica­tions bureaucracy.
Neither did it reform, constrain or merge the public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS.
During the pandemic the Coalition delivered the largest peacetime expansion of government expenditure and control. And while a significant response was warranted, the overreach still hurts us economically and by way of public expectations.
The abandonment of small-government principles has gathered pace for more than a decade. It is not just a factor of the Dutton opposition and this election cycle.
Dutton did a reasonable job trying to bring his party back to the fundamentals by backing the only energy source that could deliver net zero with affordable and reliable power. But his nuclear plan involved public ownership of the reactors, which conflicted with Liberal principles.

Back to that old hobby horse.This was the dog botherer way back on 18th January 2014 in the SA Sunday Snail under the header Chris Kenny: OK, so it's hot - but don't be fooled by climate change alarmists.

Please admire the fluent way he manages to conflate and confuse weather and climate:

Remember when the easiest way to spark harmless small talk was to make an observation about the weather?
"Bit of a scorcher today, eh?"
Not anymore.
Weather talk can create a storm.
Bit of a scorcher today, eh?
"Give me a break, mate, it's summer, it's always hot in summer and we had hotter days back in 1939!
"Was there global warming then? I'm sick of all you alarmist, scare-mongering trendies."
If you're brave you might try the same line at dinner.
Bit of a scorcher today, eh?
"Is that what you call it? Just taking it in your stride are you, another hot one? You sound like some sort of denier.
"This is extreme heat in our angriest summer. The dash on the Prius said it was over 50 degrees in the sun. This is no mere scorcher, mate, this is a climate emergency."
If the climate debate is not quite that bad, it isn't far off.
Looking for small talk these days, it's safer to tackle less contentious topics such as politics and religion.
Regular readers will know I like to tilt at the windmill of climate alarmism.
For my trouble, I am constantly attacked as a denier (in itself is a vile term, previously reserved for Holocaust deniers).
It doesn't seem to matter to alarmists that no sensible person would deny the climate is changing - it always has and always will change...

And so on and even in his closer he was trotting out the need to nuke the country, and preaching that climate science was something of religion...

The trouble with the alarmists is they make it seem less like climate or weather, and more like religion.

They know about religion at the Catholic Boy's Daily.

Cue a snap of a disconsolate Duttonator, Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan involved public ownership of the reactors, which conflicted with Liberal principles. Picture: Adam Head/NewsWire

Then it was time for a final burst of irrelevance, what with the dog botherer apparently unaware that nuking the country had been part of the pitch, and given the awkward result, had hit something of a rough patch ...

The opposition also promised to repeal income tax cuts legislated by Labor – in other words, it promised higher taxes while offering tax giveaways of its own, including a temporary 25c a litre reduction in fuel excise and a $1200 rebate for some.
This was as confusing as it was fiscally paradoxical, and it meant the Coalition promised deeper deficits than Labor for the next two years.
The Liberals’ achilles heel for two decades has been climate and energy policy. They have succeeded when they have stood firmly on the side of reliable and affordable energy, and failed when they have tried to match Labor’s climate evangelism.
There are two options: remain committed to net zero and improve the nuclear plan because it is the only engineering mix that can get there; or boldly step away from net zero and prioritise electricity price and supply, promising to reduce emissions when and where we can, in line with global trends rather than ahead of them.

Oh yes, a bold burst of climate science denialism, that'll work a treat.

On the upside, it could be worse ...

And so to the final burst of irrelevance, and the pond saved the Ughmann to last because he provided a Miltonian twist, a seventeenth century flourish, to his brand of peak irrelevance, as only an unreformed seminarian might do ...

It was another five minute read, so the reptile stopwatch said, under the header ... Hell to pay for bad ideas, poverty of leadership, The Liberal Party finds itself without obvious leaders and out of ideas. This is a pity because the party actually has a pretty good story to sell.

Ah hell, such an excellent scientific approach, though it's hard to say if hell is other people, or just reptiles.

The caption, still with ancient notions of hell: The first reflex of Angus Taylor and Sussan Ley was to wage open war against each other when unity is the only path out of hell. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

An open invitation to hell, wherever and whatever it is: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The Ughmann got things off to a cracking irrelevant start with a bust of Milton:

John Milton’s Paradise Lost begins with Satan’s forces lying in ruin in the depths of hell, having been cast from heaven by God’s army.

“With hideous ruin and combustion down,
“To bottomless perdition, there to dwell,
“In adamantine chains and penal fire.”

Welcome to the Liberal Party, circa May 2025.

Ah, it's going to be that sort of irrelevance:

In good news, this is just the start of the greatest epic poem in English. Because, early on, in an astonishing show of defiance, Satan stands and calls to his fallen angels: “Awake, arise or be forever fallen.”
Through sheer force of will, the Prince of Darkness drags his vanquished army to its feet and gives his troops a renewed sense of purpose. He reframes hell not as a prison but as a state of mind. He insists they are not defeated if they refuse to submit: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
In raising any army, leaders matter and ideas matter. Unfortunately, the Liberal Party finds itself without obvious leaders and out of ideas. In part that’s because many political careerists in its ranks have no idea what the party stands for, aren’t signed up to it or cannot articulate it in a way that makes sense to a 21st-century Australian audience.

Surely this is beyond the valley of peak irrelevance, surely the Ughmann shows Polonius and the dog botherer how to do it.

Naturally the reptiles followed up with more of The Price is Wrong,  Shadow trade minister Kevin Hogan claims Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa did not follow due process when leaving the Nationals and defecting to the Liberal Party. “No, I was not contacted before that decision, I found out that decision through the press,” Mr Hogan told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “That being said, I wish her well. I don’t think due process was followed, obviously we’re disappointed.”

He's disappointed? Not half as disappointed as being trapped in some kind of weird hell with the Ughmann. Couldn't he at least have used chess as his metaphor?

Never mind, on with the coulda, woulda, shoulda ... essential components of peak irrelevance ...

This is a pity because the Liberal Party actually has a pretty good story to sell. At its core, liberalism champions the dignity and freedom of the individual, grounded in reason, the rule of law and limited government.
It seeks to balance liberty with order, protect rights through democratic institutions and create space for pluralism, debate and the peaceful contest of ideas. These principles are timeless, they just need the policies and words to meet this age.
The alternative is a model of governance that elevates the group over the individual, assumes the state can and should solve every problem, and steadily expands its reach through regulation and redistribution.
Where liberalism trusts free citizens to shape their own lives, its rival builds dependency, centralises power and narrows the space for dissent. The natural end of this is the end of your freedom.
In his Miltonian five-volume epic on the history of Australian liberalism, David Kemp traces the development of liberal thought and institutions from European Enlightenment ideals through colonial self-government to the modern Liberal Party. He argues liberalism, centred on individual freedom, constitutionalism and civic virtue, has been the driving force in Australia’s democratic evolution.
Given that almost no one in the modern Liberal Party is likely to read these tomes, someone should produce a CliffsNotes version for the troops. It will come in handy in the long days ahead.
The Labor Party would hotly disagree with this version of history because it is much better at selling its own tale. But this is what the contest of ideas is about, and to have the contest the Liberals need to come armed with ideas. Right now, they are shooting blanks.
The proof of the power of liberal ideas is that they won the voice campaign. The No case succeeded against the odds because people were persuaded that no one should be entitled to more rights than anyone else.

Um, speaking of versions of history, but no matter, time for a couple of snaps, on the basis that peak irrelevance is best achieved by peak double distraction, Andrew Hastie has shown great wisdom in not wanting the job at this stage. Picture: Richard Dobson / NewsWire, Dan Tehan is a decent man in an impossible position. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

 

This is how desperate it can get, a kind of purgatory, what with limbo having been abolished, as the Ughmann relived the Voice and climate wars...

Early sentiment strongly favoured the Yes case, driven by goodwill and a widespread desire to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians. But as the debate crystallised around the proposal to constitutionally entrench different rights for one group, support evaporated. Australians rejected the idea not because they are racist but because they believe in equality.
Remember, the No campaign began as an unbackable underdog pitched against the full weight of political, corporate and cultural power. It falls into the same category as another virtue windmill that any real liberal should tilt against: net zero.
To question this dogma in the aftermath of the election may seem like madness. And perhaps it is, if you lack the leaders and lack the ideas. But the liberal case against it is compelling because it demands permanent, Covid-level government interference in the lives of all Australians.
This is not an argument about whether the climate is changing. It’s a reckoning with a futile policy experiment that will cost trillions, achieve nothing and impose itself on every aspect of our lives.

Note that tidy sidestep. It isn't a climate science denialist arguing about climate science, it's a climate science denialist arguing that he doesn't want to argue about the climate changing ...

And so to a Miltonian understanding of climate and energy and the whole damn thing ...

Energy systems are life systems. Meddle with them at your peril. To believe mandated carbon-cutting targets can bend physical systems to political will is to believe in voodoo. No country will reach net zero. Those few that try hardest to hit an impossible target will pay the most. And the poor will suffer most as taxpayers’ dollars are harvested by an endless procession of carpetbaggers.
Trying to retool the electricity grid is only the beginning, and that is proving to be an expensive, reckless disaster. What lies ahead is harder, costlier and far more disruptive. Future generations will not be spared the effects of climate change, but both current and future generations will bear the financial and social cost of bad policy. And we will be chasing the receding horizon of net zero while the US, China, India, Russia, Indonesia and much of Africa have no intention of following.
In the end, the outcomes will be decided by physics and not politics, so the risks of taking on this doctrine are lower than they may first appear. Just like the voice.
But right now some of the same Liberal “powerbrokers” who destroyed the party are urging leadership hopefuls to fall into line with this profoundly anti-liberal doctrine. It doesn’t even make political sense. Back current energy policies and you’re on a unity ticket with Labor, the Greens, the teals and other assorted independents. So why would anyone vote for change at the next election when there is nothing to change to?
Propose an alternative, and when physics and international politics assert themselves you just may be proved right.
So, with bad ideas afoot, can the Liberals at least pick good leaders? The choice is limited and the early signs are not good. The first reflex of Angus Taylor and Sussan Ley was to wage open war against each other when unity is the only path out of hell. Whoever emerges from this fight inherits a poisoned crown, condemned to preside over the wreckage they helped create.

Ah, we've shifted back to a 'pox on the lot of them' mode...

And so to a final AV distraction, Liberal MP Andrew Wallace discusses the possible candidates for the Liberal Party leadership as the party is set to meet next week to select the new opposition leader. "I think both of them have certain skills and qualities that would serve the country and the Liberal Party very well … I take this very very seriously and I am not going to give my vote away," Mr Wallace told Sky News host Danica De Gorigio. "We are a team of champions, and we need to get out there on the park and work together to take the fight to Labor."

And then it was time for a final gobbet and a final Miltonian flourish ...

Andrew Hastie has shown great wisdom in not wanting the job at this stage. He is only 42, is based in Western Australia and has a young family. Why burn your career, abandon your loved ones and ruin your life endlessly trekking across the country trying to referee a party that probably will spend at least the next couple of years engaged in internecine warfare? Dan Tehan is a decent man in an impossible position. Hopefully he throws his support behind the person best equipped to lead.
Of the unhappy few left in the party’s ranks, two stand out as having the commitment to liberal ideas and rhetorical skills to make them count: James Paterson and Tim Wilson. But Paterson is in the Senate, so only Wilson could be a candidate. He is an unlikely longshot who may believe his best bet is to wait because more than one leader will fall on the long march ahead. So alas, for the Liberals, a lengthy stay in Hades beckons.
As Milton wrote: “Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

And with that the pond achieved enlightenment, or at least meaningless, pointless, useless inanity and inconsequentiality ... a perfect storm of irrelevance ...

And so to Tom, providing an answer to the pond's doll prayers ...

And now as part of the pond's travelogue and slide show night, the pond would like to address a single reader.

You see, a reader made a reference to the balls at Southgate.

That was a bit like getting a Masonic handshake somewhere in Afghanistan or Kafiristan or wherever it was in in The Man Who Would Be King.

This was someone who knew the depths of Tamworth, this was someone who could catch the pond out.

The pond immediately set about researching the insider joke ... and yet the pond simply couldn't find any illustration of the balls.

The best the pond could come up with was a glimpse of latter-day balls in a THS school newsletter dated 24/2/2012...

Yet that was way too late. Southgate had gone through a number of slumps and renewals before it was finally demolished.

In the pond's memory, the balls were painted vertically in faded, rotting colours, interspersed with dirty once white stripes, in the manner of a beach ball ...

The pond did find one snap of Southgate in its prime, back in the year it started, 1962, before the great decline began...

On its way out of town to Quirindi, the pond stopped in to check on the new development, and it was hideous, as expected...

That was what the town had become ... a gigantic supermarket complex everywhere you blinked ...

This was what the desolate area of Scully Park and Southgate looked like back in the 1970s ...

The bloody place turned up in the THS magazine in 1975 on the back cover (they called it Koala, THS being very innovative at the time)...

Yes, it was adjacent to THS, it was the place where all the ruffians and bad girls went, sneaking off at lunch time or after school, and the pond couldn't help but wander up the road...and immediately experienced severe, extreme PTSD, way worse than Milton's hell...

The fence was new but the principle of a gulag stayed the same...

The pond was surprised to see some hints of diversity. 

In the pond's day, anyone from Coledale was shoved in a portable stationed across the other side of the oval, far away from 'decent' white folk (even thugby league had its barriers back then) ...

That's when the pond's PTSD really kicked in, and vivid memories of a certain Mr Brown came back. 

His idea of teaching English was to stand at the first floor window, break up pieces of chalk and try to land them in the rubbish bin below, while his class sat in strict silence reading Stevenson's Kidnapped. He was bored out of his brain, and intent on boring his students out of theirs.

The pond didn't mind that much, being a fan of Stevenson, but it didn't say much for his lesson prep, and the sound of chalk hitting tin bin became very wearing after a while ...

Look, see the sort of window he stood at to torment his charges ... covered up now, but once open to a chalk free for all and the festering Tamworth summer heat ... just transpose the ground floor windows to the upper, and you too could toss chalk bombs down below, or at recalcitrant students ...

For that one pond correspondent, a reminder that the Southgate shopping centre opened in 1962 with the boast that it wasn't just the first shopping mall in Tamworth, but was the first "drive-in" mall in all of New South Wales.

It quickly became infested with country music types and saw commercial opportunities in the breed, as in ...

1966  December 24. The first MCMA/CCMA charity concert held at Southgate Shopping Centre (sponsored by the Centre’s pharmacist, Charles Skaffe).

And in ...

The Songmaker tributes were inaugurated in 1982 with a presentation to Stan Coster of a special plaque mounted on a "Folio of Fame" at Southgate Shopping Centre. This was moved in 1994 to the Tamworth Visitor Information Centre.

And here's an obituary for one of the founders:

Elizabeth Edith (Betty) Ives (1918–2010)
by Harriet Veitch
On the night Japanese midget submarines attacked Sydney, May 31, 1942, Betty Ives was doing her bit for her country by serving as a driver for the National Emergency Services. She and her best friend, Ruth Waterhouse, were on duty to collect the ''walking wounded'', men on troop ships not badly enough hurt to need an ambulance, and take them to hospital.
Ives and Waterhouse had trained for driving in blackouts — Ives drove a 1.5-tonne truck blindfolded around an obstacle course and Waterhouse navigated. They had been the only two on their training course to pass the test, so they were ready. Ives's husband, John, who was at home on leave, backed the truck out of the garage for them, then went back to bed, and they got on with the job.
In the end, there was no call for them that night as the only casualties were aboard the ferry Kuttabul and the injured were rescued by others, but they had been ready, and they continued to be ready to serve for the rest of the war.
Elizabeth Edith Smith was born on September 14, 1918, in Lindfield, the only daughter and middle child of ''T. K.'' Smith, a senior partner in the Thomas Davis accountancy firm, and his wife, Gladys. Betty, as she was always known, started school at Marshall Mount Grammar School for Girls, then completed her education at Abbotsleigh Girls School. After leaving school, she did a secretarial course and worked in a doctor's surgery.
She was on one of the official boats on Sydney Harbour, with the rest of her family, when the Harbour Bridge was opened. Those on board did not realise that Francis De Groote had unofficially cut the ribbon before the ''official'' opening and continued celebrating regardless.
She married John Ives in February 1942 at Shore Chapel, North Sydney. Later that year, she lost her older brother, Jim, who was a prisoner of war being taken to Japan aboard the Montevideo Maru, which was sunk by a US submarine with the loss of all POWs, although the families did not find out about the deaths until the end of the war.
Ives lived with her parents in Killara during the war, while John served with the army and then the RAAF. In 1952 they moved from Sydney to Tamworth for John to manage P. G. Smith (which later, after amalgamation, became P. G. Smith & Regans) and they and their young family settled in so well they stayed in the town for 56 years.
In 1962 they went into business for themselves and developed the Southgate Shopping Centre. They ran the supermarket and Ives also managed the florist shop. She was a founding member of the Tamworth Women's Club and in later years, after the death of a grandson, Andrew, worked tirelessly to raise funds for the Children's Medical Research Foundation.
John died in 1992 and Ives missed him dreadfully, but she continued to celebrate life and enjoy her children, grandchildren and eventually great-grandchildren.
In 2008 she moved into a nursing home but her mind remained clear and she enjoyed sending and receiving emails as ''Greatnan'' and, more importantly, checking her bank balance on the internet. Although her health gradually declined, she always dressed well and had her hair done every week.
She died peacefully 18 years to the day after John. Betty Ives is survived by her children Judy, Keith and Margaret, sons and daughter-in-law Denis, Tanya and Joe, grandchildren Carnie, Peter, Sally, Fiona, Anna and Natasha, and seven great-grandchildren.