In which the pond endures deep irrelevance with the bromancer and "Ned" ...

A reading from the venerable Meade:

..there was plenty of Tingle boldness on Monday when she told David Marr on LNL that News Corp was irrelevant in terms of influence on Australian elections.
“There’s just no correlation between what News Corp says and what voters do, except, you know, for a few old people in grey cardigans somewhere,” Tingle said. “I mean, it’s irrelevant, and I find it extraordinary that people, including other journalists, get so cowered by a bunch of people who are so irrelevant and who have basically dragged the Liberal party and the Nationals into irrelevance as well because they’re trying to suck up to them.”
Veteran columnist Niki Savva, who famously quit the Australian and joined the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age after editors told her she had to share a page with Sky News host Peta Credlin, agreed with Tingle’s analysis.
“What [the election result] exposed in the end was the absolute irrelevance of Sky After Dark and the News Limited tabloids, and also the Australian,” Savva said on LNL, adding that she didn’t “really subscribe to many of those publications”.
Savva said Dutton “got it so wrong” because he “spent so much time in the Sky studios and reading the Australian and not enough time talking to the millions of other people who don’t subscribe to those outlets”.
On Friday, News Corp’s global results brought more bad news for the media mogul. Rupert Murdoch’s mastheads in Australia, the US and the UK have suffered a sharp fall in revenue after lower advertising income cut into their revenue streams. (More essential reading for herpetologists here).

This is a site dedicated to absolutely deep irrelevance. 

The savvy Savva long ago disappeared from the lizard Oz, and so from the pond, and petulant Peta and all the rest of the reptiles are no substitute.

This day the reptiles continued their high standard of irrelevance.

For example, Starmer's wretched, spineless, gormless performance in King Donald's circus, driven by the Brexit folly, was a chance to slag off the hapless Labor government (a 10% general tariff remained in place). 

But that would mean implicating the Cantaloupe Caligula in his tariff folly. Anyone wanting relevance had to troop off to Marina Hyde for How Singalong Starmer got his deal … and a bit part in Trump, the Musical.

There, no complaining, no moaning or whining, the pond has provided a chance to wander off. 

Anyone who stays in this vale of irrelevant tears has it coming.

What else? Well early this weekend the India-Pakistan conflict had disappeared from the digital headlines, while the mass starvation going down in Gaza is a no show, but then the ethnic cleansing is always a reptile no-no ...

Fireworks, in the quaint, old fashioned celebratory sense of the word, was deemed to be of more importance, while over on the extreme far right, the Catholic Boys' Daily paid obeisance to their new lion ...

The pond almost wept, to be a follower, to be a student, of such devoted, expert irrelevance.

How to start, what to do, mired in this irrelevance? 

Well, the pond will save the irrelevant prattling Polonius for its Sunday meditation, and will ignore Frank, agitated by the Augustinians. Why bother with an actual priest when you can have the bromancer?

Okay, okay, this bro piece first appeared yesterday, but he's timeless in his irrelevance.

The pond will note two things at the get go.

(a) Of late the reptiles have cranked distracting images and AV offerings up to 11, and yet the pond must note their presence.

(b) The bromancer, in what the reptiles claim is nine minutes in a non-existent purgatory, does his best to alienate everyone from this Leo by running through a checklist of all the usual insufferable reptile triggers, but the pond has no time to individually note them all.

First the housekeeping, with the header Leo XIV: a new lion to lead the church, The first American Pope faces enormous challenges, not least the deep divisions within the church. But make no mistake – in style, probably in substance, this Pope is a serious course correction from the chaos of the Francis years.

The caption for those not keeping up: Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, on May 8, 2025. Picture: AP

The transformative instruction, better than transubstantiation: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The bromancer was in ecstatic raptures ...

Pope Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, the first American to be pope, is a magical choice embodying a thousand firsts.
The scene when his name was revealed and he came out on to the papal balcony, the 267th Pope, to address the crowds was majestic. All the ritual and ceremony, all the grandeur and continuity, and yet all the popular touch – the church of the masses with thousands thronging St Peter’s Square to catch a glimpse of the new Pope – of an institution that has stood in storms and trials of every kind for 2000 years was there.

It didn't take long for the first visual distraction to pop up, with a frock turned into a traditional garment, Pope Leo XIV, in traditional papal garments, waves to faithful and pilgrims gathered in St Peter's Square, after his election. Picture: AP

It took only a few bromancer sentences until the next snap appeared ...

The first American to occupy the chair of Peter, he was not well known as an individual to the crowds, but they loved him as their new Pope.
“Viva il Papa, ole, ole ole.”
Two things stood out. His address invoked God first. Social justice, the challenges of the church, the call to humanity around the globe – these all figured in his short address. But most of all he spoke in the words of Christ: “Peace be with you.”

Stand by for more iconography ...Pope Leo XIV appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on Thursday (May 8) and gave his first address to a cheering crowd at the Vatican.

The striking thing is that the reptiles always rail at TG folk, but always give a pass to the sight of some men in frocks. Who knows why?

The other striking thing was that he chose traditional papal garments, unlike Francis who had eschewed them in a gesture of simplicity.
We shouldn’t read too much into that, but it’s a gesture towards tradition, Catholic identity, the deepest institutional continuity, almost a kindness to traditional Catholics.
The new Pope faces enormous challenges, not least the deep divisions within the church that grew under the long reign of Francis. Naturally he also invoked Francis. But make no mistake. In style, probably in substance, this Pope is a serious course correction from the chaos of the Francis years.

These visual distractions soon became extremely tiresome, beyond the valley of the tedious, Members of the clergy react as they see Pope Leo XIV making his first appearance in the balcony of St Peter's Basilica, after the cardinals ended the conclave. Picture: AFP

It'd be fine if the bromancer had stuck to the notion of a picture standing in for a thousand words, but he kept on slipping bits of verbiage in between ...

It seems in the conclave of 133 cardinals that elected him, both the liberals and the conservatives had a blocking minority. A doctrinal revolutionary who might have completed Francis’s revolution, or an arch-conservative who might have attempted a full restoration, couldn’t get the necessary two-thirds majority.

Just two sentences, and then a snap, Cardinals react from a balcony of St Peter's Basilica, as the new pope makes his first appearance. Picture: AFP

A little more verbiage, featuring the bleeding obvious:

So the conclave did what conclaves often do. It chose compromise. Prevost was born and grew up in Chicago. His ancestry is partly Spanish, partly Creole, with a touch of African-American. He studied mathematics and philosophy before joining the Augustinian order of Catholic priests. He gained degrees in theology and canon law. That alone marks him as a great departure from Francis, who was impatient with canon law.
Leo was a missionary in Peru for nearly two decades, serving as a parish priest, a seminary lecturer and a bishop. He became the global head of the Augustinians before Francis made him a cardinal and appointed him head of the office that chooses bishops around the world.

Another snap: The late Pope Francis elevates Robert Francis Prevost to cardinal, during a consistory to create 21 new cardinals at St Peter’s square in September, 2023. Picture: AFP

Should the pond borrow "hegemony" from our Henry? Or should the pond be content with noting the way that globalism and a globalist suddenly becomes accepted terminology?

He took Peruvian citizenship and was a dual national. He’s an authentically global Catholic, reflecting the church’s universalism. He knows the global south in his finger tips, he also knows the American church, and the difficulties of Vatican governance. He unites the global south and the global north, the intrigues of the Vatican and the missionary fields of Peru, the global reach of bishops in every field of the church.

Funny. Apparently if you watch Sky Noise down under you can hear the bromancer and others rail at the globalist elites and the globalist hate media, and, for example, Mark Carnehy as a globalist elite green central banker, and yet here the word has become authentic and merely universally, far-reachingly, pleasingly, global.

At this point the reptiles slipped in a banal slide show of dot points, the sort of vacuous timeline that serves as a substitute for insight:

The pond can understand why, and wondered when the bromancer might turn on his new infatuation. He's always for turning, he's always prone to hysteria, it's just a matter of the timeline ...

Francis was a Jesuit. There’s something fit about an Augustinian succeeding a Jesuit. It’s said that history gives us a fat pope, then a skinny pope, a tall pope, then a short pope, as each conclave tends not to replicate the pope just gone but to balance him, sometimes even to chart a modest course correction.
The Jesuits are sometimes called the church’s politicians. The Augustinians are known as the church’s intellectuals. The differences in style between the new and old popes will be hugely important.
Francis was charismatic, the master of gesture, but he was also garrulous and undisciplined in his remarks, with the Vatican often having to correct and retract his odd and often self-contradictory statements. Francis too, though genuinely compassionate for the poor, was bad-tempered and didn’t like to be contradicted.
Famously, he hadn’t conducted a meeting of cardinals since 2014 – an extraordinary situation in the modern church. This was partly because he didn’t like cardinals disagreeing with him on points of theology and moral teaching. And he was said to be scared that a group of cardinals might come and see him and ask him to resign.

Perhaps it takes an undisciplined, garrulous scribbler, a master of meaningless verbal gestures, to see fault, Pope Francis was charismatic, the master of gesture, but he was also garrulous and undisciplined in his remarks. Many Catholics thought he was too taken up with politics. Picture: AFP

As for being too taken up with politics, naturally the bromancer spends much time on fatuous identity politics...

As far as we can see, the new Pope will not be at all like that. He’s famously a particularly good listener, attentive and deeply present with people who are talking to him.
There will be endless attention on the new Pope’s politics. That’s understandable but a bit of a mistake. American Bishop Robert Barron, of the Word on Fire mission, regarded as the most effective communicator in the modern church, argued just before the election that the new Pope had to emphasise and prioritise the supernatural in the church.

Oh that's what we need, more of the bloody holy ghost wandering around and getting it on with womyn ...

“The most important consideration in electing a pope,” Barron said, “is to choose someone who can proclaim the message of the risen Jesus effectively.”
Barron went on to argue that far from there being a contradiction between the supernatural dimension of faith and a living concern for social justice, the two go hand-in-hand. A church that is concerned first with the supernatural is then more effective in giving witness, and aid, in the world.
Barron didn’t cite her but Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who took her name in honour of Therese of Lisieux, a contemplative French nun who in her short life virtually never left the convent, was inspired to a life of heroic service to the poorest people because of her love of Jesus.
Father Damien of Molokai ministered to lepers in 19th-century Hawaii no one else would go near, because of his love of God. He dressed people’s wounds and he taught them about the gospel. His close association with lepers led him to contract leprosy and die from the disease himself.

Not the Mother Teresa routine. 

The pond was still recovering from the notion that she's a saint...Mother Teresa Was No Saint ...

On September 4 of this year, Mother Teresa will become Saint Teresa. This is unsurprising; she was beatified in 2003, which is sort of a one-way road to canonization. But it's the last thing we need. She was no saint.
To canonize Mother Teresa would be to seal the lid on her problematic legacy, which includes forced conversion, questionable relations with dictators, gross mismanagement, and actually, pretty bad medical care. Worst of all, she was the quintessential white person expending her charity on the third world -- the entire reason for her public image, and the source of immeasurable scarring to the postcolonial psyche of India and its diaspora.
A 2013 study from the University of Ottawa dispelled the "myth of altruism and generosity" surrounding Mother Teresa, concluding that her hallowed image did not stand up to the facts, and was basically the result of a forceful media campaign from an ailing Catholic Church.
Although she had 517 missions in 100 countries at the time of her death, the study found that hardly anyone who came seeking medical care found it there. Doctors observed unhygienic, "even unfit," conditions, inadequate food, and no painkillers -- not for lack of funding, in which Mother Theresa's world-famous order was swimming, but what the study authors call her "particular conception of suffering and death."
"There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering," Mother Teresa once told the unamused Christopher Hitchens.

And so on, and so another snap, American Bishop Robert Barron argued just before the election that the new Pope had to emphasise and prioritise the supernatural in the church. Picture: Supplied

Better emphasise the supernatural, or otherwise people might pay attention to the sexual hi-jinks ...

The pond promised politics, but first a word from the Pellists...

Many Catholics thought Francis too taken up with politics. Not only that, as cardinal George Pell argued in one of two serious critiques of the Francis papacy he wrote, the intellectual quality of papal writings declined. Partly as a result, partly because Francis had such an aversion to systematic thinking and the normal processes of church teaching, papal influence, in Pell’s view, declined.

Now on with the politics:

Francis aligned himself completely with the global left, but it’s not clear he had any normative effect on Western politics, and he had no effect at all within the tyrannies such as China and Russia, which he never criticised.
The new Pope is also progressive politically but his temper is completely different from that of Francis. Also, he seems to be a moderate progressive. He has rightly described as problematic elements of Donald Trump’s attitudes to immigration, specifically those policies in the first Trump presidency that briefly saw children separated from parents.
Traditional Catholic social teaching has always held that immigrants should be treated with respect and kindness, certainly with respect for their innate human dignity, for each of them is an imago dei, an image of God. But traditional Catholic social teaching also holds that nations are entitled to secure their borders.
Similarly, the new Pope made a measured criticism of a position that US Vice-President JD Vance argued. Vance held that human love starts with the family, goes out to the nation and then finally to foreigners, with each category of love weakening the further it is from every human being. The then cardinal Prevost disagreed with Vance, saying Jesus preached instead a universal love, which should not prioritise categories of human beings, which is not of course to deny the special affection anyone has for their own family.
However, the new Pope is unlikely to make correcting the Trump administration the priority that Francis strangely seemed to assign to this task.
Not only that, the new Pope has plenty of traditional Catholic views with which conservative Catholics will identify.

Thanks bro, you've done your very best to make the pond dislike this new pope, what with your half-baked equivocations and diminutions, and now another snap, Cardinal Robert Prevost celebrates Mass at St. Jude Parish in New Lenox, Ill, in 2024. Picture: AP

On with the politics, and make sure to make a feature of a man in a frock dissing frock wearing:

He is a strong opponent of abortion and in the past criticised Hillary Clinton by name for her extreme pro-abortion position. A Pope who, being an American, has naturally commented on the American scene in the past, and politely criticises Trump and Clinton by name for actions that he thinks transgress sound moral behaviour, sounds like an authentically Catholic Pope.
The new Pope also has written of his opposition to modern gender ideology and his opposition to having that taught in schools. Gender ideology, he argues, at best creates confusion because “it seeks to create genders that don’t exist”.
He will certainly proclaim continuity with Francis, but anyone who was elected pope, even had it been a more forthright conservative, would do that.
Pope John Paul II, whom I’d regard as the greatest pope in hundreds of years, took the names of his three immediate predecessors: Pope Paul VI, Pope John XXIII, and Pope John Paul I. Yet his pontificate, in style, manner and even in many ways substance, was radically different from all three.
Of course there were also continuities. But each pope brings his own personality, his own history, insights, background and distinctive priorities, to the position. No pope is ever a carbon copy of the previous pope. Most, as I say, tend to represent a conscious departure from their immediate predecessor.

The pond is too tired to go over intersex and such like, or get into the matter of gender, so it's on with another snap, Pope Leo XIV has politely criticised Trump and Clinton by name for actions that he thinks transgress sound moral behaviour. Picture: AFP

Then came a tricky one for the bromancer.

The new Pope does share Francis’s concern about climate change. 

That's more than enough of that. We'll have no more of that, thank you very much. Quick, on to other matters ...

And he certainly shares a missionary outreach to all marginalised people, whether they be marginalised by living in poverty in the global south, or under tyranny in China or Russia, or marginalised by racial or sexual identity within Western societies.
Like Francis, he will want the church to be universal and welcoming. The old adage of the church has been: come as you are. That does not imply, however, that you stay as you are, or that you continue in behaviour the church believes the gospels teach is wrong.
The choice of the papal name, Leo XIV, is fascinating and telling. It’s an obvious tribute to Pope Leo XIII, who was pope for 25 years, from 1878 until 1903. Indeed, Leo XIII was 69 when he was elected pope, just as Prevost is 69 now, and Leo XIII lived until he was 93.
This is one of the oddities of modern popes. The greatest recent pope, John Paul II, was a young, vigorous man in his 50s when he was elected pope. His sheer energy, his love of life, love of the gospel, of God and of people, sent an electrifying charge throughout the church and throughout the world.

Yep, it was time for yet another snap, this one cheap from the archives, The choice of the papal name, Leo XIV, is an obvious tribute to Pope Leo XIII, who was pope for 25 years, from 1878 until 1903. Picture: News Corp

And that was an end to the snaps, and then came a final outburst from the bromancer ...

Yet, naturally, it was a very long papacy, and in his last years he was disabled by Parkinson’s disease and was a shadow of his former self.
With modern medicine, and the abstemious lives that popes lead, notwithstanding the job’s huge stresses, popes typically live to be quite old.
The cardinals these days are reluctant to choose a young man because if they don’t like his papacy they’ve got to put with it for decades. It also means that almost certainly those who elect him will be too old to succeed him. That means, however, that the last years of a papacy are typically endured by a pope suffering the extreme illnesses that often precede death.
Leo XIII is most famously remembered for his landmark Rerum Novarum encyclical, which had the English title of Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour. It supported the rights of trade unionism and the need to give the working class a decent standard of living. But it plainly rejected socialism, as well as unreformed capitalism, and asserted the right to private property. It can be interpreted as the church finding a way to combat communism.
It was brilliantly written, closely argued and highly influential.
Hopefully, that doesn’t mean the new Pope will concentrate on politics rather than God. Leo XIII was also a deeply formed theologian.
Only in the past day or two was the new Pope’s name mentioned as a contender. In no sense did he enter the conclave as a favourite. He didn’t figure at all on most lists of likely popes.
Apart from everything else, he now has massive problems of Vatican governance to address.
He seems a wise, spiritual, moderate, self-effacing, reliable man who has loved God his whole life and served the church, and through the church all the people he could. It was thought the cardinals would never elect an American, never elect a citizen from the global superpower. But plainly they chose the man, not the accidents of his civic identity.
As leader of 1.4 billion Catholics, and the best known and most important religious leader on the planet, the new Pope now has the loneliest job in the world. So much now depends on him.
Leo means lion. He’ll need the heart of a lion, a lion who can lie down with the lambs.

Or perhaps hustlers, snake oil sellers, con artists and fraudulent bankrupts...

And so to "Ned", and don't ask why the pond does it, because "Ned" always offers a supreme example of irrelevance ...

The joke here is that in recent times the pond has routinely joked that getting through a ten minute "Ned" read (according to reptile timing) is always an Everest climb, and yet ...

Yes, there was the notion of an Everest climb right there in the header: Mountains to climb: challenge of the Albanese ascendancy, The remarkable election result signals long-term political and cultural ramifications.

Put it another way: "Ned's Everest to climb: challenge of the Ned ascendancy...an endless dissection of the runes and the ramifications of the entrails".

Are the reptiles trying to signal to the pond that they're in on the joke?

Never mind, the caption for those wanting to celebrate Frank's fabulous artwork: Anthony Albanese celebrates a historic victory, marking a new era in Australian politics and a new era in the national culture. Artwork: Frank Ling.

Oh and there was that magical instruction: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Here the use of distracting snaps and AVs compounded at an unnerving rate of lack of interest, but again all the pond can do is note them and move on.

First a burst of "Ned" ...

Australian life and politics have entered a new experiment. It is a 2020s Labor ascendancy based on Anthony Albanese’s leadership, likely to last for the rest of the decade, with Labor now positioned to decide how far the nation’s economic, social and strategic foundations will be redefined.
The Albanese ascendancy needs to be understood – it is wide, not deep, but likely to endure because it reflects structural and cultural changes in our life. This looms as the most influential Labor government since the Hawke-Keating era, but that was 40 years ago and Albanese Labor, unsurprisingly, is far different from that brand of dynamic centre-right reformism.
The election offers many pointers, some contradictory, to our future. Albanese projects three identities – as successful battler, as true Labor and as a modern progressive – a leader who won’t get ahead of himself, who fosters stability, unity and down-to-earth pragmatism.
Yet Australia at the election has moved to the left in economic and social terms. With the left shading the right in internal power, Albanese’s destiny is now to show how a centre-left Labor government can deliver sustained success for Australia in the 2020s.

Bored yet? You haven't left base camp, and yet the reptiles immediately flung in an AV to distract you from packing your lunch, Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt has confirmed that the Albanese government is yet to make a decision on a proposed 2035 emissions reduction target, amid growing pressure from Labor’s environmental faction to set more ambitious climate goals. Labor’s left-wing environmental action group, known as LEAN (Labor Environment Action Network), is calling on the Albanese government to adopt a 70-plus per cent emissions reduction target for 2035. “We haven’t made any decisions about that yet,” Mr Watt told Sky News Australia. “I mean, what we did well before the election was ask for advice from the independent Climate Change Authority. “Once they do, we will listen to that advice, and we’ll make a decision, but we haven’t settled on anything at this point in time.”

No wonder there were so many distractions. "Ned" was at his pompous, portentous, preening, pretentious worst ...

The country hasn’t been here before in the lifetime of today’s Australians. Can a long-term centre-left national government manage the multiple challenges ahead? It is an experiment because Labor has changed and the country has changed. The post-Covid shift in Australia’s outlook helps Labor.
The party runs an economic model perhaps described as state paternalistic capitalism, an energy transition dedicated to the utility of renewables, social policy that locks in constituencies through government direction and spending programs, and a creeping agenda of cultural progressivism.
Whether the electorate will underwrite this framework over time is highly dubious. Albanese seeks to govern from the Labor centre and stick to his election mandate. How Albanese evolves as a pragmatic adaptor remains to be seen. Regardless of his majority, Albanese as PM confronts a daunting task.
Consider the paradox of the election: Albanese won a sweeping victory when much of the country was unimpressed by his first term in office. A week before the election Newspoll said only 39 per cent of people believed the government deserved to be re-elected while 48 per cent said someone else should get a go.
That’s a dissatisfied society. The further evidence came when people were asked whether the Coalition was ready for government, with 62 per cent saying they were “not confident”. The public was sceptical of both Labor and the Coalition but far more distrustful of the Coalition.
Former Liberal minister and party director Andrew Robb said of Labor’s flawed record: “Three years of broken promises on power prices, living costs and mortgages, the housing crisis, uncontrolled immigration, the neglect of national defence, the loss of nearly a year of governing with the hugely divisive voice campaign, a forecast of 10 years of budget deficits, the spread of violence and the wave of anti-Semitism, recalcitrant unions, burgeoning red and green tape, and the related failing ‘renewables plus storage’ experiment.”

Cue a snap, Jim Chalmers must direct his persuasion inside the cabinet, not just outside. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images)

It's a hard way to learn about irrelevance, but the pond promises that all this can be forgotten almost immediately upon reading, in much the same way that you can sometimes forget a movie plot while it's unfolding ...

If Albanese is to succeed, his second term must improve on his first. That is the essential test; more of the same won’t suffice. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said post-election that the second-term economic priority is “productivity without forgetting inflation”. That is the pivotal declaration – only higher productivity can underwrite higher living standards. That’s the issue that will make or break the Albanese government.
It is time for Chalmers to bring out his inner Keating – get tough and impose a productivity-enhancing agenda on the cabinet. That means directing his persuasion inside the cabinet, not just outside. Does Chalmers possess the authority and will to do this? It could be the decisive question for the second term.
Unless Chalmers exercises the authority as Treasurer that typified Paul Keating and Peter Costello, Labor’s ability to turn its majority into policy gains will fail and that means, in the end, it will fail politically.
Albanese is Mr Engagement. “I build relationships with people,” he told Sky News. It’s a long list – unions, business, civil society, global leaders, King Charles, and Donald Trump next in line. But Albanese as PM is neither a transformational figure nor a policy innovator. Over to Chalmers.
The left wing has never been as potentially powerful since World War II, inviting the question how Labor will use the ascendancy it has won. Here’s the test: PMs with big majorities are tempted to do what they want, not what the country needs. That’s another make-or-break test for Albanese.
He has a strong political strategy. It was apparent in the campaign and even more last week.
Albanese talked up his second-term agenda based on practical progressivism – Labor as the party of opportunity, of private investment, of the energy transition, greater housing supply and density, universal services represented by Medicare, trade diversification and the embodiment of multiculturalism, supporting the Chinese and Indian communities, elevating a nation based on respecting people “of different faith, different ethnicities, different backgrounds”. Labor’s skill is projecting its brand, whether valid or not.

It's always make or break with Chicken Little "Ned" and the pond confesses to be broken, and so to another AV distraction, The business world is waiting to see what the Labor government will do with the strong mandate it has been given by the Australian people. The way parliament is likely to stand, Labor will be able to pass legislation through the House of Representatives without any constraint. In the Senate, only if the Greens and Coalition collude, will Labor have legislation potentially blocked.

On and on "Ned" rambled, trotting out assorted alarums and panics ...

Albanese’s opportunity is blue skies. In one blow he has smashed the Liberal Party for years, engendering a crisis of identity, while he has reversed the advance of the Greens. The defeat of both Peter Dutton and Adam Bandt in their seats is an extraordinary Albanese triumph but highlights an Australian disposition – the people distrust Greens extremism and demand Liberal leaders with empathy. Big lessons there.
The Albanese working rule is: “No one left behind, no one held back.” That’s non-ideological, it’s about hard results. He sees that rule as compassion for the less well-off and aspirational for the middle class. Influenced by the abject failure of the US Democratic Party against Trump, Albanese wants to govern for the whole country, not just his loyal constituents. Indeed, that’s the logic of his election victory. But beware – just watch the demand for spoils from Labor’s constituents.

On came the distractions, continuing the alarums and panics, Australia’s energy market operator has issued a warning about potential gas shortages on the eve of the federal election. Chief Executive Daniel Westerman says gas is the key to supporting renewables in the power grid. Chemicals and explosives giant Orica is backing the claim, demanding a review into gas policy. Calls to import more gas into the system have been made to support Labor's push to increase renewables to 82 per cent by 2030.

Aw, how sweet. The reptiles love images of fossil fuel tech ...but back to the tech and the challenges and the disruptions, the challenge being to make it to the next snap without an eruption ...

Consider these challenges. Labor needs an economic growth strategy. A post-inflation boost isn’t enough. It must impose fiscal control when its MPs will demand the opposite. It cannot allow the income tax burden to keep escalating. It is trapped with an energy policy that guarantees steadily increasing prices. Its tax and IR policies undermine private investment, yet private investment is essential to recovery. Its bias to the public sector is an electoral plus and an economic minus. Its red and green tape suffocate initiative and enterprise. It needs public sector reforms, notably in health and the NDIS. It is caught with a defence policy obviously inadequate in its spending and riddled with procurement inefficiencies. And its ability to realise its AUKUS commitments is in doubt.
In the disruptive world of the 2020s old-fashioned, pre-Hawke-Keating policies won’t deliver for Australia. While Paul Keating attacked Albanese for his failure not to protect right-winger Ed Husic in cabinet, Keating’s critique of the Albanese government’s first term is far more significant and direct – he thinks too many of its core policies are misguided, economically and strategically, a critique the government essentially dismisses.

Cue more snaps, this time doubled up for extra distraction, Outgoing Greens leader Adam Bandt holds a press conference on Thursday to concede he has lost the seat of Melbourne, alongside his wife Claudia. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling, Peter Dutton returned to Canberra on Wednesday afternoon. Picture: NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

It's not enough, it's no help, the air is getting thin, and the oxygen isn't working, and still "Ned" blathers ...

The trap for Albanese lies in the distinction between a wide and deep victory.
He scored gains against the Coalition and the Greens, with Labor to finish with seats in the low 90s compared with the Coalition in the low 40s. Indeed, Albanese’s two-party-preferred vote was higher than Tony Abbott got when he won office in 2013, as well as higher than Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd in their inaugural wins.
While an astonishing victory, it is driven by two elemental forces. First, the Australian people are more volatile in their voting, able to reward and punish more freely than before because Australia, in cultural terms, is a more fractured nation. That is only likely to intensify. Cultural diversity breeds political fracture. Labor won’t be immune.
Second, the result arises more from Labor’s status as the “least worst” option for much of the voting public. Labor’s poor primary vote of 34.7 per cent shows only one-third of the nation really prefers Labor, but that converts into a two-party-preferred vote of a mammoth 54.61 per cent achieved through the preference system because people voting for other parties still preference Labor as they vote down the card.
In this election Albanese was seen by many voters as less offensive than Dutton or Bandt. That Dutton and Bandt lost their seats illustrates the point. Voters rejected their brand of strong partisanship. By contrast, the nickname “Albo” rings with Aussie familiarity. The fact is even people who dislike Albanese still preferenced him. He was seen as the leader “you distrust the least”. But securing such a victory on preferences points to a degree of conditionality for Labor.
Albanese defines Labor as the party of the future – and the party of a changing Australia. His aim is to denigrate the Coalition as the party of an Australia that is dying. The reality is that Australia has changed immensely since Abbott’s 2013 victory. The shift has been towards a more progressive set of values – and the story of the decade, the voice aside, has been the Coalition’s failure to project its own liberal and conservative values in this contest. Coalition figures seem to lack the language and the cultural understanding to meet this challenge.

There came a glimmer of understanding. The pond was having a Percy Grainger moment, with "Ned's" words a feeble substitute for a birching, and then came another AV distraction,  Liberals push gender quotas after 2025 Australian election defeat #auspol #election2025 #australianews The Liberal Party has a problem ascending women. After their crushing defeat at the 2025 Australian election, is it time for the party to seriously enforce gender quotas? Only around a third of the party's MPs are women, and the party lost even more this time around. So who will become the next Liberal Party leader and replace Peter Dutton? And should the party consider gender quotas if it wants a shot at winning the next election? Here's a look at how gender shaped the shocking 2025 election result.

Luckily the pond couldn't look, the pond was having trouble coping with "Ned" ...

The Coalition is in trouble with four dominant centres of Australian life: the tertiary-educated professional and elite class; women, and particularly professional women with influence – witness the teals story – with some evidence women were more hostile to Dutton in 2025 than they were towards Morrison in 2022; the youth vote, with polls showing young people under 34 are more likely to vote Greens than Liberal, and; ethnic communities, where an increasing electoral challenge arises from the Chinese, Indian and Muslim communities and their expectations of the main parties.
As the 2020s advance, Australia will become more urban, more educated, more shaped by female influence, more alert to the under-40s generations and more multicultural. The Liberals need to change their mindsets and their cultural norms to respond.
For years a great impediment to bold government has been a narrow mandate. The last election when a prime minister won a strong mandate was Abbott in 2013 – and that didn’t work well. For a decade the elections of 2016, 2019 and 2022 delivered extremely narrow wins for Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Albanese respectively.
Now that cycle is broken; another empowered executive has arrived. Albanese has a command no PM has experienced since John Howard after the 2004 poll – a big majority in the House of Representatives, a Labor-Greens majority in the Senate, Labor governments in four states, and the Coalition in a condition of unprecedented weakness.
The pivotal issue therefore becomes: Will Albanese succeed in aligning Labor as the culturally dominant party of the 2020s? The related question is: Will Labor shift the balance of our politics from being centre-right to being centre-left? Don’t think it can’t happen. There are no guarantees about the relevance of parties.

At this point the distraction game with the images reached a peak, with the reptiles slipping in four huge snaps in a row, and with a shameless, feeble excuse for trotting them out, Albanese’s two-party-preferred vote was higher than Tony Abbott got when he won office in 2013 … Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard … as well as higher than Gough Whitlam … Bob Hawke… and Kevin Rudd in their inaugural wins. Picture: Getty Images

Of course the pond had to shrink them down, there's only so much a possum can bear ...

In his concession remarks, Dutton said: “I love this country and have fought hard for it. We have been defined by our opponents in this election, which is not a true story of who we are.” Yet this is exactly what happened at the 2022 election. The Loughnane-Hume report on the 2022 defeat said: “The Coalition had lost control of its brand, with the parties and their leaders being defined in the public’s mind by our opponents.”
For however long the Liberal Party cannot explain and define its values to the Australian people, it faces defeat and growing irrelevance. As Redbridge strategy director Kos Samaras said in the Financial Review: “Unless it redefines who it is, who it speaks for, and what kind of Australia it wants to shape, it will remain locked out of the suburbs, cities and communities where the country’s future is being written.”
Can the Liberal Party unite after its 2025 wipe-out? The omens aren’t encouraging given a bitter leadership contest between Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor. The worst mistake the party can make is to sink into factional warfare between conservatives and progressives or moderates. The rebuilding of the centre-right will require an outward-looking Coalition that reaches out to the community and recruits intellectual backing and develops networks from many centres of Australian life.

Dear sweet long absent lord, the worst mistake? 

That's done and dusted, with a numerologist taking on a beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, and the Canavan caravan throwing its hat into the ring, not to mention The Price is Wrong making a MAGA play. 

No wonder the reptiles turned to the shameless shaman, Liberal Senator Dave Sharma has claimed sharing the Liberal Party’s values is a “compelling proposition” to the Australian public. “We stand for people’s fundamental freedoms, we stand for aspiration, we stand for, you know, political liberty, we stand for smaller government,” Mr Sharma said. “Translating that into policies and convincing the public that this is in their best interest and we’re the party that best represents those values, that’s partly where we’ve fallen short.”

On and on "Ned" trudged, and the pond trudged with him ...

The Liberal Party suffers from cultural denigration now entrenched across much of the nation’s educated, artistic, professional and media ranks. Reactions to Dutton’s defeat typify the problem. Take two examples – the near automatic reflex that Dutton lost running an aggressive right-wing agenda and focused on culture war issues.
Since Dutton did neither – indeed he did precisely the opposite – such views testify to a deeper problem: a toxic view of the Liberal brand that seems to transcend whatever it does.

Oh FFS, the pond has just endured the bromancer doing the culture wars, and what was it that the venerable Meade noted in relation to the reptiles? Please allow the pond a little distraction:

For some News Corp commentators, the election result was not an invitation for self-reflection but a time to double down on the Sky News agenda of amplifying the culture wars.

Janet Albrechtsen began by saying “everything is about culture”.

“Genuine Liberals need to stop trembling about these ‘culture war’ accusations from opponents, inside and outside the party. What kind of country do we want to live in? If Liberals don’t start embracing that, explaining policies through the prism of what kind of culture we want, they may as well fold their tent and save donors a heck of a lot of money.”

Credlin urged the party to offer a strong and clear alternative and not “Labor-lite”.

“Importantly, the Coalition cannot get spooked by the call from its enemies to ‘drop the culture wars’ because it’s the ‘long march through the institutions’ that’s the reason for the left’s ascendancy.”

Enough of all that, back to poor fractured "Ned" ...

In this campaign Dutton was excessively cautious and seemed intimidated by Labor. He endorsed most of Labor’s spending agenda, notably on Medicare. He declined to tackle NDIS reform. He refused to run on tax reform. He rejected a commitment on indexation of the tax scales. He pledged to repeal Labor’s modest income tax cut, thereby running as the higher tax leader. He refused any significant assault on Labor’s IR laws. He made only modest bottom-line budget savings with a higher deficit over the first two years. For most of the term he had no policy on the energy transition, nuclear aside (a flawed agenda for the distant future). Defence spending was a big policy difference only announced after voting began. Aside from a few comments about “welcome to country” he ignored culture issues the entire time. This agenda was constructed only to maximise votes – where it failed. It revealed a lack of confidence in Dutton’s ability to persuade and sell an ambitious Coalition agenda. It exposed an absence of conviction within the Liberal Party. There was no values-based coherence and, along with Dutton’s unpopularity, it exposed the failure to define the Liberal Party brand for the Australian people.

Cue a final distraction, Australia, in cultural terms, is a more fractured nation. That is only likely to intensify and Labor won’t be immune. Picture David Clark/AAP

The pond had to pinch itself. Almost there, just one more gobbet and the pond would summit, as they say when mangling the language ...

After this, recovery will be a hard road. There is a psychological reluctance in the community about the Liberals. It will require a big effort to resurrect the party’s values. But will the Liberals even agree on those values?
The Liberals will need to avoid repeating their main blunder from the 2022-25 term: thinking that public disenchantment with the Albanese government will translate naturally into support for the Coalition. It won’t. But don’t think the public will stand and applaud the expanded Albanese government. Again, that won’t happen. Many people might be shocked by the scale of Albanese’s triumph. History suggests Australians typically respond to big electoral wins by growing more critical of the winning side.
Albanese will aspire to change the nation. In today’s world of mounting challenges he will need a government of muscular direction and policy toughness – but the Australian public is not there. Its focus is economic security, regulatory guarantees, social assurance, energy cost relief and more government paternalism. The political mood and the policy needs are in conflict.

Yes, the pond had mounted the challenge, and could celebrate with an immortal Rowe for a closer ...

And so to the pond's travelogue and slide night and the pond's devotion to tourist clichés, and the tragedy is that few will see them, what with "Ned" and the bromancer being such killjoys, with the result at this stage being that everybody just wanted to take a nap.

For those few still awake, the view from the hill ...

Older views from the hill ...

An older view of the hill in the distance, from whence the snaps were taken...

The information board on the hill. There always has to be a plaque of some kind ...