In which the pond gets drunk on the tears of Lord Downer, the Caterist and nattering "Ned" ...

 

The pond had promised not to indulge in too many reptile tears or anguished reptile post-mortems, but the pond is a hopeless drunk - once the pond gets into the tears a bender is sure to follow - and this was the beginning of the week after ...

So much suffering, so many tears to enjoy, and over on the extreme far right, the hapless commentators were thrust below a dreadful sight, a reptile summary of the state of play, up there with the suffering of the Ancient Mariner...

The pond did have to pick and chose. The bewildered reptiles had lured comrade Bill in to help explain it all ...

Voters want their politicians with an Australian accent
The Coalition parties didn’t just shoot themselves in one foot, they shot themselves in both feet, arms and torso.
By Bill Shorten

Too cruel, but the reptiles were determined to be completely clueless, as demonstrated by this pearl of wisdom ...

‘Sensible right’ can rebuild by ending policy me-tooism
Far from signalling the death-knell of the sensible right in Australia, the Coalition’s catastrophic defeat represents an opportunity for renewal.
By David Pearl

Indeed, indeed, keep on nuking the country to save the planet.

The pond had hoped for a major Major whine, Catch-22 style, but he must have stayed out on the golf course, shanking away ...

Instead the pond decided to start proceedings by supping on the tears of Lord Downer ...

The wondrous header: Gun-shy Liberals ran scared of their own values, During the campaign there were flashes of a values debate but they didn’t happen often. The Liberals looked too frightened to confront their opponents head on with their principles.

The marvellous command: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

His Lordship was, in the reptile way, bewildered, completely clueless and bitter, and hearkened unto Ming the Merciless ...

Politics should ultimately be a battle of ideas. It should be more than just arguments about management.
After such a catastrophic election defeat the first thing the Liberals will need to do is elect a new leader.
Then that leader will have the opportunity to define the values and priorities of the party. Too much of its rhetoric has been about the mechanics of government.
The Liberal Party needs to be brave and bold enough to confront the progressive left head on across a range of different issues.
This is what Robert Menzies did when he first created the Liberal Party. He confronted the socialism of John Curtin and, more effectively, Ben Chifley with his own liberal democratic ideals.
In the end it wasn’t just his policies that won him subsequent elections. It was the public understanding of his core values.

The reptiles hastily interrupted with an AV distraction, wondering whether the coalition should have gone full mango Mussolini, The Wall Street Journal’s Australian Correspondent Mike Cherney says the Coalition will now have to decide how “Trumpian” the party will be moving forward. “I think there’s interest about how Trump is affecting these countries all over the world, and Australia is a key US ally,” Mr Cherney said. “Albanese was on the campaign trail, sort of saying that Australia got the best outcome out of this tariff situation. “It’s a bit early to say if Trump’s tariff strategy is going to work. “The Liberal Party will now have to decide whether it was too Trumpian in the campaign, or not Trumpian enough.”

It's a bit early? Thanks, mindless Mike, and it's back to His Lordship ...

The Liberal Party should first and foremost be fervently patriotic. By that I mean unequivocal in its determination to put the national interest first. Concepts such as love of country, pride in our history and the nation’s achievements and unbounded confidence in the capacity of the public to achieve great things in the future will always trump mere managerialism.
Politicians and aspiring politicians should read biographies of great people through history. They will find again and again one of their characteristics is the passion of their patriotism.

Just to rub it in, the reptiles slipped in a reminder, Anthony Albanese at his election-night function Sydney’s west. Picture: Jason Edwards

Apparently everybody had a good time ...

Back to His Lordship, not one to shy away from placing himself in grand company ...

The greatness of Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Thatcher and even our own Robert Menzies lay not in the quantity of handouts they offered the public with borrowed money but the passion with which they argued the case for their nation’s survival and prosperity. They gave purpose to the nation and the endeavours of its people.
Second, great politicians become synonymous with their core values; all of their policies are presented in the context of their values, not just as tools of management. So the new Liberal leader needs to be defined by his or her values.
In Australia, in recent years, the political left has been successful in winning the argument for values. They have been braver and bolder in expressing them than the Liberals.

The delusions were strong in this one, and again the reptiles quickly inserted an AV distraction, featuring the coming Conclave, Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell says it is his understanding there are three contenders to possibly take over as Opposition leader from Peter Dutton within the Liberal Party following the heavy federal election loss. The Liberal Party has suffered an emphatic defeat in the federal election, with Peter Dutton also losing his seat of Dickson to Labor. "It's my understanding is there are three contenders: Angus Taylor, Dan Tehan, Sussan Ley," Mr Clennell said. "All were sort of putting feelers out. "And there's a suggestion that Angus Taylor might have the backing of Jane Hume and be doing a deal with Jane Hume for her to become Senate leader."

If the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way wins, expect endless bumbling and much enjoyable stupidity, but on with His Lordship sobbing away about the dominant zeitgeist ...

The idea that in Australia we are building a great nation that can achieve levels of economic prosperity for its citizens unequal to anywhere else in the world, and within which people enjoy freedoms of choice and a range of choices, is unimaginable in most countries. But this has been replaced.
The so-called progressive narrative that has come to dominate discussion spurns the achievements of our ancestors, denies choices for families and individuals by confiscatory taxes and regulatory interventions and puts the fantasy of changing the weather ahead of family prosperity.
This has become the dominant zeitgeist of the country. Above all they have used the issue of climate change to seize control of people’s lives. Any intervention under the rubric of climate change is acceptable. It’s hardly surprising that climate change initiatives are more passionately embraced by the left than the centre right.

Good one your Lordship, climate science has absolutely nothing to do with prosperity. Please give His Lordship a snap to remind him he belongs in the 1950s, Sir Robert Menzies.

The sight of Ming the Merciless didn't placate His Lordship, as he ranted on about the Marxists in an increasingly comical way...

Then there is the issue of equity. Egalitarianism should mean the equal value of all people regardless of their circumstances or, as we would say nowadays, their race, gender and sexual preferences.
But the dominant left paradigm today is redistribution: that is, taking away from the industrious and the creative rather than encouraging people to be ambitious and to achieve for either themselves or their families. In other words, we have replaced the concept of equality of opportunity with equality of outcomes.
It’s become fashionable to denigrate our history. We focus on the crimes that a few have committed, in particular against Indigenous Australians, rather than expressing our pride in how this continent has been transformed into one of the richest and most successful societies humanity has ever known. Surely that is something to celebrate.
Part of this paradigm of shame has been the embrace by many in Australia of the notion of identity politics. This neo-Marxist concept – which we have imported from America – has salami sliced society into racial and ethnic groups. Part and parcel of this is the abandonment of traditional Australian egalitarianism and replacing it with a range of discriminatory practices.
We’ve even imported from North America concepts such as acknowledgment of country. I went to an Episcopalian church in California at Easter and there it was on the back of the order of service: those familiar words acknowledging the traditional owners – in that case Native Americans – and their leaders past, present and emerging. Go to Canada and you will hear all the same language again in relation to the Inuit people.

Tremendous stuff, and didn't it play well ...

The pond has let His Lordship rant, and confesses that all the pond knows about greeting strangers comes from Ten Canoes and wikis and such like, but perhaps His Lordship might learn a few things ...

In Aboriginal culture prior to European settlement, each clan's survival was dependent upon its understanding of food, water and other resources within its own country – a discrete area of land to which it had more or less exclusive claim. When other Aboriginal people travelled onto another tribe's land, a ceremony was performed to determine whether the travellers were peaceful and then to show that the travellers were welcome. A smoking ceremony may have been used to transfer the scent of the home tribe onto the visitors in order to indicate to others the travellers had been welcomed and to avoid animals fleeing at a strange scent.

Of course it's well-known that deviant indigenous tribes travelled all over the world exchanging ideas, and that's how North American customs ended up down under before Cook landed, but do go on ...

During our election campaign, there were flashes of the values debate but they didn’t happen often. The Liberals looked too frightened to confront their opponents head on with their values. There was the controversy over welcome to country ceremonies being overdone but this discussion was quickly abandoned because the professional campaign staff judged the only thing the public cared about was relief from cost-of-living pressures.

Phew, time to turn to Sky Noise again, Sky News host Rowan Dean says people across Australia have been "so badly let down" by the Liberal Party following the emphatic election result. The Liberal Party has suffered a heavy defeat in the federal election, with Peter Dutton also losing his seat of Dickson to Labor. "There are hardworking people in Australia that you, the Liberal Party, have really, really badly let down," Mr Dean said. "I'm now questioning whether you're fit for purpose."

No question as to whether the relentlessly stupid Deann was fit for any purpose, but that would require a level of insight, and reflective navel-gazing beyond the Sky News mob's analytical abilities.

And so to a final burst of tears ...

The mood of the Australian public throughout the election campaign was one of relative indifference. Neither side of politics inspired them. There was a sense that the public didn’t really care what happened in the election. They noted with admirable cynicism the handouts that were being offered to relieve cost-of-living pressures.
Over and over again the mistake professional campaign staff make is to do the polling and then assume all the politicians need to do is address the concerns expressed to the pollsters and repeat them back to the public. I don’t think this is right.
Political leaders have to create their own narratives and their own issues that will interest and, in time, inspire the public not just repeat back to the public what the public are telling them. That is not leadership.
Opinion polls should be used by politicians not as a mirror but as a lamp. They should have their values and their ambitions for the country and use opinion polling to find ways they can excite the public with their ambitions. The reason the two major political parties sounded alike during the election campaign is that they were polling the same people and getting the same answers – unsurprisingly.
So out of the ashes of this disastrous electoral defeat can emerge a new, vibrant Liberal Party which inspires Australians to flock to its liberal democratic values, not just the mechanics of its policies.
Alexander Downer was foreign minister from 1996 to 2007 and high commissioner to the UK from 2014 to 2018. He is chairman of British think tank Policy Exchange.

Time to pause for 'toon refreshment, as cleaners go to work ...

And so to a particular pleasure, the Caterist in deep, dire pain ...

The header: Political death: Liberal Party uncertain about what it should stand for in the current era, There is no single-cause explanation for the Liberal Party’s worst result – but the bottom line is Robert Menzies’s party lost touch with the concerns of aspirational, middle-class voters.

The dire command: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

This time the reptiles decided no one had much interest in the sight of a whining Caterist, so they offered an AV distraction at the very get go ... Sky News host James Macpherson claims the Liberal Party will need to choose a new Opposition leader who can work out “what their values are”. “I’ve not met a conservative politician who actually thinks that human-induced climate change is a cataclysmic thing that we must sell,” Mr Macpherson said. “They keep going along with as if it’s something they really do believe in. “I just don’t think we can have a conservative party that is trying to sell things to the Australian public, that we all reckon, I don’t actually reckon they believe in this. “If the conservatives will make a comeback, they need to work out what their values are. “Maybe stop trying to win office and start trying to annunciate what’s best for the country, whether you win office or not.”

The pond wasn't interested in what Sky host Jimbo Mac had to say - instead the pond was compelled by the sight of a Caterist in pain ...

A leader losing his footing on a platform at election time is a minor embarrassment. An entire party falling backwards off the stage is a catastrophe with no obvious path to recovery.
If there is a crumb of comfort in this story, it’s well hidden. The Coalition’s support in regional and rural Australia largely held up, but much of that was thanks to the Nationals. The fundamentals haven’t changed. Anthony Albanese presided over an inglorious first term and promised nothing of substance for his second. A dozen mortgage rate rises, inflation and skyrocketing energy bills gave the Liberals a golden opportunity to win back the hearts of the forgotten people, and they squibbed it.
If the baseball bats were going to come out for the Prime Minister anywhere on Saturday, it would’ve happened in Mickleham in the seat of Calwell, on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, where the household recession is intense.
Mickleham is a patchwork of recent subdivisions occupied by families with large mortgages. Labor suffered a 14 per cent swing against it in the Mickleham booth on Saturday, finishing at 34 per cent. The Liberals also went backwards, coming in a distant second at 15 per cent. The remaining 51 per cent was scattered around like grapeshot: Greens, independent, One Nation, Family First, Legalise Cannabis, you name it. The informal vote was 6 per cent.

No path to recovery? The path well hidden? Et tu Caterism?

And only a caption to claw back the painful sight of a winner, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese waves beside his partner Jodie Haydon. His landslide is insubstantial and undeserved. Picture: Saeed Khan/AFP

Ah well, never mind, just an insubstantial landslide, just a few rocks tumbling own.

Oh it's tough being a Caterist right now. Can someone find him a flooded quarry in which to hide and decipher the entrails?

There is no single-cause explanation for the party’s worst result. If it were simply a bad campaign or an unconvincing leader, the problem could be fixed. If the solution was moving to the notional left or right, to embrace or ignore the so-called culture wars, the argument could be settled in the partyroom. The bottom line is that Robert Menzies’s party has lost touch with the concerns of aspirational, middle-class voters to the point where it can no longer speak their language.
Albanese’s landslide is insubstantial and undeserved. Like Labour’s Keir Starmer in Britain, his parliamentary majority is flattering given his meagre primary vote. Kevin Rudd won 83 seats in 2007 with 43.4 per cent of the popular vote, while Labor’s primary vote hovers around 34 per cent.
Labor’s support was clearly soft, which begs the question: Why couldn’t Dutton pull voters his way? Labor’s brand was seen as toxic in Victoria and parts of Western Sydney, prompting many Labor candidates to shrink the party’s logo on corflutes or drop it altogether. Dan Andrews’s poisoned legacy gave Victorians a compelling reason to leave Labor, but they held their noses and stayed.

Begging that question, the reptiles slipped in another AV distraction, featuring the gormless Dave, agitated he wasn't allowed to save the day, Liberal Senator Dave Sharma claims the party’s strategy of hiding its key members on the sidelines “clearly did not work”. “A decision was taken to prioritise campaign discipline in the unity of messaging over having multiple voices with the risks that that entails,” Mr Sharma said. “That put a lot of pressure on Peter Dutton, and it put a lot of pressure on the leadership. “We didn’t have as many voices as we could’ve put there selling our message and promoting our policies.”

Indeed, indeed, what was needed was a celebration of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, but back to the Caterist, still deep in his suffering ...

The Coalition’s blue wall in Queensland has collapsed. Diligent local MPs in mortgage-belt seats, such as Luke Howarth in Petrie and Bert van Manen in Forde, were helpless as the ground disappeared under them.
In Sydney, three decades of Liberal advances into Labor’s suburban heartland were reversed. Labor made a successful smash-and-grab raid on Hughes, which had been in Liberal hands since John Howard’s 1996 landslide.
The Liberals lost Banks, a seat first won when Tony Abbott swept the board in 2013. Labor’s first-preference vote rose by less than 1 per cent, but increased support for the Greens, messy preference flows and an informal vote of almost 10 per cent exhausted David Coleman’s chances.
Adelaide will replace Canberra as the nation’s all-red capital if Labor loses Bean to the teals. The Liberals have been banished from Tasmania, and the mortgage belt in WA didn’t budge. The vulnerability the Coalition sensed in teal seats proved largely illusory, and the Coalition looks like it may lose Bradfield into the bargain.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap of some ancient politician relegated to history and long forgotten, Peter Dutton and wife Kirrilly. He had the right credentials to lead a party that draws its strength from enterprising, working Australians in the suburbs. Picture: Adam Head/NewsWire

If he had the right credentials, who knows what the wrong ones were ... as the Caterist kept on keening and wailing...

Dutton had the right credentials to lead a party that draws its strength from enterprising, working Australians in the suburbs. His background in policing and small business ticked the boxes.
His views might have been seen as conservative in the media echo chamber but, to the majority of Australians, they are simply common sense. His greatest legacy in the thankless job of opposition leader is defeating the voice to parliament referendum. His courage in backing Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was not inconsiderate. He proved a better judge of the popular mood than some within his party who warned it would be a career-ender.
So how did a leader who was in tune with 60 per cent of Australians in October 2023 capture the votes of only half of them 19 months later? If it was simply because he failed to sell his message well, that could be fixed. If the party’s strategists were misled by poor internal polling or the wrong message from focus groups, there is no shortage of marketing and communications professionals who could do with the work.
The brutal truth, however, is that the party is uncertain about what it should stand for in the current era. Equivocation is political death. Focus group-driven policy will inevitably be insipid.
“Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides,” Margaret Thatcher once said.

And so to an AV distraction featuring the man who had delighted David Rowe, Former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger says Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is a “quality human being”. Mr Kroger told Sky News host Paul Murray that “regrettably” he won’t be prime minister of Australia. “But he joins a long pantheon of people that would’ve been great prime ministers of this country.”

And so to end with a wildly stupid comparison to elbows up Canada, with the Caterist determined to ignore the pointed jibes at Trumpism offered by Albo during his victory speech ...

Dutton would have fared better if he had leant into the remarks rather than stepped away from them. By pulling his punches, he got the worst of both worlds. The story became even bigger in the woke media, while Dutton looked timid to the majority of Australians, for whom unabashed patriotic sentiment would have gone down rather well.
Dutton’s defeat at the hands of an unpopular left-wing government that was all but written off at the start of the year parallels the defeat of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in Canada five days earlier. Yet Poilievre’s tone was different. He was overflowing with national pride, projecting an image of citizens chasing the Canadian promise protected by brave troops under a proud flag. He closed his concession speech with, “Canada first, Canada always … Thank you very much, Canada”.
Prime Minister Mark Carney matched his nationalist rhetoric. Both leaders recognised that, at a time of global uncertainty, it was the language Canadians wanted to hear. Carney’s Liberals increased their share of the vote by 11.1 per cent, while the Conservative vote increased by 7.5 per cent. The minor parties’ share fell from 33.6 per cent to 15 per cent.
The flight of voters to third parties is not inevitable, even in bilingual Canada, provided you speak their language.
Nick Cater is a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre.

It's going to be a long hard road back for the reptiles ...

And so to "Ned's" natter, last and according to the reptile timing of three minutes, least ...

The header: Smashed opposition faces an existential crisis, Australia has been remade in political terms in one of the most extraordinary elections in our history. Anthony Albanese is an enhanced PM, while the Liberals face their worst ever crisis 

The caption: Peter Dutton on election night, after an election result that plunged the Liberal Party into ‘its worst ever crisis’. Picture: Tertius Pickard/NewsWire

The immaculate conception: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

It's a measure of the existential crisis that "Ned" could muster only three minutes of despair. 

If "Ned", master reptile pundit of Everest punditry fame, could only blather for a short time, all was lost ...

Australia has been remade in political terms in one of the most extraordinary elections in our history. Anthony Albanese is an enhanced Prime Minister able to put Labor’s imprint on the nation and guarantee a long-term government. The Liberal Party is smashed – plunged into its worst ever crisis, its future in question.
Albanese has won an astonishing victory – it seems with a greater two-party-preferred vote than Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke or Kevin Rudd at their initial victories.
He is likely to finish with around 90 seats, with the Coalition struggling to reach 40 seats.
Neither side predicted this result. The shake-out will last many years. Long underestimated, Albanese has displayed political mastery in winning a commanding position with a big majority in the house, a likely Labor-Green majority in the Senate and with the prospect that Australia will shift further to the centre-left in economic and social terms.

It was grum stuff, but the reptiles decided to make it even grummer by inserting "Ned" into the middle of an AV distraction, The Australian Editor-At-Large Paul Kelly talks about the future of the Liberal Party, Labor's success and the future of Australian politics

Most days the pond is grateful that it doesn't have to deal with AV distractions. 

That was especially true this day, what with "Ned" in full portentous, pompous pose ... and anyway, there was plenty of verbiage to go on with ...

With Peter Dutton losing his seat, the Liberals are thrown into a new leadership contest with Sussan Ley, Angus Taylor and Dan Tehan the likely main contenders. But this defeat, far more serious even than the 2022 defeat, means the party faces its gravest plight since its inception by Robert Menzies in 1944.
Its identity, purpose and place in Australian life is on the line. The risk the Coalition faces is being marginalised by changes in contemporary Australia with the ascendancy of the centre-left, anchored by Labor but encompassing the Greens, the teals and community independents.
The Liberals have been decimated in urban Australia and among younger voters, women, public sector employees, ethnic voters and the professional classes. It is a structural, cultural and institutional crisis. Recovery will be a protracted event.
Albanese outsmarted Peter Dutton at this election. He read the electorate far better, tied his policies to voting constituencies, and won the leadership popularity contest. Labor is now ready to exploit a modest economic recovery based on interest rate cuts. Don’t think Albanese will lurch into audacious new directions after this victory – his watchwords are stability, unity and upholding his first-term guiding rule: “No one held back, no one left behind.”
That means running on compassion and aspiration. Albanese’s aim is to keep the Labor base but pitch more to the middle class, a strategy he made clear in his campaign interview with The Australian. There is another lesson from Labor’s fluctuating first-term ratings – he needs to deliver better public policy outcomes since this vote was more a rejection of Dutton than endorsement of Albanese.
The most significant pointer to the future came from Jim Chalmers, on Sunday saying while the first-term priority was inflation, the second-term priority will be “productivity without forgetting inflation”. Productivity to secure higher prosperity is the decisive task for Labor and will probably determine its success in office.
Albanese now enters the Labor pantheon. He is the first PM to be re-elected since John Howard in 2004, thereby busting the era of short tenure prime ministers. He has turned a narrow initial win into a commanding second win – overthrowing the norms of our politics. He will serve a full second-term over 2025-28, making him Labor’s second-longest serving PM after Bob Hawke and, on these figures, Labor is well positioned to extend into a third term.

At this point, with "Ned" reduced to speculating about a third term, came the last illustration, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in his electorate of Grayndler on Sunday with partner Jodie Haydon, Senator Katy Gallagher and Bennelong MP Jerome Laxale. Picture: Monique Harmer/NewsWire

How these visual interruptions must hurt the suffering reptiles.

And so to a last gobbet of "Ned" misery and despair, with the façade barely concealing the urgent need to return to the 1950s and Ming the merciless ...

While Albanese will be engulfed by a conga line of progressive interest groups in the demand for spoils, he possesses the authority to manage his own supporters. Chalmers said the second-term agenda was “really clear”: more homes, more energy transformation, more AI, more competition policy, improved living standards and managing global economic uncertainty.
Chalmers played down his own leadership aspirations. That’s smart, given Albanese’s win and the inevitable debate about when the Treasurer might take over from the Prime Minister. That’s now deferred.
Albanese secured a higher ALP primary vote running at 34.75 per cent, an increase of 2.17 per cent. It’s still bad, but Labor has mastered the preference system, mobilising the broad pro-left side of politics to shatter the Liberals. The Coalition primary has slumped to around 32 per cent, down nearly four percentage points from last election, a humiliating result, worst in its history, revealing a shocking collapse from its 39-40 per cent over summer.
This penetrates to the most astonishing feature of the campaign – the failure of the Coalition. The Liberals under Dutton believed the election could become a referendum on cost of living and seven quarters of negative GDP per capita thereby exempting them from the hard policy work essential to offer a viable alternative government.
They were repeatedly exposed during the campaign for flawed, delayed and inadequate policy. This went to a bigger problem: the Liberal Party brand – its beliefs and convictions – all but disappeared.

And contemplating all that analysis, marvelling at all three members of the reptile triptych, the pond invites correspondents to count the number of times these reptiles mentioned the urgent need to nuke the country to save the planet. Or the pleasure of having an SMR in every home ...

The pond came up with zero, but is happy to be corrected.

And so to the immortal Rowe, summarising matters with many, many details ...

It's wrong to make a pick from so many details, but in view of that nuking the country angle, the pond found this portion irresistible ...

And so to the pond's travelogue and endless slideshow night, and on the way back to Tamworth, the pond stopped off at the hamlet of Uralla...

There had been a bit of a rebranding, what with bushrangers now being an inspiration to vulgar youff ...

Good old Thunderbolt. The pond's grandparents had famously offered him flour, tea and sugar on his travels - see any history book - and here he was in statue form, as often happens in country towns in search of a tourist angle...