In which the pond lowers the heat and the tone for its Sunday meditation with prattling Polonius and the Ughmann. Go furries!

After yesterday's full-throated, full-blooded "denihilism", it was time to settle things down in the pond's Sunday meditation.

As an aside, the pond only came across "denihilism" while reading Jill Lawrence's The Party of ‘Denihilism’ in The Bulwark:

...All I can see when I look at it is “denihilism,” a word my former boss at USA Today, Bill Sternberg, used this week in an article about climate change, the coming hurricane season, and the many ways the Trump administration has weakened and destabilized federal weather forecasting and disaster response agencies.

These actions, Bill wrote,

"appear driven by a combination of scientific denial (if you pretend a problem like climate change doesn’t exist, then you don’t have to do anything about it, particularly anything that would offend fossil fuel interests) and ideological nihilism (taking a perverse pleasure in inflicting trauma on federal employees and watching the world burn). Call it denihilism."

Well yes, but in the meantime, the pond has a bone to pick with Media Watch and in particular its segment last week titled Furry Fever.

The pond can't quibble with the notion that Clinton Maynard is a first class dickhead inclined to sensationalist stupidity. 

Nor that 2GB, radio tabloid gutter at its swampiest, is a pile of shit. Or that Lucy Zelic is deeply, deeply weird.

And the pond will concede that there's zero evidence of furries rampant in schools, or elsewhere, outside comic con dress ups and woman who still imagine they're rabbits as a way of pandering to men living in a Hugh Hefner dream time.

But here's where the pond had to draw a line in the furry sand, with Media Watch in full denihilist mode about furries:

...Now if you’re wondering why this zombie story simply won’t die, it has nothing whatsoever to do with students dressing up like cats and dogs and nothing to do with the standard of education in this country, rather it’s a clumsy attempt to stir moral panic and use sheer tittle-tattle to bait outrage in a bid to drive up listeners. 
Heaven save us all if it actually works.

That simply won't do Mr Besser. Furries are real. They stalk the pages of the lizard Oz.

For years, prattling Polonius has disguised himself as a dog and scribbled Media Watch Dog. The pond doesn't mean to stir a moral panic or provoke sheer tittle-tattle, but Nancy was regularly shown at work:

The melding of dog and master was complete, and ineluctable, and it wasn't just an ordinary furry imagining, it was a tranny one, what with the editor and compiler of this media hound passing as "Nancy". Good girl, who's a good girl ....

Even more dire, the hound later came to embody a sinister form of bodily possession from the hereafter, a kind of spectral ectoplasm.

The newsletter explained the ghostly furry phenomenon this way, a kind of Sixth Sense, with Nancy returning to conduct Courtesy Classes:

Nancy had a full, vividly imagined back story:

As avid readers are aware, the late Nancy (2004-2017) did not die. In modern terminology she merely “passed” on to the Other Side. Hence MWD has been able to keep in touch and seek Nancy’s advice about behaviour, courtesy and all that – with the help of the American psychic John Edward of Crossing Over fame.  As avid readers are aware, your man Edward is soon to visit Australia.

And so on ...

This Nancy kept offering advice from beyond in an incredibly twee way, like this ...

... here’s one more question.  Isn’t it time that Comrade FitzSimons attended one of Nancy’s Courtesy Classes? – especially since they cover many areas of etiquette as “How to consume hors d’oeuvres at a French palace” and “How to avoid pushing such journalists of colour out of the way in order to have a chat with a French president”.

And like this ...

NANCY’S COURTESY CLASSES – OPEN NOW FOR MIKE (THE SNEERER) SECCOMBE
As avid readers are aware, the late Nancy (2004-2017) did not die. She merely “passed” on to the Other Side. Hence MWD has been able to keep in touch with her – with the help of the American psychic John Edward. And so, Nancy’s “Courtesy Classes” continue – albeit from the “Other Side”.
****
What a stunning performance by sneering Mike Seccombe – the national correspondent for Morry Schwartz’s The (Boring) Saturday Paper on the ABC TV Insiders program last Sunday. Despite Mr Schwarz’s wealth, and despite the existence of editor-in-chief Erik Jensen and editor Maddison Connaughton, it seems that your man Seccombe has yet to be taught the difference between abuse and argument. This despite the fact that courtesy classes are not that expensive.
And so it came to pass on Insiders last Sunday that Mr Seccombe referred to people with whom he disagreed as “knuckle heads”. He also dismissed associates of Prime Minister Turnbull as “rich dudes”.
Mike Seccombe – Off to Nancy’s Courtesy Classes for you.

The dog also handed out awards:

... as explained this way:

Media Watch Dog’s Five Paws Award was inaugurated in Issue Number 26 (4 September 2009) during the time of Nancy (2004-2017). The first winner was then ABC TV presenter Emma Alberici.  Ms Alberici scored for remembering the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 whereby Hitler and Stalin divided Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union.  And for stating that the Nazi-Soviet Pact had effectively started the Second World War, since it was immediately followed by Germany’s invasion of western Poland (at a time when the Soviet Union had become an ally of Germany). Soon after, the USSR invaded eastern Poland in accordance with the protocols of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
Over the years, the late Nancy’s Five Paws Award has become one of the world’s most prestigious gongs – rating just below the Nobel Prize and Academy Awards.

Nancy also didn't suffer fools gladly:

It will come as a shock to some - perhaps even to Mr Besser - that in reality this Nancy was really just Polonius in disguise. 

Truth to tell, there's nothing to suggest that Nancy actually handed out awards or offered courtesy classes, or provided copy for the newsletter, and much to suggest that Polonius's favourite fantasy was to imagine himself as a female dog. 

The pond will leave it to Freudians to work that one out: a genuine furry alive and well in the heart of the lizard Oz.

And it wasn't just Nancy. 

Other hounds also turned up, as in this report:

MWD COMMISSIONED LULU, A MONGREL CANINE FROM THE HUNTER VALLEY TO COVER THE AUSTRALIAN FREEDOM CONFERENCE REVIEW WHICH WAS HELD IN SYDNEY ON FRIDAY THE 28 JUNE. HERE IS THE REVIEW.
When it was advertised that tickets to the Clive Palmer-produced Australian Freedom Conference with Tucker Carlson were being reduced from over $200 down to $50, I decided to take the opportunity to check it out – not aware it would be a 4-hour event with not that much Tucker Carlson.

Relax, that "I" isn't Lulu pounding away at the keyboard, that's Polonius exploring a range of furry possibilities.

Of course this is hidden from the hive mind on a Sunday, but you see Mr Besser, it's just as well to keep in mind that furries are real, and can be found in the most unexpected places, and that a moral panic can't be justified.

Long live furries, long live men who like to wear frocks, long live hounds dressed in frocks, or at least with Edna glasses and an aged typewriter.

Now on with Polonius in grave sermonising Sunday meditation form, where he chucks off the disguise of a hound, and settles for hounding people by imitating that original Shaskperian Polonius ...

Polonius: Marry, I will teach you! Think yourself a baby
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus) you'll tender me a fool.

Put it another way:

The header: History shows Libs and Nats are better together, Until the Sussan Ley-led Liberal Party and the David Littleproud-led Nationals attempted a kiss-and-makeup pause, both parties were heading for a lose-lose outcome.

The stars: Sussan Ley and David Littleproud.

The invocation, best ignored: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The Polonial hound was all sweetness and light today, a kumbaya of coming together:

Until the Sussan Ley-led Liberal Party and the David Littleproud-led Nationals attempted a kiss-and-makeup pause, which took place around lunchtime on Thursday, both parties were heading for a lose-lose outcome.
The fact is the previous leaders of both entities understood more than a century ago that the political conservatives in metropolitan areas had to collaborate with like-minded conservatives in rural and regional areas.
That’s how it came about that, in 1918, preferential voting was introduced at the federal level by the Nationalist Party (a forerunner of the current Liberal Party) led by William Morris (Billy) Hughes.
There was a by-election in the West Australian seat of Swan in October 1918. Labor won with 34.4 per cent of the primary vote. The main rural party scored 31.4 per cent and the Nationalists attained 29.6 per cent. So, Labor won Swan despite the fact it scored a third of the primary vote.

The reptiles quickly inserted another snap of the pair, David Littleproud insists he respected Sussan Ley’s ‘personal circumstances’ after bombshell Coalition split announcement. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Oh they do look glum. Is it because Polonius has appointed himself marriage counsellor?

Or is it because Polonius insists on doing a deep dive into the past, in a boring, pedantic attempt to match our Henry, hole in bucket man?

Preferential voting was legislated by the Nationalists in December 1918 before there was a by-election for Corangamite in Victoria. This time the Labor candidate scored 42.5 per cent of first preferences but did not win. William Gibson, the Victorian Farmers Union candidate, prevailed on the back of Nationalists preferences.
In the period up to World War I in 1914, there was a steady growth in rural organisations – some of which had a political direction. In his 1966 book The Formation of the Australian Country Parties, BD Graham wrote: “Taking an overall view, an interested observer of the Australia of 1914 could have discovered the first outlines of the (Country) party.”
The gradual move towards the formation of rural parties received an impetus during the war. The outbreak of hostilities made it possible for the commonwealth to gain greater control over farming, including marketing. Consequently, various rural organisations became increasingly involved in the governmental process at the federal level. At the December 1919 election, rural parties attained more than 9 per cent of the primary vote, winning 11 seats. The Nationalists maintained a majority of seats in the House of Representatives but lost this in 1922.
In January 1920, the Australian Country Party was officially formed under the leadership of Tasmanian William James McWilliams. He was replaced by Earle Page in April 1921.

Compelling stuff... go cockies...

...but once Polonius gets started, he never knows when to stop, and we have to do a trudge way up to Ming the Merciless and beyond ...

After the 1922 election, the Country Party joined with the Nationalists to form a government with Stanley Melbourne Bruce (who replaced Hughes) as prime minister. Page was the treasurer and second in line behind Bruce in the Nationalist-Country Coalition.
From early 1923 until late 1929 (when the James Scullin-led Labor Party won the election) the Bruce-Page Coalition government remained in place. At the December 1931 election, the United Australia Party (which had replaced the Nationalists) under the leadership of Joseph Lyons came to office. Lyons, who attained majority government for the UAP, offered the Country Party a coalition arrangement but it declined.
It was reinstated after the 1934 election and remained in operation when Robert Menzies became prime minister on the death of Lyons in April 1939. Labor under John Curtin came to office in October 1941 and presided over a significant victory in 1943. Curtin died in office in July 1945 and Ben Chifley led Labor to victory in 1946. Menzies formed the Liberal Party in late 1944 (replacing the UAP). When he became prime minister in 1949, he established a Liberal-Country Party coalition – which remained in place until December 1972. Menzies retired in January 1966.
Only four Liberal Party leaders have won office from opposition – Menzies in 1949, Malcolm Fraser in 1975, John Howard in 1996 and Tony Abbott in 2013. All of this quartet strongly supported a Coalition government. Menzies, Fraser and Howard won 14 elections between them. In time, the Country Party became the National Country Party, then the National Party and now the Nationals. But it is the same entity.
Menzies, Fraser, Howard and Abbott were successful Liberals but all four knew the importance of the Country Party, in its various forms, to their success. Likewise, Country Party/Nationals leaders in the modern era such as Arthur Fadden, John McEwen, Doug Anthony, Tim Fischer and John Anderson understood the importance of the Liberals. Sure, the Liberal Party had its worst defeat on May 3, but not quite as bad as the UAP in 1943. The Nationals did well compared with the Liberals. But not that well.

The question, as always, is whether someone can spot a Polonial error, but what's more problematic is the way he's forced to meander down memory lane, seeking reminders of great glories as solace for current troubled times.

The reptiles continued the search for hope with an AV distraction, featuring a particularly useless hill of beans ... Outgoing Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes discusses the future of the Coalition, remaining optimistic about a swift resolution. “I think we’ll see a resolution to this issue sooner rather than later,” Ms Hughes told Sky News host Rowan Dean. “I think David Littleproud’s been found out a number of times this week, but particularly in the fact that he did not give to his own party room the full story when it came to his demands around cabinet solidarity. “Mr Littleproud is going to have to have some very open discussions with his own party room, regardless of the result.”

And that was it for distractions, as Polonius ended on an uplifting note, not by invoking Ming the Merciless, as is often done in the hive mind, but by turning to the lying rodent, and never mind his fame as the PM who absent-mindedly lost his seat...

The Littleproud-led Nationals failed to win back Calare after Andrew Gee quit the party in 2023 and ran as an independent. Moreover, on my count, at the May 3 election there were swings against the Nationals in nine seats – including Littleproud’s seat of Maranoa.
Then there is the able Bridget McKenzie, leader of the Nationals in the Senate. She won her Senate seat in Victoria in 2010, 2016 and 2022 on a joint Liberal Party-Nationals ticket. It is unlikely the Nationals would win a Senate seat in Victoria standing alone.
In the current inner-party discussions there is one thing Ley and Littleproud have in common. It’s called time. After such a devastating defeat, not many Australians will be focused on the Liberals and Nationals for at least 2½ years (until the lead-up to the 2028 election). Apart, that is, from how Liberals and Nationals vote in the Senate, where both share the balance of power along with the Greens when parliament resumes in July.
There is no hurry to confirm Coalition agreements or choose shadow ministers. The Coalition broke up after Labor’s victory in December 1972 but was repaired by mid-1974. There was a further break in 1987 at the time of the Queensland Nationals’ premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen “Joh for PM” madness. This extended the life of the Hawke-Keating Labor government. The Coalition under Howard led in the polls in late 1986 but lost the July 1987 election and took years to recover.
Howard’s message to The Australian’s Simon Benson and Sarah Elks last week was direct. Namely, “the best interests of the two parties is served by being in coalition”. And this has been the case since the early 20th century. This is a precedent for Ley.

That lowered the hysterical "denihilism" down a notch or two, and though the guest spot was reserved for a bigoted bout of Ughmann choosing who should come into the country, the temperature stayed lukewarm ...

The header: It’s not racist to hold the line on who lives here, The nation’s capital stock is not growing in line with the population, with implications for living standards. And it is not racist to include social cohesion as one measure of who gets to live here.

The caption: One of the last loads of migrants in Australia’s organised immigration program of the 1940s through to the 1970s arrives. Picture: News Corp Australia

The Ughmann turned the oldest trick in the book, providing too much information in the hope that it would soften the bigotry to follow, make the reader more open to bigoted companionship ...

It was 1988 and I was standing in line at the head office of Westgate Security in Parramatta, dressed in a green uniform I had picked from a rack of discarded clothes in the changing room.
I had just finished a two-day security course that bought a licence I hoped would lead to some work. Nothing was guaranteed. The way the system worked was that new guards turned up at the office and lined up to be allocated one of the jobs scrawled on the whiteboard behind the main desk.
On my belt was the PR-24 side-handle baton and a 4D Mag­Lite torch. I still have both. The 38cm long torch is made of aircraft-grade aluminium alloy and is powered by four D-cell batteries. Once filled with the big batteries, it weighs about a kilogram, making it part torch and mostly truncheon. The ex-cop had advised us that, if necessary, it was better to brain people with the torch than the baton because it would be easier to defend in court.

Way TMFI, compounded by the illustrative snap ... Part of Chris Uhlmann’s Westgate Security ID pass.

That's just part of the build-up, the generating of sympathy for someone who's been there and done that, a man of the world, so that you might forgive him if he ends up adjacent to stories such as Trump falsely claims Australia being 'inundated' by white South Africans fleeing 'genocide'.

So many lies and distortions and in such a quick time, per Reuters' Trump's image of dead 'white farmers' came from Reuters footage in Congo, not South Africa.

Sorry, back to the Ughmann ...

The line was a mix of unskilled workers, like me. That’s not entirely true. I had an associate diploma in religious studies, earned in three years studying to be a priest in my first, failed, career.
This was, in the immortal words of my junior rugby league coach, “as useless as tits on a bull” when it came to getting work in the 1980s, when the unemployment rate ranged from 8 per cent to 10 per cent nationally and was much higher the further down the food chain you swam.

He'd probably fail as a farmer too, because bulls do have tits, and they're actually very useful as a way of improving breeding ...

So on to an authentic account with an authentic racist, fresh out of Romper Stomper...

I had spent two years as a storeman and packer, and was painfully aware that some very bad life decisions had put me at the bottom of that chain. The demographic in the security guard queue was as broad as Sydney’s western suburbs, with currency lads like me and those from Greek, Italian and Lebanese heritage predominating.
The guy behind me in the line tapped me on the shoulder.
“You’re new, mate, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Well, when you get to the front of the line, that guy is going to offer you a job at McDonald’s at Cabramatta.”
“Great, I need a job.”
“Don’t take it.”
“Why?”
“Viets, mate, they will stab you,” he said in a stage whisper that could be heard across the room. “They stabbed one of our guys there last week and now none of us will go there.”
This sparked an animated discussion in the line. Every ethnicity had a view. The consensus was that, as guards, they expected someone might try to punch them. If they hit the ground, it was considered poor form, but not unexpected, that someone might kick them.
But stabbing people was unacceptable.
“It’s un-Australian,” said a guy who might best be described as hailing from the Once Were Warriors end of Auckland.
I was offered, and declined, the job in Cabramatta. I don’t remember where I did work that night but the debate with the guards left a lifelong impression and it mirrored arguments I had read in a book called All for Australia, written by historian Geoffrey Blainey.
There Blainey, controversially, argued that immigration policy, particularly the rapid increase in Asian immigration, was being driven by politicians, academics and the media rather than public consensus.

Surprising, going the old Blainers route, especially as Sir Keir showed there was still life in Enoch.

Still, a local bigot is a good port in a storm for local bigotry, Professor Geoffrey Blainey. Picture: Matthew Farrell

The good news?

Events and time have made Blainey irrelevant, and now make the Ughmann just as irrelevant. All that Canute tide-turning didn't manage to stop Australia turning into a pluralistic, diverse community ...

Blainey believed the pace and scale of the change risked social cohesion. He argued that policymakers did not live in the “frontline suburbs” where the reality of the rapidly changing demographics landed. And there I was on the frontline, and some of those loudly echoing Blainey’s arguments were the most recent immigrants. This is something I have witnessed many times since.
I had direct experience with the wave of post-Vietnam War immigration to Australia. The novice master at our seminary, Father Tony King, had been instrumental in getting a group of Vietnamese sisters settled in an old Josephite convent at Granville. He was a great and good man but hailed from the old-school opinion that everyone understood English as long as you spoke it slowly and loudly enough. Today he would be considered a relic, but unlike those with no deeds to match their polished words, he settled about two dozen women from refugee camps in Southeast Asia.
The term boatpeople was coined in Australia when five Vietnamese asylum-seekers arrived in Darwin in April 1976 in a small fishing boat. Only about 2000 of the 90,000 Vietnamese who were resettled here came this way, but each illegal boat poured petrol on the immigration debate.
In the wake of Blainey’s book, opposition leader John Howard would walk into the minefield of immigration and social cohesion, with predictable consequences. He was branded a racist and it was among the reasons he lost the Liberal Party’s leadership before being resurrected in 1995.
As prime minister, he cracked down hard on illegal immigration and famously said the government would decide who came to the country and the manner in which they came.
Howard understood what activists ignored: that the Australian people would countenance one of the world’s largest per capita immigration programs only if they believed it was orderly. Illegal boat arrivals threatened to derail the peaceful settlement of millions. If you need evidence for this, look to Europe. Disorderly immigration driven by bad government decisions drove Brexit in Britain and the rise of Alternative for Germany. We have avoided wrenching social discord because of Howard’s hard line.
The nation should be grateful to Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. Their unflinching stand against illegal immigration means the mass immigration program still enjoys broad public support. Being brutal on boat turnbacks and offshore processing is now bipartisan. No one should be more grateful for this than Labor, which is still quietly sending illegal immigrants to Nauru.
But it is past time to have a serious national conversation about the size and shape of Australia’s legal immigration program.
The numbers arriving have been much too high for too long. The nation’s capital stock is not growing in line with the population, and this has serious implications for productivity, living standards and long-term growth.
And it is not racist for a country to include social cohesion as one measure of who gets to live here.

But if we're talking social cohesion, shouldn't the reptiles immediately be deported somewhere to some hellhole?

Isn't their idle rhetoric the most dire threat to social cohesion doing the rounds, especially as it's just a thinly disguised form of whites only in a white land, or white supremacism or white nationalism and love our values or leave town ...

It's been around for a long, long time ...

... albeit redressed and made over to suit the circumstances and the times and see what might be saleable ... Sky News host Chris Kenny says immigration is the “big issue” of the campaign for both major Australian political parties. Mr Kenny said the Coalition “haven’t hit” enough on the immigration debate. “Right around the country, housing crisis, cost of living crisis, everybody knows it’s driven by record immigration.”

The pond's only regret?

In lowering the heat (and the tone) there has been no room for King Donald or his minions or cartoons celebrating same...

And so to a few last words ...

If a politician cannot criticise the Chinese Communist Party for fear of losing Chinese Australian votes during an election, then we have a problem. If Jewish Australians fear for their safety, then we have a problem. If we have imported all the religious and ethnic disputes of the world, then we have a problem.

What an ineffably stupid man he is. 

First of all we imported convicts, with all the class disputes that involved, and then we imported many other religious and ethnic disputes and a long time ago at that, as celebrated in the wiki on Sectarianism in Australia...

You'd think a wannabe papist would remember the glory days ... what with him back in the day being one of the proscribed, though likely to have received a warm welcome from the South Vietnamese Catholics of Cabramatta ...

What the Ughmann is really doing is that old dog whistle about Islamics. We all know that the reference to the religious and ethnic disputes of the world isn't a reference to Jews or to the government of Israel's current ethnic cleansing genocide in Gaza.

It's to those pesky, difficult Islamics and fellow travellers appalled by the shameless ethnic cleansing (and that was in April!) ...

What else to be said?

Recently, Anthony Albanese introduced the idea of “progressive patriotism”. He said it would be a guiding principle of his second term in government and it meant embracing national pride rooted in inclusivity, fairness and shared values.
What are those shared values? What does it mean to be an Australian in the 21st century? It’s time to call the line together for another chat.

Whatever the shared values might be, if they happen to include the Ughman's values or those of the reptiles in the lizard Oz hive mind, count the pond out ...

Perhaps in closing Tom the Dancing Bug can help here ...

Want some more thoughts on white grievance?