In which the pond sups on "Ned's" tears and relives the culture wars with a valiant, defiant Dame Slap ...

 

The reading for the day:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance and blind ideology happeneth to them all.
For man (and the odd womyn) also knoweth not their time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons (and the odd daughter) of Murdoch snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me.

Let the homilies featuring broad churches begin.

What a pile on, and the reptiles plough on oblivious, or if dimly aware, surly and resentful. 

As noted by a correspondent, there was Margaret Simons in The Graudian, As Australia’s election result reminds us, News Corp no longer has the power to sway voters.

It’s old news, but people are only just beginning to believe it.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has, for some time now, been impotent when it comes to affecting the outcomes of elections.
Once, it was widely accepted – though possibly never entirely true – that if a political leader did not have the blessing of Rupert Murdoch, then they could not win power.
That hasn’t been the case for at least 15 years, and yet we have not broken free from the fear, caution and intellectual paralysis that results from the belief.
At every state and federal election in Australia since 2010, the Murdoch press has supported the Coalition, and usually campaigned vigorously against Labor and other opponents. But look at the results in those contests. No discernible impact...

And so on and so it goes ...

...Identity politics, important in its way, has obscured too much of the politics of class, including economic and educational inequality.
So, for once and for all, let’s accept that News Corporation will do what it does. If there are facts and arguments, think about them. If not – don’t waste your time.
Sharri Markson backs Dutton? Andrew Bolt reckons the voters got it wrong? Peta Credlin thinks there should be more, not less, culture war?
These are non-stories. The effusions of vanity projects. Let’s not mention them again.
Instead there is harder work to be done – to write our own agenda, to engage with the world as it is – not with Murdoch’s shadow.

Bless their socks, there were some Nationals still lurking in the shadows, still eager to nuke the country and their chances ...

You could pick the ABC or The Conversation ... it goes without saying that the lizard Oz was still promoting climate science denialism and the dumping of net zero, while the cardigan wearers were featuring solar and batteries.

And yet ...days after Bid turned up on Sky News to say that nuking the country was a no brainer,  the fearless Bid returned to the belly of the beast crying out for an honest appraisal of what went wrong ... (and that's a very rare Sky Noise link on the pond - be warned).

Here's a tip Bid. Honestly, you spend way too much time with the reptiles ...

Even the harping Hartcher, fresh from a stint on CNN explaining down under to the Yanks, couldn't resist a snipe in his listicle of lessons to be learned ...Election delivers hard lessons for the Libs. But they can’t say they weren’t warned (soft paywall)

...A third lesson that the Liberals really should learn? The Murdoch media is their ally, but it is not a good indicator of electoral support. When The Australian, Sky News After Dark, the Daily Telegraph and the rest lavish praise and encouragement on the Liberals, the credulous Libs interpret this as public support.
It is not. It is Murdoch support. And that is not going to win you an election. This election, once again, illustrates the impotence of Murdoch to generate votes. Love from the Murdoch media is the siren song that lures smitten Liberals onto the rocks of electoral disaster.

Over in The Echidna (The Canberra Times' newsletter, no link, sign up here for bonus infallible Pope cartoons) John Hanscombe put it discreetly under the discreet header Old fart influencers no longer sway opinion:

Day after day, the posts kept coming on that old farts social media platform otherwise known as Facebook.
"Ray Hadley slams..." "Ray Hadley says..." "What the hell happened: Ray Hadley reacts to election boilover."
Hadley on such high rotation you'd have thought he was running for office. He wasn't, of course, just meddling in the process on that old farts FB page run by the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph.
What a blast from the past, I kept thinking as I scrolled past his unsolicited critiques of Albo (the "worst prime minister ever") and Labor. I also wondered why links to his missives kept appearing on my feed before remembering that I, too, was an old fart and the algorithm assumed I was an easy mark. I wasn't.
I never took any notice of Hadley when he was vaguely relevant because I only ever encountered his radio hectoring in cabs to or from Sydney airport - an angry voice in angry traffic I did my best to ignore. That was years ago. Nowadays the cab drivers are more likely to play Bollywood music than 2GB, which is infinitely preferable.
Now it's all wrapped up and everyone's picking over the corpse of the Coalition, Hadley's exhumation in the News Corp stable looks like money spent poorly. Where he once wielded great influence, Hadley clearly didn't shift opinion in this election.
Nor did Murdoch stablemates Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin, Paul Murray, Rowan Dean and Sharri Markson. In the end they were like drunks in the gutter yelling pointlessly into the empty vault of heaven (apologies to George MacDonald Fraser and his character Flashman).
What's clear as the dust settles is that it wasn't just the Coalition that lost the election. Its cheerleaders not only went down with the ship but may have been responsible for luring it into treacherous waters: an echo chamber divorced from the reality outside it. Extensive friendly coverage from one news stable might make you think you're on track to win until, that is, you face the reality on election night.
The electorate is much younger. Gen Z and the Millennials now outnumber Boomers. They get their news and opinions from multiple platforms, their lives are no longer scheduled around the nightly TV news and their listening habits are much more likely to involve podcasts than daily harangues on AM radio.
The audience to which News Corp appeals is older, more likely set in its political ways and dwindling through natural attrition - a bit like the Liberal Party whose average member is said to be male, white and in their 70s.
Even in the digital ecosystem Sky News is watching its audience shrink. It peaked at number 11 in May 2023 but by March the following year it had dropped out of the top 20 Australian news sites.
In a searing analysis on The Guardian website yesterday, Margaret Simons offered an explanation for News Corp's declining influence over Australian politics. At the very bottom of news outlets in terms of trust were news⁠.com⁠.au, Sky News, the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph. This was based on research undertaken by the University of Canberra's Digital News Report.
I've since had words with the algorithm, told it I want to snooze posts from the Daily Telegraph. In a month's time I'll know if it has twigged to the times and snoozed Ray Hadley.

Alas and alack, no snooze button for the pond, it is the pond's sacred duty to be lured by the reptiles' siren song into the Murdochian shadows each day, hopefully to return alive and with a modicum of sanity retained.

What did the journey offer this day?

Phew, at least the reptiles were so distracted, they hadn't noticed the tangerine tyrant's latest trolls, whether returning to Alcatraz, tariffing the flicks up the wazoo, wild ranting about Obama's library, or the main show, featuring elbows up Carney v. the mango mauler...

Over on the extreme far right, the reptiles were still lurking beneath the seat total on the tape, but the pond cut to the chase ...

This is the first time in yonks that the pond had actually looked forward to nattering "Ned" doing his Chicken Little routine, looking anxiously at the clouds and wondering where it all went wrong...

How sweet did it get?

Yes, there was the portentous, pompous "Ned" urging the Libs to reject the reptiles at the lizard Oz? 

Who else could he mean when he talked in apocalyptic biblical terms of broad churches and false demons?

Liberals must revive ‘broad church’ and reject false demons, John Howard knew the ‘broad church’ concept was the key to internal unity and winning. If today’s Liberals have any hope, they need to understand and take the best from their past. Or will a beaten party now devour itself?

For those who hate small print, the caption: Peter Dutton delivers the Budget Reply at Parliament House in March.

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

Now on with "Ned" writhing and reeling, all five minutes, so the reptiles said, as the pond tackled the modest K2 climb with gusto:

The depth of the Liberal Party crisis was not invented over the past month. It has been years in the making – directly traceable to 2015 and 2016 and going back even further. The party was put on notice with the 2022 election defeat and what did it do? Next to nothing, taking refuge in denial.
The party failed to act after the devastating 2022 campaign review conducted by Brian Loughnane and Jane Hume, and there are real fears the Liberals will fall short again. Political parties are tribal beasts, living by their tribal faiths and rituals. It takes a wrench to reset. Whatever the Liberals decide, they should begin with a clean slate – everything must be on the table.
The reason the Liberal Party was broken in election 2025 was because too many Australians no longer knew what the Liberals stood for and too many who did know were no longer persuaded. The Liberal Party needs an imaginative reconception.
Malcolm Fraser and John Howard – the two longest serving Liberal prime ministers after Robert Menzies – reinterpreted Liberal values and policies for their own times. They invoked Menzies but rewrote Menzies. That’s what successful leaders do. That task is now greater than ever because the party faces a crisis of identity, organisation, philosophy and policy.

Such is the reptile delusion of relevance and potency that they returned to the notion of "Ned" as a member of a triptych ... The Australian Editor-At-Large Paul Kelly talks about the future of the Liberal Party, Labor's success and the future of Australian politics

Here's a depressing thought, pace John Hanscombe. 

The pond's YouTube logarithms have started to feature lizard Oz AV distractions, offered up outside the paywall, for free.

What had the pond done to deserve this? Why had the reptiles decided they needed to give away their stuff? Was it lizard Oz irrelevancy syndrome in action? Were they trying to appeal to vulgar youff and somehow only ended up attracting old farts?

Never mind, they're easily ignored, as is "Ned" ...

The lesson of election 2025 is that the public will endorse a lacklustre Labor government if the alter­native is weak and unconvincing. The Liberals cannot win on Labor’s mistakes; they need to win on their values and policies. Integral to this task is repairing their ties to four pivotal centres of Australian life – the managerial and professional class, women, younger voters under 40 and ethnic communities.
In truth, too many Liberals are alienated and uncomfortable with too many centres of contemporary Australian life. The Liberals are experts at criticising what’s wrong with Australia but inept in sorting out any solution. Often they lack the language and cultural ability to explain themselves and their values to their fellow Australians. The country is changing around them.
This election has altered the structure of Australian politics. It will deliver another two terms of Labor government – making nine years in total – but when the inevitable swing against Labor arrives it won’t guarantee a Coalition government with, at that point, a minority ALP government being a distinct possibility.
The chief defect in the Liberal 2025 campaign was lack of conviction. Peter Dutton ran a campaign of extraordinary caution (nuclear power aside). It was narrowcast, focused on a flawed cost-of-living effort such that, in branding terms, the Liberal identity virtually equated with cheaper petrol. Full stop. That retail pitch would work only if encased in a values branding – and that never happened.

The reptiles reminded "Ned" of that dire monster, smugly smirking as he talked with sundry reptiles, Australia’s re-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese talks to the media as he visits his Sydney electorate.

It set "Ned" up for yet more moaning and suffering...

The Liberals were frightened of Labor. They matched most of Labor’s spending; refused to embrace tax reform and backed tax rises instead; shunned industrial relations reform; delivered a budget bottom line with higher deficits than Labor for the next two years; delayed their higher-spending defence policy until people were voting; failed to explain how they would deliver cheaper power; rarely discussed economic management; and shunned any cultural issues – most conspicuously an education policy to tackle declining school performance.
Leadership is more vital than ever in Australia’s presidential-style politics. Anthony Albanese not only outpointed Dutton at that level. Labor has a proven model of personal targeting of Liberal leaders – destroying them on character grounds – with its cultural messages taken up by progressive media, educational and cultural influencers.
It happened with Scott Morrison; it was repeated with Dutton. Yet the Liberals seem devoid of any retaliatory strategy to a Labor method now decisive in election outcomes. This doesn’t deny the limitations of Morrison and Dutton – but it highlights the fact by election day neither Liberal leader was actually electable.
The 2025 Liberal campaign was one of its worst. But historical context is essential to grasp what happened. At the last four federal elections the aberrant result was 2019 when Morrison defeated Bill Shorten, just. In the other three elections – 2016, 2022 and 2025 – the Liberals were outsmarted, out-campaigned and suffered numerous losses, with Malcolm Turnbull just falling over the line in 2016, Morrison suffering the worst defeat in Liberal history in 2022, only to be exceeded by Dutton in 2025 suffering an even worse defeat.

The reptiles rubbed it in with snaps of the clap happy liar from the shire and the head prefect, Scott Morrison, Malcolm Fraser

"Ned" was deep in his grief, confessing to failures and heading back to convict days, as only members of the hive mind can do ...

At each election the same defects were on display: weak projection of Liberal values, unappealing policies, poor on-the-ground organisation, an inability to counter fierce Labor negative campaigns, repeated Labor messages the Liberals were risks to Medicare, and a deepening sense the Liberals were out of touch with contemporary Australia. The Liberals kept fooling themselves the worst wasn’t happening. The traps were Morrison’s 2019 election win and Dutton’s 2023 referendum victory on the voice.
These were wins against the trend. During the recent campaign I wrote the danger for the Liberals was that 2025 would repeat the 2022 defeat. I got that wrong – it was far worse.
It will take a long time, post-election, to sort the future direction. There are two catastrophic factional pathways to be avoided.
The first is the idea the Liberals weren’t conservative enough at this election and the party must embrace the populist pro-Trump right, lean into aggressive conservatism and lurch further to the right, the sort of view favoured by the populist right-wing media.
This proposition is based on a misreading of Australia’s character and history and betrays the foundational principles of the Liberal Party. If followed, it would terminate the Liberals as a governing party.
From the inception of European politics on this continent with the arrival of the British in 1788 Australia has never been a major­ity conservative nation. It never will be. There is no national party called conservative for good reason. There have been three great political traditions in this country – liberalism, social democracy (or socialism) and conservatism. The latter is the weakest.

Is there no hope, is all lost? Stand by for a celebration of the lying rodent as the way forward ...John Howard makes victory speech at Wentworth Hotel in 1996.

... and never mind that he too lost his seat, which meant some mangling of that broad church blather was needed from "Ned" ... somehow not the lying rodent, but sort of like the lying rodent ...

That the Liberal Party might decide 80 years after Menzies formed and named the Liberal Party that it was essentially a conservative party would be an act of political self-destruction.
The second blunder would be to decide the Liberal Party had to engage in a half-hearted embrace of left progressivism as its salvation mantra to win back women, the youth vote and the teal seats. This is tantamount to political surrender on the terms dictated by your opponents.
It would mean the abandonment of Liberal values as well as liberalism’s values; a deliberate realignment to the left; a degree of acceptance of progressive views on identity contrary to the party’s success in defeating the voice referendum; embracing much of the progressive critique of the Western cultural tradition; and accommodating, post-Covid, the rise of government paternalism, higher government spending and growing state power in most aspects of life and social control edicts.
Any such option would shatter the unity of the Liberal Party, betray its principles and guarantee a fracture from the conservative wing. Again, it would be fatal for the party.
The best framing for the future is the Howard concept of a “broad church”. That broad church is now in ruins. But its revival is the only viable strategy because it opens the lens wide, it is inclusive, it incorporates both the liberal and conservative traditions, it offers a broad basis for public policy and a welcoming window for a wide range of Australians. It would open the party to the country, not shut its doors.
This doesn’t mean Howard revisited; it means reinterpreting the “broad church” for the 2020s. The risk now is a factional conflict between conservatives and so-called moderates on the party’s future.
Howard knew the “broad church” concept was the key to internal unity and winning elections. If today’s Liberals have any hope for their future, they need to understand and take the best from their past. Or will a beaten party now devour itself?

For a nanosecond the pond thought the reptiles had decided to reform themselves. 

"Ned" didn't actually suggest the coalition give up reading the lizard Oz, but at least he had a glimmer of understanding of how following the reptiles had resulted in a trip up shit creek ...

And below him, there was Paulie announcing that the pond was a "real person", a human bean ...

Libs must realise ‘real Australians’ live in cities, too
Of all the errors that led to the Coalition’s shattering defeat, few were more ruinous than the belief that the future of conservative politics lay not in the traditional heartland seats of the cities but in the socially conservative outer suburbs.
By Paul Maley

Too soon, way too soon. 

Step aside Paulie, Dame Slap was on hand, in a six minute rage worthy of Hadders, and she was down for more feuding and fussing, old hidebound reptile style ...

Carry on culture warring: Liberals must not tremble over ‘culture wars’ — but own them, Debates about what kind of culture we want in this country must respond to the times. But the values stay constant. Without a firm foundation of values, a political party is just a house of cards.

The caption, for those confused by the arty graphic: Former opposition leader Peter Dutton.

The magical incantation the pond always ignores: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Dame Slap wasn't about to go all meek and mild and blather about broad churches. 

She was for doubling down and maintaining the culture wars rage ...

This was the first federal election in 20 years of writing where I had little to say, on paper at least. The reason I didn’t pen a single column on the campaign was simple. It was the most lacklustre one I’ve seen in more than 20 years, a series of transactional handouts from both sides that did nothing to address the seriously big challenges facing the country.
Now that the bloodletting has started inside and outside the Liberal Party, there is something worth saying: don’t fall for the claims that the culture wars are rotten or lead inevitably to defeat.
Our biggest culture war in the past 20 years – the voice referendum – was squarely about our political culture, about equal civic rights for all Australians. More than 60 per cent of Australians sided with equality. It was the most resounding mainstream victory for our culture the country has seen.
Since the nationwide pasting suffered by Liberals last weekend, a line-up of predictable names and faces has announced, in all seriousness, that the culture wars killed off Peter Dutton’s chance to become prime minister. People don’t like the culture wars, we’re assured – again. The Libs need to step away from the culture wars if they want to be relevant to voters, they’re saying – again. Talk about deja vu. Every time the Libs lose a federal election, it’s painted as an existential crisis and critics announce that the Libs must stop engaging in the culture wars.
Rubbish. Genuine Liberals need to stop trembling about these “culture war” accusations from opponents, inside and outside the party.

The reptiles featured some genuine liberals in an epic collage, the ones up shit creek. Not the one on the left (should have been far right), but the others (L-R) Peter Dutton, Andrew Hastie, Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor.

Dame Slap ignored that visual offering and went on with the ranting in a way which delighted the pond.

Everything is about culture. 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.
What is remotely warlike, or even scary, about debating whether we want more regulation of small business – or less? That’s one about our business culture. Do we want unions to dictate workplace laws – or not, given they represent a shrinking portion of the nation’s workers? That’s a debate about our workplace culture. Do we want a culture that creates equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? These are very different. The former empowers individuals. The latter empowers the state. Do we want an aspirational, productive culture? If we do, we’d better have the economic policies to match.
The Liberals failed to express these simple ideas about our culture. Which is no surprise because they had no policies to match these important values. If you don’t start from first principles, then you will lose your way and stand for nothing.
What value do we place on improving literacy and numeracy, for example – or are we happy with Australian students consistently falling behind other Western countries? Unbelievably, in the final weeks of the campaign, senior Liberals rejected a desperately needed curriculum overhaul. Seriously? They don’t deserve to govern at the moment.
Do we think universities should encourage students how to think rather than tell them what to think? These are debates about the culture of our education system – are we highbrow or content with dumbing students down?
These are big ideas that deserve to be debated.
On that front, do we think people should be able to express their views freely without being labelled racist or misogynist or transphobic unless they are inciting violence?
Or do we want to crack down on speech with “hate speech” laws even if those laws may be exploited by people who simply hate the speech of their opponents?
That’s another important debate about the culture of freedom in our democracy.
The more recent debate about welcome to country is also about our culture. Do we want every Zoom meeting, footy game, conference, school assembly to start with a political statement that has become part of a bigger project to divide the nation between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people?

The reptiles decided to distract with a snap of former chairman Rudd, Kevin Rudd launches his 2007 election campaign at the Dame Joan Sutherland Centre.

That triggered Dame Slap and she carried on ranting:

Last weekend a reader wrote that I might need to rethink my scepticism of welcomes to country given Labor’s win. Why? It’s possible that many Australians oppose welcome to country but, given what was on offer, chose Labor’s handouts over the opposition’s. Indeed there is growing evidence that most Australians think welcomes are at best overused and at worst unwelcome.
Ever since I’ve been writing, the “culture wars” have become a general-purpose scare tactic used by a certain class of people who don’t really want to engage in debates. They are usually on the left side of the political spectrum, be it hard-left Greens or soft-left liberals. They mostly work in politics, in the media, in universities, in the places where debates about ideas should be rich and robust, in fact.
But they use the “war” word deliberately because wars are nasty and must end. “War” is deliberately used to shut down debate. But debates are healthy. They should be encouraged.
Critics of “culture wars” will never talk about the need for a debate about what’s in the education curriculum. Instead, they will describe that debate as a culture war over education.

It all sounded eerily familiar and it took Wilcox to remind the pond of another recent example:

The reptiles did try to undermine Dame Slap a little, did introduce consternated Kate taking up the "Ned" chant, urging on a "broad church" and a kumbaya coming together ...

Former ACT chief minister Kate Carnell says the Liberal Party is a “broad church” as it maintains a diverse range of opinions on the Voice to Parliament. “The Liberal Party is a broad church, it has been since the days of Menzies,” she told Sky News Australia. “There are people on both sides of the agenda – people who are more conservative than others, we come together in the middle based upon good economic management and those sorts of issues.”

Water off a duck's back, with Dame Slap not for turning. This was her six minutes of ranting at clouds, and she was all in.

How she loved her black knight strategy, hacking away at all she had loved, and still yearned for ...

In this same way, debates about using phonics to teach kids how to read became the “reading wars”. Debates about our history became the “history wars”. On and on it went. When some women expressed doubts about the notion that we could have it all, choosing to care for our own children instead of full-time childcare, that became the “mummy wars”. Can’t we just have a debate in this country without resorting to this puerile notion of a war?
As prime minister, John Howard took aim at the “self-appointed cultural dietitians” because back then they wanted to tell us what to think, and if we didn’t agree with them they tried to push us out of the public square with claims that the culture wars were bad, or over, or both.
They are nothing if not predictable. In 2007, after the Rudd­slide that turfed Howard from power, left-leaning Guy Rundle told people like me the culture wars were over. Rundle said The Australian needed to “clean house” because people like me had “no dialogue with the times”. Over at the ABC, Jon Faine said there needed to be a “cleansing” of voices like mine.
After Labor was defeated in 1996, 1998, 2001, 2013 and 2019, I don’t recall anyone on the conservative side saying the marketplace of ideas should be cleansed of people such as Rundle, Faine or any of their other fellow travellers. It wouldn’t be much of a marketplace of ideas if only one set of views is on offer.

The reptiles hastily slipped in another snap of that epic seat loser, the lying rodent, John Howard

Dame Slap wasn't up for turning or for distraction ... she knew what "liberal values" meant. 

Constant war, constant raging as the reptiles had done for decades...

It’s passing strange that the same people who use the term “culture war” will talk heartily about the importance of culture when they’re talking about things they support. The arts, for example, as a central part of our culture, should be supported with public funds, they will say. I agree, up to a point.
Even if I disagree with them, that doesn’t make our disagreement a culture war. It’s just a disagreement. Debates sharpen ideas. Shutting down debates allows dumb ideas to flourish, untested. It’s as simple as that.
If the Liberals let go of liberal values, shy away from big debates about these values or fail to effectively articulate them to voters, then the party will face a genuine existential crisis. There is a rich choice of left-wing offerings on the table for voters. If the Libs join that cultural chorus line, why would voters side with a Labor-lite when they can have the real Labor Party?
Conservatism doesn’t need a defibrillator; it needs a decent leader. There won’t be another Howard. In any case, debates about what kind of culture we want in this country must respond to the times. But the values stay constant. Without a firm foundation of values, a political party is just a house of cards.

Please allow the pond to remind those few who might have forgotten of Dame Slap's firm foundation of values ... beyond the valley of the IPA, over in Cantaloupe Caligula territory ...

Strange that Dame Slap hadn't urged on the nuking of everything, what with her own desire to nuke stuff ...

Perhaps another nuking day ...

And so to the infallible Pope to wrap up proceedings, offering a way of escaping this very narrow church by turning into turtle ...

As for the pond's travelogue, on the way back to Tamworth the pond paused to admire the graffiti on what is loosely called Thunderbolt's Rock ...

For years the pond was impressed with the indefatigable ability of Australians to fuck over a landscape, as the pond drove along a road it came to know by heart. 

Oh sweet days, leg over the gear shift to hold the FX in third, arm draped over the driver's door to keep it closed, foot just above the tar visible through the big rust hole adjacent to the accelerator.

This was pond country, big sky country, and Ben's battered rust bucket with the vacuum wipers was the pumpkin of choice ...