In which the presence of Hannah Ferguson compels the pond to offer a petulant Peta contrast ...

 

Such is the serendipity of the pond's logarithms that the pond reeled back in surprise when this hovered into view on YouTube:

IN FULL: Cheek Media's Hannah Ferguson speaks at National Press Club | ABC NEWS

The pond has largely given up on FTA, as has Ferguson, so in the normal course would have missed the lunchtime ABC offering.

The pond started viewing and, not being on Instagram, TikTok, or any of the other fangled devilish intertubes devices, was surprised by the performance and even more by the content. Ferguson was young, feisty, spoke very quickly and was very intense, and in a ploy designed to pander to the pond's prejudices, had it in for the Murdochians and the lizard Oz. Hang on, let's not undersell, she loathed them in the way the pond loathes them.

She had all the pond's talking points down pat, and delivered them with much more force than the pond could ever muster. Ah, the advantage of being part of vulgar youff.

Ferguson is supposedly part of the tribe of online commentators (she hates the word "influencer") the reptiles love to hate.

The pond has no knowledge of the intricate, arcane rituals of vulgar youff, but apparently she intruded on the last election at the expense of legacy media, and if that's true the pond is all for it.

For a start, she called herself as 6'2" and a threat to men in lifts, which pleased the pond no end, with (a) the use of imperial measurements which the pond understands, and (b) the celebration of tall women. (Got something against tall? Sing to the hand, or the pond will start singing a verse of Short People in an insulting tone).

She announced that she'd be running at the next election as an independent, while acknowledging defeat was the likely outcome, revealing an inclination to martyrdom, or perhaps a desire for notoriety. 

If the greenies had any gumption, they'd try to beguile her into a prime Senate slot, but perhaps independence (and a refusal to take money from the usual suspects) is a key part of her brand.

The pond hopes that as the world delivers its knocks - the long absent lord help her if she becomes victim of a real reptile crusade - she won't lose her feistiness or her assorted passions. On the evidence to hand, the pond would back her against a horde of lizard Oz reptiles.

The pond hastily looked up Cheek Media, and discovered her intermittent filings on Substack, and noted with relief that she was listed on Saxton Speakers and defiantly sold vibrators as a way to finance herself. 

Most of the questions she was asked were fawning, perhaps because the questioners feared being eviscerated in the way Ferguson had done to "legacy media" during the prepared part of her talk.

Replete, the pond turned to watching a performance of Tchaikovky's Violin Concerto by Alena Baeva, who also made a mark while very young.

According to Ferguson, the shamelessly cowardly reptiles of the lizard Oz did a no show:

The Australian, who's not here today I believe, ran a range of hit pieces on female content creators right before they massaged the coalition's policies into the nightly bulletin.
Interviews with Prime Minister Albanese and former Greens leader Adam Bandt were labeled a warm hug... easy ... conversational
I haven't seen Sky's after dark program ask any politician about the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, reform to negative gearing, or the fact that more than half of the gas exported from our country attracts no royalty payments. These were the questions to which many emerging commentators were asking for answers...

Well yes, but anyone expecting answers must keep whistling in the dark if they turn to the lizard Oz, as the pond does, blindly hoping for light in the darkness:

As usual, Thursday posed a problem for the pond. 

The pond takes seriously the often expressed desire by correspondents to avoid a serving of petulant Peta, and yet there she was, top of the world ma, bold as brass and exceptionally silly, proof positive that for every Ferguson on the rise there was a hack hacking away:

The pond even did a deep dive to see if there was anybody or anything else ...

Nope, nada, a blank.

There was just Rowan rowing the 'reptile war with China' boat yet again ...

How China uses defence of its diaspora to silence criticism
The accusation about ‘Chinese spies’ was unfortunate, but in truth Chinese-Australians are not as easily offended as the Chinese Communist Party would have you believe.
By Rowan Callick
Contributor

Jack the Insider decided to raise the alarums, but repeating him would just be providing free publicity to wretches not worth noting...

Beware: Online child-predator group spreads to Australia
Nihilist online networks such as 764 and No Lives Matter rely on a grab bag of extremist ideologies that include Nazism and the occult to persuade young people to stream depraved and self-harming acts.
By Jack the Insider

The pond decided that by starting with Ferguson, it had earned the right to indulge in a little petulant Peta, especially as the header was richly comic:

Sussan Ley is proof the merit system works
We do need more women in the party, but quotas are not the answer. We need to attract more women at branch membership level if we want more women on the frontbench.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

Beyond the valley of the farcical, and here's the proposed compromise. 

Those who can't stand it can head off to watch Ferguson, and to ease the petulant Peta pain, the pond has stripped her of all illustrations, rather like those military scenes in the movies where sergeants are brutalised back down to privates with a satisfying tearing of fabric and stitches.

So it's just one huge gobbet of gormless nonsense, and if you can't appreciate the fun, if you can't chortle at the ritual invocation of Ming the Merciless - hie thee to an apron and an iron and a picket fence, woman! - the pond can't help ...

Unlike Julia Gillard, who was the factional pick to take down a first-term prime minister, the first woman to lead the federal Liberal Party was elected, not selected.
That alone speaks to the party’s foundational belief that opportunity and merit should determine advancement. Indeed, as Robert Menzies said: “I am not half so interested in the sex … of my representatives as I am in the quality of their minds, the soundness of their characters, the humanity of their experience, the sanity of their policy and the strengths of their wills.”
Those words of Menzies should ring loudly in the ears of anyone who says gender-based quotas will fix the Liberal Party’s electoral fortunes. The Liberal Party does indeed need to get more women into its parliamentary ranks and to attract more female voters. But chasing votes on the left could lose as many votes to minor parties on the right. And the fundamental problem is not failing to win enough female votes but failing to win enough votes across the board. This has far more to do with its failure to create a contest with Labor and to develop strong policy than to any current lack of female leaders, or policies pitched specifically to women, or quotas designed to force the party to install women in particular seats.
I warned last week in this column that convulsions about turning left or right are counter-productive; the Liberal Party’s values are its North Star and that’s where the rebuild should start. If you get the policy right, the politics will follow. Thinking that a big-spending policy on childcare, for example, will win female voters is naive if the policy doesn’t reflect Liberal values by providing women (and men) with choice about how they raise their children, as opposed to Labor’s funding of unionised childcare only.
Simply matching Labor’s $18bn in subsidies for families earning up to $500k a year is hardly the Liberal way; certainly it’s hardly in the spirit of John Howard and Peter Costello, where policy was underpinned by sound economics.
But a party that’s spooked by its own shadow has lost the ability to contest policy and this must change under the new leader.
Sussan Ley is a Liberal who won a Nationals seat. As a pilot, a farmer and a former tax official, she has an attractive backstory but has never been regarded as a Canberra heavy-hitter, nor has she developed much of a political persona despite 24 years in public life. Possibly that’s because of past scandals over entitlements and somewhat eccentric positions, at least for Liberals, such as strong support for Palestine (which she has now put behind her) and fierce opposition to the live sheep trade.
Leading the opposition after a heavy defeat is the hardest job in politics. There’s little goodwill or benefit of the doubt from voters and certainly none from the Canberra press gallery. Ley has acquitted herself well in her opening encounters with her natural predators, firing back when she felt journalists weren’t giving her a fair go.

An early test will be how Ley handles the federal intervention into the NSW division of the party sparked by its faction-driven failure to lodge local government nominations on time. To revitalise itself and to entice people who normally vote Liberal to join, the NSW party desperately needs a new constitution encouraging members to debate policy and empowering them to preselect candidates.
But the factional bosses want a swift return to business as usual in a closed shop that in the past few years has lost 5000 members and refused to accept 600 new applicants lest factional controls slip.
Ley will face pressure from the moderate wing of the party, largely run by renewable energy lobbyist Michael Photios and including the likes of Malcolm Turnbull and Matt Kean with big commercial interests at stake, to back the Albanese government’s energy policy guaranteeing ongoing multibillion-dollar subsidies for wind and solar power. So far Ley has hedged her bets, putting off taking a position until a policy review.
While the Libs don’t need detailed policies until a year out from the next election, they can’t avoid having a broad position on key issues or dealing with legislation designed to wedge. Without being clear in what they stand for, they will never be able to develop a coherent critique of Labor.
This means if Ley is to avoid the trap of being Labor-lite she’ll have to thank her factional backers for their support while insisting on being her own person. To be more than a stopgap leader, she’ll have to emulate the likes of Menzies and Howard, leaders who saw politics as a contest of ideas and were willing to have robust internal debates.
By prizing unity above all else, Peter Dutton missed the opportunity to test the party’s policy settings, yet that’s an important part of opposition; not junking your values but shaping policy that reflects the needs of the community in line with party principles.
It may surprise those demanding quotas that the last time the Liberal Party’s share of the female vote was above 40 per cent was under Tony Abbott (45 per cent in 2013, 41 per cent in 2010 even against the first female prime minister). Paradoxically, while the left likes to claim women loved Turnbull, his time in office saw the Libs’ female vote slump to 35 per cent in 2016 and it has since fallen further.
That’s because women respond to a well-crafted, values-based policy agenda as much as men. It’s because that has been missing that women have walked away. And the style of our leaders in communicating with women, which is hardly less important than the policy offering, has been appalling.
On this, Ley is already different. But that’s not all down to gender. After all, Labor’s landslide win and increased share of the female vote have happened under a male leader and deputy.
Back in 1943, Menzies declared: “There is no reason why a qualified woman should not sit in parliament, or on the bench or in a professorial chair or preach from the pulpit or, if you like, command an army in the field.” And most of the female firsts were under Liberal governments. If the Coalition lacks strong female representation in parliament right now, it’s less the absence of quotas and more the disproportionate male membership at every level of the party.
A 2020 Menzies Research Centre paper revealed that scarcely 30 per cent of the Young Liberals membership was female and scarcely 40 per cent of the general membership was female.
The challenge is to increase female membership in the branches because it’s only if there’s a more numerous pipeline that women are going to enter parliament and go on to become frontbenchers in greater numbers.
To think that quotas, the most illiberal move the Liberal Party could make, are the silver bullet to solving its electoral crisis misunderstands the nature of the problem. Dividing us by identity, be it gender or race, is precisely what so many Australians rejected with the voice. As a woman, I can’t think of anything more demeaning than to be advanced by anything except hard work and ability.

Deeply pathetic, but if swallowed in one gulp, no worse than downing a tablespoon of cod liver oil, and with about the same medical benefits.

Having no snaps meant that eyes could glaze over until a relieving 'toon appeared ...

Golding has been on a remarkable roll of late. 

Here, have another one to remove all traces of petulance:

For a bonus the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist, a rare treat, but all the more a pleasure because this copy was also picture free.

The reptiles sulkily gave up the desire to nuke the country to save the planet, and took up chanting the new mantra, the urgent need to gas the country ...

Politics of renewables have been won, now for hard bit
Bowen still left with the realities of engineering, physics and delivery.
Editorial

3 min read

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been quick to claim vindication from the federal election result for his determination to push on with a renewable energy-focused transition of the nation’s electricity grid. On the politics, Mr Bowen is entitled to feel a sense of relief. So, too, is the renewable-energy industry, which has clear air to plan its investments without the uncertainty and potential of competition from government-owned nuclear power. Whatever the Coalition now decides to do with its nuclear policy, the issue realistically has moved beyond the time frame for the rollout of renewables that makes the business case for nuclear, if ever there was one, more difficult in the short to medium term.
Although Mr Bowen rightly can claim to have won the politics in renewables’ favour, he is still left with the realities of physics and engineering as well as the enormous task of turning complex and untested plans into realities. The Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project is still years behind schedule and six times over budget. The economics of floating offshore wind, the sort planned for NSW, are still best compared with those of nuclear power. Mr Bowen may claim deep community support for deployment of renewables but this does not mean there won’t be obstacles along the way.
Continued support will depend on the Albanese government continuing to shield electricity consumers from the cost of the transition. Mr Bowen says energy bill relief in the immediate term is in place while government and industry deliver lasting structural reform. “Australians understand this is more than a three-year fix, and we’ll keep working to deliver the modern grid Australians deserve,” he says.
In fact, the challenge will become more acute as the federal government revises its 2035 greenhouse gas emissions target as it continues to bid to hold a meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference of parties in co-operation with Pacific Island nations in 2026. For business, this means the net is being squeezed as the reality of what decarbonisation means becomes more apparent across all industry sectors, not just power.
There is a growing list of companies that have watered down their net-zero commitments as the US takes a different path under Donald Trump. The Australian election result did not stop Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue this week laying off about 90 staff working on its hydrogen projects, spread across its Queensland electrolyser facility and a hydrogen unit in Western Australia.
The positive news is that natural gas increasingly is being recognised as an essential part of Mr Bowen’s favoured modern grid. This is true from the hyper-partisan Clean Energy Council to the energy authorities planning the transition. The CEC now says: “Australia’s power system can be comfortably powered with a high share of renewable energy, paired with energy storage technologies and back-up gas-fired power generation.” Mr Bowen has taken to emphasising the role of gas as well.
The federal government and the energy industry must use the certainty of the election result to lock in future gas supplies as a national priority. And regulators must quickly respond to an industry consensus that a detailed road map is urgently required for how the transition will work as coal-fired generators exit the market. The fragility of the grid was emphasised by Australian Energy Market Operator chief executive Daniel Westerman, who said that in 2024, AEMO had to intervene in the market 1800 times to direct gas, hydro and coal-fired generators to synchronise to the grid to provide critical system stability. This was up from six manual interventions to maintain a secure grid in 2016 and 321 interventions in 2020. Away from the partisan hype that batteries will be sufficient backup for grid stability, AEMO says 22 large synchronous machines will be needed to keep the grid stable and secure. Even still, Mr Westerman said “flexible gas-powered generation will remain the ultimate backstop in a high-renewable power system”.
These are all big investments that will be needed to provide services that traditionally have been part of the coal-fired generation bundle. Analysis of the British network has found about three-quarters of the increase in household electricity bills since 2015 have come from renewable energy subsidies, carbon taxes, grid balancing, capacity market payments and grid strengthening. Australia’s energy transition is still very much a work in progress. Having won the politics over nuclear, Mr Bowen must get real on gas and get on with the job.

Fossil fools to the bitter end, but what could they do, given Chris Bowen mocks Liberals' equivocation on 'bare minimum' target of net zero by 2050.

By golly, without pictures, the pond could feature much more text, handy because he lizard editorialist also had a brief word on another matter:

Beware Qataris bearing a 747 gift, The new Syrian army includes former Islamic State jihadists.
Editorial
less than 2 min read

Donald Trump should be cautious about pushing too far, too fast in his embrace of former al-Qa’ida terrorist commander Ahmad al-Sharaa, who now rules Syria. Turkey’s hardline Islamist and anti-Israel leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is encouraging him to do so. So is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom the US President has a close relationship.
Mr Trump, on his Middle East trip, has lifted sanctions that targeted Syria’s deposed Assad regime. He also has said he is willing to meet Sharaa, even though the latter is still listed by the US as a terrorist who was deeply involved in the former Islamic State caliphate and has formed a new army for Syria that includes commanders who were Islamic State and foreign jihadists.
Israel, concerned about developments in Syria that could further threaten its own security, rightly has counselled Mr Trump to be cautious. Lending US backing to the new regime in Damascus amid apprehensions about the extent to which it is under jihadist control and potentially could be used by Mr Erdogan to destabilise Israel would undermine the Jewish state. Mr Trump, as a British Sky News commentator said, obviously finds the wealth and opulence of the Gulf states a “happy place”. As with the new regime in Damascus, however, he should be cautious about accepting the spectacular largesse of a $US400m ($626m) “palace in the sky” Boeing 747 jetliner being offered to him by the rulers of Qatar for use as a new US Air Force One.
Mr Trump is keen to accept the offer, despite apprehensions about potential security and political implications that could be involved in the leader of the world’s most powerful nation accepting such largesse from a regime in Doha that has been a facilitator, if not a full-blown supporter, of Hamas by allowing the Gazan terrorists free rein to operate out of Qatar. It is not only Trump critics who are worried about his eagerness to accept the Qatari offer: influential right-wing US podcaster and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who frequently travels with him, also has expressed dismay: “I love President Trump. I would take a bullet for him. (But) we can’t accept a $US400m ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits.” Mr Trump should heed her alarm.

That timid cluck-clucking has to be worthy of a cartoon ...

While on the topic of the Cantaloupe Caligula, the pond noted that the lesser member of the Kelly gang, a certain Joe, was for a time masquerading as a commentator in the commentary section with ....

For those hard of sight, the header and caption read:

Donald Trump’s all business when it comes to diplomacy, The US President’s latest diplomatic push shows what his ‘America First’ agenda really means in practice.
US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman during an investment forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Picture: Reuters

It turned out that this two minute read was just a press release with many pictures.

The lesser member of the Kelly gang provided a little text ...

Donald Trump’s Middle East visit shows him embracing the Arab world to do business. His trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE is about showcasing the US President as a wheeler and dealer above all else. He wants wins and runs on the board.
This trip is one of the clearest signs of what Trump’s “America First” agenda is all about. It’s not about geopolitics, grand strategy or upholding principles despite its potential to reshape the US approach to the region.
Trump’s goal is to cut $1 trillion in deals and investment agreements to the benefit of the United States – but also, it seems, himself.
This is a key shift in the way US Presidents have approached foreign policy. It means Trump is prepared to be flexible where his predecessors were not. This can be a strength and a weakness.

That brief attempt at padding was just cover for the celebratory snaps ... Mr Trump addresses the audience at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center in Riyadh Picture: Getty Images

So it went, a little more fawning text, a hesitating note of alarm on the back palate...

Lifting sanctions on Syria and meeting the nation’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa – a US designated terrorist who led an al-Qaeda affiliate – would have been an unthinkable option for any other American leader. But not for Trump.
The US President used his key note address in Riyadh to announce the sanctions would go, and even framed them as a concession to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Erdogan. He is expected to meet al-Sharaa in Riyadh on Wednesday local time.

And a snap followed,  Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa, left, with Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa in Manama this week.

A very small amount of text...

For the US President, he is merely doing business. But concerns are growing over what the “America First” approach means in practice. Even his supporters are questioning the wisdom of his plans to accept a $US400m ($626m) luxury Boeing 747-8 jet gifted from Qatar, which Trump wants to use temporarily as a new Air Force One.

... and an AV distraction, United States President Donald Trump says that Qatar's gift of a Boeing 747-8 to the Trump administration was a "beautiful gesture." “We give a lot of gifts, we give too many gifts to defend countries that wouldn’t even exist,” Mr Trump said. “I thought it was a beautiful gesture. “There are those who say we shouldn’t be accepting gifts … and I say only a stupid person would say that, why wouldn’t we do that? “It helps us out because we will have a relatively new plane, instead of having 40-year-old planes … that’s not representative of our country.

So it continued. A minimal amount of text, eliding over all the issues to present a King Donald view of the world ...

“Some people say, ‘you shouldn’t accept gifts for the country.’ My attitude is, ‘why wouldn’t I accept a gift?’ We’re giving to everybody else,” he told Sean Hannity on Fox News (aboard Air Force One). “There are those that say, ‘we shouldn’t be accepting gifts in the defence department.’ And I would say, ‘only a stupid person would say that’.”

... followed by another distracting snap, Released Israeli-US hostage Edan Alexender, right, was reunited with his family at Tel Aviv's Sourasky Medical Center this week Picture: AFP

On the evidence, this lesser member of the Kelly gang doesn't have the first clue about how to do commentary, despite a flurry of verbiage at the end: 

As always, Trump refuses to be constrained by convention and is unafraid to take a fresh approach – especially when he thinks everyone else has got it wrong. He views Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE as valuable intermediaries in a strategically complex region.
Not only do they want to do business with the US, Trump views them as helpful in getting things done – from mediating the ceasefire with the Houthis, providing back channel communications to Hamas, helping secure the release of Edan Alexander to countering Iran and working towards a new nuclear deal.
Trump’s Middle East trip has also exacerbated tensions between Washington and Israel, with both nations already clashing over several strategic questions – including a potential pre-emptive strike by the Jewish state on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
So far, Trump’s diplomatic initiatives have fallen flat, including his efforts to solve the Israeli conflict with Hamas and secure an end to the fighting in eastern Europe by broking a peace between Ukraine and Russia.
His current Middle East trip is unlikely to advance the cause of peace in either war zone. But Trump will be able to promote a grab bag of deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars across a series of vital areas ranging from vital infrastructure and AI to defence and energy.

Come on, if you want to become a full paid-up member of the Kelly gang, do better, be best...

At least Melania managed 14 days since January, (archive link),which is pretty good for a separated woman ...

And so to wrap up proceedings with an infallible Pope, with much digging still to be done...

And now an AV offering, the aforementioned Baeva doing Tchaikovsky.

Some might sniff and turn up their noses at the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker Orchestra rather than it being say the Berlin Phil, and the sound was a little too alive for the pond's taste, with what sounded like an air conditioner rumble beneath the performance, but it was a lively affair, performed with aggressive vigour, with the band, conductor Alexandre Bloch and Baeve very engaging. (There was also the Fantasy Overture from Romeo and Juliet, and what a grand venue, with some of the audience in the band's lap). 

The pond realises many dismiss Tchaikovsky as an overwrought frustrated and closeted gay inclined to sappy melodies and romanticism, but the pond has loved this piece since first hearing it performed by Ruggiero Ricci on an ancient World Record Club disc (that dates the pond).

Send the link over to a decent sound system and all traces of the reptiles will wash away ...