In which the reptiles try for a fresh look ... but the Caterist turned up like a bad penny ...

 

The reptile theme for today is tiredness, and something of a desire for renewal ...

Perhaps reality finally got too much for the reptiles to endure, perhaps it was time to bury the post-mortems...

Major Mitchell has been away on the golf links since the 27th April, when he offered the hive mind Journalists failing to ask politicians the hard questions on campaign trail, After the federal election campaign was branded a cost-of-living poll, journalists have failed to explore other key issues that affect Australia.

The pond looked in vain for him this day asking the hard questions ... perhaps should he use a wedge or a sand iron ...

Instead the reptiles had a number of relatively fresh faces to hand ...

The Caterist was also missing, and the pond checked inside to see if any of the old Monday, Monday mob, just hate that day, were on hand ... as the pond raced past the Leak cartoon for fear of visual contamination, and still couldn't find him ...

Talk about a downgrade, but of course the reptiles were just hiding him and soon enough he emerged to become top of the extreme far right world, ma:

UPDATE:

Later in the day, the reptiles gave the Caterist a makeover and a centre stage splash. It's not much of a business plan, but it's the best they've got for the next three years ... and yes, it was another of those demonic, "rabbit in the headlights" photos featured in the splash ...

How tiresome, not much of a refresh there...

The pond had noted a couple of hangovers - these days the reptile talent on view is spread pretty thinly. 

The grave Sexton had appeared earlier with his astonishing analysis offering something of a heresy to the hive mind ...

All the way with the USA into quagmire of Vietnam
Australian participation was a cynical exercise by government to build up an insurance policy.
By Michael Sexton

Spoiler alert, this was his conclusion, after the reptiles had been force feeding the pond snaps of Ming the merciless for the last week ... 

...This was a cynical exercise because the Australian government did not really care whether the war was won or lost or what damage it did to America’s international reputation and domestic politics.
Its goal was to build up an insurance policy with the US but, as we have seen recently, no insurance policy lasts forever.
There is no doubt that Robert Menzies was a very talented politician and his name is often evoked by contemporary Liberals, but few of these mention his responsibility for Australia’s participation in one of the most futile conflicts of modern times.
Michael Sexton is the author of War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam (New Holland, 2002).

Ya don't say, who'd have guessed it.

Somebody should tell prattling Polonius.

Cackling Claire was also hanging around ...

The forces driving young women to the left are accelerating
Liberals face an existential choice: adapt – and bring in more women into positions of power – or perish as a political force.
By Claire Lehmann
Contributor

Really? Problem solved...red-hatted womyn are rushing to join ...

After wasting much time rooting around in the reptile waste bin to discover the Caterist - before he became top of the hive mind ma - the pond immediately regretted the wasted effort. 

There had been no reptile makeover, no reptile reinvention, it was just the same old, same old yadda yadda ...

The header should have been enough of a warning to the pond: PM need to come clean on who’s running climate policy, A victorious Anthony Albanese can’t dodge the hard questions on the environment versus energy policy.

The caption was bland: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese In Perth with Premier Roger Cook Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

The magical incantation was sounding just as tired: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Something was deeply wrong, and the opening line hinted at the malaise:

The ABC’s Sarah Ferguson did her level best to extract a straight answer from the Prime Minister in response to a straight question last week.

The pond blinked a few times in disbelief. 

Did the Caterist just break ranks and praise Ferguson?

What was in the kool-aid this day?

Then it was on with the usual Caterist routine, adjusted because nuking the country to save the planet was now on the back burner, and the new cry had to be the urgent need to gas the country to save the planet:

Would Anthony Albanese’s proposed environmental protection agency have the power to decide whether mining projects go ahead, she asked.
The Prime Minister went into an evasive ramble about sitting down with “sensible people across the spectrum”, prompting Ferguson to interrupt.
“So, have you decided yet on whether that body will have the power to approve projects?”
It prompted yet another shifty response, which is troubling since the only acceptable answer to that question is “no”.
Putting an environmental watchdog in charge of development decisions is like giving Alcoholics Anonymous the job of issuing liquor licences. The conflict between regulator and en­abler is unavoidable.
Yet the Prime Minister wants us to believe he still hasn’t made up his mind, which is disturbing, to say the least, considering his government is about to decide on a significant project that will determine the future of the natural gas sector in the North West Shelf.
Heaven help us if a project so important is left in the hands of an environmental regulator.
In August 2024 it emerged that the West Australian Environmental Protection Authority had declared the project to be an unacceptable environmental risk. The decision was inevitable since the EPA’s job is narrowly prescribed under legislation to protect “living things, their physical, biological and social surroundings”.

No wonder the reptiles started the day by hiding this offering, and the AV distraction was also illuminating, Dumped Labor frontbencher Ed Husic has slammed Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles in an extraordinary spray on television.

Of course the reptiles dare not mention a key component of the spray. 

It might be okay to talk about 'Nam and Ming the Merciless, but this?

“You can’t celebrate diversity and then expect it to sit in the corner silent. You need to speak up, when you bring the different views to either a cabinet table or a caucus,” he said.
“I certainly tried to help us navigate wretchedly difficult issues, such as Gaza, post the horrors of October 7.”
Outside the ministry, Husic is likely to feel freer to express his views on the conflict and Labor policy related to it.
“We’ve seen just in the past week or so the Israeli parliament say it wants to annex Gaza and effectively that is a form of ethnic cleansing,” he said on Insiders.
“We’ve seen the starvation of its people through the failure to provide humanitarian assistance.
“It [the Netanyahu government] should be held to account. Starvation is a war crime.”

Well yes, but back to the urgent need to gas the country ...

It is not the regulator’s job to make trade-offs between protecting nature and human prosperity. That is the government’s role, which is why the WA parliament wisely decided the WA EPA’s role was merely to offer advice.
Today, governments are expected to yield to experts on everything from the management of pandemics to development decisions.
Back in August 2024, Guardian Australia assumed the authority’s decision meant game over. “EPA deals ‘major blow’ to Woodside’s multibillion-dollar gas drilling plan at Browse Basin”, its headline read.
Further down in the story, the “major blow” quote is attributed to Jess Beckerling, at the time executive director of the Conservation Council of Western Australia. “It is now incumbent on the WA and federal governments to respect this independent scientific advice and expert opinion and refuse Woodside’s application to develop Browse,” she said.
WA Premier Roger Cook should have slapped down this nonsense right away and reminded the EPA and the Guardian that he was wearing the trousers.
Instead, he said his government was “obviously in deep discussions” with the EPA experts to “mitigate against any negative impacts on the environment”.
The EPA’s conclusion took six years to arrive at, and even then it took a journalist’s Freedom of Information application to make it public. No wonder resource investors are tempted to leave Australia.

Funny, it wasn't so long ago that the Caterist purported to be a truly caring environmentalist ...

The case has put the obvious tension between renewable energy and the preservation of the natural environment onto the agenda, including among a growing number of green groups and conservationists.
If more renewable energy is needed (and that's an open question when we have better alternatives available) Chalumbin has brought the need for tradeoffs to the forefront. The theoretical benefits of reducing carbon emissions must be offset against the observable damage to the natural environment.  

(No link, the pond refuses to give the Caterist's substack the pleasure).

On with digging it up and shipping it out, and never mind the hindmost.

As for the obvious tension between fossil fools and the preservation of the natural environment? 

Please allow the reptiles to distract with another AV... Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned fixing Australia's productivity crisis will require a third term of government. The Treasurer, one of the five senior Labor ministers to remain in their roles, has explained there is less instant policy gratification in fixing productivity than there was with inflation. Before the election, Dr Chalmers asked the Productivity Commission to review Australia's ballooning productivity shortage.  Reports will be released later this year.

Then it was on to a final lengthy burst ... which began with a remarkable thought ...

Orica chief executive Sanjeev Gandhi told Sky News on Sunday: “Given a choice, my incremental dollar would always go first to the United States. They are pro-manufacturing, they are pro-mining, they are for infrastructure.”

Feel free. If the orange sun god is your idea of stability and trading certainty, off you go, and enjoy being tariffed up the wazoo ... 

And then it was on to the rest of the rant, and the pond was too tired to protest, so predictable was it...

The Prime Minister should have dispersed the cloud of sovereign risk by flying to WA to stand beside Cook and give the project his unqualified support as Bob Hawke did in September 1989 when he stood alongside Labor premier Peter Dowding for the inauguration of the North West Shelf project.
Hawke compared it to the Snowy Mountain scheme, predicting that the new industry would foster Australian jobs and Australian exports into the 21st century.
The hype was justified. Three decades later, the North West Shelf accounted for more than 55 per cent of Australia’s liquefied natural gas exports and supplied roughly 12 per cent of global LNG trade.
It has attracted close to $200bn in investment, much of it from overseas. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been added to our GDP. Together with the iron and coal exports boom, it has underpinned 30 years of unbroken growth in prosperity.
The Browse project will unlock one of the largest untapped gas reserves in Australia and extend the life of the North West Shelf for at least 50 years, increasing opportunity and prosperity for future generations.
Yet Labor is deeply ambivalent towards gas.
It has reluctantly accepted that its renewable energy ambitions cannot be achieved without substantial support from gas generation, at least in the medium term. Yet there is little concrete support for the industry.
Labor’s commanding victory has given Albanese the opportunity to regain control of environmental and energy policy and redress the balance between an abstract concern for the planet’s future and a real concern about the future of Australian prosperity.
It gives him the freedom to consider the nation’s long-term needs, as Hawke did, rather than saving his political skin beyond the three-year political cycle.
He must begin by entrusting the environment and energy portfolios to new hands.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has not delivered the cheaper energy he promised and Australia’s emissions reductions have flatlined at about 29 per cent below the 2005 level.
Renewable energy is barely 30 per cent of the mix in the national electricity market, and we are no less reliant on coal than we were in 2022.
The sooner the government concedes that it will not meet its 2030 target of reducing emissions by 43 per cent and producing 82 per cent carbon-free electricity, the sooner it can develop a plan B. No one should hold their breath.
Labor’s delayed decision on its 2035 target is due any day and its response on the Browse Basin is overdue.
The Coalition will be doing a great disservice if it lessens the scrutiny of the second-term Albanese government in these crucial first few months by making itself the story.
The depleted partyroom cannot afford to expend energy on factional warfare that it needs to use to fight the government.
It must quickly accept its failure to win government and take on the second most important role a party has in parliament as an effective opposition.
Nick Cater is a senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre.

Relax, Caterist, when it comes to factional warfare, the government is doing its level best to make itself the story ... and provide a boon to cartoonists of the immortal Rowe kind ...

And so to the pond's travelogue and slideshow night, also winding down.

When heading to Sydney, there's always a choice. 

Some stick to the main highway, which takes in Wallabadah, a hamlet which lost its horse race and now only has a pub and its name to recommend it.

The pond prefers the back road which takes in the railway station at Werris Creek and the little town of Quirindi, which always confuses Victorians when it comes to the saying of it (think Boggabri, think Narrabri).

Of late the town has been afflicted by the same silo art as can be seen in Barraba ...

There were any number of plaques on hand to explain the meaning ...

There was also a prize winner headstone ...

Sadly the pond missed the light show, advertised next to the 'roo ...

It had a plaque too ...

There was an adjacent novelty item ...

It was a visual representation of the town's rainfall over the years, in inches of course ...

As for the town at this spot, it was bustling and full of life, a vehicular frenzy ...