No introspection, reflection or insight from the bromancer and Dame Groan, so the pond had to turn to Crikey ...

 

What a splendid set of comments yesterday, and the pond is on a hits high, helped by Studebakers and endless reptile stupidity ...

The reptiles have never been good at introspection or accepting responsibility - for that you have to look elsewhere, such as Christopher Warren in Crikey yesterday ...

Australia has jumped the media snark as the coalition of the shrilling collapses, News Corp and its media bedfellows rely on snark, shrillness and outrage gimmickry. This election shows the public don’t like it, and the result has done untold damage to media relevance. (sorry, paywall)

Please excuse the pond preparing the way for the bromancer's entrance with a visit to the Warren ...

The sneering, punch-down outrage manufactured wholesale by News Corp (and subsequently absorbed into “news values” across media) fell victim to the unexpected triumph of a public yearning for a bit of positivity, kindness and gentility.
Don’t (just) blame the Coalition of the shrilling who saw their votes drop — look to the Greens’ Max Chandler-Mather from the left, Jacqui Lambie from the centre or (take your pick) just about any Liberal Party frontbencher on the right. 
They’ve spent the past three years servicing the rent-a-quote market — a Pavlovian feedback loop created by our broken media’s rewards of prime-time attention and Facebook algorithmic virality. 
Night after night on the evening news (yes, even on the ABC), the political story of the day has been delivered wrapped in an outrage grab — about process, policy, personality — with the prize of getting your face on screen going to whoever shouted loudest.
In light of the election result, rising politicians need to recognise the old rule has flipped: now, not all publicity is good publicity. 
And, the media? It needs to stop trying to hang onto the dwindling traffic it has and think more about the two-thirds of Australians who actively avoid the news that old media has opted to give them. 
Avoiding the stories legacy media treats as “news” doesn’t mean people get no political news at all. While the legacy media sagely waved past the Liberals preferencing of One Nation as just part of the numbers game, it lit up social media platforms like Xiaohongshu and WeChat, leading to the resultant swings in seats with large numbers of Chinese-Australian voters. 
In a first-draft-of-history kind of way, this remains the most far-reaching moment of the campaign. It will be talked about long after the trivia of kicked footballs and stage stumbles is forgotten.
There’s plenty of blame for the media mess to go around. It starts (of course) with News Corp’s embrace of activist media and its subsequent capture by the darkest corners of its own comments section, who, through their pay-walled subscriptions, pay to keep the lights on at Sky after dark and The Australian’s pundit desk.
So politically toxic has the Murdoch brand become that it probably costs the Liberals more votes than it draws. Worse (for the Liberals, that is), its role as commissar for ideological thought prevents conservative parties from recognising what’s right in front of their eyes — that they are their own problem.
Across the mastheads (particularly in The Australian) and on Sky, the News Corp punditocracy spent the parliamentary term painting straw man Albanese as simply too weak and too woke. The result? The conservatives got high on their own supply, convinced — as they kept telling each other — that Albanese was simply not reelectable. 
The ideological disciplining of the right’s thought leaders — particularly on Sky — led Dutton into his culture war stumbles like “hate media” and the Welcome to Country imbroglio. Trump-like, they struggle now to accept the legitimacy of Labor’s win in the face of the “lies” narrative they worked so hard to cement. 
At the beginning of the campaign, I wrote here in Crikey that News Corp simply doesn’t matter. Still true — but that’s just with voters. The real danger of News Corp has been its cultural impact on the way Australian media goes about its business.
Partly, it’s the way Murdoch media shapes how the rest of the news media sees people and policies. Their relentless tearing down of Albanese might not have convinced many “quiet Australians™”, but it led astray even the best of Australia’s political commentators, including the normally far more astute Niki Savva or Crikey’s own Bernard Keane (as he, just about alone of Albanese’s critics, acknowledged over the weekend).
But more, it’s the near-universal acceptance across legacy media of the Murdoch schtick that anger, rage and conflict are the definitive news values. If it works for News Corp, the rest of the media have convinced itself to think, maybe it will work for us, and perhaps it will for that dwindling minority of hardcore political junkie news consumers...

Well yes, and so on and so forth, and so it goes, and nowthe "hate media" is but a dream, an idle memory ...

And now to an actual example of complete reptile cluelessness, and abject failure to accept any responsibility for the proceedings...

Come on down bromancer, and make sure to look anywhere but in the mirror...

For those who hate the small print, the header: Little conviction, no smarts and Trump factor shattered Coalition hopes, Trump is now hurting centre right parties everywhere. He has managed a monumental inversion of the long, normal pattern of democratic politics. He has, incredibly, associated conservative parties with instability.

The bleeding obvious caption: Peter Dutton concedes defeat during a Liberal Party election night event.

It was five minutes, so the reptiles said, of the bromancer blaming everybody and everybody else, without a single look in the mirror or any sign of self-awareness or a willingness to acknowledge the many follies the reptiles had initiate or encouraged, or their adaptation of Faux Noise as a down under role model ...

Somehow News Corp was transformed by the bromancer into "the Australian establishment" ...

The biggest single message out of our election is the monumental failure of the Australian estab­lishment, in common with the ­establishment in most Western nations.
The world we have known for 80 years is effectively coming to an end, but our biggest issue was work from home.
Two huge factors, unpredicted six months ago, were Donald Trump and the staggering incompetence of the Liberal campaign.
Underlying this, the failure of the Australian establishment, as broadly defined, mirrors a similar failure in the US, Britain and other Western nations.
Politics is not responding anywhere to the deepest policy problems. Politics is becoming petty, ridiculous and fractured. The continued decline in the primary vote for the two major parties in Australia is part of this.
At this election, just over 66 per cent of voters supported either Labor or the Coalition, nearly 2 per cent below the 2022 figure. Labor gained a couple of points, the Coalition declined. It’s hard to see the long established trend of declining support for the major parties reversing, short of a ­national crisis.
Our electoral system has its perversities. Labor won several seats on Liberal preferences. In all the teal seats the Liberals failed to win back, and in any seat such as Bradfield they might yet lose to a teal, Liberals lost because Labor put them last on its how to vote card.

Not a nanosecond of introspection or reflection for the role the reptiles played in the follies, and instead a snap of the usual suspects, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton at Nine's North Sydney studio.

Back to the bro, blathering on about the greenies ...

The mechanics of the system thus massively favour Labor. I think it’s right that the Liberals preference the Greens last. But the political argument for the Liberals runs two ways. If Liberals put Greens last they make Labor look brilliant. If they put the Greens ahead of Labor, they put Greens in parliament. That drags the whole political culture to the left. But it also drags Labor to the left and makes the choice between Labor and the Coalition more stark.
If the Greens were smart enough to remain an environment party, like, say, the German Greens, rather than a party of Marxist abuse and nihilist policies, obsessed with Gaza, they might even have a case for attracting Liberal preferences.
The teals are effectively Greens stripped of their worst excesses. More moderate Greens could do to Labor what the teals do to the Coalition. Or the teals could do it to Labor.

Where were the reptiles? That's right, nuking the coalition ...

Here no insight, no insight here ...

Albanese’s big victory came with a lower primary vote than Julia Gillard got in 2010. Albanese has a landslide lead against the Coalition, but not a landslide parliamentary majority. Tony Abbott won 90 seats in 2013. Labor is winning 86 at the moment.
This could be important in the long run. Britain’s first past the post electoral system is even more comprehensively designed to preserve two party dominance than our preferential system. Yet after the stunning success of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party last week in local elections and a by-election, and its strength in opinion polls, Britain is now effectively a five party system: Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Scottish Nationalist and Reform. That’s not even counting parties that get seats in Westminster from Northern Ireland. Governments are elected on ever smaller shares of the vote. Keir Starmer won a parliamentary landslide with a lower vote than Jeremy Corbyn. That brings problems of democratic legitimacy.
Trump was a big factor in Australia. In Canada, the Trump factor took the Conservatives from a 25-point lead to just losing a ­narrow election.

Any port in a shallow bromancer storm, and so the Cantaloupe Caligula made an entrance ... President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews.

And who gifted the Mango Mussolini to the world and keeps on with the gifting? And who keeps clinging to the faith?

Oh delusional aunts and yet more evidence that you can be a billionaire and lack any smarts whatsoever ... (if you can bear the Daily Snail, it's all there).

You won't find the bromancer pausing to think about the whole hot IPA infected-mess the lizard Oz has become over the years...

In Australia, the Trump factor took an even contest and made it a big win for Labor. The electorate moved left. Labor, Greens and teals won more than 50 per cent of the primary vote.
Trump is now hurting centre right parties everywhere. Trump now looks, even to American voters, nasty, turbulent and the cause of instability. Voters hate those qualities, especially in a compulsory voting system like Australia. Centre left parties everywhere paint their conservative opponents, however unfairly, as mini-Trumps. Trump has managed a monumental inversion of the long, normal pattern of democratic politics. He has, incredibly, associated conservative parties with instability.
Initially, Dutton campaigned in part on being better able to get on with Trump than Albanese. Some of Dutton’s early moves, such as proposing an office of government efficiency, in clear imitation of Trump’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, underlined the psychological connection with Trumpism. It was dangerous even when Trump had his initial ­moment of popularity. It developed as spectacularly ill advised.

And what of the reptiles and their ill-advised adherence to King Donald? All those ambivalent "on the one hand, on the other" outings by the bromancer himself?

On the upside, it did have one gratifying result, a trumpeting of trumpets doing a Titanic ...

The bromancer kept on refusing to take any responsibility for News Corp's role in the debacle ...

Overall, the Coalition campaign was the worst I’ve ever seen. It must discredit Angus Taylor almost as much as it discredits Dutton. It was tactically a nightmare – policy reversals, repeated gaffes and misstatements, a wacky emphasis on message discipline so extreme that all the Coalition’s best frontbenchers – Dan Tehan, Andrew Hastie, Sarah Henderson – were virtually kept in hiding.
Liberal frontbenchers had prepared detailed policies months in advance they were never allowed to release. The Coalition had almost nothing to say about anything. It represented a void, a nothingness. It thought Labor would lose the election and it need do nothing but be still and quiet.
Some of the tactical missteps were almost unbelievable. The defence policy was not released until days before the vote. Labor’s appalling policy to tax unrealised capital gains in superannuation funds was a ready-made Coalition scare campaign which could have terrorised every Australian with a superannuation balance. The ­Coalition barely mentioned it.

Then came an unfortunate visual juxtaposition, Andrew Hastie, Tim Wilson voting at Beaumaris Secondary College

Oh dear, that's the best the reptiles have got? The pastie Hastie and freedumb boy?

All that did was remind the pond of another Golding ...

And so to the final dissembling bromancer gobbet ...

The Coalition offered its troops nothing to fight for and almost nothing to fight against. Its one big contrast with Labor was, bizarrely, to offer higher income taxes, rejecting Labor’s albeit tiny income tax cut.
All this speaks to spectacular incompetence. But it also speaks to character and cowardice. Consider this example. The Coalition needs to do much better with women and young people. A key problem for young people is home ownership.
At the last election, the Liberals had one policy to address this, allowing people to use part of their superannuation balance for a first home deposit. Because they were scared of the superannuation funds, they didn’t release the ­policy until just a few days from the election.
That was pure cowardice. In politics you must be willing to crusade passionately for things you believe in. Politics requires core beliefs which you have to fight for and which define your political identity. A successful political movement polarises the electorate and wins the argument. The modern Liberals have become such cowards they’re always trying to win without fighting the policy fights. By fighting I don’t mean being bad tempered, but just actually engaging in a serious policy battle, which can’t be done only in the leader’s office.
The Liberals today are incompetent at politics. In 10n years in office they built no institutions which broadly share their world view. A decade of Labor will give us countless climate bodies, trade union training authorities, university think tanks, which generally won’t be overtly partisan but will share a basic Labor world view.
Here is a small secret of politics. You need to believe something. You need to fight for it. And you need to be smart. Tim Wilson, who looks as though he’ll win Goldstein back, is a good example. The Coalition this time demonstrated little conviction and no smarts. It’s a long road back. ­Better start soon.

Here's the pond's suggestion for a small secret in politics. 

Coalition and followers, you need to stop reading the dribble in the lizard Oz, end the endless sucking on the News Corp teat. 

You need to get out into the world. You don't need to live in the hive mind. If you stay, you'll be deep diving in a fetid pool of endless bigotry, fear mongering and hate. There's no road back if you head off down that road, better never start.

And if you think that Tim "Freedumb boy" Wilson is the way forward, you'll be forever doomed to live in a world infested by bromancers ...

And speaking of that fetid cesspool, is this the last cartoon of the Duttonator to feature on the pond? Possibly not...

In all that fuss, the pond completely forgot to survey the reptiles' digital edition this morning ...

Keen eyes will note that the current ethnic cleansing in Gaza just made it into the top yarns - a reminder of the heartless cruelty of the bromancer and other reptiles devoted to genocide ...

Over on the extreme far right, the anguished lack of insight was a feature rather than a bug, as the humiliated reptiles were relegated to a notch below the ongoing seat count ...

Dame Groan was the obvious bonus, bizarrely turning to a "moral case", and that reminded the pond of the keen Keane in Crikey, News Corp owns much of the Liberals’ spectacular defeat. If they want more of them, keep going, News Corp contributed deeply the Liberals’ election disaster. Its agenda, designed to serve its business interests and not the national interest, is deeply damaging to the Liberals. (sorry, paywall)

Reading the chin-stroking commentary from News Corp over the last 48 hours on what caused such a catastrophic defeat for their political allies is a lot like watching the burglar who, having broken in and trashed a house, complains loudly about what a mess the inhabitants live in.
News Corp, and the editors it employs to run its political campaigns, owns a very great deal of this disaster. And the sooner it accepts that — of course, it won’t — the sooner its friends in the Liberal Party can get back to being politically relevant.
Reading the chin-stroking commentary from News Corp over the last 48 hours on what caused such a catastrophic defeat for their political allies is a lot like watching the burglar who, having broken in and trashed a house, complains loudly about what a mess the inhabitants live in.
News Corp, and the editors it employs to run its political campaigns, owns a very great deal of this disaster. And the sooner it accepts that — of course, it won’t — the sooner its friends in the Liberal Party can get back to being politically relevant.
What the Liberal Party itself needs to understand is that News Corp is a foreign-owned communications business, with its own agenda of fostering hatred, resentment and division in order to sell advertising and subscriptions. Its alliance with the Liberals is in pursuit of those goals — not in pursuit of good policy. Its best interests are those of the Murdochs and other shareholders that are paramount to News Corp’s business model (which, let us remember, pays not a single cent of tax in Australia), not those of Australians.
That’s why News Corp will always encourage the Liberals to pursue policies that punch downward, that divide and alienate, that are about culture wars targeting minorities. We can complain about the toxic effects of fostering division and resentment, but in the words of that eminent statesman, Michael Corleone, it’s not personal, Sonny, it’s strictly business.
That means that any Liberal who wants to be in the business of unifying Australians (News Corp is always bleating about policies that are “divisive” but strangely silent on the benefits of bringing Australians together) will automatically face pushback from News Corp. And any failure to aggressively pursue culture wars will be regarded as evidence of weakness — not because culture wars work politically, but because they fire up Sky News’, The Australian’s and the News Corp tabloids’ angry, old, white audiences.
But that’s only the start of the way News Corp undermines the Liberals’ capacity to engage meaningfully with the electorate. The company and its pundits have a wildly inflated self-belief in their understanding of ordinary Australians. Its editors, journalists and commentators are even whiter and older than those of other media outlets (myself included). They are every bit the chattering class elitists they rail at, living in wealthy suburbs and enjoying above-average incomes or, in the case of executives, wildly inflated salaries. They have no understanding of the lot of ordinary working Australians, especially in the outer suburbs of our cities, which are good only for car crash and crime stories, and especially not Australians from migrant or non-English-speaking backgrounds.
Result: the policies, priorities and tactics they believe the Liberals should pursue only reflect the interests of those of their affluent background, not of people living in the real world. They’re people who actually think sitting through a Welcome to Country is an outrageous infringement of their rights that should be centre-stage in an election campaign, rather than the cost of living or economic precarity.
As a foreign-controlled company, News Corp is also a vector for foreign political ideas. In particular, it is a conduit for ideas from the United States’ deeply toxic and polarised political environment, including conspiracy theories and culture war obsessions. The story of the now decades-long climate denialism of the Liberal Party is only explicable in terms of News Corp’s relentless denialism and importation of the tactics of fossil fuel companies. The war on “woke” is a Made In USA fabrication imported here by News Corp. So too the ongoing assault on trans people. Conspiracy theories about election tampering — still being peddled by the Coalition on the weekend — and elite cabals plotting to destroy the country are all funnelled into Australia via News Corp.
And as more than just Crikey are now pointing out, News Corp ensures that Liberal leaders and frontbenchers are permanently enfeebled when it comes to selling policies. News Corp creates a bubble in which every Liberal policy is brilliant, every announcement or tactic is a masterstroke, in which no Liberal leader can ever put a foot wrong. Only after an election defeat does the mask temporarily come off, and its pundits and journalists reveal what a shambolic, incompetent show they were advertising all along.
That bubble lends a false sense of confidence to Liberals: not only are they in touch with real Australians rather than just another elite vested interest, but their arguments are strong, and will hold up to scrutiny — something that News Corp reserves, by and large, for Labor and the teals.
For hard evidence, look at the striking failure of News Corp’s campaign to demonise Labor as antisemitic. Since October 2023, News Corp has been portraying the Albanese government as, at best, lackadaisical about the growing threat of antisemitism and, at worst, an active enabler of it. Peter Dutton gleefully ran exactly the same line. Both Dutton and News Corp tried to peddle conspiracy theories about the Dural non-bomb. Both portrayed the government as doing nothing about violence against Jewish schools and residences.
How did that work out? Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus enjoyed a 5%+ swing in Isaacs. Josh Burns got a 3% swing in Macnamara, where the Greens and Liberals both went backwards. In contrast, Liberal Julian Leeser in Sydney’s Berowra suffered a nearly 6% swing against him, and his seat is now very marginal. After the campaign of lies and conspiracy theories from News Corp and the Liberals about Labor’s purported antisemitism, and how only Dutton would protect Australian Jews, it’s a staggering result.
If News Corp wants the Liberals to keep losing, the answer is simple: keep on doing what you’re doing. Keep on pushing the Liberals toward culture wars and elite obsessions that are only aimed at stoking division. Keep on attacking any Liberals who dare to pursue centrist or evidence-based policies. Keep on telling the Liberals they know what working Australians really want. Keep on spreading far-right conspiracy theories. And keep on making sure the Liberals enter election contests woefully unprepared for the most basic scrutiny.

Well yes, and what a splendid introduction to Dame Groaning, and her groaning this day ...

The risible "moral" header: To win economic debate, Libs must pitch moral case, Any claim the Coalition could make to being the more responsible budget manager went up in a puff of smoke. There was never any chance of making the moral case that debt and deficits matter.

The banal caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers during the election campaign. Picture: Getty Images

It was another 5 minute read according to the reptiles, and it was perhaps remiss of the pond to expect any form of recantation or insight from the old duck as she waddled down memory lane ...

I’m old enough to remember a time in election campaigning when the first question asked of a political leader proposing to spend money on a new program was: how is this going to be paid for? These days, no one bothers to ask this question, not even someone from the opposing side.
Now politics is more akin to a television program in which everyone is a winner and money falls from the ceiling to rapturous applause.
To be sure, it’s not always money – sometimes it’s green plastic Medicare cards that will “guarantee” free-of-charge access to the GP. Anyone who suggests this largesse is not sustainable and ultimately has to be paid for is quickly dismissed as being out of step with the current vibe.
People are under pressure and the government must step in to help. The fact that this is really robbing Peter to pay Peter is a point that is simply overlooked.
The grip of this mass illusion was demonstrated by the widespread tepid reaction to the warning of one of the key rating agencies in the last few days of the election campaign.
According to S&P, one of the world’s largest rating agencies, there is a very real prospect that Australia will lose its AAA credit rating “if major election commitments aren’t funded via additional revenues or savings”. Questions were also raised about Labor’s dubious off-budget spending, which amounts to around $100bn in just four years.

What was it that the keen Keane said?

If News Corp wants the Liberals to keep losing, the answer is simple: keep on doing what you’re doing. Keep on pushing the Liberals toward culture wars and elite obsessions that are only aimed at stoking division. Keep on attacking any Liberals who dare to pursue centrist or evidence-based policies. Keep on telling the Liberals they know what working Australians really want. Keep on spreading far-right conspiracy theories. And keep on making sure the Liberals enter election contests woefully unprepared for the most basic scrutiny.

After a banal snap ...Australia's re-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese talks to the media as he visits his Sydney electorate. Picture: AFP

... Dame Groan kept on keeping on ...

But when Anthony Albanese was asked about the S&P report, he simply shrugged it off, declaring he didn’t take any notice of the rating agencies. As for off-budget spending, he offered the false assurance that commercial returns will be generated in time. They clearly won’t be – think here the NBN and the Whyalla Steelworks as examples.
But with Labor experiencing such an emphatic electoral victory, it’s unlikely the cabinet will be spending much time discussing ways in which the growth of spending could be reduced or savings made. Making everyone a winner with no one left behind is an expensive venture.
Even so, there is no way of getting away from the scary nature of the budget figures. In the coming financial year, commonwealth spending is expected to be around $777bn, or 27 per cent of GDP. At the end of the forward estimates, spending will be higher by another $100bn. Total underlying budget deficits over the period will exceed $150bn.
The situation is even more dire when it comes to the headline deficit, which incorporates the off-budget spending. Over the forward estimates ending in 2028-29, the cumulative headline budget deficit is expected to be around $236bn.
The fact that during the campaign Jim Chalmers didn’t seem to understand the difference between the underlying and headline budget figures is a real worry.
With all this overspending and the insufficiency of revenue, the obvious outcome is rising government debt. By the end of the forward estimates period, gross government debt will exceed $1.2 trillion, or 37 per cent of GDP. Note that in 2010-11, gross debt was only 13.5 per cent of GDP, and that was after some substantial spending measures had been undertaken in response to the global financial crisis.
Of course, increasing government debt comes at a substantial cost in terms of servicing. Next financial year, net interest payments are expected to run to $18.5bn; in 2028-29, the figure is forecast to be $28bn, or nearly $10bn more. This buys a lot of hospitals, schools, doctors, teachers and defence spending.

The victim of all this blather made an appearance, Opposition leader Peter Dutton concedes defeat alongside wife Kirilly and their children Harry and Tom during a Liberal Party election night event. Picture: Getty Images

The poor bugger, he was just trying to follow reptile orders ...

Then the Groaner was back, still sounding alarums and bleating at clouds...

The reality is that most members of the voting public have only a vague appreciation of the state of the government’s books. No politician, be they Labor or Coalition, has been talking about these alarming figures or the possibility that it may all blow up at some stage.
Some older voters may recall Paul Keating declaring in the mid-1980s that Australia could be a “banana republic”. These days, many younger voters may not even understand the reference to “banana republic”. No one cautions about the dangers of deficits and debts, and while the figures on face value may look alarmingly large, most voters will simply assume it can be sorted one way or another. This situation is made worse by the trend to universality of government benefits.
One of the principal means whereby Labor treasurer Paul Keating and finance minister Peter Walsh were able to repair the budget in the 1980s – they did a mighty job, by the way, with spending falling from 27.5 per cent of GDP in 1985-86 to 22.9 per cent in 1988-90 – was to insist on strict means-testing across the board for all government payments.
For Walsh it was not simply about the dollars; it was matter of principle. His view was that the role of a Labor government was to assist those on the lowest incomes and unable to help themselves. He didn’t think a government should be in the game of replacing private spending with taxpayer benefits.
The view of our current Prime Minister is the polar opposite. He wants government spending to be spread across almost everyone, be it childcare, visits to GPs, aged care, housing assistance, and the list goes on.
This is not unlike the Scandinavian model where public provision across a wide range of services is the norm, but with a high tax take to accompany this arrangement. Interestingly, there has been some serious questioning of this cradle-to-grave welfare model in Scandinavia itself.

Interestingly? Tell that to the Fins and the Danes, leading in one of those mindless happiness surveys...

At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction, featuring a pompous portentous bore, prating away about Ming the Merciless... The Australian's Editor-at-Large Paul Kelly discusses the future of the Liberal Party following their substantial defeat in Saturday’s federal election. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton lost his Queensland seat of Dickson to Labor MP Ali France, making her the first candidate to unseat an Opposition Leader in a federal election. “The new leader is going to have to exercise a lot of authority,” Mr Kelly told Sky News Australia. “The party faces the need for the most substantial reform since it was created by Sir Robert Menzies back in 1944, and that is going to be one hell of a task.”

Dame Groan was more than a match for "Ned", as she suggested the deplorables were only in it for the bribes ...

One of the presumed electoral advantages of Labor’s current universal model is that because nearly everyone is on the take to varying degrees, voters can’t afford to toss Labor from office.
Rather than the Coalition querying the model, a me-too approach has taken hold, with the election campaign clearly illustrating the unwillingness of the Coalition to refuse to match Labor’s expensive promises – the (highly inefficient) promotion of GP bulk billing being a prime example.
For the Coalition, this all came to a head with the late-in-the-day release of its election costings in which a higher deficit than Labor’s was forecast for the first two years of the forward estimates.
The combination of the trivial difference to the cumulative budget deficit and government debt lower by only $40bn meant any claim the Coalition could make to being the more responsible budget manager went up in a puff of smoke. There was never any chance of making the moral case that debt and deficits matter.

What a deeply offensive Groaner she is, and how dire that she and the reptiles should resort to Petey boy, Former Coalition treasurer Peter Costello. Picture: Daniel Pockett/NewsWire

Enough already, enough this living in the past, enough of the refusal to take a single look in the mirror ...

According to former Coalition treasurer Peter Costello: “I always argued, when I was paying off federal debt, that debt is not just an economic problem, it’s a moral problem. That by running up debt, society is consuming its resources on itself and sending the bill to the next generation.”
Can anyone imagine either a Coalition or Labor politician making this point now? The only time when the constraints on the handing out of free stuff will have to be acknowledged is when international financial markets decide enough is enough.
The adjustments are likely to be painful, but they may come as a real surprise to voters who have been lured into believing that money grows on trees. It doesn’t.

While over at Crikey, the pond did enjoy a quiz offered up by Cam Wilson, QUIZ: Did News Corp’s talking heads say this after the Coalition’s 2022 or 2025 defeat? Can someone hear an echo?(sorry, paywall)

The pond isn't going to do any spoilers - the point of the quiz was to guess whether the reptiles had said their lines in 2022 or 2025, with mindless repetition the point of the exercise.

Three whole years ... and for every line, there was an echo, and it was incredibly tricky guessing what was then and what was now ...

Petulant Peta
“The Coalition wins and keeps winning when it’s a strong alternative to Labor. It loses when it’s hard to distinguish from the other side.”

The Bolter
“Memo to the Liberals: You can’t win an argument if you’re too scared to put it. And three years from now, voters will be more inclined to hear it.”

The reverend Dean
“[Leader] chose to abandon those core beliefs and follow the siren call of the pollsters and focus groups and bedwetting backroom boys. You reap what you sow.”‘

Unlovely Rita, meter maid
“Labor is a radically left party which the Coalition did not in any way go after.”

The pond didn't do badly and came out with a pass mark, but to show why the pond must do one spoiler, with the moronic Morrow Jimbo showing why. Here was his line:

“‘Labor-lite’ is a term that is thrown around a lot to describe when the Liberals swing too hard towards their moderate wing, which seems to live in terror that they might cop criticism from the ABC and their viewers who would never vote Coalition anyway.”

And here was the pond, spoiler alert, guessing correctly ...

You got it. Three years ago, Morrow told viewers, “The fact of the matter is that there’s all of this advice going out to the Liberals. ‘You need to be more moderate, you need to be competing in this space’, and all of this is coming from people who do not have the Liberals’ best interest at heart.”

What a hoot, what a most excellent quiz Mr Wilson, and so to the Rowe of the day ...

As usual, there's more insight in a 'toon than in all the reptile offerings ... always check the details ...

And credit where credit is due for the source inspiration ...

And so to the pond's recent wanderings, and the subsequent slide show ... as the pond wandered around enjoying the Uralla sights, with the hamlet thriving as a tourist trap, all the more impressive for the main drag being on a relatively steep slope...

The pond always loves to check out the way every hamlet has some park designed to beguile tourists and give the aesthetic elbow a sharp prod ...

The pond was the only traveller on hand to enjoy the vision ... looking in at cockies and sunflowers and such like ...

... and looking out ...

Credit where credit is due. There was a plaque, there always has to be a plaque, and there always has to be a snap of it ...