"Thank you for your attention to these reptile matters!!!"

The pond isn't the only one to have noticed the way that King Donald has been concluding his posts of late, as in this outing celebrated in the Graudian...Trump claims without evidence that celebrities were paid to endorse Harris, President urges ‘major investigation’ of Beyoncé, Oprah, Bruce Springsteen and others in late-night social media rant

Some only noticed the peculiar mix of rampant CAPS insanity and full-blown hysterical dementia, but others paid heed to the vastly more meaningful and useful "Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!"

That's the sort of phrasing that used to be reserved in Tamworth for recalcitrant debtors. 

A conclusion to a letter explaining that if you didn't pay up by noon next day, your gizzards would be hanging on the clothes line for the pleasure of the magpies. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Among many celebrations of this new meme came this offering ‘Thank you for your attention to this matter!’: Trump’s favorite sign-off has become a viral meme, The first major Trumpism of the president’s second term has caught on with Bluesky and X users.

The piece provided a number of excellent examples ...

The pond particularly liked the application of the sentence to buildings ...

And these came as a pair ...

And now, in keeping with the theme, thank you in advance for your attention to this day's reptile matters ...

Of course, of course, the news had landed like a bombshell in the reptile bunker. 

The hive mind was in a frenzy of fear and loathing.

Reptiles were rushing hither and yon bringing the news ...

Three-year Noalition: divorce set to last to the next election
Sussan Ley intends not to re-form a Coalition with David Littleproud before the 2028 election as she moves to seize on the Nationals’ shock split to promote up to nine additional Liberal MPs to her new opposition frontbench.
By Geoff Chambers and Sarah Ison

How Littleproud’s ambush killed the Coalition in a virtual hook-up
Some Nationals MPs and senators who dialled into the virtual partyroom meeting that tore up the Coalition did not outwardly oppose David Littleproud’s move, but privately believed their leader was cooking his own goose.
By Geoff Chambers

Poor old Geoff was particularly unhappy and early in the saga he chambered a vitriolic spray, then fired it into the air ...

Littleproud talks nonsense as he takes party to the right
The Nationals’ tantrum, which comes less than a week after Sussan Ley was elected and days after her mother passed away, smacks of the worst type of short-term posturing in the wake of the most devastating result for the conservative parties in history.
By Geoff Chambers
Chief Political Correspondent

Simplistic Simon, here no conflict of interest, was also on hand ...

COMMENTARY by Simon Benson
Go your own way: Split from Nationals not viable for Ley
The Nationals’ split from the Liberals is more than the final humiliation for the Coalition following its May 3 drubbing. If left unattended, it risks becoming potentially cataclysmic.

Oh there was great fun and much chortling to be had, with the infallible Pope celebrating the power of Popes ...

Over on the extreme far right, the reptiles provided a threadbare set of alternative distractions. 

"Thank you for your attention to these tedious matters!!!"

The pond felt comfortable ignoring Dame Slap, rabbiting on in bog standard reptile way about super.

The pond has already been there before and doesn't give a fig about Dame Slap's 80,000 suffering mates.

Instead the pond turned, as it always does in a time of crisis, in an hour of need, to the bromancer ...

Trust the bro to suss out the cosmic relevance: Coalition split indicative of global trend in Western two-party systems, The Coalition split has disastrously fractured Australian politics and put at risk the viability of the two-party political culture and the Westminster system.

Trust the bro to drag in just about everybody, including the far right cat, in what the reptiles insisted was just a three minute read: The failure of the two-system party: Nationals leader David Littleproud, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Oh and there was the usual winsome advice (winsome being a word the pond picked up from John Oliver in his Instagram teaser for an extended discussion of fundamentalist Xian bigotry): This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

"Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!", as the bro took it away (spoiler alert, you might be better off watching the movie Dumb and Dumber) ...

The Coalition split between the Liberal and National parties has disastrously fractured Australian politics and put at risk the viability of the two-party political culture and the Westminster system.
It is an act of spectacular self-harm by the Nationals, designed in part to mask their own internal divisions and the underlying limitations of their position, shielded by their holding most of their seats.
This reflects the simmering crisis in the politics of many Western nations and the similar fracturing of two-party systems in Britain and numerous European nations.
The Nationals record lower national support than the Greens. But they have a long and noble history of simultaneously representing their rural constituencies while forming a key part of coherent, centre-right governments.

The reptiles were so agitated they slipped in an audio track, here rendered mute ...

The bromancer was ropable ...

The Nationals have now had a political nervous breakdown because the elementary discipline of shadow cabinet organisation and cross-party policy formulation apparently is too much for them.
This explains the rushed, panicky move to kill the Coalition so quickly over perfectly negotiable questions of policy and procedure.
This makes centre-right politics in Australia a shambles, with the Nationals reducing themselves to the status of country teals, and the Liberals not much better.
The Westminster system rests on major parties, or coalitions, having the internal policy debates, making the social and financial trade-offs between different interests, then offering a coherent and integrated policy package to the electorate. This contrasts with proportional representation systems where parties focus on much narrower interests and then make the trade-offs in negotiations after the election.

So dire was it all tht the reptiles dragged in the failed lying rodent to mourn the behaviour of Little to be proud of ...Former prime minister John Howard says the Coalition works best when there is a spirit of “give and take”. Nationals Leader David Littleproud on Tuesday announced his party would leave the Coalition with the Liberal Party. It marks the first time the parties have split in decades, with the country party unable to secure policy commitments from the new Opposition Leader. “I hope that the present leadership of the two parties will adopt the same attitude,” Mr Howard told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

The bromancer was reduced to babbling about systems ... 

Westminster systems typically deliver more stable and coherent government than proportional systems. Neither the Liberals nor the Nationals can realistically aspire to government on their own. Without coalition, each becomes right-of-centre protest parties. Labor would be the only party of government. That’s a tremendous triumph for the left. The only tactical option for the centre-right parties would be to find independents or teals they could preference in Labor seats to reduce Labor’s parliamentary dominance.
Clive Palmer’s money plus one charismatic leader could further devastate centre-right politics.
Western politics is in long-simmering crisis. Two-party systems are breaking down everywhere. The British first-past-the-post voting system even more heavily favours a two-party political culture than our preferential system.
Yet British voters apparently hate this and have imposed effectively a five-party system. Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists all have substantial representation at Westminster. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has only a handful of Westminster seats but has moved decisively ahead of the Conservatives as the second most popular party. It took a seat from Labour in a recent by-election and won huge gains in recent local elections, outperforming the Conservatives.

The reptiles decided that the time was right to drag in a snap of Nigel, always making plans,  Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Picture: Getty Images

Talk of Clive and Nigel is all very well, but what about others suffering, as evoked by Golding?

Oh poor, poor Gina. "Thank you for your attention to this bedtime story matter!!!"

The bromancer was now wild-eyed with alarm and roaming the planet in a terrified way, in search of some kind of cosmic meaning ...

Keir Starmer’s Labour government won a huge parliamentary majority with barely a third of the vote, which has mostly been a losing percentage in British political history. Without the mechanism of preferences to deliver ultimate electoral legitimacy to a government with such a narrow share of voters, alienation from the British political system is growing. Electors increasingly contemplate more radical ways to express their frustration with politics.
Two-party systems have collapsed across Europe. Traditional centre-right parties in France, the Gaullists, and in Italy, the Christian Democrats, have been displaced by more populist parties, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy in Rome.
In Germany the two major parties that once alternated power, the conservative coalition and the Social Democrats, are locked in a sterile and incoherent cross-aisle coalition because the conservatives are scared to go into coalition with the anti-immigration populist Alternative for Germany.

Shouldn't the bromancer be delighted, shouldn't he be applauding? Isn't this precisely the kind of company he and his mob like to keep? France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Picture: AFP, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Picture: Getty Images

After all, his barking mad far right mate bromance loves to hang around on the fringes, as noted by Benjamin Clarke in Crikey in Tony Abbott’s position in Orbán’s Hungary is untenable, If Tony Abbott is to inherit Liberal Party elder statesman status, he needs to reconsider some of the company he keeps — starting with his affiliation with the Danube Institute. (sorry, paywall)

Why's the bromancer getting agitated, when his bromance buddy when the reptiles shamelessly promoted his devotion to Viktor? (celebrated recently in the pond)...

...Abbott’s position with the institute, and his repeated praise for Orbán, ought to be scrutinised by the Australian media far more often. Morally, any association with such an illiberal, increasingly undemocratic regime is highly suspect. And is it appropriate for him to serve on the Australian War Memorial board, an institution dedicated to celebrating those who fought for democracy and freedom, while simultaneously getting into bed with a state apparatus that increasingly represents the opposite?
Last week, Orbán’s party Fidesz introduced legislation to the Hungarian Parliament that would empower the government to monitor, penalise and ban organisations it designates as a threat to national sovereignty. Critics have suggested that, if passed, the bill could shut down all independent media and politically engaged NGOs in the country. Is this company you really want to keep, Tony?
Abbott’s affiliation is particularly hypocritical given his staunch support for Ukraine. He once threatened to “shirtfront” Vladimir Putin, and while he might have misspoken, no-one questioned his sincerity in repudiating the Russian warmonger’s imperial landgrab. Abbott has recently criticised Donald Trump’s embrace of Russia, accusing the president of living in “fantasy land”, and urged Europe to step up its support to Ukraine.
Yet Orbán is now the key blocker in Europe for doing so. He is holding out against progressing Ukraine’s application to join the European Union, among other roadblocks. Other EU states are now seeking ways to sideline his recalcitrant regime to put further pressure on the Kremlin.

And so on and so forth and "Thank you for your attention to this cosying up to authoritarians matter!!!", as the bromancer let forth a final, despairing wail ...

A similar situation exists in the Republic of Ireland with the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties co-dependent on a cross-aisle coalition of the collapsing mainstream, propped up by independents, as neither main party wishes to join with Sinn Fein, which formerly supported terrorism in Northern Ireland and is now the second largest party.
Crumbling two-party systems make it ever less likely that governments can confront structural issues such as chronic deficit, ballooning debt, out-of-control immigration and urgent defence needs. Increasingly, mainstream politics cannot adjudicate difficult policy questions and deliver coherent responses.
The main parties offer instead special pleading for designated interest groups and transfer payments and cash handouts to recognised classes of voters.
In the US the syndrome is disguised because party primaries mean the frustration and rebellion occur within the Democrat and Republican parties. Donald Trump’s populist takeover of the Republicans is mirrored by left-wing populism in the Democrats.
What you don’t get out of any of it is good, much less heroically reforming, government.
Though the Liberal leadership ran the worst federal election campaign in living memory, the Nationals have now played a dramatic role in bringing similar incoherence into Australian politics. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

What fun, and then the pond faced a real dilemma. 

Dame Groan had been out and about Groaning about Victoria, but had quickly disappeared from view as the current crisis unfolded.

The pond didn't much care, but knows that the venerable biddie has a cult following and knew that this would appeal to cultists:

Victorian budget: Lies, damn lies and false freebies
If there was a year in which the Victorian government might warn citizens of the dire state of the budget and the need for cuts and sacrifices, this was the year.
By Judith Sloan
Contributing Economics Editor

Oh there were graphs and charts and all sorts of visual distractions, but the pond decided just to lie there, look at the ceiling, strip out all the visual paraphernalia, and hope it would all be over quickly ...

As a regular user of public transport in Melbourne, can I tell you that giving free rides to children aged under 18 won’t make much difference to the budget bottom line? The vast majority of kids don’t bother to swipe on and off now.
Yet handing out “free stuff” has become an integral part of governments’ playbooks, both state and federal. In this case, it’s less an issue of the dollars involved and more of the culture of entitlement that is instilled in the population. Let’s face it, it’s a one-way street for most of these entitlements. Politicians take them away at their peril.
I gave up going to Victorian budget lock-ups long ago. They are just a case of lies, damn lies and Victorian budgets. Because the accounts are split between recurrent and capital accounts, there is a great deal of fudging that goes on. There’s not really any point focusing on the recurrent budget outcome – in this case, a trivial $600m surplus next financial year, down from $1.6bn in the budget update.
The key is government net debt and the spiralling lack of control that has characterised Victoria’s budget outcomes for nearly a decade. The net debt to gross state product ratio will exceed 25 per cent next financial year and the forward estimates optimistically put the net debt figure in 2028-29 at $194bn. Sure, it might not have a 2 in front of it, but it’s odds-on-to-a-dollar that it will end up over $200bn and before 2028-29.
Had the state received value for money for the vast sums spent on infrastructure, it would be one thing. But every major project is massively overbudget and massively delayed. Take the Metro Tunnel project. The cost overrun is at least 50 per cent, it still isn’t finished, and its operational advantages have been significantly compromised.
The cover-up in the budget is particularly apparent in the assumptions made about the growth in spending. We are expected to believe that next financial year, total expenses will go up by 3.5 per cent. And the year after that – an election year – they will increase by only 0.6 per cent. Pull the other one, I say.
At the same time and underpinned by the fact Victoria is the highest taxing state of all, total revenue is expected to grow by 8.1 per cent next financial year and by 7.7 per cent in the year after that.
The trouble for the Victorian government is that taxes have been pushed to the point where the geese are truly hissing, indeed flying off to other states. (The reference here is to the famous quote of finance minister to France’s Louis XIV’s that “taxation is the art of plucking the goose without making it hiss”.) This flight of funds takes some time but the trend is clearly emerging.
Given that Victoria receives virtually nothing by way of mining royalties, the state is forced to rely on a very narrow tax base. Witness here the reaction to rapidly rising land taxes and other levies.
To lob farmers with a much higher fire levy is surely a slap in the face to the same farmers who volunteer to fight fires.
And let’s not overlook here the fact that the federal government is already bailing out Victoria with more GST revenue as well has other backdoor grants such as money for insupportable infrastructure projects such as the Suburban Rail Loop.
If there was a year in which the Victorian government might warn the citizens of the dire state of the budget and the need for cuts and sacrifices, this was the year. But after last year’s chaotic and failed attempt to trim the health budget, the relatively new Premier, Jacinta Allan, and her very new Treasurer, Jaclyn Symes, clearly don’t have the stomach for belt-tightening.
No doubt, the ratings agencies will be taking a careful look at the detailed budget figures.
All going well, interest expenses are expected to increase from just under $7bn this year to $10.5bn in 2028-29. Any ratings downgrade would add further to interest expenses.
As Ernest Hemingway pointed out, there are two ways to go bankrupt – gradually, then suddenly.
This could easily apply to Victoria unless some genuine budgetary repair is undertaken, sooner rather than later.

Satisfied cultists? 

You get Hemingway, Louis XIV and incipient bankruptcy, and many sorrowful cries that we'll all rooned by sundown ... 

"Thank you for your attention to this hideous free rides on trams matter!!!"

For the pond's real bonus, it turned to Saul. Please; someone call Saul ...

The header, featuring a lot of broken breakage: A broken Coalition needs to demonstrate unity on climate, A broken Coalition needs to demonstrate unity on climate - as an alternative to Labor’s approach

The caption for the tragic snap of an abandoned woman: Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Poor Sussssan was the only visual distraction on hand for Saul, as he did what he always likes to do, and need the pond add, "Thank you for your attention to this climate science matter!!!"

Energy and climate policy has finally ripped the Coalition in two. It appears the Nationals’ stance on support for nuclear and against a 2050 net-zero target has left an unreconcilable schism with the Liberal Party under Sussan Ley’s leadership, at least for now.
Yet it has never been more important for the Liberals and Nationals to present a united stance on energy policy. Australia needs a compelling alternative to the diabolic energy trajectory under Labor: we need policy that focuses on abundance, advancing Australia’s economic advantage, and sets us up for a future in hi-tech manufacturing, artificial intelligence and regional development.
A path forward can make clear that nuclear should never be banned, while acknowledging government-directed investment in nuclear is not aligned with sound market-based roots. Whether the Liberals pay lip service to a 2050 net-zero target (that won’t be met anyway) shouldn’t become an all-consuming issue that leaves the opposition abdicating from the public energy debate on what to do in the next 10 years when it really matters. Without a compelling energy policy alternative from the Liberals and Nationals, Australia will be left with an emboldened Labor to continue down the path of ideological and economically damaging environmental targets under the undue influence of radical activists.
Already, Labor’s fanciful green targets are being rendered impossible by the party’s contradictory environmental policies. It is leading to poor outcomes for our energy costs, energy reliability, jobs, taxes, environment and emissions.

As the reptiles refused to provide visual distractions, the pond thought it should help out.

You see Saul is ever so proud of his reptile appearances ...

A chance to enlarge the text for those few who might care ...

Yes, we've been here before, and likely enough will be here again...

The federal government is targeting 82 per cent renewables and 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. Victoria is targeting 95 per cent renewables by 2035. Most of these targets were set without regard to whether they were realistically deliverable. All these targets now appear impossible to achieve.
There are major economic, regulatory, logistic and reliability issues in delivering these targets, which cannot be addressed in time. Ironically, the biggest obstacles to the targets are Labor’s own environmental regulations; approvals to build anything, including renewables infrastructure and carbon credits, are becoming overly burdensome if not unworkable. Ambitious targets are laudable, but not when they become an unrealistic central point of planning and policy. This results in insufficient planning for the actual scenarios that eventuate when these targets are not met.
We are then caught scrambling for costly emergency fixes again and again: last-minute taxpayer-funded coal-fired power extensions, secret taxpayer-funded capacity investment (of ideologically driven higher-cost technologies), grid instability and manufacturing jobs losses.
Victoria targets 65 per cent renewables in 2030, increasing to 95 per cent in 2035, up from 40 per cent today. The 2030 target may be achieved. But to achieve the 2035 target Victoria needs to double its average annual renewables penetration growth rate of about 3 per cent across the past five years, towards 6 per cent for the five years to 2035. This is in defiance of the challenges that will make the next phase of renewables growth harder than the last phase.
As renewables penetration increases – especially beyond 70 per cent – wind and solar saturates, more storage and grid services are needed, and grid operability challenges become increasingly problematic. Seasonality challenges become harder, leaving the grid more dependent on gas capacity.

Please allow another distraction ... a few words about Saul ...

Saul was keen to go the Spanish blackout routine, a comedy styling much beloved by the reptiles, one that never gets old, Who's on first base Spanish blackout, Watt's on second base Spanish blackout ... and let's gas the country to save the planet ...

The recent Spanish blackout is illustrative, with Spain increasing gas generation to avoid a repeat. But Australia will struggle given our gas capacity is in decline after years of Labor policies that are hostile to gas, especially in Victoria. The federal 82 per cent renewable target suffers from the same problems as Victoria, at a compounded level. The big concern of the Australian Energy Market Operator and the industry is about system operability more than capacity these days. Transmission is key to addressing this. Merely building more wind farms won’t achieve much if they can’t reliably be connected to the grid.
Much more infrastructure, including transmission and interconnectors, is needed to enable haulage of new renewables supply and to maintain system reliability. But Labor’s push to toughen up the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act may make it harder, if not unworkable, to get the approvals to roll out needed renewable infrastructure upgrades in time.
The Spanish blackout is a warning of things to come. It provides a lesson Labor refuses to learn for our own energy security. It is clear low inertia due to high renewables penetration was a key contributing factor to the blackout: it made the grid more vulnerable to a shock and made system recovery more difficult.
Even the renewables lobby argues the blackout signals more investment is needed in the grid. Perhaps these grid upgrades should occur before more renewables are added? This fiasco should sound familiar to Australians. Our grid is not ready to accommodate our renewable targets. The energy industry and government know the target won’t be met. The targets were based on how quickly Labor wanted to see coal’s demise, rather than a realistic timeframe to make the investments needed to replace coal. The problem is the government continues to plan based on this fairytale because acknowledging the targets won’t be met is too politically painful.
The result is we risk not having a backup plan when the inevitable renewables shortfall arrives. We are about to learn we cannot shut down coal, reduce investment in gas and stop investment in renewable infrastructure all at the same time. Somewhere, there will need to be an environmental and social licence trade-off made.

Speaking of gassing the country, Saul does like to get around ...

"Thank you for your attention to this need to gas the planet matter!!!",  as Saul launched on a final gobbet of gaseous joy ...

Labor’s 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 will necessarily also fail. This is due in part to regulations slowing the renewables rollout. But mostly it is because the federal government is slowing down the generation of carbon offsets needed. Because of uninformed pressure from activists, key methods for carbon credits have been halted, with replacement methods under development continually delayed.
Our carbon market has become the biggest driver of conservation of Australian biodiversity and habitat during the past decade, along with returning more money to farmers across the nation. Yet green activists attack it just because the fossil fuel industry is one participant in the market.
Indeed, we have reached the incredible point where green activists are effectively campaigning against planting trees. And Labor is allowing these activists to influence policy. Australia is pursuing a delusional mix of policies that will result in economic and environmental decline: reduce coal and gas investment while also making it harder to build the needed grid infrastructure to roll out renewables, alongside making it harder to generate carbon offsets to keep manufacturing going amid rising safeguard mechanism obligations.
The economic damage from the Spanish blackout is still to be assessed. The more deeply personal suffering that results from major blackouts may not make headlines: the demise of family business stocks in cold storage; the elderly at risk on life support systems; couples who may no longer be able to have families after IVF clinics lose power; the loss of manufacturing jobs and the communities they support.
This is not the kind of pain any Australian should have to feel before we realise a practical path cannot be compromised to pander to a green fairytale. The Liberals and Nationals have the opportunity and duty to offer this practical energy policy trajectory.
Saul Kavonic is head of energy research at MST Marquee.

Splendid stuff, and the pond particularly enjoyed Saul's call for the Libs and Nats to offer a practical energy policy trajectory.

Indeed they can, as demonstrated by Wilcox's splendid study of a modern family in action, full of care and concern for the children ...

"Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!" And remember, gas is part of the family, it was just busy when the snap was taken ...