A meditative Sunday mainly devoted to domestic matters, featuring Polonius, the onion muncher and Dame Slap ...

Of course the pond should have linked to Marina Hyde in the Graudian yesterday when dealing with the bromancer, who was dealing with King Donald and former President Musk.

But if the pond had linked to So long, Elon: the cuts didn’t go to plan, but you completely shredded your reputation, how would the pond have provided an easy escape for those who want to duck out of Sunday herpetology class? 

How to help them avoid yet another encounter with prattling Polonius? Or even worse, the onion muncher, both offering nostrums and cures for what ails 'em.

Besides, if you go down that rabbit hole, there's only so many comedy carrots to find...‘Snowflake’ Trump Mercilessly Mocked As His Newest Legal Claim Backfires Spectacularly

Or you might find yourself heading back to checkout chemtrails footnotes with an unreconstructed crank.

Go on, git while the gitting's good ...

Still here? Don't blame the pond for your suffering or your mental anguish. Act and sound as tough as a mango pudding...

The header offered shards of hope: Time and training could be the making of Ley’s new team, The future for the Coalition looks bleak but, as George W. Bush famously said, you’d be wise to ‘misunderestimate’ it.

For those in the hive mind too clueless to recognise them: Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley and National Party leader David Littleproud hold a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The mystical injunction, for those who don't understand how hell to git outta here: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

At no point does Polonius suggest a herbal concoction, or an array of expensive Goop supplements as a way of fixing what ails them ...

Instead he tries his hand at Bushian comedy, and oh how sad it is...

Around the time that he was elected the 43rd US president, George W. Bush was reported to have said about his many critics: “They misunderestimated me.” The quote is cited in Jacob Weisberg’s George W. Bushisms and has never been denied. Bush was known for his tangled speech. But in this instance he was correct. Bush was underestimated. The point was demonstrated when the Republican president was re-elected in 2004.
Anthony Albanese is of a similar view to the former US president – a position he has stated on many occasions. For example, in late December 2024, during a media conference in the Victorian town of Horsham, he said: “I have been underestimated my whole political life.” A poll in the Nine newspapers around that time had Albanese with a net approval rating of minus 17 compared with Peter Dutton’s net rating of zero.
Yet in just over four months the Prime Minister was to lead the Labor Party to one of the greatest election victories in Australian political history at the federal level.
There are quite a few political commentators and columnists – of both the centre-left and centre-right, along with politically neutral types – who have reason to regret what they wrote and said about how Albanese was failing as Prime Minister.
It is common for critics of the Labor Party and trade union movement to dismiss those who belong to the labour movement as lacking in management skills. This overlooks the fact most of those who rise to the top of the Labor Party and trade unions, having negotiated their way through the factions, have real ability.
Those who have known Albanese since his days as a left-wing activist at the University of Sydney and in his early years in the ALP’s NSW branch will attest to his political skills. Then there is his encyclopedic knowledge of electorates throughout Australia, including a grasp of Labor’s candidates and their opponents.

The reptiles decided enough was enough and introduced an AV interruption, Some Liberals are suggesting Sussan Ley has risked making enemies in unveiling her new shadow ministry. Conservatives who voted for the Opposition leader have expressed disappointment with her decision to demote those who voted against her leadership. According to The Australian, several Liberal members expected Jane Hume to be given a more junior role rather than being removed entirely from the frontbench. Other Coalition members have voiced their support for the Opposition leader's decision.

The pond has nothing to say about all this - why should anyone care? - and nothing to offer, save the sight of furry-inclined Polonius writhing on his self-selected stick (fetch boy, fetch):

From early 2025, sources in the Labor Party were saying privately that Labor would attain majority government and Dutton would be defeated in his seat of Dickson in outer Brisbane. And so it came to pass. But the Liberal Party did not have the faintest idea of the magnitude of the defeat that was coming.
In short, modern Labor – now that the Labor splits of 1916 (over conscription for overseas service), 1931 (over economic policy at the time of the Depression) and 1955 (essentially over how communism should be fought, egged on by Labor’s erratic leader Bert Evatt) are matters of almost ancient history in the contemporary match-fit fighting machine.
This is not always the case with the Liberal Party. However the four Liberals who led the Coalition to office defeating an incumbent Labor government – Robert Menzies (1949), Malcolm Fraser (1975), John Howard (1996) and Tony Abbott (2013) – were match-fit leaders who knew what they stood for and were not afraid to say so.
All except Fraser were involved in politics at university and at 25 Fraser won a seat in the House of Representatives. All four were experienced political operators when they became prime ministers.

The pond has no doubt that these mystical incantations, these recitations of ancient history, are a great comfort for those seeking refuge from the present. 

It's a bit like taking in a mass before settling down to a feast of human flesh and blood, or perhaps a working from home to learn about a recalcitrant senator, Senator Jane Hume. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Amazingly Polonius thinks The Price is Wrong is The Price is Right, and he also wants to join Bid and the Canavan caravan, what with coal the thing that matters:

Leaving policy aside, the modern Labor Party is more politically skilled than the modern Liberal Party. That’s why the Liberals – along with the Nationals – need to ensure their most skilled politicians get important political jobs.
During this term of government, the only real influence the Coalition will have is in the Senate (where it will be, on occasions, in a balance-of-power position) and in the Senate estimates.
The standout performers on the Coalition side are the Nationals’ Bridget McKenzie and Matt Canavan, along with the Liberals (in alphabetical order) Andrew Bragg, Claire Chandler, Sarah Henderson, Jane Hume, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, James Paterson and Dave Sharma.
In the shadow ministry announced by Sussan Ley on Wednesday, Chandler, Henderson and Hume were dropped altogether. And Nampijinpa Price was demoted from the shadow cabinet to the outer ministry. Moreover, Sharma got a position beneath his pay grade.

Then comes a whine sweeter than vintage wine, Liberal senator Jane Hume has broken her silence after her dumping from the shadow cabinet, saying she was "hurt" both professionally and personally by the move.

And so to the hope against all lost hope:

It is true that Hume made an error when she spoke before the election on the Seven Network Sunrise program about “Chinese spies”. The reference should have been to a few agents of the Chinese Communist Party attempting to operate in Australia to support one Labor candidate – the offer was not accepted.
Hume also was marked down for her support for advocating abolishing work from home arrangements in the Australian Public Service. However, this policy was approved at the time by the leadership group before it was abandoned. Consequently, the blame should be shared.
Chandler and Henderson, conservatives both, appear to have been dropped without reason. Likewise with respect to Nampijinpa Price’s demotion.
Nationals leader David Littleproud nominates the Nationals to fill shadow ministry positions. In the previous parliament, the able Keith Pitt was excluded. On this occasion the political street fighter Barnaby Joyce is not in the shadow ministry. Along with Michael McCormack, who on ABC television on Thursday indicated that he might like to replace Littleproud. And Canavan does not want to be part of the frontbench while the Nationals remain committed to net zero emissions by 2050.
All up, it looks like a football team on the bottom of the ladder that has left some of its best players in the shed as they run on the field to take on the reigning premiers.
The Opposition Leader deserves time to put pressure on the Albanese government and her shadow ministry is not without talent. The Labor frontbenchers and backbenchers have more political skills. However, it is fair to say that Labor’s victory on May 3 was not without some luck. The effect of Cyclone Alfred, the erratic behaviour of Donald Trump and the death of Pope Francis all worked in favour of an incumbent.
And then there is Labor’s drive to net-zero emissions by 2050 and how to get there.
In short, the future for the Coalition looks bleak but it would be unwise to “misunderestimate” Ley and her colleagues – to use a Bushism.

The death of the Pope had something to do with it? Oh dear ... is that the best that's on offer? A cyclone was wot done it? Could this be climate change at work?

"I think we agree, the past is over." (25 more here)

And so to the onion muncher, an unendurably long nine minutes, or so the reptiles say ...

The cure for what ails 'em was in the header: ‘Ferocious opposition’: Tony Abbott says super tax fight is first step back to credibility, In failing to perform better against a deeply underwhelming government, Liberals have to accept that we’ve let ourselves down. What’s worse, we’ve let the country down. But we can improve.

There was no caption or credit for the risible gif illustration, which featured random splashes of lighting, which was just as well, because naming any names would have been a form of defamation. 

As for the super tax fight, super, the pond has been looking for a home for this Wilcox:

There was the usual incantation, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there, but who cares? 

Herpetology students were offered an out when the gitting was good, and now there's nothing but a lot of mindless onion munching...

In scale, the Liberals’ recent defeat rivals the rout of the old United Australia Party in 1943 that led to its demise and to the Liberals’ formation. It must mean a serious analysis of what has gone wrong in recent times and what should change if the Liberals are to stay the best hope of giving Australia better government. Because if the right lessons are not learnt the party could fade into irrelevance, a fate that now threatens an even more storied political movement: the world’s oldest and hitherto most successful political party, the British Conservatives.
Like all potential parties of government, the Liberal Party is itself a coalition of interests and movements. John Howard often used to say the party was the political custodian, in this country, of the liberal tradition of JS Mill and the conservative tradition of Edmund Burke.

Why does he still hang around like a bad penny? Why does the lizard Oz keep giving him space? It's been nigh on a decade since he did the rounds, and yet he still keeps popping up.

No wonder the reptiles immediately interrupted with Killer Creighton, and full disrespect Sharri ... IPA Senior Fellow Adam Creighton says the Opposition will “get ahead” of public opinion if it opposes net zero. “I think if the Coalition opposes it, they will be getting ahead of public opinion,” Mr Creighton told Sky News host Sharri Markson. “As energy prices keep rising … I think more people are going to realise it is because of the changes in the energy market.”

How the reptiles love shots of demonic forces scattered across the land and there'll be more to come.

As for the onion muncher, who cares? If the word on the street is right, he helped fuck the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way's chances, not to mention those of The Price is Wrong:

My preferred formulation was that the party was simultaneously liberal, conservative and patriotic: the freedom party, the tradition party and, above all, the patriotic party. As liberals, I said, we supported smaller government, lower taxes and greater freedom; as conservatives, we supported the family, small business and institutions that had stood the test of time; and as patriots, we believed that Australia was the best country in the world to live and were determined to keep it that way.
The temptation, after a heavy defeat, is to argue over whether the party was too left-wing or too right-wing. That’s an essentially academic exercise that’s impossible ever finally to resolve because so much depends on circumstances.
Peter Dutton had the right response last time when he said the party should be neither more nor less conservative, just more strongly Liberal.
For most of the term of parliament just past, Dutton was a highly effective leader. He kept the surviving Liberal and Nationals MPs reasonably cohesive after the demoralisation of first losing office.
He opted to oppose the Indigenous voice, thereby saving Australia from permanently entrenching race in our Constitution. He opted to support civil nuclear power, a no-brainer given that nuclear power can hardly be acceptable in a submarine but not on the other side of the dock. In the process, he so discredited the Albanese government that pre-Christmas most of the public told pollsters it did not deserve re-election.
But in the months running up to the recent election, Dutton was unable to persuade the public that the Coalition was ready to govern.

Cue another distraction featuring an astonishingly banal image (what's the chance of seeing a purse?), Independent MP Zali Steggall has urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to recall Parliament soon, highlighting the need to address pressing cost of living concerns. "It's important to get to Parliament and govern and get on with legislation, especially the ones around the tax cuts, hex debt relief and cost of living assistance," Ms Steggall told Sky News Australia. "We want to see small business support that should be made permanent. I will be very much pushing the government to do better on small business support. They are very much hurting. "So, look, I think we all need to get on with the job now. I hope Parliament will be recalled quickly so we can get on with things."

Excuses, excuses ...

Partly, this was because of an undercurrent of shameful Labor attacks on his looks and history as a Queensland policeman. Partly, this was because of brazen Labor lies about seven nuclear power stations costing $600bn and the destruction of Medicare to pay for them.
But mostly it was because it became far from clear, as polling day neared, how a Coalition government would be change for the better. An election both sides agreed was about cost-of-living relief, rather than about the deeper challenges facing the country, eventually boiled down to a choice between $14 off filling up your car for a year or a permanent 70c a day tax cut.
In any election that comes down to what government can do to ease the pain in your pocket, Labor tends to have a head start, especially when the Liberals seem out of character in opposing a tax cut.

Amazingly the next snap kept peddling the need to nuke the country, ‘Inexplicably, there was ... no sustained advocacy of the Coalition’s nuclear policy’. Picture: Matthieu Rondel/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Another  stack! If the pond could have a dollar for every stack snap in the lizard Oz...

At this point it should be clear that the pond just wants to get to the end, and the sooner the better, but there's no way of shutting the onion muncher up when he gets into self-important mode ...

Doubts about the Coalition crystallised when its policy to get public servants back to the office was announced as a thought bubble in a speech, only to be weaponised by Labor as an anti-women, anti-family attack on working from home, and then humiliatingly withdrawn.
Another vote changer was Labor’s promise to forgive 20 per cent of students’ HECS debts: for some, a $20,000-plus free gift. The Coalition was right to oppose it but somehow neglected to explain, forcefully and persistently, why it was fundamentally unfair to transfer student debt to taxpayers, essentially from comparatively high-income earners to comparatively low-income earners.
Inexplicably, there was no aggressive refutation of Labor’s lies about Dutton’s record as health minister; no sustained advocacy of the Coalition’s nuclear policy; and no powerful attacks on Labor’s promised tax on unrealised capital gains, a wealth tax that was the likely precursor to death duties and taxes on the family home. The Coalition’s advertising and social media campaigns were often lame; and, incomprehensibly, its pollster seems to have been completely oblivious to voters’ growing resolve to stick with the devil they knew.
Ever the decent and honourable man, in a remarkably gracious concession speech Dutton shouldered full blame; but really it was a collective failure: by shadow ministers who failed to do their policy homework or to insist the Coalition have coherent policy in key areas; by party officials who insisted to donors and supporters that the Coalition was on track to win at least 10 seats; by party insiders who have presided over a catastrophic long-term decline in membership; and by factional warlords cum lobbyists desperate to capture the Liberal brand, sometimes for commercial gain, often shoehorning into parliament pliable careerists rather than proven community leaders.

How did he manage to leave his own interference out of that list of collective failures and blame? Why not mention the baleful influence of the Murdochians, who sold a pup while thinking they were selling a hound? 

Cue another meaningless snap, Anthony Albanese, top, was criticised over his handling of a live-fire drill by the Chinese navy in March; inset, Defence Minister Richard Marles.

Just remember, it's not the pond's fault you're stuck here ...

As a Liberal Party, there has been a serious collective character deficit as too many of us, too often, have put personalities and politics before nation and principle. Too many Liberals think the business of politics is about achieving office, not improving the nation; and that democratic success is about feeding voters what they want rather than persuading them to want what the country really needs. Our defeat had very little to do with being too left-wing or too right-wing and much more to do with a long-term failure to be a clear alternative to an increasingly green-left Labor Party and to fight hard for our vision for the country.

So where to now?
Plainly, the reconstituted Liberal-Nationals Coalition needs to get on with the fundamental job of an opposition, which is to reject anything the government does that would make the country worse. That doesn’t mean opposition for opposition’s sake but it does mean relentlessly pointing out the government’s errors and, at the very least, letting voters know that it will undo the damage, as far as is possible, if it gets into government.
Ferocious opposition to the government’s unrealised capital gains tax legislation would be the obvious place to start. Because taxing unearned income is wrong in principle, support for it is confined to class-war warriors. Win or lose on this, for the Coalition it’s a way back to political credibility: forcing the government to back down would instantly end the Prime Minister’s second honeymoon; and if that’s unachievable, a finally legislated unrealised gains tax would be a permanent reminder that Labor was coming after voters’ assets. Besides, the one thing that normally unites Liberals is attacking Labor.
More substantially, though, the Coalition needs to level with voters about our country’s predicament and not shy away from pointing out all the indicators of imminent long-term decline – the economic stagnation, the social fracturing and the strategic peril – just because that implies difficult choices.

Yet another interruption and distraction, and no wonder the hive mind are drawn to these, Sky News host James Morrow says the Coalition did not do their “homework” on immigration policies. This comes amid the Coalition’s devastating 2025 federal election loss. “Stop letting groups like Universities Australia and the property developers lobbies define what our population should be,” Mr Morrow said. “The Overton window … that has shifted so far on immigration now. “They just simply didn’t do the homework.”

This is about as tough a torture test as the pond could mount for a Sunday meditation:

Australians sense that our country is drifting backwards and will eventually acknowledge leaders who are straight with them about our challenges and their potential solutions.
The cost-of-living pain is obvious but, rather than tackling symptoms before causes, what needs to be explained is how much of this is due to poor government. Australia is one of only two developed countries where average real disposable incomes, after tax, after inflation, and after living expenses, have gone backward across the past three years. This 8 per cent decline in living standards, the worst since these statistics have been kept, has been exacerbated by key government decisions.
Labor’s almost manic determination to drive fossil fuels out of our electricity generation is driving prices up and reliability down, and forcing heavy industry offshore. Its industrial changes have made it harder to run businesses and sent productivity backwards. Its green concerns, plus licensed lawfare, have made new resource projects almost impossible. And its addiction to record numbers of mostly low-skill migrants as a lazy way to boost overall economic growth (but not per capita GDP) is putting downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs and massive pressure on infrastructure.
A credible response to the cost-of-living crisis might have been repealing the Albanese government’s industrial legislation; scaling back foreign students to 10 per cent of university enrolments, closing English-language colleges that are basically a cover for foreigners to work here and pausing non-essential worker visas; plus ending the nuclear ban, keeping all coal-fired power stations open until there’s a reliable alternative, developing new gas fields with extreme urgency and ending subsidies for new renewables because, if they really are cheap, no subsidies should be needed. And achieving net zero, in eight elections’ time, should never have been at the expense of jobs or cost-of-living now.

It wouldn't be an onion muncher piece without bigotry and sundry phobias on display, and so it came to pass, A man rushes to get his share of food aid in Gaza this week. Visas issued to 3000 people from the war zone was ‘simply importing trouble’. Picture: AFP

As usual, the "entitlement mindset" gets a run, without any mention of how the onion muncher feels entitled to stick out his paw to score a little from Hungary's authoritarian ruler Viktor Orbán. 

What you might call an entitlement mindset on authoritarian steroids, or ketamine if you prefer Uncle Leon's example:

As well, the federal government simply can’t keep spending 3 per cent of GDP more than it raises in taxes, throwing money at every social problem and worthy cause. The inevitable consequence of long-term deficits is that already incentive-sapping taxes will have to increase, today’s children will be saddled with ever increasing debt, and sooner or later social programs will have to be frozen. The least politically painful way to deal with debt and deficit is to go for growth, but that would have required the intellectual self-confidence to take on educational vested interests, ingrained green preoccupations and the union movement.
Part of a credible Liberal response to the explosion of the “care economy” could have been alternatives to industrialised childcare, aged care and disability care. As well, to break the corrosive “something for nothing” entitlement mindset, healthy long-term welfare beneficiaries could once more have been required to work for the dole.
As the Howard government found, making it harder to exploit the system can be quite popular, especially with low-paid workers who resent their taxes going to people who should lift their game.

Feel like another celebration of fossil fuels, just as the Swiss are expecting more extreme events of the glacier collapse kind? 

You're welcome, and cheap at the stock image price, ‘Labor’s almost manic determination to drive fossil fuels out of our electricity generation is driving prices up and reliability down.’ Picture: Getty Images

Is this the reptiles' way of making Polonius seem like a sensible read?

The evidence on our streets is that society is changing fast and not always for the better. An immigration system that issued tourist visas to 3000 people, more or less unvetted, from the terrorist-controlled Gaza war zone is simply importing trouble. That 80 councils now refuse to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day (after Labor scrapped the rules insisting that they do) is hardly conducive to the civic patriotism needed to keep a multiethnic, culturally pluralist society together.
In the lead-up to the election, the Coalition’s response to declining social capital seemed to be moving towards an immigration system that was selective on the basis of values, insisting on unity under one flag and discouraging divisive gestures such as acknowledging that the country belongs to some of us more than all of us. Yet it never really crystallised into a decisive new direction.
For years now Australian leaders have been noting the strategic parallels with the 1930s yet without making any commensurate moves to acquire the more capable armed forces, deeper economic resilience and strengthened regional deterrence that avoiding major war and escaping economic coercion should demand.
Perhaps the most shameful dereliction of the Albanese government was its refusal to send a frigate to the Red Sea in December 2023. This was the first time since the ANZUS Treaty that Australia has refused an American request for military help because we lacked the personnel to crew ships or, more likely, because the government would prefer not to put Australian forces in harm’s way.

Thank the long absent lord this was the last AV distraction, and fittingly it featured petulant Peta and The Price is Wrong, Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses the Coalition’s demotion of women in the new shadow cabinet ministry and how some portfolios are replaced by women who have not been elected yet. “I spoke here last night to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, she was disappointed, she has been demoted,” Ms Credlin said. “No one could accuse these women of lacking in performance or capacity and I reckon the fact they are all conservative women, it feels like they have been targeted, I might add too, these women who have been dropped have been replaced by women that are not even elected yet in the parliament.”

Then it was just a saunter to the conclusion, an end to the word salad:

Then there was the limp response to China’s intimidatory live-fire exercise off the NSW coast. Yet the Coalition proposed only a gradual increase in military spending to 3 per cent of GDP at the very end of the campaign, unlinked to any specific program for rearmament. On difficult and complex subjects, policy can’t be developed in secret and then sprung on the public at five minutes to midnight. Or as Howard used to say: “You can’t fatten a pig on market day.” Individually as well as collectively, senior Liberals need to be working out a new and compelling program. This was my object in publishing Battlelines in 2009.
Making the next election a credible contest really needs to start now, with an in-depth analysis of our national malaise and a policy response capable of turning it around. This will require detailed work that can withstand serious public scrutiny. It also will need an accessible plan, perhaps a “contract with Australia”, in good time for the public to digest before they have to vote, that’s far more substantial than the vapid bromides the Coalition released earlier this year.
What better way could there be to show Australians you mean to be different than to invite everyone who normally votes Liberal and who takes an interest in our public life actually to join the Liberal Party for real policy debates and to choose the best possible candidates at rank-and-file preselections that factions can’t readily manipulate?
In failing to perform better against a deeply underwhelming government, Liberals have to accept that we’ve let ourselves down. What’s worse, we’ve let the country down and now owe it to Australians to learn the right lessons and improve accordingly.

Some might wonder why the pond preferred the onion muncher to the dog botherer, but truth to tell the pond could take only so much celebrating of mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and an attempt at genoicide.

Take this sample from the junketeer:

...Albanese amplifies implausible claims about Israel deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza when the real-world dilemma is to ensure aid can be delivered directly and free of charge, bypassing Hamas’s profiteering. A serious prime minister would have offered international aid expertise and resources to help find solutions but Albanese just lashed out, leaving Israel and the US to get on with the task of feeding Gazans.
After my 2006 visit I wrote a piece for Adelaide’s The Advertiser arguing that in the fight against Islamist extremism Israelis were at the epicentre in a similar way to how Berliners were the bellwethers in the Cold War. Israel’s struggle would be ours: “The battle is not between civilisations but for civilisation.”
To see how this is playing out we only need to take Hamas at its word. It is doing what it has always pledged to do, fulfilling an Islamist plan that will not countenance a two-state solution.
If this conflict were about Palestinian statehood it would have been resolved three decades ago. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and others want Israel wiped off the map and modernity wound back around the world.
They have terrorised Jews, traumatised their own people and scandalised Israel. It has been a success – inspiring Islamist extremists and anti-Semites worldwide, creating social and political division abroad and weakening support for Israel so dramatically that even Australia has stepped away.
These are worrying times. Israel’s fight remains our battle too. If pluralism and democracy can be eliminated in the Holy Land, they will be under threat globally. And if we cannot unite against a genocidal death cult, civilisation has lost its purpose.
Chris Kenny is in Israel as part of an Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council study tour.

Implausible claims? Gaza is the hungriest place on earth ...

Even the Germans are having second thoughts.

What a contemptible man he is.

If the pond wanted to feature a meditative Sunday story, try this sample from Nicola Redhouse in the Nine rags, When Israel acts shamefully, we Jews must be willing to be ashamed of it. (*Archive link).

A few weeks ago I signed a statement from members of the Jewish community calling for an end to the Israel-Gaza war, and an end to the “humanitarian crisis” unfolding under the Netanyahu-led government.
The statement was meant to be published as a paid advertisement in The Australian Jewish News, but I found out last week the editor was not willing to run it as it was written.
I have avoided signing statements on this war until now. Here in Australia, there has been fierce conflict over how we respond to the horror of Hamas’ terror of October 7 and the subsequent decimation of Gaza and its people. What date to mark the beginning of “it all”? What label for what kind of trauma is being inflicted, and for what reason? I have kept a notebook of alternating news reports of the same event to observe this dissonance at how we describe what we are witnessing.
But this week, driving my children to school, I heard British plastic surgeon Dr Victoria Rose, who works at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza. Every 40 minutes, she said, a child dies there. The children dying are between 1 and 11 and many are dying because they are so malnourished their bodies cannot fight the infections from their burns and wounds. The hospital is running out of the disinfectant they need to operate. These are unequivocal accounts of a humanitarian crisis that can and must be stopped...

Uh huh, and again ...

...A rabbi in my community used these words when I challenged his opposition to protests earlier this week: “Israel, like any nation, is not without flaws”.
In the face of the destruction of more than 400 Palestinian villages, the permanent exile of more than 700,000 people, and the ongoing mass death inflicted in Gaza, this response is pallid. Like describing apartheid in South Africa as a “zoning issue”.
My moral clarity comes instead from the words of a Holocaust survivor protesting in Israel: “I don’t think we can remember our suffering without acknowledging the suffering of Gaza ... It occupies the same place in my heart.”
The rabbi offered more: “Walk with your head high”.
But what if dignity requires that we sometimes must bow our heads? What if the radically Jewish act, at the same time the most truly human act, is to listen more carefully – especially to those whose cries we are most reluctant to hear? To hear of the shrapnel and infections and malnutrition of the Gazan children.
How can we treat one people’s trauma as sacred and another’s as all but non-existent? Justice that operates with such distorted vision is not justice, after all. It is tribalism in moral dress. Ethically speaking, love that cannot feel shame is not love – it is vanity; and nationalism that cannot feel shame is not love of country; it is mere jingoism.
What to do, too, with the conflation of the identity of the Jewish people with the state of Israel? This is not only a definitional error; it is a theological and moral one of huge significance. Judaism long survived without sovereignty, and even when sovereignty returned, the emergence of Israel did not annul the prophetic tradition that long taught us to hold power accountable, to speak truth to it, and to mourn when justice is denied – even by our own. Maybe especially by our own.
Jewish tradition has never required uniformity of judgment. But it has required a reverence for truth. And above all, it has demanded that we never mistake power for righteousness, or the survival of the state for the flourishing of the soul. As the statement I signed says, “what is happening in Gaza is so catastrophic to Palestinians and Israeli hostages, that any constraint against open criticism is no longer tenable”...

And so on ... and so to a bonus.

The pond realises many have already fled the room shrieking and howling at the heavens, but please spare a thought for a shrieking and howling Dame Slap ...

The great thing here is that clearly the ACT watchdog has got under her skin, like a leech lurking in the Peel River, and lordy, lordy, does she squeal and squirm: Who will bring the ACT watchdog to heel?, The ACT Integrity Commission attempted to slander me, and the journalism of this newspaper, when writing its Operation Juno report. Ultim­ately it failed. This is the untold story.

It is of course the Dame Slap version of the story, and should be viewed strictly from that angle, with the caption identifying Dame Slap's source, Walter Sofronoff is an eminent lawyer with the intellect and resources to fight for a judicial review, but ordinary people might not find it so easy to take on the power of the state. Pictures: Jack Tran

Throw in the usual command, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there, and yet you're still here ...

There is a big question about whether the ACT Integrity Commission deserves to have the word integrity in its job description. Its behaviour in two recent matters raises concerns that this powerful body may believe it is above the law. The first matter is public. The second one is not. Until now.
As to the first, last week we learned that the ACT Integrity Commission doesn’t believe that its own work should be the subject of judicial review. The commission has accused Walter Sofronoff of a most serious offence – corrupt conduct – arising from his contact with me before and during the board of inquiry proceedings that investigated, among other things, the conduct of Shane Drumgold.
Following that finding in the Commission’s Operation Juno report, Sofronoff launched an action in the Federal Court for judicial review, claiming the ACT Integrity Commission acted beyond its powers.
Last week, the commission sided with claims by the Speaker of the ACT Legislative Assembly that parliamentary privilege attaches to the Operation Juno report once it was tabled in parliament – keeping it beyond the bounds of a court of law.
This curious development raises several questions. What role did the ACT government play in putting forward these claims? Ring-fencing the Operation Juno report from judicial review is hardly a vote of confidence in the conduct of the ACT Integrity Commission. What is the Speaker, the ACT Integrity Commission and possibly the ACT government afraid of?
That we might learn that this body behaved badly?
The legal arguments about whether the commission’s report can be the subject of the judicial review will play out in court – in public. As they should. Sofronoff is an eminent lawyer and former judge with the intellect and resources to fight this. But ordinary people might not find it so easy to take on the power of the state.
Behind the scenes is a second, untold story about the ACT Integrity Commission. Neither the commission nor the ACT government will relish it being made public. This story too raises considerable questions about the commission’s modus operandi.
The commission attempted to slander me, and the journalism of this newspaper, when writing its Operation Juno report. It ultim­ately failed. But what it tried was profoundly troubling. It was wrong, legally and morally.
Had the commission behaved this way towards an ordinary citizen, without the legal resources and editorial support I had, it is very likely this body would have succeeded in damaging that person’s reputation. Perhaps a dose of sunlight will trigger more probity at the commission in future.
With that in mind, here is what happened.

Important clarification and correction at this point: "Here, in Dame Slap's mind, is what she thinks and alleges happened". 

Oh what a tale of woe and suffering and how delicious:

In January, the commission sent me, through our lawyers at The Australian, its draft Operation Juno report setting out its findings about me and Sofronoff. It was an extraordinary insight into the workings of the commission.
The draft report was riddled with untrue statements, inconsistencies and unfounded allegations. That was evident from the start.
To comply with section 186 of the ACT Integrity Commission Act, paragraph two of the draft report said if an asterisk was placed next to a person when first named in the report, it signalled the person was not the subject of any adverse comment and opinion.
When my name was first mentioned – in paragraph four – there was an asterisk. And yet the commission proceeded to include a litany of adverse comments and opinions about me throughout the draft report.
When we pointed that out to the commission, it had the audacity to suggest it had made no adverse comment or opinion about me.

Ah the offending asterisk, and to Dame Slap an offending snap, ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP Image

The pond resolutely refused to indulge Dame Slap during her shameless and shameful interference in the Lehrmann-Higgins matter, but the fall out from that shocking and indefensible behaviour had a price, and with it now comes the squealing and the squawking ...

Who was it kidding? The commission’s draft report accused me of having “pre-formed views” about Drumgold, of using information that was “grist to her mill”, of having an “axe to grind”, of being a “protagonist” in this saga. And more. These allegations amounted to serious and unfounded slurs against my work throughout the Lehrmann-Higgins scandal.
The integrity commission did not seek one bit of evidence from me about these matters. So much for procedural fairness from a body charged with investigating the integrity of others. (It asked only who our source was when we published the findings of the board of inquiry report into Drumgold and others. I will come to that later.)
Once we read the draft report, we immediately asked the commission to provide to us evidence to support its allegations against me. The ACT Integrity Commission’s response to us suggested a distinct lack of integrity.
The commission either failed to provide evidence for its allegations about me or it said the allegations were drawn from the judgment of Justice Stephen Kaye in the ACT Supreme Court. Following a legal action brought by Drumgold, Kaye had found that Sofronoff’s conduct, in speaking to me, gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias against Drumgold. Importantly, Kaye also found that seven of the eight findings by Sofronoff about Drumgold’s misconduct were not legally unreasonable. The judge went so far as to describe some of Sofronoff’s findings against Drumgold’s misconduct as “unimpeachable” and “entirely unimpeachable”.
Kaye made no adverse comments about me. I was not a party to the legal action brought by Drumgold, nor was I called as a witness. In those circumstances Justice Kaye was careful not to besmirch my reporting and commentary. On the contrary, he described my work as “firm and considered”. Indeed, Justice Kaye described my work as “cogently adverse” to Drumgold. These were entirely fair descriptions by Justice Kaye of the body of work that I produced about this saga, often working with my colleague Stephen Rice.
Justice Kaye said this in his judgment (at paragraph 270): “Ms Albrechtsen’s views, as expressed in the articles published by her, could not be characterised as superficial or unreasoned. Rather, the articles were clearly the product of substantial research undertaken by Ms Albrechtsen, and were based on a significant amount of information that was apparently available to her … she was well immersed in the background and the circumstances of the prosecution of the case against Mr Lehrmann, and … held considered and firm views relating to that matter, which were significantly critical of” Drumgold.

Just remember this ...

Walter Sofronoff’s “private and secret” text messages with a columnist at the Australian demonstrated “preferential treatment” and a “closeness” that could lead to an impression of bias, a court has heard.
Janet Albrechtsen’s 273 interactions with the head of an inquiry into the failed prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann are at the centre of a legal challenge by the former ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold, who wants to quash the inquiry’s adverse findings against him.
Drumgold’s lawyer, Dan O’Gorman, told the ACT supreme court on Thursday that Albrechtsen texted Sofronoff on 10 July to ask for a copy of any potential adverse findings contained in his report.
O’Gorman said text messages obtained during discovery show Sofronoff replied with a thumbs-up emoji. O’Gorman said when Albrechtsen later questioned when they would arrive, Sofronoff said he would provide them after she made a formal request through an email address he provided.
“The inference to be drawn is that what was being requested was that there be an appearance of something different being done to reality,” O’Gorman told the court.
“There was an attempt to prevent disclosure of those earlier communications where the request had been made and granted. Put another way, these exchanges highlight the private and secret nature of some of these text messages.”

And this ...

...“That is, it is clear there had been discussion between Albrechtsen and Sofronoff related to Lehrmann,” O’Gorman said. “We have no idea what the discussion was, of course … but a fair-minded observer is left wondering.”
O’Gorman then cited phone records indicating Albrechtsen and Sofronoff communicated 38 times in the three days before the inquiry began in May. This included a text message from Sofronoff criticising the former prosecutor’s treatment of “two young professionals” under his mentorship.
“It shows that Mr Sofronoff had poisoned his mind to Mr Drumgold, before Mr Drumgold even got into the witness box,” O’Gorman told the court. “It is an example we will say of a failure to provide a fair hearing.”
O’Gorman then cited phone records indicating Albrechtsen and Sofronoff communicated 13 times while Drumgold was in the witness box between 8 and 12 May.
The court heard Albrechtsen texted Sofronoff requesting a draft copy of his inquiry report on a strictly embargoed basis. A copy provided from Sofronoff’s personal email address included annotations and tracked changes. Albrechtsen also successfully sought advanced notice of adverse findings, the court heard.
“In the course of those communications information that was of importance to the inquiry and its deliberations, and not really to a journalist, were passed on,” O’Gorman told the court.

And so on and no wonder the reptiles paused for Divorce, bankruptcy and citizenship issues – these are all matters that might land you in court. But not all courts are created equal.

Truth to tell, when you get down into the reeds and the mud and fancy yourself as a player, chances are some of the mud will stick, and all that's left then is the howling, and perhaps most pathetic of all, resort to a dictionary ...

It was patently untrue for the commission to claim it had gone no further than what Justice Kaye said. It made unfounded, gratuitous, adverse comments about me.
For example, the Macquarie Dictionary defines “axe to grind” as “to have a private purpose or selfish end to attain”. In fact, I had no “axe to grind”, nor did I use information as “grist to my mill” or have “pre-formed views” about Drumgold. Rice and I reported on matters as and when events happened. We sought information from myriad people about myriad issues and events – some involving Drumgold. My commentary responded to events as they unfolded. I formed views about facts as I found them – never before.

Likewise, the commission had no evidence to support its assertion I was a “protagonist” in this never-ending story. That manifestly disparaging claim misunderstands our journalism.
Rice and I interviewed many people involved in this debacle that other media outlets did not. We developed dozens of confidential sources that others did not. We broke dozens of stories. We reported on matters to the public that most other outlets did not. In other words, we were curious and thorough. That did not make me a protagonist.

Perhaps not a protagonist, because the pond prefers the term 'antagonist', because at every stage during the reporting of the Lehrmann/Higgins matter, the hostility to Higgins and the transparent allegiance to Lehrmann never stayed hidden. And that's why the pond banned this particular crusade by an eternal jihadist.

Cue another snap, Justice Walter Sofronoff. Picture: Liam Kidston

These are muddy waters, but the more Dame Slap protests, the more she sounds like she's protesting too much ...

The commission’s claim that these slurs were not adverse comments about me was ludicrous. Test it this way: if one described those preparing the draft Operation Juno report as having “an axe to grind” or receiving material that was “grist to their mill”, or that they had “strong and pre-formed” views going into an inquiry or that they were “already committed to an adverse view” or that any of them was a “protagonist” for simply doing their job, would those assertions – with no evidence to support them – be procedurally fair? No. Would these statements potentially damage the reputation of those at the commission the subject of these allegations? Yes.
We do not shy away from having strong views about the importance of the rule of law. That single foundational legal principle distinguishes us from mob rule. The former director of public prosecutions made a series of admissions during the board of inquiry hearings about his conduct before, during and after the criminal trial of Bruce Lehrmann that raised serious questions about the administration of justice. That’s what we reported and commented on.
The commission’s pattern of disregard for the rights and obligations of a journalist was evident from its first communication to us in September last year when it asked us to disclose – confidentially – the identity of our source, backed by an unveiled threat of “issuing a summons to obtain this information”.
We advised it that no professional and ethical journalist would ever reveal a confidential source. Not even confidentially. Not even to the ACT Integrity Commission. The commission failed – or refused – to understand this most basic of journalistic tenets. It seemed to us that it was determined to build a false case that I was given every chance to defend my integrity about not breaking an embargo – and failed to do so.
We also explained to the commission why it would be impossible for us to “corroborate” that we hadn’t broken the embargo. We told the commission there was no evidence we could give that would not breach our ethical duty in relation to confidential sources.
The commission’s dismissive response to us last year sure was a harbinger of what was to come in its draft Operation Juno report this year. The commission described our response to it as “difficult to accept for obvious reasons”.
What were these “obvious reasons” for rejecting our position? The commission didn’t set that out in the report. It appeared determined to infer – with no evidence – that we had breached the embargo, despite us assuring it that we did not.

Pathetic really, but the pond has reached the final snap, Shane Drumgold and his junior counsel Skye Jerome leaving court during the Bruce Lehrmann trial in Canberra in 2022. Picture: Gary Ramage/NCA NewsWire

And that leaves one final lengthy indignant howl to go ... make of it what you will ...

Once again, it fell to us to force the commission to correct the draft report. And we explained the law to the commission: section 126K of the Evidence Act is parliamentary recognition of the critical importance of journalists keeping their confidential sources secret from even the compulsory processes of the court.
This fundamental journalistic tenet is incorporated into the 2018 Integrity Commission Act by reason of section 174(a).
We pointed out that the draft report naively failed to record that the final board of inquiry report had been handed to the ACT government before we received a confidential copy. And that leaks often happen. It could have come from a number of places.
Time and again, our experience was that the ACT Integrity Commission seemed not to comply with its own standards. Its own draft report said “as a tribunal of fact (it) cannot choose between guesses”. It must, its own draft report says, base findings on “a rational assessment of the relevant and available evidence”.
To sum up, the ACT Integrity Commission used patently pejorative words and phrases to make adverse comments about my journalism in its draft report. It did not seek evidence from me – other than to extraordinarily ask who my source was.
The commission did not provide evidence to support its adverse comments about me. It even misrepresented what Justice Kaye said about our journalism. On the one matter where it did ask me questions – requesting we reveal our source – it rejected our response. Its behaviour was so demonstrably inappropriate that it gave rise to, at minimum, the appearance of bias. At its highest, it looked like actual bias and pre-judgment against me.
Ultimately, the ACT Integrity Commission appeared to agree that its draft report lacked integrity. How can I say this? Because after we spent a great deal of time, money and legal effort to expose its shoddy work in our letters to it, the commission agreed to remove all those adverse comments about me and our journalism.
There was nothing magnanimous about the commission’s volte-face. It never should have included baseless allegations in its draft report. Not every person can fight tooth and nail to have baseless allegations removed from a final report.
We could have said nothing about any of this. After all, no one relishes even unfounded allegations being made public. Its debacle could have stayed between the commission and us.
But the commission’s treatment of us raises serious concerns about its final report and its treatment of Sofronoff.
After all, just because the commission removed those adverse opinions about me doesn’t mean it stopped believing them.
I couldn’t care less what the commission thinks about me privately. But painting me as an unethical journalist appeared to be critical for it to conclude that Sofronoff had engaged in corrupt conduct.
At one stage the draft report suggested that conversations between the judge and me may have been “one-sided”. As in I might have been doing all the talking. I will not breach confidentiality by commenting one way or the other on the accuracy of this comment. However, I will observe that this accusation was not put to me by the commission. My conversations with Sofronoff were not taped. The commission had not a skerrick of evidence to support it.
Once again, the commission ignored the role of a journalist – at its core, to listen, to ask questions and to listen again. It failed to understand that Sofronoff wanted the media to report about the board of inquiry in a timely, thorough and curious fashion. That is why he spoke with this newspaper.
Yet here again, the commission was using an unfounded accusation to build a case that an unethical journalist was, quite literally, whispering in private to Sofronoff about her pre-formed views about Drumgold so that the esteemed judge would take her lead. This was slander without foundation.
Our experience with the ACT Integrity Commission is that the behaviour of this body, with its wide-ranging powers, lacks integrity. Its behaviour is far more troubling than anything it has claimed about Sofronoff. It would be a travesty of justice if its final Operation Juno report was not reviewed by a court.

The role of the journalist? 

Dame Slap went on a crusade, a jihad, for months on end, and as noted above, it was so appalling that the pond banned covering her coverage, especially as the matter was before the courts.

Whining now about the way some have judged her behaviour says much more about her resolute failure to indulge in a little self-reflection than about anything else ...

And so to a few concluding cartoons. 

What with the domestic nature of much of the above, it seemed best to save them all for a final burst, a way of cleansing the palate and suffering eyeballs ...

And back to where the pond started this day to produce a tidy virtuous circle...