In which it's steadily as she goes into drunken binge spending with the bromancer, and super reform with Dame Groan ...

Some days the reptiles are beyond the valley of the completely predictable and this was such a day...

They'd been Hegsethed, all shook up and wildly excited, as pissed as parrots on a Faux noise champagne binge.

The leads started the bender..

3.PC OF GDP
Albanese defends low defence spending after US calls for lift
Anthony Albanese has been warned by a former army chief that the government risks ‘abrogating its responsibility’ to the public and those in uniform by failing to increase military funding.
By Sarah Ison and Geoff Chambers

COMMENTARY by Cameron Stewart
Albanese blinks on defence and is caught out by Trump
After being called out by the Trump administration over its go-slow increase in defence spending, the Albanese government faces a dilemma of its own making about how to respond.

Over on the extreme far right came astonishing news ...

War is a risky business? Who'd have thunk it? Who'd have guessed?

Why war is a risky business
The almost total lack of consideration of defence matters during the recent election campaign and the current focus on a far-off distant, enormously expensive force demonstrates how willing our politicians are prepared to tolerate risk.
By Peter Leahy

As always when it comes to such heady matters, life on the killing fields, the pond always turns to the bromancer, always ready to recall his time on the front line, always pissing into the wind ...

The header: Hegseth-Albanese confrontation on defence a historic moment, If Australia became pacifist this would have a small, negative effect on American security. If the US abandoned its alliance with Australia, we would be utterly defenceless.

The caption: US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers his speech during 22nd Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore. Picture: AP Photo

The injunction: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Couldn't the reptiles have started by digging up a better image, perhaps done in the style of one of their infamous montages?

Might not it have been wise to begin with a warning? 

Per their reptile colleagues at the WSJ (archive link)?

No? Okay, let's get on with the shakedown, because that's what it is, what with Petey the Faux Noise boy and the rest of King Don's Mafia mob expecting everybody to drop a bundle on US weaponry, what with the shakedown having already worked a treat ...

We’re in danger of missing the historic significance of what happened at the Shangri-La security dialogue involving US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles and, back home, Anthony Albanese. Historians may well look back on this moment as a pivot point in Australian history.
Hegseth had two historically important messages. Marles claimed to hear them. Albanese treated both with contempt. Hegseth made the strongest statement yet that the Trump administration would support Taiwan militarily if it were attacked by China. He suggested Beijing could take military action against Taiwan “imminently”.
Hegseth is a complete Trump loyalist and it can only be that these messages to Beijing are fully authorised by Donald Trump. Hegseth is telling the truth that Trump is determined Beijing won’t invade Taiwan while he’s President. In his speech, Hegseth also said US allies in the Indo-Pacific, facing the threatening Chinese military build-up, should be spending more on defence. Some are doing just that.
Japan has effectively doubled its defence budget. The new US defence budget incorporates a 13 per cent increase to a cool $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion).
Hegseth said: “Our defence spending must reflect the dangers and threats that we face today. Because deterrence doesn’t come on the cheap … Time is of the essence. We must … move out with urgency.” America is doing exactly what it’s asking its allies to do. In fact it’s one-sided.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles. Picture: Department of Defence

The pond was reminded of mad scramble to arm up that was a feature, not a bug, in the decades before the Great War ...

At the behest this time of a man in the grip of late night weirdness at the least, or at best, incipient dementia ...

Barking mad, and so the bromancer barks in unison ...

To every ally, certainly to Australia, the US gives vastly more security than it gets back.
If Australia became pacifist this would have a small, negative effect on American security.
If the US abandoned its alliance with Australia, we would be utterly defenceless. We could quintuple our defence budget and not get a fraction of the security we get from the Americans.
Marles made a strange speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, more like a woolly foreign affairs thumb-sucker than a Defence Minister’s speech. He called for new emphasis on arms control treaties. Of course, more multilateral processes – just what we need to deter the Chinese from taking military action against Taiwan. Brilliant!
Don’t get me wrong, arms control treaties can make a contribution. They’ve got nothing to do with the urgent tasks of today. But the whole point of the Albanese government, domestically and in national security, is to avoid the urgent tasks of today.
Nonetheless, Marles nodded to the idea that deterrence was under challenge. The way to reinforce deterrence is enhanced allied military capability.

Just to rub it in, the reptiles slipped in another snap, Anthony Albanese.

The pond would have preferred a 'toon ...

The bromancer remained ever so keen to embark on a drunken spending spree, what with his war with China pending by Xmas ...

Which leads to Hegseth’s second historic action. He privately raised with Marles the obvious, blatant, crying need for Australia to do more for itself on defence capability. The Labour government of Keir Starmer in the UK has raised defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP and will go to 3 per cent. Australia is stuck at a pathetic 2 per cent of GDP, which is just what it was when Albanese came to government.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute last week issued a sober, rigorous, conscientious report in which it said the current defence budget was wholly inadequate to the strategic tasks. Albanese abused ASPI for this, accused them of being politically partisan and said they needed to take a good look at themselves.
Yet every single person the Albanese government itself has officially appointed for guidance on defence policy says the same thing as ASPI. Former defence force chief Angus Houston, whom Albanese tapped to lead the Defence Strategic Review, says we need at least 3 per cent of GDP. So does Peter Dean, the lead author of the DSR. So does Dennis Richardson, former head of Defence. So does Kim Beazley, the last Labor defence minister of any real consequence. Do these men also need to take a good look at themselves?
Hegseth actually asked Marles to consider taking defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. We only got to hear of this from a Pentagon briefing. The Albanese government never levels with us on defence.

The reptiles elevating Sir Keir? So it seems ... Keir Starmer delivers a speech during a visit to the BAE Systems' Govan facility. Picture: Pool/Getty Images

Inspired, the bromancer kept calm as he could - what with hysteria and cries of 'nuts' always hovering in the wings - and carried on ...

If we moved to 2.5 per cent initially that would be an extra $13bn a year. Missile defences, drones, counter-drone capabilities, de-mining ships and a thousand other things should top our buying list. If we took defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP that would be an extra $13bn on top of that. Then we might even think of something radical like a minor expansion of our very small defence force. We need money now just to make what we’ve got work.
A government always has to build a defence force of the distant future and one for the next five to 10 years. Our two giant projects, the AUKUS subs and the Hunter-class frigates, will consume much more than $100bn before they give us any capability, at soonest in the mid-2030s.
The Ukrainians have just shown us what drones can do in modern warfare. Yet the Australian Defence Force under Albanese and Marles has made no significant investment in armed drones, nor in counter-drone capabilities.

Actually, glory to Ukraine, the Ukrainians have shown the wisdom of being cautious, doing their own thing, and keeping a lid on their plans, for fear of a leak by an alleged friend, a motley pack of rabid lovers of authoritarians in thrall to Vlad the sociopath and other nationalists...

There's a drone frenzy, which makes it all the funnier to recall the heady days when the bromancer was infatuated with those amazingly expensive and perhaps completely useless subs ...

And so on with the blathering bromancer ...

Marles told Hegseth he was “up for that conversation” about increasing our defence spending. Albanese treated both Marles and Hegseth with contempt. We will decide our defence budget, Albanese fatuously declaimed. OK, does this mean we’re fine if the Americans walk away from our security?
Albanese further said his government had allocated $10bn more for defence across the forward estimates, which is about two-thirds of diddly-squat. But here the loquacious, Euclidean Albanese asserted himself. Instead of picking a percentage of the GDP, he smugly explained, you should choose what defence assets you need to defend the country and then pay for them.
What a brilliant rhetorical joust! So tell us, PM, what actual defence assets has your government secured for Australia? The answer is none. We’re less capable militarily now than when Albanese was first elected.

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of the Bomber, Kim Beazley.

How the pond wished the Bomber would go away. He was useless when he was in charge of things, and he's even more useless today.

Why couldn't we have another illustration of the mind of the King to whom the reptiles are in thrall? A man who whiles away his time in the wee hours tormented by strange demons ...

Weird stuff, but the bromancer remained oblivious to the bitter end ...

Our defence budget crisis has two obvious dimensions. You can’t acquire nuclear-powered submarines and keep your defence budget static without cannibalising all your other capabilities. And second, as the government has repeatedly told us, these are the most dangerous strategic times we’ve faced since World War II; we need much more defence capability, not the business-as-usual minus that the Albanese government has given us.
In their more honest moments senior Labor figures admit they plan to have virtually no significant capability over the next 10 years. Whatever happens between America and China the Americans will handle, they think. We’ll commit our flag, some temporary basing and a token force in any emergency.
Albanese has decided not to take Australian security seriously. The Trump administration is right to call him out over it. Albanese has weakened the alliance, and our security.

That deserved a celebratory cartoon ...

And so to the bonus, the usual Dame Groan Tuesday outing, which promised a super time for all ...

Dame Groan scored a header, For the sake of national interest, super system needs overhaul, There’s no doubt super has benefited some handsomely but there are many weaknesses in the system. At the very least, the system needs massive simplification to eliminate the thicket of arcane complexity that characterises superannuation in Australia.

And a caption, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra.

... but no injunction to take us there, and before going there, the pond wondered why Dame Groan had turned from simply ravaging the super tax to proposing that the system needed an overhaul ...

Of course, of course ... Ted had been talking to the reptiles ...

And so on, and the talk sent the Speccie mob into a frenzy of fear and loathing... (possible paywall)

Just in case the paywall intervened, the rest of the rant was juicy, more distilled essence of Oz than the reptiles or Dame Groan herself could manage ...

...All the Liberals need to do is leave Chalmers alone in the middle of his self-created mess and the voters will flock back to the Liberals to protect their nest eggs.
Ted O’Brien’s suggestion that he’ll back a Labor super raid against electorates who would be natural Liberal voters is just mad. It is incomprehensibly dumb.
‘If Jim Chalmers is prepared to be humble for a moment and realise he’s made a mistake and wishes to engage with me, my door is open.’
No, O’Brien. Your door should be welded shut with a ‘Lower Taxes!’ sign on the front of it.
Increasing revenue from super makes the Liberal Party look just as greedy as Labor. If the Treasury is out of money, it’s because they wasted it on nonsense. Order a reform. Do some leg work finding out where it’s all going. Threaten to investigate Labor’s spending in a Doge-like witch hunt of all things soggy and Woke. That would scare the heck out of Chalmers.
Offering to help the Treasurer take more private money to spend on Net Zero is just … I have run out of words.
Spectator Australia writer Michael de Percy has a few: ‘I won’t forgive the Liberals for striking a deal with this socialist government, ever. The true Liberals of Sir Robert Menzies, my political hero, are dead to me. Sir Robert Menzies is dead, and the Uniparty Liberals killed him…’
Is this really what Ted O’Brien thinks his Liberal voters want? More of their retirement money going to Labor? Please. Let’s hear that argument.
After the election, O’Brien said, ‘I don’t think we had an economic narrative that the Australian people could see their aspirations realised through.’
And what, taking their super is your plan?
‘We are at our best when Australians understand that if they work hard, they can achieve anything, because the Coalition is empowering them through economic management.’
O’Brien, think about what you are telling the taxpayer. You are saying, if you work really hard, you might reach the glass ceiling of super where the government will immediately turn your hard work and economic management into a cash cow for a wasteful Treasury.
That’s the message I am hearing.
I don’t like it.
Nothing about it screams, ‘Vote Liberal!’
One comment left on The Australian said: ‘Goodness me… Where have the Liberals parked their brain cells?’
Another said: ‘Just spend less.’
And another: ‘Sometimes you just have to wonder where this Liberal Party is heading because it isn’t anywhere the Liberal voters want to go.’
Listen Ted, Net Zero is the political equivalent of a crack cocaine habit which is both screwing with the government’s collective mind and sending it into nearly a trillion dollars of debt.
The solution is not to take more money from the productive, hard-working private sector to feed this drug addiction.
It’s to take away the drugs and send the user to therapy.
Taxpayers are so unbelievably tired of tightening their belts and coughing up cash so political parties can claim they are being economically responsible.

Ah yes. the .5%, 80,000 taxpayers, how they suffer ...

Enough already, there's been too much suffering and so it was beyond time for sensible, useful reforms with Dame Groan ...

It was a common refrain: Australia has one of the best superannuation systems in the world. Admittedly, it was trotted out by those who benefited most from the system. We don’t hear it so often these days.
The revelation of stark weaknesses in the operation of the system, including inordinate delays in the processing of death and disability benefits by some industry funds, has sullied the reputation of the system. Question marks over the governance arrangements have had the same effect.
Super has been in the news a lot because of the government’s proposal to impose a 30 per cent tax on super balances of more than $3m. The key sticking points are the lack of indexation of the $3m figure and the inclusion of unrealised capital gains in the calculation.
But this change to the taxation of super – the government would probably prefer the term “tweak” or “reform” if you are the Treasury Secretary – is just one of a very long list of changes to the regulation and taxation of superannuation that has characterised the system since the early 1990s. In fact, hardly a year has gone by in which there haven’t been any changes. For a long-term asset in which the confidence of policy holders is critical, this is an astonishing feature. Australia should be immediately disqualified from receiving any prizes for our system of superannuation on this score alone. The fact no other country has sought to mimic our system is telling, though some have experimented with the model, only then to ditch it.
It’s worth outlining some of the main weaknesses of our system of compulsory super. In this way, there might be some hope that useful reforms could be initiated that benefit superannuation members as opposed to those who make handsome livings from the system.

The reptiles decided to slip in a little of Dimitri having a chat with Danica of the rising gorge, Eminence Advisory Dimitri Burshtein labels Labor’s superannuation tax on unrealised gains “destructive”. “It has the smell of a yes minister idea to it with a treasury designing attacks that is at once both morally repugnant, administratively complex and economically destructive,” Mr Burshetin told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “The reality, however, is that the tax is unlikely to generate the revenue projected because people will adapt to minimise the impact on them. “The most offensive part of this tax is that it’ll be calculated … on both realised and unrealised income.”

The pond decided to leave the unpicking of Dame Groan's thoughts to correspondents... 

These days the pond tends to lapse into sullen silence as the old biddie carries on in her lecturing and hectoring way ... even when it's all in the good cause of sensible, useful reforms ...

Let’s not forget compulsory superannuation had its origin in a hastily concluded deal in the early 1990s between the Labor government and the trade unions to forgo an increase in wages in exchange for an across-the-board 3 per cent contribution to superannuation.
None of the details had been worked out and there were no real rules related to taxation. But several trade union leaders quickly appreciated the benefits of having associated industry super funds, particularly as it was clear trade unionisation was falling.
The most sensible way to tax superannuation is to exempt contributions and earnings while taxing withdrawals at the full tax rates of members. This is a common arrangement overseas. In this way, the nest eggs of individual members are maximised and the reliance on the age pension can be significantly reduced.
Instead, an early decision was made to tax contributions and earnings at a fixed rate (15 per cent) with withdrawals tax-free – at least until the changes of 2016. The motivation was short-term – to generate revenue to repair the budget in the early 1990s. It was a ruinous error. What should have been a relatively simple system quickly became complex, including the imposition of so-called Reasonable Benefit Limits. On the face of it, the concept of the RBL seemed like a good idea, restricting the size of an individual’s fund beyond which penalties would be imposed.
In practice, it was a shemozzle, with the Australian Taxation Office unable to make head nor tail of the rules. The small number of very large super accounts – it’s estimated there are around 25 with balances of more than $100m – were created under the RBL rules.
Replacing the RBLs with limits on contributions, both concessional and non-concessional, was deemed a better way of restricting the size of individual accounts. Under existing rules, it’s simply not possible for superannuation members to amass very large balances.
While the taxes on contributions and earnings are a drain on the final retirement balances that members can hope to achieve, the level of fees charged by the funds is also a significant contributor. The average fees charged on super investments is excessive by international standards. This reflects the relative lack of competition between funds. It also explains the popularity of self-managed super funds given the control members have over the fees they accept.
The alignment of particular trade unions to industry super funds never made sense when it comes to the retirement needs of the members. Why would the retirement needs of a teacher be any different from the retirement needs of a bank teller or a gardener? The way industry super funds developed, with the co-operation of the associated employer groups, was all about generating influence and dollars rather than fitting in with a rational model to generate retirement incomes.

There was another intrusion, this time a Leisa talking to a Caleb, which reminded the pond that the Caleb was still a thing, something the pond had mercifully forgotten, Adoni Media's Leisa Goddard slams Assistant Treasurer Daniel Miluno over the Labor Party’s super tax which is not indexed. “The smear campaign should’ve come from the Liberal Party during the election campaign … and explained to the younger voters, who they’re trying to win over,” Ms Goddard told Sky News host Caleb Bond. “They didn’t play the long game and explain to the young voters.”

Where do they dig them all up? Howling away in the wilderness, at least if the Weekly Beast's figures are any guide, with >100k at the best of times attending to the reptiles in their wilderness ...

Never mind, if Ted would only listen, Dame Groan is standing by to help him out in his negotiations, which no doubt will produce some splendid reforms and save the rich so they can sleep on fine mattresses at night, with only that pesky pea causing some restlessness ...

Some of the failings have become apparent in recent years. The so-called equal representation model is inconsistent with having the best-qualified trustees. Many industry funds have under-invested in their IT infrastructure. Outsourcing administration to third parties can be problematic. Sub-scale funds have hung on too long. Inappropriate spending on sponsorships and marketing has been largely ignored by the regulator, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, at least until recently. At the same time, many of the industry funds are too heavily invested in listed Australian equities. The trustees then throw their weight around by demanding standards of governance that many of the funds themselves do not meet, while interfering in corporate strategy as well as companies’ internal workings.
The boards of many listed Australian companies have become fearful of the industry funds and their amateurish suggestions and woke obsessions. It is not a surprise that there has been a relative decline in listings on the Australian stock exchange, with a great deal of the action now in the private sphere. With the rate of the Superannuation Charge about to increase by 0.5 percentage points on July 1, to reach 12 per cent, it is surely time for the government to address some of the weaknesses of the system rather than press on with the crazy idea of imposing a tax penalty on large superannuation accounts, including the unworkable idea of taxing unrealised capital gains.
The fact is that 12 per cent is too high but that figure suited the industry funds, and they got their way. Workers are being asked to forgo too much of current consumption to fund their retirement, which in many cases simply knocks off their full entitlement to the age pension. It’s a dud deal for many workers, particularly when the excessive fees are considered.
It’s time for a major rethink. There’s no doubt super has benefited some handsomely but there are many weaknesses in the system that require remediation in the national interest. At the very least, the system needs massive simplification to eliminate the thicket of arcane complexity that currently characterises superannuation in Australia.

Dear sweet long absent lord, roll that one around on the tongue. Has Dame Groan gone full revisionist socialist?

It’s time for a major rethink. There’s no doubt super has benefited some handsomely...

... butt, billy goat butt, it's time for a rethink ... now it's not the suffering rich, it's the thicket of arcane complexity ...

How Ted has worked wonders, amazing to behold.

And speaking of amazing, time to return to the immortal Rowe to wrap up proceedings with another celebration of bromancer days...

It's always in the details ...

Oh that blonde clutching the cross is delicious...but of all the details, this is the one the pond liked best ... even better than the cross, the way the sight of everything induced deep alarm in the parrot ...

Why that's pure Albert Tucker and gives the pond a chance to feature a favourite Tucker with a favourite theme. Per the NGV ...

...The parrot flying above the urban sprawl is another of the artist’s familiar images:

"I have always felt that the parrot is a ready-made symbol. They have marvellous plumage, it changes at different stages of growth. The crimson rosellas have lovely plumage when they are young, and then it slowly becomes crimson and blue. The claws that tear and the beak that rips in the middle of colours of paradise, stands as a marvelous allegory – heaven and hell incorporated in the one natural form – beautiful but murderous inside – a conflict between destruction and creation" ...

Well yes, must be soon time for the pond to visit that den of iniquity, that mob of socialists, those wicked comrade Dan worshippers down south ...