In which the nuking bromancer is on parade, and Mein Gott provides a super war distraction ...

 

Here’s one headline you won’t find in the lizard Oz:

The regime change the West needs is the end of NetanyahuBenjamin Netanyahu’s unprovoked attack on Iran is another in the long list of examples of how the right is now the biggest threat to global stability and security. (* archive link)

The keen Keane was fighting fit and up for regime change:

With his plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader, and the open linking of his illegal, unprovoked attack on Iran to regime change in that country, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated his goals go beyond the genocide of Gazan Palestinians and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. He wants to overthrow other regional governments.
Evidently the lessons of the US overthrow of another vile regime, in Iraq — whose weapons of mass destruction were also touted as an existential threat — 20 years ago have not been learnt.
One lesson that will be learnt, by the Iranian leadership and any other country feeling threatened by Israel or the United States, is that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is of the utmost priority in order to deter what are intended as existential attacks on such regimes.

And so on, but alternatively you could take the approach proposed by John Hanscombe in The Echnida, which landed in the pond's email box this morning:

Until now, I'd never been a fan of cage fighting. But watching world events these past few days, I'm warming to it.
Gather up the angry old men responsible for so much misery, put them in a cyclone wire enclosure and let them fight it amongst themselves.
Pit the 75-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu against Iran's 86-year-old Ali Khamenei. Or 79-year-old Donald Trump against 72-year-old Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, also 72. Just fists, feet and walking frames. Those who want to watch the tournament are free to do so. The rest of us? We'll just get on with our lives.
Frankly, I'm sick of the lot of them. For what they're doing in their own parts of the world and for what they're risking in mine.
An indicted war criminal decides to unleash a barrage of airstrikes on Iran days ahead of planned talks aimed at de-escalating tensions over its nuclear program. He leaves the broker of those talks, the leader of the supposedly most powerful country on earth, looking sidelined, weak and a little sad. Trump's deal is a smouldering ruin - just like the one he promised between Ukraine and Russia.
Acting as much to save his own skin as Israel's - the action came immediately after the coalition government narrowly averted collapse - Netanyahu has made the possibility of another round of global energy shocks very real. It's not that Iran supplies the world with all its oil - it accounts for about 9 per cent - but it does command the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world's supply passes. Choke that off and inflation will take off again around the world...

And so on, but instead the pond is off to the hive mind with the lizards of Oz ... in full war-mongering mode ...

Ben was packing Marles heat and seeking to expand the conflict...

Defending Australia
US-China war: we would be in it, Marles warns
Australia will ­­inevitably be drawn into a US-China conflict with the continent now more relevant than ever to the contest between the world’s great powers, as America ratchets up its military presence on ­Australian soil.
By Ben Packham

Simplistic Simon was in full war monger mode ...

Commentary by Simon Benson
This is the war wake-up call the nation needs
Australia was hopelessly ill-prepared for war in the late 1930s. Have we arrived at the same point in history again?

At least we don't have Pig Iron Bob to hand to show us how to do it.

Over on the extreme far right, Nova Peris stuck her beak in where it wasn't needed and was briefly top of the reptile world ma ...

It’s first Australians’ turn to speak out for our Jewish allies
As a proud Australian woman, I leave Jerusalem, at a time of war, determined to defend Israel against the hate, threats and lies and defend its right to exist and flourish.
By Nova Peris

Yes, speak up for mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide Nova, your mob love the concepts, but why did you leave? Surely it would have been better to stick around and join in the ethnic cleansing ...

Mattie was on hand to crunch the numbers ...

DEFENCE SPENDING
Beyond numbers, key to defence spending is value
Anthony Albanese might consider another important measure for Australia’s defence industry: how much taxpayer defence money is going into the Australian economy.
By Matthew Cranston
Economics Correspondent

The reptiles also imported an irrelevance to do his irrelevant thing ...

Islamic Republic’s ayatollahs are weaker than ever
The regime’s imperial projects have done nothing for Iran’s people. They have brought only devastation. Untold billions were spent over decades to empower terrorist proxies.
By John Bolton

Inevitably the bolting Bolton was keen on regime change ...

...While the interests of the various dissidents don’t always coincide, they align entirely in their discontent with the ayatollahs. Significantly, since Israeli attacks began, there has been no spontaneous rush of Iranian nationalism, as pro-regime Western apologists long prophesied. The people of Iran know what is actually at stake.
Widespread finger-pointing within the regime followed Assad’s fall in Syria, then spread to the general population. It is likely now getting more intense.
What should the US do? Most important, it should be clear that neither US nor Israeli troops will be staging a ground invasion of Iran. Those arguing that assistance for Iranian opponents of the mullahs inevitably means another “forever war” are simply engaging in knee-jerk propaganda.
The regime’s weakness and fragmentation at senior levels is the starting point for strategy. Iran is led by an ailing octogenarian, supreme leader Ali Khamenei, with no clear successor in sight. His son apparently wants the job but he is widely disliked.
The leading potential successor, president Ebrahim Raisi, died in 2024 when his helicopter crashed. Khamenei has held power for more than 35 years and is only the second supreme leader, so there is no established path for succession and internal chaos won’t make it any easier. Israel’s decapitation of significant elements of the regime’s military leadership compounds the disarray at the top.
In the current crisis, further divisions within the regime’s leadership should be fostered and supported, especially among military officers who could emulate Egypt’s military during the 2011 protests against Hosni Mubarak, refusing to attack civilian protesters. If significant elements of the regular forces and Revolutionary Guard make clear they won’t fire on their own people, the regime could fall quickly. Offering amnesty to regime officials to switch sides could be a useful tool for a more consolidated opposition.
The Amini protests revealed that while the opposition is widespread, there is little or no national leadership. While this fragmentation means that dissent can’t be stifled simply by arresting or eliminating a small number of people, it also makes nationwide co-ordination and control impossible.
Accordingly, based on advice from regime opponents, both in-country and in the diaspora, Washington could supply communications resources internally and revive the Voice of America to provide accurate information from outside. Basic financial aid to the opposition also could make a substantial difference. Israel, the Gulf Arab states and America can all participate. Success is far from guaranteed but the moment is auspicious.
John Bolton served as White House national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the UN, 2005-06. He is author of The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal.

The moment's always auspicious for yet another American fuck-up.

But as always when confronted by the reptiles in crisis, the pond turns to the bromance ... keen to nuke the planet ...

Sadly the pond didn't catch up on the bromancer appearing on the ABC, which greatly stimulated pond correspondents, but surely this offering is just as exciting as seeing the war monger in the flesh?

It was a five minute read, so the reptiles said, but they didn't give the bromancer full weight, with the mystical instruction on how to get there lost, and all that was left was ...

The love of nukes header: Are we already in a new world war?, Whatever the pieties of liberal internationalism may hold, nuclear weapons do make a state much safer.

And the caption for the fearless leader, valiant and revitalised by his astonishing parade, Donald Trump is joined by 18th Airborne Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Gregory Anderson (R) and other military and civilian leaders as they watch a demonstration by Special Operations soldiers at the Holland Drop Zone.

The bromancer welcomed all the fussing and feuding, though he didn't seem to know what to do with it ...

Are we already, without realising it, in the foothills of a new world war? A Cold War, to be sure, but still a global conflict. A cold war, to be sure, but still a global conflict.
The conflicts between Israel and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, and potentially China and Taiwan, are closely related. In attacking Iran’s nuclear programs, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is acting primarily to protect Israel’s security. However, when he says he’s also defending America and other nations he’s telling the truth.
An Iran with nuclear weapons transforms the global geo-strategic environment.
Nuclear weapons are roaring back to the centre of geo-strategic equations. One of the most important developments of our time is the new alliance between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. They are not a formal alliance, they have all kinds of mutual suspicions and paranoias. But they’re acting with as much effectiveness as an alliance as is the Western alliance led by the US.

The pond is always astonished by the way that the reptiles ignore Israel's nuclear capacity, which partly explains why they act with such insolence and audacity, the implicit threat hidden but known to everyone in the region. But for once the bromancer was up to the task, keen to celebrate a Middle East awash with nukes of the right sort.

But before any of that rolled out, the reptiles interrupted with a report ...The Australian's Yoni Bashan and Liam Mendes report from Tel Aviv as Iran missile strikes surge across the city.

The bromancer resumed his brooding ...

North Korea sent 10,000 troops to fight for Russia. Moscow supplies Pyongyang with military hi-tech. Iran sells drones and missiles to Russia and has an increasingly intimate relationship with Beijing. Russia joins with China in shielding Iran at the UN.
Beijing supplies Moscow with countless dual-use technologies – items that can be used militarily and for non-military purposes – and continues such an extensive economic relationship with Russia that it has played a big part in making Western sanctions against Moscow ineffective.
China has enough sway with members of the global south that it neutralises most Western sanctions efforts.
Western sanctions have impeded Russia and they’ve kept Iran much poorer than it would otherwise be, but they haven’t been powerful enough to change Moscow or Tehran’s essential strategy and behaviour.
Not only is the West challenged militarily in a way it hasn’t been since World War II, it’s challenged as a determining force in the global economy. Iran’s aggression all over the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s occupation of islands and vast areas of the South China Sea plus its military assertiveness in northeast Asia all represent a twin failure.
This is, one, failure by the global institutions of the so-called international rules-based order to keep the peace or meaningfully enforce any norms at all. And, two, it’s also a failure of Western deterrence.

Strange, has the bromancer forgotten how Vlad the sociopath offered to help out the Donald with a little diplomacy? And the asking price, a mere offering of Ukraine's surrender, was incredibly low.

The reptiles didn't forget this splendid pair and their love chat, offering a visual reminder ...US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have been in talks as tension escalates between Iran and Israel. The Kremlin confirmed that a phone call which lasted nearly an hour had taken place between Mr Putin and the US President.

Apparently it's all the fault of those bloody liberals ...

This in turn is a failure of Western liberalism. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Tehran’s ayatollahs have not been successfully deterred. Three of the four of the authoritarian axis – China, Russia and North Korea – possess nuclear weapons. Iran is desperately trying to acquire them.
Whatever the pieties of liberal internationalism may hold, nuclear weapons do make a state much safer. If Ukraine had managed to hold on to its nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it would never have been invaded by Russia.
Taiwan once had a nuclear weapons program. If it possessed nuclear weapons today, it would not be in danger of invasion by Beijing. Australia signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 but didn’t ratify it until 1973. Australia first decided to acquire F-111 fighter bomber aircraft in the early 1960s. We ordered them with nuclear triggers, as there was an active discussion in Australia back then about acquiring nuclear weapons.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that a nation with nuclear weapons cannot really sustain decisive military defeat. Russia had no right to invade any part of Ukraine and the Western powers, especially the US and Britain, and Russia itself as well, had made solemn security promises to Ukraine back in 1994. But Moscow made it clear that if Ukraine looked like taking back even Crimea by force it would consider using nuclear weapons to destroy Ukraine militarily.

What luck that we now have a drunk Faux Noise host (allegedly reformed) to hand to help out, and so given his very own snap, Pete Hegseth speaks during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

The bromancer was slowly inching towards a war footing, and finally decided he was keen on some kinds of nukes ... there's nothing like an Armageddon backstop if it's the right kind of religious holy war Armageddon, with mass starvation and ethnic cleansing as a bonus ...

Ukraine has no nuclear weapons of its own and no military alliance with a nuclear weapons state. Any deterrent posture the West has put together was not enough to stop Putin, having swallowed Crimea, from trying to invade the rest of Ukraine.
Western liberalism and Western deterrence also have not stopped Iran from setting up global terror networks, conducting extraterritorial assassinations, repeatedly threatening to wipe Israel off the map and generating murderous anti-Semitic proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. If Iran would do all that without possessing nuclear weapons, what would it do with nuclear weapons?
Israel, like India, decided its own strategic environment was so threatening that it would acquire nuclear weapons. Unlike Beijing and Pyongyang, it has never proliferated nuclear technology. For Israel, nukes are an Armageddon backstop that may not work against non-state actors. An Iran with nuclear weapons would be undeterrable in most circumstances. There also would be the danger that given its extremist Islamist ideology it might share some of this technology with one of its anti-Israel proxies.
In this global conflict, it’s the height of paradox and unpredictability that the West is led by Donald Trump. Trump is both better and worse than the liberal internationalists he replaced.
Ultimately, Trump didn’t try to stop Israel from hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities. His predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, had done just that.

At this point the reptiles decided to show off that ill-fated venture, Members of the US Army participate in the 250th birthday parade on June 14, 2025.

It was a cruel ploy. 

These were the same sodden ambling wretches who'd turned up in memes around the world.

Cue the Rolling Stone's Internet Trolls Around the World Are Mocking Trump’s Military Birthday Parade, The president has long praised military shows of strength by foreign nations. People online question whether his measured up

Follow the link for the Stone's set of handy links to the memes. 

It was an easy mark, and plenty took the easy opportunity ...

Internet trolls are making a mockery of Donald Trump‘s beloved military parade that took place Saturday in Washington, D.C., on the president’s birthday, though it was ostensibly in honor of the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday.
Accounts on X (formerly Twitter) shared video of other countries’ military parades with soldiers marching in synchronized lockstep surrounded by enthusiastic and large crowds, comparing them to the spectacle in D.C. on Saturday.
One account, which Puck News’ Julia Ioffe identified as Russian, juxtaposed footage of members of the North Korean military marching in exact sync, comparing it to video of U.S. Army troops marching in Trump’s parade accompanied by much less fanfare.
“How Trump imagined his parade [vs] What he actually saw,” the caption read, according to Ioffe. The contrast is staggering, as the North Korean troops high-stepped in perfect unison compared to the Army’s less synchronized and seemingly less enthusiastic marching. Some have pointed out that members of the U.S. Army may have been ordered to march in “Route Step March” or “At Ease March,” a more relaxed and less rigorous type of marching.

And so on...

... and now back to the bromancer, still marching on and sublimely unaware of the mockery, bizarrely imagining King Donald restoring Western deterrence ...

So that’s a significant plus for Trump in restoring Western deterrence and preventing the axis of authoritarians adding a new nuclear weapons power. On the other hand, a significant negative for Trump is the way he constantly trash-talks alliances and more or less relentlessly casts doubt on US strategic commitments to allies.
This is critical in the nuclear field. Every US ally that does not possess nuclear weapons of its own – such as Australia – relies on extended US nuclear deterrence. Nuclear weapons states know if they launch a nuclear strike on us, the US will retaliate.
But Trump has made that retaliation much less certain. Also, the growth of missile technology means that virtually all nuclear weapons states have, or soon enough will have, the ability to strike the US with nuclear weapons. So would the US risk Los Angeles to save Sydney, or Berlin, or Tokyo? The bedrock of the alliance system is thus under threat.
An equally grotesque development is the way some of the MAGA right have turned against US allies, even allies such as Israel, which has never asked the US to do its fighting for it.

The hacks and Lord Haw-Haws at Russian state media were all over Captain Bonespurs King Donald's fatuous impotence.

The pond doesn't generally link to the Haw-Haws, but samples are easy enough to find, and the reptiles, helped out with a snap of the heroes ... Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's President Xi Jinping arrive for their talks at the Kremlin.

The bromancer tried to ignore all that and resumed play ...

Commentator Tucker Carlson, the source now of increasingly weird and unhinged rants on strategic issues, has recently turned against Israel, just as a significant minority of MAGA fanatics irrationally hates Ukraine.

Ah, Tucker ... (* archive link)

The emeritus chairman made him, but couldn't shut him up ...

Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson has fired back at MAGA figures upset that he accused President Donald Trump of abandoning the “America First” movement.
Carlson, 56, ranted for 45 minutes on Steve Bannon’s show on Monday, attacking some of his former Fox News colleagues, Rupert Murdoch, and anyone who suggests he is anti-semitic for opposing U.S. support to Israel for its conflict with Iran.
“You’re not going to convince me that the Iranian people are my enemy,” Carlson said. “Again, we’re going down this here—here’s who you are required to hate. It’s Orwell, man. I’m a free man. You’re not telling me who I have to hate. I’ll decide who I like and don’t like.”
Carlson criticized Trump last week for being “complicit” in Israel’s attack on Iran. He suggested the president betrayed swing-state voters who elected him in part because he promised to end U.S. involvement in wars abroad.
Carlson’s plea for Trump to “drop” support for Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, opened him up to intense criticism from his former colleagues, including the Fox News pundit Mark Levin.
A similar outcry came from many MAGA influencers, such as Laura Loomer, who has become an unofficial adviser to Trump in MAGA 2.0.
“Can we stop pretending like @TuckerCarlson is a true Trump supporter?” Loomer posted to X on Monday. “He has never publicly apologized for what he said about President Trump. He was fired by Fox News and then was terrified Trump would torpedo his career when the texts of him saying he ‘hates Trump’ came out... His fake it till you make it ‘support of Trump’ got his son a job working in the White House. This, of course, came after Tucker asked Hunter Biden to help his son get into college. Real story by the way. Look it up. Who cares about merit when you have Nepotism, Muslim investors, and Qatari cash flow? Ammiright?”
Levin wrote that Loomer’s screed was “well said.”
Carlson told Bannon that any suggestion he accepted cash from Qatar is a lie. He said he should be free to share his opinion on how taxpayer dollars are spent, even if that puts him at odds with MAGA hardliners.
“It’s all so fake,” he said of his detractors. “I’m not playing along.”
Carlson said the U.S. is “on the cusp of entering a war on behalf of a political leader in a faraway country that’s going to really hurt my country.” He invited others to speak out if they shared the same feelings.
“What I seek is an honest, open, transparent conversation about what we’re doing and why,” he said. “And I don’t think that’s too much to ask for, considering it’s my tax dollars and my money that you’re seeking to use to achieve it. If that’s radical, then you know, we’ve distorted the terms beyond recognition.”
Bannon, 71, occasionally chimed in during the interview, but did not take a side in the latest MAGA civil war. He was a leading figure in the opposition to Elon Musk’s presence in the White House during the opening months of Trump’s second term.
Carlson occasionally got explicit while making his point.
“I just don’t want my country to be further weakened or destroyed by another one of these wars,” he said. “And boy, if you can’t connect the dots after 25 years of this s--t, you’re either too dumb to participate in the conversation, or you’re like Mark Levin, just a liar who doesn’t care.”
Carlson said he takes special exception to non-U.S. natives criticizing him on where America’s priorities lie.
“I really resent being told who my enemy is, especially with foreigners,” he said. “So a foreigner shows up and tells you who your enemies are. Really? I’ve been here a long time. I live across from my parents’ graves. You can’t tell me who America’s enemies are. Or, at least, I have a right to weigh in on that.”
Trump addressed Carlson’s criticisms over the weekend. He told The Atlantic that it was not possible for him to abandon “America First” because he was the one who started the movement.
“Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” Trump said.
The president added, “For those people who say they want peace, you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.”
Carlson said he wishes he could get “away” from the discourse involving him, Israel, and Iran. He said he only spoke out because he felt someone had to stand up for the silent majority of Republicans—by his estimation—who do not want to be pulled into another war in the Middle East.
“Why do we allow 3 percent of the participant, or the participants in this conversation, to define the terms?” he asked. “If you are OK with Iranian enrichment at all, you’re for the Ayatollah and you’re against Israel. What? Shut up. No, I’m not going to allow you to define the terms. You’re a total liar. I mean, these are liars—like, for real, will say anything.”
Still, Carlson insisted that he is an ally of Trump. He said he hopes the president heeds his advice on how to proceed in the Middle East.
“I would say to him, ‘You’re the only person who can bring peace,” Carlson said. “‘You should continue to try and do that. It’s difficult. It takes a long time, but your timetable is the only timetable that matters. Don’t get bum rushed. You don’t need to fix this because there’s political turmoil in [Netanyahu’s] coalition. It’s not relevant.’”

The glories of Chairman Rupert's creations live on, and how terrifying is the sight of a united United States, united behind their King ... 

The pond never imagined giving Tucker such notice, but in the hour of the bromancer's need, the pond is up for almost anything.

And now back to the bromancer for a brief last word ...

It’s one thing to want to avoid any new US military commitments abroad.
But to demonise any support for allies who are willing to do all their own fighting and need nothing more than weapons and, at most, some economic support, is a dark turn of civilisational self-loathing by some of the MAGA crowd that mirrors the far left at its worst.
In this situation we need moral and political leadership.
We don’t get that in Washington, or Canberra, so we’ll have to soldier on without it.

Sorry bro, you'll have to soldier on without the pond, but good luck enlisting and fighting in the trenches, though no doubt there'll be tasty jobs for war correspondents, and you still might get to sip a dry sherry while slumped in a leather armchair at the club...

And so to the bonus, and with no Dame Groan visible and the cratering Caterist MIA since his 9th June post, what a relief to turn to Mein Gott, valiantly fighting on alone in the super super war ...

Mein Gott was rated only a three minute read by the reptiles, but they gave him top treatment.

There was a header: Jim Chalmers has set a trap for super balances amid market volatility, No where else in the world are retirees’ savings taxed on the basis of market fluctuations around the world and at home. It’s foolishness.

There was a caption featuring a foolish fop: Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has set a trap for those whose superannuation balance falls below $3m at July 1 as a result of a market drop. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Above all there was the mystical injunction: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond has only gone there because in recent times the pond has ignored the super super wars, and yet there are some correspondents who love to take on the reptiles in this arena, and the bromancer can't carry all the weight...

An extended war in the Middle East would cause sharemarket turbulence in the weeks leading up to July 1, which shows just how unfair and bizarre the “Chalmers tax” on unrealised gains becomes when applied to the real world.
Assuming the tax passes the parliament, there is a good chance that on the cost establishment date of July 1, the Australian sharemarket will be lower than current levels.
That means the cost base for Chalmers’s tax on unrealised capital gains will also be lower for a great many people.
It’s true there is likely to be a fall in Australian interest rates, and that could result in a rise in interest-rate linked assets.
But the Reserve Bank is not due to announce its official rate until seven days after Chalmers’s cost establishment day, so lower rates will not have their full impact on capital values until after the cost trigger date.
There is a good chance of a tax revenue harvest a year later because the war may have ended. No where else in the world is there a government that taxes on the basis of world and local market fluctuations. And the fact that Chalmers’s tax is attached to a retirement savings pool adds to the foolishness.
Chalmers has cleverly set a trap for those whose superannuation balance falls below $3m at July 1 as a result of a market drop.
In that circumstance, if the market value calculated a year later, on June 30, 2026, rises above $3m, the cost base will be $3m.
As everyone apart from Chalmers and the Greens know, the main targets of this unbelievable tax are self-managed funds which finance the capital raisings of between 50 and 60 per cent of our ASX stocks and a vast number of aspirational entrepreneurs, especially technology linked groups.
And remember there is no debate about lifting the tax on income from superannuation balances above $3m from 15 to 30 per cent.
That can be easily achieved by doubling the current methods used to calculate the first 15 per cent tax.
The totally unnecessary Chalmers tax clearly has a wider agenda. All Australians should be fearful.

All Australians consumed by fear? 

The unimaginable suffering and pain of the rich. Truly it puts Gaza in perspective.

Mein Gott, he puts the fear in fear-mongering in a way some reptiles can only envy.

Cue the sole interrupting snap, Dr Steven Kennedy at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Then it was back to the fear ...

Chalmers will be feeling just a little uneasy at the appointment of current Treasury Secretary Dr Steven Kennedy to become Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
As head of Treasury, Kennedy has been an ex officio member of the Reserve Bank board since 2019. For most of that time the Reserve Bank governor was Philip Lowe, who has stated very clearly that there are much better ways of taxing superannuation funds than a tax on unrealised gains.
My guess is that most of the board members during Kennedy’s time at the Reserve Bank would have had a similar view.
When Kennedy takes over as head of the Prime Minister’s department there is a chance Anthony Albanese will ask him for the truth about Treasurer Chalmers’s tax on unrealised capital gains.
In public service Kennedy has the reputation as a person who when asked a direct question will tell the truth to the best of his knowledge. He will tell the Prime Minister the truth as he sees it. Without knowledge, my guess is that Lowe would never have made the statement he did without a wink from Kennedy.
At this stage few Australians understand how the tax works and that it is not a liability of the fund but rather any member of the fund (or funds) who has superannuation assets above $3m.
And so when a member’s superannuation funds above $3m generate a tax liability as a result of the unrealised gains tax, that tax is not a liability of the fund. Instead it’s a liability of the member, who can pay the amount from personal savings or is entitled to withdraw from the fund an amount equal to the tax liability.
Albanese was incredibly lucky that he faced a Coalition opposition that was incompetent in not realising the magnificent weapon they had in the Chalmers tax.
At the next election countless Australians will be impacted or set to be impacted in future years, and it will be a huge issue.
Kennedy will almost certainly warn Albanese of the danger. Whatever you think about Albanese, he is a magnificent election campaigner, and if Kennedy warns him of the future danger, he will take notice.

Salvation at hand? The end to fear? Taking notice?

The pond suspects not. 

Where would the reptiles be without fear-mongering and lavish dollops of fear? 

Somewhere there, and always eager to take us there ...

And so to the Rowe of the day to wrap up proceedings, with regime change always on the menu ...