In which our Henry deserts the pond, and leaves the bromancer, and - very reluctantly - Killer of the IPA - in his wake ...

 

Reverting to noble ambulance chasing tradition, the Air India crash swept all before it at the lizard Oz early this morning...

Over on the extreme far right, the pond felt cruelly abandoned. Our Henry had failed to make an appearance ... at least early in the morning, and there was just the usual riff-faff to behold ...

There were many contenders in the AUKUS matter ...

Albanese’s mission: save the AUKUS pact
Anthony Albanese is preparing a series of major defence funding announcements as his government scrambles to lock in support from Donald Trump on the AUKUS pact.
By Geoff Chambers, Joe Kelly and Sarah Ison

Key test for PM: successful talks with Trump

It is imperative that Anthony Albanese reaffirms our relationship with the United States and secures the continuation of the AUKUS agreement as his most urgent priority.
By Michaelia Cash

With the greatest respect to Michaelia, the pond didn't feel like cashing in on her wisdom and astonishing insights on how to deal with a narcissistic king, except perhaps double the fawning.

The pond has great confidence that the matter is in hand ...

A prof also hovered into sight ...

Pentagon’s AUKUS review should spark strategic reckoning in Canberra
If the pact falters, the worst outcome wouldn’t be the loss of subs but paralysis in Canberra, which would have to await further decisions from Washington while the region drifts toward crisis.
By Ian Langford

It seems this prof is determined to bung on a do sometime in the 2020s and so it's time for this prof to get back into his old kit ...

...That should prompt urgent questions. What if the submarine deal falls over? Can Australia accelerate its conventional deterrent posture without waiting for imported nuclear platforms? Is Australia doing enough to develop sovereign production capacity for critical systems such as guided weapons, sensors and autonomous platforms?
And, most importantly, doesAustralia have the political will – and public mandate – to step up?
This moment demands more than rhetoric. It demands increased defence spending – well beyond current projections. It demands faster acquisition cycles, greater industry integration, and a ruthless focus on capability that can be delivered, deployed and sustained in the near term. It also demands that Australia thinks clearly about its role in shaping the balance of power – not merely as a consumer of allied largesse, but as a credible contributor to regional stability.
If AUKUS falters, the worst outcome would not be the loss of submarines. It would instead result in strategic paralysis in Canberra, where, in the absence of an AUKUS plan B, policymakers would have no choice but to await further decisions from Washington, while the region drifts towards crisis.
Instead, Australia must think fast and decisively.
The review may yet resolve in favour of Australia. But whether it does or not, the underlying lesson is clear: alliances are not guarantees. They are instruments, shaped by politics and underpinned by power.
Australia must now generate military power of its own. That means investing not just in platforms for the 2040s, but in the capabilities needed to deter, fight and win in the 2020s.
That is the essence of sovereign statecraft – and the real test of whether Australia can step up.
Professor Ian Langford is a UNSW academic and the executive director of Security & Defence PLuS

With the greatest respect to the warrior prof, the pond listens to only one warrior, always ready to speak loudly from his armchair while clutching a sherry, panting at the bit as he rushes off to enlist ...

The header for what the reptiles mercifully proposed was a mere 3 minute read: Who can blame the US for having second thoughts on AUKUS?, The Albanese government has not done enough within AUKUS to be a credible partner. And it has not done enough with our defence capabilities to be a credible alliance partner for the US.

Indeed, indeed, always blame the victim in any mugging or drive-by ...

The caption, for those who can't spot a signal that a champers loving Faux Noise host is in the viewfinder: US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth with Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in Singapore in May. Picture: US Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza/Department of Defence

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

And so to the bromancer in a deeply despairing mood ...

The Americans are clearly having second thoughts on the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. And who can blame them? The Albanese government has no credibility on defence with anyone, including the Americans.
Elbridge Colby, the US Under-Secretary of Defence for Policy, will conduct a 30-day review to determine whether AUKUS fits in with Donald Trump’s America First policies.
Colby is a thoughtful and hugely influential strategic leader in the US. He is also one of the chief sceptics of AUKUS.
The Australian embassy in Washington, under ambassador Kevin Rudd, has put enormous effort into trying to bring Colby round on AUKUS.
Colby, like US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, considers Australia’s defence effort, of a pitiful 2 per cent of GDP on defence spending, to be completely inadequate and obviously lacking all credibility.

The reptiles quickly interrupted with an AV distraction designed to sour the bromancer's mood even more ...Chief International Correspondent for The Australian, Cameron Stewart, unpacks the political and strategic shockwaves from Donald Trump’s review of the AUKUS pact — a calculated move that pressures Australia to boost defence spending while testing the strength of one of the world’s most critical security alliances.

The pond immediately began to wonder if it should pay such close attention to the reptiles. 

Might there not be an alternative view?

There was, there was, there was Dr Emma Shortis, historian and writer, offering in another place AUKUS is a disaster for Australia. Trump has given us an out – let’s take it (*Archive link)

The Australian national security establishment’s worst nightmare has arrived. The Trump administration is putting AUKUS to a review. A review many fear will put the $368 billion submarine deal to the sword.
Led by Elbridge Colby, defence undersecretary and noted AUKUS sceptic, the Pentagon’s review will assess whether the deal meets the president’s “America First” agenda.
The leaders of the AUKUS nations, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (left), Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump.
The leaders of the AUKUS nations, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (left), Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump.Credit:
It was always very unlikely that any presidential administration would be willing to hand over some of the crown jewels of the US Navy’s fleet to Australia, which is what the first part of the deal involved – the United States giving Australia control of some Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines. We don’t know much about the details of the deal, but we do know that the US always had a get-out clause there. It’s up to the president to decide whether to hand them over, and really, why would they?
Now, it’s possible the Trump administration will tank the whole thing. And we can safely assume that won’t mean handing back the $800 million Australia has already invested, no strings attached, in the US shipbuilding industry in the vain hope that would accelerate production rates.
AUKUS was always a disastrous deal for Australia. We were never likely to get any submarines, and all the deal does is tie us ever closer to an increasingly volatile and aggressive America. AUKUS would not have made Australia safer. It would have made us more vulnerable, and compromised our ability to make independent decisions about our own security.
Donald Trump has given us an opportunity to get out. We should take it.
Australians already knew that Trump is not to be trusted. Polling by The Australia Institute done back in March found that more Australians considered the US president a bigger threat to global peace than the heads of the world’s two most powerful authoritarian states, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Almost half (49 per cent) said they felt less secure since the election of Trump.
And in that same poll, 44 per cent of Australians said they’d prefer a more independent foreign policy over a closer alliance with the US.
By May, it was more than half – 54 per cent of Australians now want the Australian government to pursue a more independent path.
Trump is giving us the opportunity and the reason to do so.
Demands from some quarters that AUKUS be saved or that Australia dramatically increase defence spending to appease the Trump administration do not reflect community sentiment.
That does not mean abandoning our relationship with the United States. It does mean rethinking its very foundations.
The future of Australia’s security is often framed as a simple binary: that we must be all in with the US, or face total domination by China. Neither is true. To see that, all we need to do is look to our regional allies, who are more exposed to risk and yet are able to chart an independent path between great powers. And they do not constantly fret over who will come to save them.

And so on, and the pond was startled by the heresy, by all this potty mouth talk ...

Luckily the bromancer was to hand to provide proper corrections, so that the pond could stay peacefully slumbering in the hive mind ... or should that be in a state of acute hysteria that the bromancer's war with China might yet be bunged on by Xmas?

No country in history has gone down the road of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines without hugely increasing their defence budget.
The Albanese government is trying to have all the benefits of AUKUS but not actually do anything substantial or timely about defence.
It’s interesting that in Hegseth’s remarks relating to Australia at the recent security conference in Singapore, he mentioned various joint projects involving the US and Australia but didn’t mention AUKUS at all.
That’s because the Trump administration understands that the most acute strategic challenge to Australia and regional security generally comes from China over the next 10 years, not in 30 years when Australia will notionally have its AUKUS fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
Colby also has fundamental doubts about the US industrial capacity to produce enough Virginia-class submarines to have one spare for Australia in the early 2030s.
In order for the sale of Virginia subs to Australia to go ahead, the US must reach a production rate of well over two Virginias a year.
The production rate is well below that.
In the past, Colby has expressed a simple contradiction: if the US is short of nuclear-powered submarines itself why would it take one, and eventually three to five, out of its order of battle to sell them to Australia?

Indeed, indeed ...

Perhaps we should have gone with Japan or Sweden or France or ...?

And then the reptiles cruelly thrust into view the bromancer's deep desire, now hovering out of reach ... The US Virginia-class submarine, USS Minnesota, at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia. Picture: Department of Defence

The pond developed another case of the wanderlust and turned up at Crikey to contemplate the keen Keane's Trump’s AUKUS blackmail is Albanese’s chance to ditch a disastrous deal — but he won’t, Australia is now the only participant not reviewing AUKUS. It’s the perfect time for the government to walk away and guarantee our naval future with different partners. (* Archive link)

Two of the three members of AUKUS are now reviewing the agreement.
The UK House of Commons defence committee commenced one in April. Now the Trump administration’s leading AUKUS sceptic, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, is reviewing it as well.
Our own government, now the odd mug out, is cheerfully insisting all is well.
“Our engagement with the Trump administration and across the full political spectrum in the United States has shown clear and consistent support for AUKUS,” Defence Minister Richard Marles said this morning. “We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the Trump administration on this historic project.”
That closer cooperation is likely to come at some cost. As any realistic appraisal would, the Colby review is likely going to conclude that the construction rate of Virginia-class boats by the US Navy — required to enable it to spare up to five second-hand ones for the Royal Australian Navy — is wildly in excess of what the US can manage in the next four years, given the current production rate is around 1.2, rather than the 2.3 required. The obvious recommendation from such a conclusion is that Australia should hand a lot more than the currently agreed US$3 billion to America to speed up construction.
Given Anthony Albanese’s dismissiveness toward recent Trump administration calls for a rapid and massive increase in defence spending by Australia, that’s likely to be the least worst possible outcome for the government. What happens if Colby comes back and suggests Australia’s defence spending is insufficient to justify AUKUS?
Then there’s the bipartisan view within the US defence establishment that Australia should be clearer that it will dispatch any AUKUS subs to join a US war with China. That’s an abrogation of sovereignty so huge that even Marles, the member for the Pentagon and the man who has overseen the enmeshment of Australia’s territory, military, intelligence and foreign affairs capabilities with the US, has baulked at it.
The irony is that the Brits and the Americans are subjecting AUKUS to far more scrutiny than it has ever received here, given Labor signed up to the disaster within hours of Scott Morrison announcing it in the hope of altering his hopeless political trajectory. The only parliamentary review of AUKUS has been of the actual agreement, by the joint committee on treaties, and the compulsory examination by the Senate’s defence and foreign affairs committee of legislation implementing aspects of the AUKUS project, like extending the nuclear regulatory framework to encompass defence. The major parties have never permitted an examination of the merits of the entire project, even as evidence has mounted that the Virginia-class boats will never make it here.
The US review, and the possible increase in the asking price it foreshadows, is the perfect opportunity for Albanese to walk away from a disastrous agreement. The remnants of the opposition lack any credibility or policy position. There will be blowback from the rusted-on representatives of US military interests in the commentariat and at ASPI, but they are shilling for an emerging fascist dictatorship that views its own people as enemies. The budget situation is precarious, and AUKUS is widely viewed as sucking crucial resources away from more immediate defence priorities.

Albanese doesn’t have to abandon AUKUS wholesale: the longer-term SSN-AUKUS plan has real buy-in from the UK government, and Australia can be confident that those boats will be delivered from the 2040s onward. In the UK, Australia has a stable, normal, reliable ally whose word can be trusted, not a collection of psychotic toddlers.
The government could then approach Japan, Korea (Hanwha has a standing offer to Australia), Sweden and Germany about providing a fleet of diesel-electric submarines to fill the gap between the Collins-class boats and the SSN-AUKUS boats. Such vessels would have the advantage of not being tied to the demands of the country that produces them to be used in its military plans against our primary trade partner.
A deal with South Korea or Japan would strengthen our defence ties with regional allies, who are in the same position as us of losing a reliable US ally in the face of an increasingly assertive China. A deal with Germany could form part of a broader security agreement with the European Union. Either outcome would be a win for Australia in addressing the loss of our US security guarantee. And the danger of a major gap in Australia’s submarine capability would be avoided.

And so on and more heresy, more potty-mouth talk, and the pond struggled to stay in the hive mind, but how could the pond treat the bromancer? 

The way the US currently treats Ukraine, its alleged European and UK and Asian allies? That way?

The Albanese government, as a cheap alternative to producing a serious defence effort of its own, has committed to donating several billion dollars to the US to expand US industrial capacity.
Defence Minister Richard Marles recently gave Hegseth a cheque for $800m.
The Albanese government surely feels that by handing over hard money early, it will at least have bought kind comments from the Trump administration.
And, of course, when the early 2030s finally come around, any outcome is possible. The US president at the time (JD Vance?) will go ahead with the deal only if it serves the US national interest and won’t diminish its capability.

The couch fucking deeply isolationist JD as the next president?

By golly a military parade will seem like just a minor folly ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of the chief villain, US Under-Secretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby will conduct a 30-day review. Picture: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

The bro was entranced. What a Colby-ite he was ... how loyal, how yearning, the very model of a King Donald fawning sycophant ...

It’s hard to see how taking a Virginia-class sub out of the US Navy and putting it in Australia’s navy will really satisfy those criteria. Instead, Australia could suffer further delay, and perhaps get, initially as a training boat, a much older sub.
The Americans would also be aware that the necessary work to make the West Australian naval base at Stirling fit for US nuclear submarine basing, even temporary basing, is moving at a glacial pace, and is subject to the usual environmental green regulation madness and delays Australia specialises in.
The bottom line is the Albanese government has not done enough within AUKUS to be a credible partner. And it has certainly not done enough with Australian defence capabilities outside AUKUS to make Australia credible in its own defence, or a seriously credible alliance partner for the US.
The only foreign capital it consistently pleases these days is Beijing.

The caption for the final snap was gloomy ... There is little sign Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has any relationship with the US President. Picture: Gaye Gerard/Newswire

The bro was left in deep despair ...

If AUKUS were to fall over, it would be a blow to US credibility; it would also be a savage blow to Australian credibility, which is already in tatters.
At the same time, there is no sign Anthony Albanese himself has any relationship with Donald Trump. Albanese promised he would visit the US early in this term. The decision not to go to Washington in connection with the G7 meeting in Canada next week is a sign of political cowardice on his part. He rightly has little or no confidence in his ability to handle a public encounter with Trump.
Now it’s not even clear if he can secure a proper meeting with Trump in Canada.
The government’s one commitment is to do and say the absolute minimum on security matters, in the hope controversy and difficulties blow over.
It’s not a remotely adequate approach.

The pond wondered if there might be a way to cheer up the bromancer, and there was.

There was Mark Beeson in The Conversation, Goodbye to all that? Rethinking Australia’s alliance with Trump’s America

Beeson was also at Crikey, as Two essays rethink Australia’s alliance with Trump’s America, Emma Shortis and Hugh White offer compelling reasons why a reassessment of Australia’s relationship with the United States is long overdue, but the paywall might kick in ...

Even the most ardent supporters of the alliance with the United States — the notional foundation of Australian security for more than 70 years — must be having some misgivings about the second coming of Donald Trump.
If they’re not, they ought to read the two essays under review here. They offer a host of compelling reasons why a reassessment of the costs, benefits and possible future trajectory of the alliance is long overdue.
And yet, notwithstanding the cogency and timeliness of the critiques offered by Emma Shortis  and Hugh White , it seems unlikely either of these will be read, much less acted upon, by those Shortis describes as the “mostly men in suits or uniforms, with no democratic accountability” who make security policy on our behalf.
White, emeritus professor of strategic studies at the ANU, was the principal author of Australia’s Defence White Paper in 2000. Despite having been a prominent member of the defence establishment, it is unlikely even his observations will prove any more palatable to its current incumbents.
Shortis, a historian and writer, is director of the Australia Institute’s International & Security Affairs Program. She is also a young woman, and while this shouldn’t matter, I suspect it does; at least to the “mostly men” who guard the nation from a host of improbable threats while ignoring what is arguably the most likely and important one: climate change.

Poor Beeson, as if the ardent bromancer would ever retreat from his desire to bung on a do with China by Xmas, but while at The Conversation, why not take in John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University and his offering Trump may try to strike a deal with AUKUS review, but here’s why he won’t sink it.

Come on Prof, let him sink it, let it go 20,000 leagues under the sea ... 

Here, have the immortal Rowe of the day as an inspiration on how to deal with giant squids ...

And so to the matter of a bonus offering, and the pond doing its best to deal with the shattering loss of our Henry's Friday references to ancient times.

The pond had saved an example of using history to see if our Henry could measure up.

It's now hopelessly out of date, what with Uncle Leon having smoked the peace pipe in fear his wampum might disappear (and then how could he afford his drugs?), but Jessica Winter in The New Yorker provided a reminder to our Henry of how history could be introduced into discussions of the day's events, The Sublime Spectacle of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Social-Media Slap Fight, The President has kept the upper hand so far, partly because of his bully pulpit, and partly because he has remained relatively understated. (*Archive link)

Winter began impeccably by evoking Napoleon, a tad later than our Henry's ancient Greece or Rome, but still certifiably history ...

His passion died as it lived, on X. “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” Elon Musk posted in February, evoking Napoleon’s words to Josephine after he made his alliance with the tsar of Russia: “If Alexander were a woman, I would make him my mistress.” Now Musk is using X to call Donald Trump’s budget bill a “disgusting abomination” and to bang the table about the President’s well-known ties to the financier and child abuser Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock value is evanescing, the President is threatening to cut off Musk’s corporate-welfare payments, and Trump’s backers are calling for Musk to be investigated and possibly deported. (As the Bluesky user Deontological Warfare put it, “If the wheels had come off this thing any faster it’d be a Cybertruck.”) The whole situation, once again, echoed that of Napoleon after he broke with Alexander I, invaded Russia, was inevitably defeated, and got drop-kicked to the island of Elba, where he experimented heavily with phencyclidine and posted bitchy gossip about the Congress of Vienna. The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.

Winter then showed she was up with the times by deploying social media memes, something our Henry should try some time...

On May 30th, at Musk’s stilted sendoff in the Oval Office, he sported a mysterious black eye and indulged in a very specific style of swaying on his feet—while clenched of jaw and dissociative of affect—that appeared less suited to the present-day White House than to a Slowdive concert circa 1991. (The Bluesky user News Eye added a reassuring caption to this queasily compelling footage: “It’s fine, he’s just got all your personal data.”)

...Trump and Epstein’s association has been out in the open for nearly a quarter century; nineties-era footage of the gruesome twosome together at Mar-a-Lago, leering at a group of young cheerleaders, has been circulating since at least 2019. (“The Plan?” @theemmamont jokingly posted to X above a still of Nathan Fielder, in his “Nathan for You” persona, wearing a confident smile. “Spend millions to get a pedophile elected, and then tell everyone he’s a pedophile.”)

And then she wrapped up proceedings in fine patented our Henry style by reverting to Napoleon ...

...During Napoleon’s doomed Russian campaign, as he was entering Moscow, the Russian Army set the city on fire, which accelerated his defeat and downfall. “Mountains of red, rolling flames,” Napoleon recalled, of seeing Moscow burn, “like immense waves of the sea. Oh, it was the most grand, the most sublime, and the most terrifying sight the world ever beheld.”

Inspired, the pond cued a link to Max Miller's YouTube item Feeding Napoleon - Chicken Marengo.

Sadly all that is now lost, because our Henry did a bunk and the pond was still short of a bonus.

It was impossible for the pond to take on board the pearl-clutcher ...

PM’s roundtable must puncture Canberra bubble
It’s hard not to be cynical about Anthony Albanese’s August productivity roundtable, let’s hope there is a scintilla of sincerity behind the whole idea.
By David Pearl

The pond could have indulged in some FAFO, as in Trump Voter Gets Choked Up After ICE Detains a Third of His Staff (*Archive link)

Vincent Scardina supported Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration at the ballot box. But that decision came back to bite the roofing boss when ICE detained a third of his workforce.
The six men, all from Nicaragua, were pulled over in a work truck on May 27 while heading to a job—and carted off to jail.
According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, deputies helped transport the men to a local detention facility “for deportation.”
Scardina, who runs a small roofing business in Florida’s Lower Keys, cannot believe it. “It’s quite a shock. You get to know these guys, you become their friends—not just an employer but a friend,” he told NBC6, visibly emotional.
Adding to Scardina’s annoyance, the men had valid work permits and pending asylum applications, according to their attorney Regilucia Smith. “They are legally here,” she said. “Valid work permit, not even close to expired… again, no criminal records—not here, not in Nicaragua.”

It turned out that the WSJ also had a FAFO moment, apparently unaware of the ongoing Faux Noise role in the King Donald follies:

Trump Has No China Trade Strategy, Washington and Beijing stage a tactical retreat that shows China’s leverage.  (Archive link)
By
The Editorial Board

Inter alia:

...Developing an alternative supply will take years and require cooperation with allies because the U.S. can’t produce and process all the rare earths it needs. Japan has pitched a rare-earths alliance as part of tariff negotiations, and the Administration would be wise to expand such a partnership with other allies.
This gets to the larger problem with Mr. Trump’s tariff strategy—that is, he doesn’t have one. His latest walk-back shows he can’t bully China as he tried to do in his first term. China has leverage of its own.
A smarter trade strategy would be to work with allies as a united front to counter China’s predatory trade practices. Instead, Mr. Trump has used tariffs as an economic scatter-gun against friends as well as foes. This increases China’s leverage, and, like this week’s trade truce, that’s nothing to cheer about. 

Or the pond could have contemplated the latest move in the war on LA, 

Trump Throws Newsom Plan to Get Rid of Gas Cars Into Reverse
MAKE AMERICA SMOGGY AGAIN
The California Governor has already planned to sue. (*Archive link)

Who doesn't yearn to bring back those evocative vistas? 

How the pond remembers the pleasures of its first visit, gazing down from those high rolling Hollywood hills, it was looking so right ...

In the end there had to be some sort of bonus, and there was nothing for it but to reluctantly offer Killer of the IPA as the conversation-killer, going yet again over the same old tired and deeply wearying ground ...

The header: Scott Morrison’s gong drags our Covid shame back into spotlight, Only the wilfully delusional could believe it Australia’s Covid response deserves praise.

The caption: Scott Morrison puts on a face mask during a press conference in 2020. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

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

As a preamble, the pond should note that this weekend it will be heading into the deep south, terrified it might bump into some of the dangerous leftist radicals who run the place, more fanatical than Fidel.

The pond has been advised that wearing a mask might be wise while out and about - the pond is a tram devotee - because there's another wave of Covid doing the rounds.

An aged care facility which houses a member of the pond's extended family has been forced to go into lockdown mode yet again, as the grim reaper threatens more than a serve of salmon mousse.

So yes, the pond will be wearing a mask, a real slap in the chops to Killer when he's deep in his Covid hysteria chops...

Two top awards were handed out this week for pandemic management, but only one was deserved.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison was awarded an AC in part for his role in enforcing the most draconian pandemic responses in the world. Meanwhile, the King of Sweden bestowed a similar award on Anders Tegnell, the nation’s top health official, who famously refused to lock his country down.
Five years on, only the wilfully delusional could believe it was Australia’s Covid response, which caused massive and unprecedented socio-economic, political, educational and health damage, that deserves praise.
Sweden, the only country in Europe to eschew lockdowns, ended up with the lowest excess deaths of any European nation over the years 2020 to 2023, without crushing fundamental human rights for years on end, as Australia did. Australia had few “Covid deaths” but so did other nations that had very few restrictions by comparison: Japan and Iceland, for instance. Being an island was key, and that had nothing to do with government policy. Numerous statistical analyses (not biased theoretical models) clearly show the stringency of a nation’s responses made next to no difference to Covid deaths and cases.
But they certainly caused enormous collateral damage across every dimension. It’s an enormous fact to absorb, but it was all for nothing and we must ensure it is never repeated.

The reptiles took all this as an excuse to offer an AV distraction with King Chuck at the helm, though possibly not for long, Over 800 Australians will receive the highest recognition as part of the King's Birthday honour list. Former prime minister Scott Morrison is one of 14 people who will receive the Companion of the Order of Australia for his leadership and response during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hollywood stars Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin will be recipients of the same honour for their service to the arts for their work on a range of movies, including Strictly Ballroom. The youngest to be recognised is 19-year-old Scott Guerini for his charitable fundraising.

Killer kept on with his Covid rant, so familiar that the pond began to regret not staying in smoggy LA ...

Canberra borrowed more than $310bn to deal with Covid, the sharpest increase in debt since World War II, mainly to keep alive jobs its governments had destroyed by fiat. Sweden borrowed very little: its debt in 2025, as a share of GDP, is lower than it was in 2019, when SARS-Cov2 escaped from a Chinese lab.
Sweden stuck to its pandemic plan. “Communities faced with epidemics … respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted,” epidemiologist Donald Henderson, who helped eradicate smallpox, wrote in 2006. From 2020, nothing could have been further from the reality in Australia; the country was beset with mass hysteria fuelled by relentless propaganda and political obsession with imposing unproven, untried pandemic response measures totally contrary to the nation’s supposedly liberal philosophical tradition.

Then came a snap of Killer's hero, Sweden’s Anders Tegnell. Picture: AFP

Killer seems to think Covid has gone away, but in fact it hasn't. Note to self... remember to pack masks and a leftist attitude ...

Even the mastermind of lockdowns himself, Imperial College’s now disgraced Neil Ferguson, conceded China, a totalitarian dictatorship, was the pioneer and the inspiration.
“It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought … and then Italy did it. And we realised we could. If China had not done it, the year would have been very different,” he candidly told the London Times in early 2020.
This is the philosophy we’re celebrating when we pat ourselves on the back over Covid.
When Henderson recommended calm and proportion, of course he was talking about real pandemics, not a relatively mild coronavirus that almost exclusively killed only the very old and very sick, and was so deadly many carriers showed no symptoms.
Indeed, a study published in April that looked at Greek “Covid deaths” in 2022 found that 45 per cent were in practice not related to Covid at all. Information released by the Israeli health authorities in 2023 indicated they were not aware of a single death “from” or “with” Covid in anyone under 50.
Tegnell received his award for “meritorious efforts as state epidemiologist in a difficult time”, which is an understatement. The man is a hero, having provided the ultimate case study that will forever refute the insidious argument that lockdowns were our salvation, one sadly beloved by our hubristic expert class that of course personally benefited from them.

It wouldn't be the lizard Oz without the reptiles encouraging vaccine anxiety, Robert Kennedy devotees that they are ... Sky News host Rowan Dean has commented on the Therapeutic Goods Administration updating its advice for the COVID-19 vaccine. It now says that the COVID-19 vaccine is ‘not recommended for healthy infants, children or adolescents … because the risk of severe illness was extremely low in this cohort … and the benefits are not considered to outweigh the potential harms.’ “This week, we learned that the advice has now changed, which suggests that the recommendations given to Australian families to vaccinate their children during COVID, with the benefit of hindsight, may have been wrong,” Mr Dean said. “I repeat, knowing what we now know about the disease, it seems the advice was wrong. I said at the time I thought it was wrong, as did many other parents.”

Eeek, terrifying bottles, though the pond should note that as well as Dr. Dean's advice, there was this ...

COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for all people aged 18 years and older. It is also recommended for children aged 6 months to less than 17 years with medical conditions that may increase their risk of severe disease or death from COVID-19.

Yes, there's always the matter of severe disease or death.

Always consult your doctor, never consult a reptile of the Killer kind, or Rowan Dean, or Robert Kennedy for that matter, as Killer carried on ...

As Australia maniacally tried to stop deaths in nursing homes and hospices, Swedish children remained at school, avoiding the shocking learning loss Australian children have endured. Tens of thousands of Swedes were not locked out of their own country for months, as Australians were. They weren’t forced into hotel rooms for weeks or sent off to quarantine camps. Unlike Australians, they could spend time with their families and friends whenever and however they wanted, which is the most basic of human rights. Morrison may have deserved his award for his other cited contributions, but presiding over our pandemic response shouldn’t be one of them. Yes, much of the destruction flowed from state government regulations, but I don’t recall too much resistance from Canberra.
Daniel Andrews, who was similarly elevated in last year’s awards for services to public health (despite having his police tear gas Victorians for the crime of wanting to work), should have his AC revoked. Not only did Victoria have the most Covid deaths, it has since emerged that his absurd 8pm-5am curfew wasn’t even recommended by his own intervention-obsessed health bureaucrats, but rather his desire to exercise power for its own sake. We have set a terrible precedent; the Covid hangover will last for years.

At this moment, the reptiles decided to terrify the pond with a snap of a deviant lurking in Melbourne, haunting the streets, waiting to give the pond a real fright, comrade Dan ...Daniel Andrews was similarly elevated in last year’s awards for services to public health. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Has there ever been a bigger reptile boogeyman?

Will the pond make it out of Melbourne alive? 

Not so much from fear of comrade Dan as of catching a dose of Covid... or even worse another outing with Killer of the IPA while down in the deep south ...

Why would talented workers and global businesses seeking to expand choose to move to or invest in Australia given the chance they’ll be locked down here for hundreds of days when the next virus emerges?
It’s no surprise that the beginning of Australia’s stark economic decline occurred during and after our supposedly brilliant Covid response. And the damage hasn’t only been economic. The national mood is gloomy in part because many of us realised how far short we fell of the global image we once prized: that of tough, hardworking, irreverent larrikins.
Melbourne, once the international epicentre of Covid craziness, has tumbled down global rankings for liveability, likely never to recover. All nations have shameful periods, and that’s our worst. We must stop giving ourselves awards for it.
Adam Creighton is the Institute of Public Affairs chief economist.

Why is Killer of the IPA always inclined to Covid hysteria? 

The pond suspects there's some kind of childhood trauma at work, some deep fear of masks (Batman?) and a matching fear of needles... some deep-seated trypanophobia which can be induced by watching the wrong sort of movie.

Never mind, serendipity's at work again, what with the subject of Killer's ire, the liar from the Shire, featured in the closing infallible Pope cartoon ...

Surely Killer would love that portrait?