In which old Nick distracts the pond, before it's time to go to war with the bromancer and get back in the kitchen with Dame Groan ...

With the greatest respect, the keen Keane was wildly off the mark with this Crikey outing ...

Trump’s America is a bigger threat to the West than China (someone ought to tell Anthony Albanese), US infringements of the sovereignty of other countries (including Australia) make Chinese ‘interference’ look decidedly tame.(*archive link)

Bernard Keane

True enough ...

...The hypocrisy that sees the defence establishment giving a pass to American infringements of Australian sovereignty far worse than anything China has ever managed is the expression of the contradiction at the heart of supporters of the US alliance here: that in order to protect Australia’s sovereignty, we have to let it be trampled on by the United States. Or, to put it in the terms of yet another US military intervention that Australia gleefully joined, they believe it’s necessary to destroy our sovereignty in order to save it.

But the pond would have preferred this header as a way of getting to the heart of the matter.

Trump’s America is a bigger threat to the West than China (someone ought to tell the bromancer and the reptiles of Oz, lurking in the hive mind)

Fixed. Now to a much more dire issue. 

What happens when Dame Groan strays into turf that's of very little interest to the pond?

Dire times.

Look at the alleged top EXCLUSIVE news item top of the hive mind this day ...

EXCLUSIVE
Real carbon price is a ‘risk to viability’, says business
Australia’s biggest business body is urging Anthony Albanese to consider a 2035 emissions reduction target lower than the 65 to 75 per cent being investigated by the Climate Change Authority.
By Greg Brown

Just another day of reptiles stoking fears about climate action, with fears of climate change never a cause for reptile worry.

The lesser member of the Kelly gang, a certain Joe, barely made it into top of the digital edition with 

‘UNHAPPY WITH PUTIN’
Trump threatens 100 per cent tariffs on Russia
By Joe Kelly

The only notable component to that yarn? King Donald decided on fifty days rather than the customary two weeks while hoping for Vlad the sociopath's attention to the matter.

Over on the extreme far right, there was a different kind of action ...

Uh oh, bro time yet again. 

Quick, what else?

This will have to do. 

The pond doesn't like it, but the pond decided to give old Nick his due ...

The header: Why the Jewish Council doesn’t care about Australian Jews, It is a tragic irony that the Jewish Council of Australia’s activists see themselves as protectors of the marginalised yet they are ultra-marginal by every measure and mostly very rich and powerful.
The direly disagreeable threat to the hive mind: Demonstrators chant and wave flags and placards during a rally for Gaza.

It turned out that Nick was in the grip of full-throated hysteria, and rabid denunciation was his game ...

Imagine, if you will, the establishment of a Palestinian Council of Australia, whose leaders possessed little or no meaningful connection to their community.
The group’s main activity, featured in endless media quotes and opinion pieces, was to castigate Palestinians and consistently argue against the formation of a Palestinian state, between alleging that Islamophobia was “weaponised” to silence criticism of Palestinians and their leaders. Sounds laughable, right? But replace Palestinian with Jewish and we face reality.
In recent days the parodic Jewish Council of Australia (sic) has thrust itself into our national conversation, seizing headlines in the Guardian Australia and progressive (sic) media with its rejection of the Albanese Labor government’s new plan to combat anti-Semitism.
The JCA’s hysterical reaction was not only predictable, it also was dangerous, misleading and an affront to progressive Jewish identity and the vital cause of anti-racism in this country. The far-left JCA is not representative of Australian Jewry. A thousand unhappy, narcissistic flowers less than blooming without a transparent membership and zero democratic accountability. The JCA is not even representative of the Jewish left.

Quick, a snap of the alleged hysterics who precipitated the hysterical reaction ...Antony Loewenstein, Louise Adler

Shocking, and Nick had his keyboard wired to tar and feathers.

The reason for this gallery of two rogues? The JCA and its had committed the direst of all reptile hive mind crimes, a Graudian thought crime ...

Imagine, if you will, the establishment of a Palestinian Council of Australia, whose leaders possessed little or no meaningful connection to their community.
The group’s main activity, featured in endless media quotes and opinion pieces, was to castigate Palestinians and consistently argue against the formation of a Palestinian state, between alleging that Islamophobia was “weaponised” to silence criticism of Palestinians and their leaders. Sounds laughable, right? But replace Palestinian with Jewish and we face reality.
In recent days the parodic Jewish Council of Australia (sic) has thrust itself into our national conversation, seizing headlines in the Guardian Australia and progressive (sic) media with its rejection of the Albanese Labor government’s new plan to combat anti-Semitism.
The JCA’s hysterical reaction was not only predictable, it also was dangerous, misleading and an affront to progressive Jewish identity and the vital cause of anti-racism in this country. The far-left JCA is not representative of Australian Jewry. A thousand unhappy, narcissistic flowers less than blooming without a transparent membership and zero democratic accountability. The JCA is not even representative of the Jewish left.

The link in that gobbet to progressive "sic" media led to, of all people, Major Mitchell, and yesterday's outing, Selective ‘context’ key to how journalists view Israel, As if to highlight Jillian Segal’s comments about the role of media in spreading anti-Semitism, fill-in ABC Radio National breakfast show host Steve Cannane wasted half of his interview with her taking issue with the definition of the term

Old Nick should watch the company he keeps, but as the pond has noted many times, once you book into the reptile hive mind, you can never ever leave.

Old Nick also seemed to be confused, because thus far there has been a report made, which the government has said it will consider. 

At this point, it can't, shouldn't, be conflated with the Albanese Labor government’s new plan to combat anti-Semitism.

There's been a bit of a headwind, what with Louise Chappell in The Conversation this day scribbling Antisemitism plan fails on a number of fronts - a contentious definition of hate is just the start ...

And the pond has already noted 'Gross overreach': Labor group urges Albanese to reject key parts of antisemitism envoy plan.

And oopsie daisy...

Devilish old Nick is however keen to take anyone down who might dare to disagree with the notion of concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, yadda yadda ...

It is a fringe clique, the same tired old actors – Antony Loewenstein and Louise Adler and co – that actively dist­ance themselves from the Jewish community’s core values, institutions and experience in Australia and globally.
Yet in Adler’s recent Guardian Australia column, Jews and non-Jews are told the Albanese government’s plan – created in consultation with mainstream Jewish organisations and aimed at addressing rising anti-Semitism – is really a “push to weaponise anti-Semitism”.
According to Adler, a co-founder of the JCA, the real threat is not white supremacy or Islamist extremism, or the explosion of anti-Semitic tropes on social media or the bullying of Jewish students on campus. No, the threat is the plan to stop all of that. This is gaslighting on an industrial scale.
The JCA claims to oppose anti-Semitism but refuses to adopt the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, endorsed by dozens of countries and most global Jewish institutions. Instead, it obsesses over how anti-Semitism is supposedly being used to shield Israel from criticism – specious nonsense given the scope and scale of Israeli domestic critiques of the Netanyahu government and diaspora writers of my ilk. (I have previously written about how West Bank settlements “are a cancer eating away at Israel’s democratic soul”.)
In doing so, JCA flirts with classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power, political manipulation and dual loyalties.
It’s not just what it says – it’s what it doesn’t. Where is its outrage at Hamas? For Gazans living under the jackboot of Hamas? For Aussie Jewish children like mine requiring security protection at junior sporting activities, at synagogue arsons or at anti-Semitic chants on university campuses?

The reptiles continued the confusion with this AV distraction ... Anti-Semitism report explained, Richard Ferguson breaks down the Albanese government's plan to combat anti-Semitism in Australia.

If the reptiles offer an EXPLAINER, remember, once you've booked in, you can never leave, as old Nick turned out to be a proud, unapologetic Zionist...

Where is even a flicker of positive association with Jewishness, Jewish culture or Zionism – the democratic national liberation movement supported by 90 per cent of Jews globally? I wake up each day thankful to God for being a Jew. I am proud to be a member of a tribe that has contributed so much to the world and Australia – for the blessings of Torah and its instructions on how to be a good Jew and pursue social justice, Talmudic scholarship and our questing thirst for knowledge and debate, and our beautiful diverse community.
I beam with pride when reading my (Zionist) great-grandfather’s death notice published by his son (also a Zionist and co-founder of the Jewish Socialist Workers Party, later the Israeli Labor) in Vienna in 1919: “a good man and loyal Jew has left this world. Even living in a constant struggle for existence, he was an advocate for all the poor and oppressed. His longing to find refuge in Eretz Israel from the storms of this troubled world has been shattered by his sudden passing. I and my family have lost a role model of loyalty and kindness in the dearly departed.”
Zionism is not a dirty word. It is the movement that re-established Jewish self-determination after two millennia of exile, persecution and genocide.
It is the reason Druze, Baha’is, Christians, Muslims and Jews in Israel, with equality for women and LGBT citizens – unlike anywhere else in the region – live under a democratic government, with free courts and press. Yet, for the JCA, Zionism is the enemy, as is mainstream Australian Jewry. The JCA poses as anti-racist and a human rights defender but its real impact is to undermine the efforts that protect minority groups, including Jews, from hate and violence.
As Philip Mendes has written in two meticulously researched pieces in The Times of Israel, this is not a new story. The JCA follows in the well-worn ideological tracks of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, a Soviet-aligned organisation from the mid-20th century that excused Stalinist anti-Semitism and smeared Zionism as a form of fascism.

Ah, that's way better than using the Adolf ploy, the Stalinist commie swine ploy is always a winner in the hive mind as a proudly Joe McCarthy style slur ...

Old Nick seemed to prefer the company of simplistic Sharri, full disrespect, Racism towards Jews is “apparently now acceptable” and what has happened at the Adelaide Writers’ Week over the past few days is “intolerable”, says Sky News host Sharri Markson. “People like the Writers' Week director, Louise Adler, say it's perfectly fine to criticise Israel, and of course it is. But this is the veil through which people get away with dangerous anti-Semitism. “I'm not talking about criticism of the Israeli government and its actions – of course that's fine – I'm talking about inflammatory individuals who call Jews and Israelis human garbage and who want to wipe them off the face of this earth." Ms Markson said Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa and Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd were "allowed into Australia" and celebrated at the Writer's Week, and she revealed some of their “blatantly offensive and racist remarks”. “I just think this is all really sad – it's one thing to criticise the Israeli government, the settlements. “It's quite another to engage in hate speech, in anti-Semitism – not in the dark corners of the dark web, but on stage where people have bought tickets to hear you speak, where your remarks are cheered and applauded.”

Apparently it's all part of an iron dome strategy ...

Time to wrap up old Nick's effort this day ...

Mendes writes that “these councils were effectively fronts that ignored the Jewish community’s core concerns”, more interested in ideological purity than helping real people. That tradition lives on today in the JCA.
It’s a tragic irony that the JCA’s activists see themselves as protectors of the marginalised yet they are ultra-marginal by every measure and mostly very rich and powerful. They do not represent Jewish religious bodies, educational institutions, welfare organisations, youth movements or progressive politics. They speak for themselves only and get attention only because they offer media outlets the mirage of Jewish endorsement for anti-Zionist screeds. JCA won’t participate in the World Zionist Congress elections. I voted for the progressive ticket.
Enough. Jewish identity is not something to be weaponised on behalf of far-left politics or, lest it be unsaid, apologised for. Nor is anti-Semitism a game of rhetorical gymnastics. If the JCA truly wants to make a difference, it could start by standing with the community it claims to represent.
Until then, it is a bit player and a big part of the problem. And not the solution.

Nick Dyrenfurth is executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre.

So the pond can chalk old Nick up as an enthusiastic supporter of concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, the current eradication of Gaza, and all that stuff, or did it just escape his attention momentarily?

Elsewhere, a few of the reptiles seemed sanguine about comrade Albo's trip to China ...

EXCLUSIVE
Date night for relaxed PM ahead of Xi meeting
Before a possible showdown over the Port of Darwin, Anthony Albanese was spotted walking with Jodie Haydon en route to dinner. Of course, it hasn’t been all relaxation for the PM in Shanghai.
By Will Glasgow

PM sitting pretty ahead of Xi’s charm offensive
Anthony Albanese is likely to be greeted by Xi Jinping like an old friend on Tuesday. But as the government knows, today’s cuddly panda can turn wolf-warrior in the blink of an eye.
By Ben Packham
Foreign affairs and defence correspondent

Sorry Will, sorry Ben, the bromancer was packing it in his usual hysterical way.

The pond must abandon your musings and give the bromancer his due ...

The header: PM’s defence fail leads to impossible Taiwan question, Anthony Albanese’s strategic approach seems to be dodge displeasure from Beijing and try to entrap the US into providing for our security in exchange for the minimum possible effort on our part.
The caption: Anthony Albanese at a press conference after a Steel Decarbonisation Roundtable in Shanghai, China.

As always, the bromancer was keen for a war with China, preferably by Xmas, and if that happened to turn into WWIII, so much the better, offering a chance for the lizard Oz's Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches to show off his skill ...

If the People’s Republic of China takes control of Taiwan by force, the results would be disastrous for Australia. You would think this reality would figure centrally in our debate about Taiwan. Instead it has hardly been mentioned.
This is partly because the Albanese government still doesn’t really believe Australia can actually exercise serious power concerning its own military fate.
Instead we must dodge displeasure from Beijing, and try to entrap the US into providing for our security in exchange for the minimum possible effort on our part.
It is of course obvious that for Washington to ask the Australian government to commit in advance to going to war in alliance with the US in defence of Taiwan if China should move militarily is absurd.
No nation gives an iron-clad commitment to war in some hypothetical, unforeseen circumstance. Washington doesn’t give such commitments. It’s still an open question whether a Trump administration would come to Taiwan’s military aid in extremis.
The official US position remains one of strategic ambiguity on this point. However, this American inquiry emerges directly out of the drift and uncertainty that arises from the pervasive, profound lack of seriousness of the Albanese government in defence and national security.

Strategic ambiguity might be okay for the Yanks, but is absolutely not on for the bromancer, at least when it comes to Comrade Albo, and the company he keeps ... Xi Jinping, Anthony Albanese and Keir Starmer pose with other G20 leaders at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024.

That sighting set the bromancer off again ...

The idea the government has meaningfully or adequately increased the defence budget is ridiculous. No one not on the government’s payroll would even mouth such a ludicrous proposition. Defence accounted for 2 per cent of GDP when the Albanese government came to office; it still does. For several years of the Albanese government, inflation ran way above budget forecast. Defence’s budget is not compensated for inflation above forecast, so Defence’s real purchasing power declined very substantially.
The government has told us these are the most dangerous strategic circumstances since World War II. At the same time the government is embarked on a program to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Both these realities obviously require a much bigger defence budget.
Most of the increase in defence spending the government has announced, which is still quite modest, doesn’t come into force until the first year of its third term. Many capabilities recommended in the Defence Strategic Review have not been acquired. The recent Australian National Audit Office report demonstrated the government doesn’t even provide the money to keep our pitifully small naval surface fleet in regular working order.
The Trump administration, certainly all US defence officials dealing with Asia, are intimately aware of all this.

Pardon the pond for rudely interrupting, but is King Donald intimately aware of anything? 

There's a special brand of singularly unaware comedy playing out at the moment, Trump Claims Putin Has Never Fooled Him - After Admitting Putin Keeps Fooling Him.

Do carry on ...

As the Treasury advice to the incoming government shows, the government can’t control its domestic spending. It’s not prepared to take hard choices to provide for national security. The very few new capabilities we are committed to, namely the AUKUS subs and Hunter-class frigates, don’t come meaningfully into play until the second half of the 2030s at best.
The first of each of these is scheduled early in the 2030s, but schedules are never met and in any event they’re not a meaningful capability until there’s a fleet of them.

And that timetable is simply outrageous. How can you have a war with China by Xmas this year, if the kit isn't available until Xmas 2050?

Cue another snap designed to send the bromancer into an even deeper frenzy, Anthony Albanese with Shanghai Party President Chen Jining in Shanghai.

As is traditional these days in reptile la la land, the bromancer headed back to the days of Pig Iron Bob, aka Ming the Merciless ...

We are reprising, almost eerily, the abject failures of Australian policy in the 1930s. The best book you could read on defence is Jeffrey Grey’s A Military History of Australia. Grey could have been writing about today: “For most of the inter-war period, it is clear that little or nothing was done to increase the government’s ability to carry out its military responsibilities … Australian governments of both persuasions chose to believe that another major war would not occur or that, if it did, someone else would fight it on our behalf.”
Yet Australia knew all about the emerging Japanese threat. The 1930s fate of Australia’s submarines is prophetic of the colossal national mess we’ve made of submarines over the past 20 years. For a while we had two submarines, then finally decided we couldn’t afford them. So we gave them to the Brits. When World War II came, we had nothing, whereas we had had subs in World War I.
Our surface fleet of destroyers was so old it was routinely described as “ancient warriors”. Grey recounts how small our surface fleet was, yet it was about the same size as our navy today. The consequence? Grey writes: “The Royal Australian Navy was to be handled very roughly by the Japanese.” In 1928, our air force was still flying planes made in World War I.
PRC President Xi Jinping constantly tells his forces to be ready for war. The PRC has built a war economy, securing supply lines and accumulating big stockpiles of key supplies. Famously, Xi has told his military to be capable of taking Taiwan by force by 2027. That does not remotely prove Beijing will take such action, in 2027 or at any time.

So a major war looms in the bromancer mind, and so the bromancer is constantly telling his forces to be ready for war ...

What could possibly go wrong in a China v. Oz stoush, provided the bro is immediately appointed Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches?

If it isn't clear by now that the bromancer is completely agin the trip, has been, always will be, the reptiles helped with an AV distraction, The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan questions Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s trip to China amid rising political and economic tensions in the region. “I think this whole trip is a little ill-advised,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News host James Macpherson. “Why would you go to China and not go to Japan and South Korea, nations with whom we have intimate political and security relationships and with whom we share values?”

Much better to fuss and feud and fight, bro style, than pay a visit.

On with "peace is our profession" ...

The best course for anyone to prevail who doesn’t want war in Taiwan is to provide a stable system of deterrence.
In her recent speech in Kuala Lumpur, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia wanted to contribute to deterrence.
Yet how are we doing this? We have almost no military capability of our own, almost nothing to contribute. By hosting US-Australia joint intelligence facilities, and increasing rotations of US troops and aircraft in northern Australia, and in due course hopefully some US subs based or semi-based in Perth, we make a geographic contribution. But that’s it.
The US, already spending 3.5 per cent of its GDP on defence, has just passed a bill raising its military spending to $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion). But the US can’t do it all alone. This is made more difficult for the US by the strategic alliance of Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang.
Oriana Skylar Mastro, one of the most brilliant US security analysts, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs: “Given how readily (Beijing and Moscow) co-operate, there is a good chance they might overpower US forces if they fought together in a single military theatre … (They) could also wreak havoc by fighting separately but simultaneously.”

Sheesh, did we just lose WWIII at the hands of these desperadoes? Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend the Victory Day military parade at Red Square in central Moscow on May 9, 2025.

The bromancer wrapped up proceedings with a dire sense of doom...

In such circumstances, Mastro argues, the US might have to concentrate on one military theatre and for a time leave the other theatres to mostly fend for themselves.
There are no circumstances, given the defence dereliction of this and previous governments, under which Australia could fend for itself.
But more broadly, if we want deterrence to work, all US allies need to add substantially to the quantum of allied military capability so that deterrence is credible. We’re not doing this.
Malcolm Davis, of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, argues that the entire security order Australia has enjoyed would break down completely if Beijing took Taiwan.
He says: “If Beijing controls Taiwan, it’s very well placed to project force against Guam, Japan, The Philippines. In a situation where China wins a war (over Taiwan) against the US, or the US backs down, then China can project hegemonic power through the whole of Southeast Asia, including us. I would fully expect Japan and South Korea to get nuclear weapons. If the US is not there, we would face Chinese coercion we couldn’t resist. We’re in a very dangerous situation. We’re facing the prospect of a major war in our part of the world, and we’re not doing enough to prepare for it.”
This is gross national irresponsibility. We’ve seen this movie before. It never ends well.

Speaking of movies, when are the reptiles going to let out an outraged howl at the latest iteration of Superman? 

As in Trump vs. Truth, Justice and the American Way, which heils Catturd as FBI director in 2027?

As for the bromancer's movie, the pond has seen enough celebrations of Afghanistan to last a tyrannical Taliban lifetime.

And speaking of the fate of repressed womyn, so to Dame Groan for the bonus. 

Like the bromancer read, the reptiles clocked it at a full five minutes, but the pond is aware that the old Groaner has a devoted fan base, so consider this a form of pandering ...

The header: Call this feminism? Parents need real choices for childcare, Whether it’s tax-deductible nannies or subsidies for mums to stay home, can’t some of the vast sums spent by governments on childcare fees be redirected to provide greater choice for parents?
The caption: “More regulation of childcare centres will be costly and won’t necessarily work,” writes Judith Sloan.

The groaner started in good style with an invitation ...

Call me old-fashioned ...

Oh if the pond must, you old-fashioned biddy ...

Hang on, that was just the start, inevitably there was a billy goat butt that immediately followed ...

...but I always thought feminism was about giving women and girls the right to choose. About education pathways, about employment and training, about getting married, about having children, about childcare options.
For far too long, women had been constrained in the choices they could make: the length of their schooling, the subjects they took, the limited number of acceptable occupations, the loss of job tenure after marriage in many areas, the mandated lower rates of pay, the expectation of marriage and staying at home after the birth of children.
It was a restrictive and stifling milieu for many women. (Incidentally, I was a net beneficiary of these constraints on women. At my school, which had an all-female teacher workforce, save for the chemistry teacher, we were taught by a cohort of remarkably talented and well-educated women who, in the future, would never consider teaching as a career path. And as I was leaving school, feminism was beginning to achieve widespread social acceptance.)
If we fast-forward to today, there have been massive changes, particularly in terms of women’s participation in the workforce since the mid-1960s. At that time, women made up less than one-third of the workforce; they now make up nearly half.
About three-quarters of couple families with children aged up to 14 years now have two employed parents. Female employment participation rates by age no longer dip during the child-bearing years – the traditional U shape in the graph has disappeared.

The pond has no dog, cat or child in this fight, but did heave a sigh at yet another truly pathetic reptile image, straight from the school of AI, More than 23,000 students holding fake diplomas will be stripped of their qualifications. The Labor Party is cracking down on dodgy private colleges, pinning the blame on underinvestment from the previous Coalition government. There are concerns some of those students have used their qualifications to obtain jobs in sectors such as childcare, health, and engineering.

Why do they do it? Is it just to distract the pond?

Is it a way of making the old-fashioned biddy seem brimming with feminist energy?

To be sure, women with young children, particularly of preschool age, are likelier than other women to work part-time. But the very low workforce participation of women with children under two years that once characterised the Australian labour market has not persisted. It is commonplace for children to be placed in some form of childcare around the age of one, and sometimes earlier.
According to the latest figures, about half of one-year-olds are in childcare that attracts a childcare subsidy. For two-year-olds, the proportion is close to 60 per cent, and for three-year-olds it’s 70 per cent. Most of these tots attend for-profit centres, with community centres accounting for 20 per cent of enrolments. Across the past decade or so, the expansion of the childcare sector has overwhelmingly been through the expansion of private, for-profit centres.
These trends raise the question of whether these outcomes are entirely the result of free choice on the part of hard-pressed mothers. Saddled with high living costs, including servicing a mortgage or paying rent, many mothers of young children have no choice but to return to the workforce to bolster the family’s financial position. Were it not for these financial pressures, there is little doubt some mothers would prefer to stay home to look after little ones for longer.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with another grotesque image, surely devised by AI using stock images, Parents need real choices for childcare, including the option to be subsidised to stay home, says Judith Sloan. Pictures: iStock

WTF? What on earth does it mean? What was it meant to mean?

It surely took the pond's mind off Dame Groan's desire to get the government to pay to get women back into the kitchen ...

To my mind, we are a long way from the feminist dream.
It’s not helped by certain advocacy groups pushing parents of young children to re-enter the workforce quickly and outsource their children’s care to others.
The acting chief executive of Parenthood exhorted new mothers to “get off the mat” while playing with their children and return to employment, preferably full-time. The irony of the fact that other women might end up on the mat playing with these same children didn’t occur to her.
There is also the associated fall in the fertility rate that has occurred with these developments. The rate has now dropped to a historic low of 1.5 births per women, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1.

How long before the old-fashioned biddy plays the paedophile card?

Not long, not long at all, Sky News host Paul Murray discusses how 17 per cent of Australians disagree childcare centres are safe for children. “A lot of Australians have had a really tough time talking about this issue in the past few days and I understand why,” Murray said. “So, let me jump to the findings of an opinion poll which starts to tell us about how many of us do not feel particularly safe about the way childcare centres work in Australia.”

Is it just the pond, or do those bright colours reek of AI? A kind of nightmare image designed to help Dame Groan peddle fear ...

Research undertaken by the e61 Institute has demonstrated that the lesser availability of grandmothers to help with childcare is an important factor driving lower birthrates. Many grandmothers are also living the feminist dream – or not – by remaining in the workforce; they now must wait to turn 67 to access the Age Pension. (The eligibility age used to be 60.)
The report notes that “having a grandmother who qualifies for the pension based on her age increases the likelihood that her daughter will have a child, from 69 per cent to 73.5 per cent, and increases the average number of children per woman from 1.47 to 1.56”.
There is also the issue of how close parents can feasibly live to their own parents.
Centre-based childcare has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons: the disturbing case in Melbourne in which an alleged serial child abuser has been charged with numerous offences. Across a period of nearly eight years he worked at 20 centres.
His alleged crimes were not picked up because of the regulations pertaining to childcare but indirectly through the dissemination of abhorrent material on the web.
Apart from the fact he worked at a relatively large number of centres, which is a possible red flag, and one centre manager thinking he was a “bit creepy”, there was nothing in the system to prevent this person continuing to work in childcare.
He had regularly passed working with children safety checks. He was responsible for the youngest children from five months to two years – without words and defenceless.
It’s not as if this is an isolated event. Last year, a convicted pedophile who had worked in numerous childcare centres in Queensland was jailed for life.
There are thousands of notifications of inappropriate behaviour each year. Many centres continue to operate on the basis of a “must improve” rating, and many workers are not fully qualified but are working towards qualifications.

Naturally it's all the fault of deviant Victorians, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen holds a press conference at police headquarters in Melbourne regarding sexual assaults in childcare centres. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

Now the pond is all for improved screening, security and regulation, but Dame Groan just gets silly.

There are also serious question marks about the content of training, with insufficient emphasis placed on child safety. Centres are incubators for the spread of infection among the children.

And so are schools. And so are offices. And so are trams and trains and buses. Incubators and transmitters all ...

Your point? 

We should all wear masks all the time to ward off incubation hubs? 

Wait 'til the pond dobs Dame Groan into Killer of the IPA ...

Very many issues arise as a result of these recent disturbing events. The one I want to raise here is the lack of choice for far too many parents who are forced to rely on centre-based childcare. In effect, parents are handing over their children to be cared for by strangers, based on trust. They don’t have time to hang around to ensure staff ratios are being met; they can’t be sure of the intentions of all staff members.
Given the sums of money that are being expended by the federal government on childcare fee subsidies – now $16bn, rising to more than $18.5bn in 2028-29 – it is reasonable to question whether some of this money could be redirected to provide greater choice for parents. For some families, the subsidies are close to $40,000 a year per child.
Many mothers may be happy to take that sum and stay at home with young ones. Given that the governmenthas now abolished the activity test that used to apply to the receipt of fee subsidies, there is no reason this option should not be made available.
Providing tax deductibility for nannies – including a shared nanny model – also should be made available. If this is seen as too generous to high-income earners, a capped rebate for the cost of registered carers is an alternative.
More regulation of childcare centres will be costly and won’t necessarily work. If feminism is to be true to its original objectives, we need a system that allows real choice for women, not just the preferred route of (unionised) centre-based care that the government and advocacy groups prefer.

Real choice for women?

Nah, not really, just pass the pond a nausea pill, and now, with the immortal Rowe taking a break, time for a new cartoon to close business for the day ...

This one got under some people's noses on the basis that Albo was a big supporter of the original Voice. 

Apparently those critics are under the impression that comrade Albo is shortly to introduce a new referendum, trading on the big vote his government scored, and next year the Voice will return ...

The pond keeds, it keeds, it's never going to be Brexit o'clock time again ...