Warning: this is going to be a long and exceptionally tedious outing, but that's the price you pay if you wander off the beaten track into the hive mind, almost as dangerous as getting lost in WA.
For no apparent reason the reptiles sent out Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, to lead the "news" at the lizard Oz with an alleged EXCLUSIVE designed to sooth savage breasts and pour oil on troubled nuke waters ...
American deep dive won’t kill off AUKUS defence pact
The Trump administration’s AUKUS review was not initiated to kill off the landmark security partnership, but is seen as a full-scale Pentagon endeavour to identify and get ahead of future challenges.
By Joe Kelly
Look, there it was, top of the world ma ...
The pond immediately sussed out the real reason.
It was so "Ned", senior member of the Kelly gang, could strut his stuff, allegedly to make sense of it all, but really to make the pond embark on one of those endless nattering "Ned" Everest climbs ...
Sheesh, the reptiles clocked it as a nine minute read, with that hideous uncredited graphic the first dire warning of what was to follow ...
The endlessly repeated advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
As always, there's a vast unawareness in "Ned", the consequence of his apparent compleat ignorance of what his kissing cousins at Faux Noise have got up to ...
The lure of success makes Trump only more dangerous – to the world, to America’s real interest, to the international order and, of course, to Australia. He is capricious, unpredictable and stamps himself as the untrustworthy partner.
Tariffs? Why they're going exceptionally well ...
"Ned" rambled on ...
Whether Trump pulls the trigger on his tariff threats remains to be seen. He is a master of intimidation and bluff. Perhaps he doesn’t even know. Stung by the TACO label – “Trump Always Chickens Out” – he seems to oscillate between muscular threats and blustering retreats.
Trump, it seems, changed his mind and decided to extend the deadline for his so-called reciprocal tariffs from July 9 to August 1 on advice from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that he could get more trade deals with more time – notably with the EU and India among others.
Consider the contribution of Faux Noise to the unremitting daily chaos, or consider this AV distraction, reduced to a screen cap, Large crowds have chanted anti-American slogans and burned an effigy of President Donald Trump in Brazil as they protest new US tariffs. The Trump administration is raising tariffs on all Brazilian imports from ten to 50 per cent from August 1. A third of the coffee drank in the US comes from Brazil, as well as other staples such as orange juice, sugar and oil products. Brazil's President Lula Da Silva is vowing to match any levies imposed.
The pond just knew that "Ned" would miss out on all the fun that's been taking social media by storm ... (credit)
That's the best the pond can promise, matching visual distractions, as the pond pauses at various points in the Everest climb...
Trump dispatched the letters with typical bravado, saying: “As far as I’m concerned, we’re done.” He intimidated dozens of leaders to make deals, saying he decided on the numbers himself: “The deals are mostly my deals to them. We’ve picked a number that’s low and fair.” This is how the US President now reshapes world trade.
Trump quickly ran on pharmaceuticals, setting off an Australian tripwire since our exports to the US, spearheaded by CSL, are worth $2.2bn, with obvious risks for our industry and possible impact on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Ever generous, Trump offered an 18-month grace period to enable companies to relocate their pharmaceutical supply lines.
Jim Chalmers said Australia would defend the PBS against Trumpian intimidation. As usual, with Trump’s disruptive lurch to global chaos, the Coalition blamed Anthony Albanese, with opposition trade spokesman Kevin Hogan saying the pharmaceutical issue was more evidence of the Prime Minister’s failed relations with America. Their claptrap never ends.
Say what? Their claptrap never ends?
The pond almost fell of chair, but there the notion came again in the caption for the next duelling snaps,‘Hopeless blame game’: opposition trade spokesman Kevin Hogan. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman, ‘Defend PBS’: Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Really? But things have been going so well thanks to Faux Noise and the lizard Oz endlessly rabbiting on about the wokerati ...
By this point it should be obvious the pond won't be adding to "Ned's verbiage ...
The Coalition has learnt nothing from its election rout. It is incapable of addressing the strategic havoc being wrought by Trump or how Australia should respond, locked into its hopeless blame game against Australia for the consequences of Trump on this country. The public won’t buy this line any more than it did at election time.
Oh that is worth repeating with a little tweak ...
The reptiles at the lizard Oz deep in their hive mind have learnt nothing from their election rout. They're incapable of addressing the strategic havoc being wrought by Trump or how Australia should respond, locked into a hopeless Sky Noise after dark blame game against Australia for the consequences of Trump on this country. The public won’t buy this line any more than it did at election time.
Indeed, indeed, but what fun to see the fiery hell embracing the world...
On the pond trudged ...
The source of the crisis lies in Trump’s core beliefs and prejudices. He misreads the impact of higher tariffs, thinking this will empower the US economy and industry.
He doesn’t care that higher tariffs weaken the bonds of mutual national interests and discredits the US. He subscribes to the delusion that US economic withdrawal means a stronger America when it really means the opposite.
He talks about cutting spending but brings down a “big beautiful bill” that boosts the debt by between $US3 trillion and $US4 trillion. He pretends to champion ordinary people when his bill delivers $US1m on average to the richest 0.1 per cent of American families, partly financed by cutting healthcare to upwards of 11 million people. He assaults the independence of the US Federal Reserve, brands chairman Jerome Powell a “total and complete moron”, threatens to create monetary policy chaos by prematurely announcing a successor to Powell and calls for interest rates to be cut to 1 or 2 per cent, in current circumstances an act of financial folly. Powell, meanwhile, warns the Fed would have lowered rates more quickly if not for Trump’s tariffs.
The reptiles flung in a snap... Trump and US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell
... so the pond could celebrate "Ned" going "poof", no need to mention the Epstein list ...
More verbiage followed ...
Returning after a recent visit to the US, the debate in Australia seems conducted in a bubble from another planet. The problem we face, almost daily, is Trump, not Albanese. This is obvious, not hard to grasp, yet escapes much of the public discourse.
Instead of a rational assessment of what Trump constitutes – occasionally good but mostly bad – the right-wing zeitgeist is to blame Albanese because it cannot come to grips with the scale and magnitude of Trump’s folly and defaults into pathetic excuses for him.
Our Prime Minister’s limitations are well known. His political approach to Trump has serious flaws. The far bigger point, however, is that Trump is a danger to the world – in trade, security, interdependent and alliance partnerships. The more he succeeds, the worse it gets. Trump has no interest in a US-led global order, preferring instead an America that operates as a nationalistic, selfish hegemon that incessantly complains about being ripped off. It is a Little America mindset in the sad disguise of a “Make America Great Again” boast.
Cue a snap for a terror shortly to be addressed by the bromancer, Each of Trump’s decisions and stances only weakens America against China, where President Xi Jinping is still in charge and going nowhere. Picture: Fred Dufour. / AFP / POOL
And as "Ned" goes on to discuss King Donald's "successes" ...
Take it away "Ned" ...
With Israel a conspicuous exception, more nations and people are disenchanted with the US, hedging their bets, engaged in a mixture of accommodation, flattery or avoidance, but settling on the idea of US unreliability. Leaders won’t trust Trump.
It’s not happening overnight because US power, clout and its economic footprint remains strong and innovative. But the trend is being set. The harmful consequences of Trump dominate every Washington conversation while – who would believe – the failures of Albanese seem to hardly rate a mention.
By attacking trade, the Fed, boosting US debt levels and displaying contempt for allies, Trump undermines the foundations of America’s long era of global success.
"Ned" even goes the king thingie, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent does seem to exercise some influence in a ‘bizarre divine right of kings model’. Picture: Al Drago/Getty Images/AFP
"Ned" boldly suggests a certain lack of function, entirely forgetting the Sharpie way forward ...
Keep brooding "Ned", and remember to send a thank you note to your kissing cousins at Faux Noise ...
The Wall Street Journal reported on this week’s tariffs that Trump “argued privately he was riding a wave of momentum from his signing of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and his bombing of Iran and wanted to ride those perceived wins to victories on trade policies”.
Every morning at 6am the Labor government wakes up to discover the latest bluster from Trump while the Coalition busies itself preparing to blame Labor for the latest Trumpian trade atrocity.
Trump’s dominance in US politics is likely to be more enduring than orthodox analysis would predict. His projection of power and strength – even some of his brutal policies that are apparently unconstitutional – consolidate much of his base.
The Democratic Party looks demoralised and disoriented, unsure of how to combat Trump, lurching to the left, instinctively opposed to everything Trump does, almost turning into a left-wing populist version of Trump but without any iconic figurehead.
Cue another snap, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s political approach to Trump has serious flaws but the far bigger point is that Trump is a danger to the world.
Back to "Ned" and the lack of oxygen at these heights is making the pond dizzy ...
Getting the optics right on his China visit will demand skill of an extremely high order that will test Albanese’s ability to get the balance right between the US and China.
Any idea that an earlier Trump-Albanese meeting would have secured trade breakthroughs is a fantasy. Forget any notion that the 10 per cent tariff applied to Australia will be altered. Indeed, the trade differences are, in effect, cemented: Albanese criticises Trump’s tariffs saying they will hurt America and are unjustified on Australia – right on both counts.
The two leaders will meet when Trump, not Albanese, decides. They will meet when it suits Trump and his priorities. Australia is not a Trump priority – that might be a good or bad thing. Trump seems not to feel the hysterical alarm about the relationship being conveyed daily by the Coalition and the centre-right in Australia. Albanese, unsurprisingly, is ready to travel to wherever is required for a meeting.
Cue a hint of remorse at Sky Noise, University of California Professor of Political Science Louis DeSipio says the American leader’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is achieving “most of what President Trump promised in his campaign”. “In the past when Republicans and certainly Democrats have passed tax cuts, they’ve provided resources for poorer people … this one doesn’t do that,” Mr DeSipio told Sky News Australia. “The rich are getting richer and the poorer are paying for it and that’s not a healthy system where America is already pretty divided.”
More alarums ...
The federal Treasurer said: “The US accounts for less than 1 per cent of our copper exports. Much more concerning are the developments around pharmaceuticals. Our pharmaceutical industry is much more exposed to the US market.
Cue another distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is not up for negotiation.” “It is not a commodity, it is part of our identity,” Mr Albanese said during Labor’s campaign launch. “We never, ever, ever want an American style health care in this country. “Labor is the party of Medicare. We strengthen it and we created it.”
At this point the pond began to run out of cartoons, and just wanted it over, as did the immortal Rowe, who apparently is taking a break, and who can blame him?
"Ned" at last began to wind down ...
On AUKUS, the Australian diplomatic position is obvious – we expect the US to honour the agreement and the spirit of the agreement. It is structured to deliver benefits to both nations. There is strong support for AUKUS across most of the American system – the congress, the State Department, most of the Pentagon and most of the national security establishment – partly a tribute to the work of Kevin Rudd who, like virtually every ambassador in Washington, doesn’t have a personal relationship with Trump.
There was another visual distraction featuring a ghost of a man, US President Donald Trump with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has handled trade negotiations with Australia. Mr Trump has threatened global pharmaceutical tariffs. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP
"Ned" put on a last spurt ...
Trump’s treatment of Japan and South Korea – with tariffs proposed at 25 per cent – reveals his focus on tariff punishment exceeds any commitment to them as vital US allies. But the price impact for consumers would be severe since they constitute nearly 9 per cent of all US imports.
The Wall Street Journal reported the average effective US tariff rate when Trump arrived in office was 2.4 per cent but had now reached 15.6 per cent.
It says Trump’s tariffs will raise an estimated $US300bn in border taxes from the productive economy and he manifestly wants to go far higher.
Trump and his backers are convinced his policies will generate a growth surge and a new “golden age” for the US. His tax policies are geared for investment and growth. But assessments of his economic and fiscal policies are deeply polarised.
Sky Noise after dark offered a final AV distraction, UnHerd newsroom editor James Billot says Elon Musk’s plan to start a third party in the United States is a “fool’s errand”. The world’s richest man announced that he has formed a new US political party, “The America Party”. “It is never going to take off; third parties are always doomed to fail in America,” Mr Billot told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. “For the time being, Elon would be doing everyone a favour by just stepping away from politics for a little bit, focusing on his great companies and returning with a bit more of a level head.”
"Ned" decided to end with Uncle Leon:
Elon Musk said of Trump’s big beautiful bill: “The bill will cause immense strategic harm to our country.” In the Free Press, economist Tyler Cowen said it is “one of the most radical experiments in fiscal policy in my lifetime” and economic commentator Kyla Scanlon said: “While the US cuts taxes in the hope that it will create new industry, China continues to directly invest in advanced manufacturing, critical minerals and industrial capacity. The structure of the law will likely put the US even further behind, with cuts to renewable energy and a prioritisation of the past over the present.”
Really? As if anyone pays the slightest attention to that prize heiling loon ...
And as the pond could hear the sighs and groans and cries of "enough already", and sobbing and lamentations, the pond headed over to the extreme far right to see what was happening ...
There's a relief.
The Angelic one will make a perfect Sunday meditation, and as for Dame Slap, this day bashing TG folk rather than pesky, difficult blacks ...
The recent landmark ruling of the UK High Court, that woman means biological woman, should be a powerful precedent in this country – but the Australian courts sure have some catching up to do.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist
...all that did was remind the pond of Parker Molloy, who makes Dame Slap sound like a bitch from hell, and an unintelligent, always missing the point bitch at that ...
The NYT Has a New Standard for What's Newsworthy: Whatever White Supremacists Are Pushing, The paper laundered hacked documents from a race scientist into a hit piece on Zohran Mamdani, then silenced their own columnist for pointing out their source was a Nazi.
This might strike you as a complete non-story. A teenager filling out college forms tried to accurately capture that he was, quite literally, an Asian person from Africa? Stop the presses! But the Times didn't just report this as some minor curiosity. They splashed it across their website and ran a print headline suggesting scandal — "Mamdani Faces Scrutiny Over College Application" — and gave his opponent, Eric Adams, prime real estate to declare this was "an insult to every student who got into college the right way."
Here's what makes this journalistic malpractice even worse: The Times got this "scoop" from a white supremacist who had access to a hacked Columbia's admissions database. They knew this. They gave him anonymity anyway. And according to Semafor's reporting, they rushed to publish because they were terrified of being beaten to the story by Christopher Rufo, the right-wing activist who manufactured the "critical race theory" panic.
And if you want more of that, try Ali Breland in The Atlantic, A Race-Science Blogger Goes Mainstream, Jordan Lasker, known online as Crémieux, is taking a victory lap after he was mentioned by The New York Times. (archive link)
After the Times published its story, Lasker celebrated on X. “I break-uh dah news,” he wrote to his more than 260,000 followers. On both X and Substack, where he also has a large following, Lasker is best-known for compiling charts on the “Black-White IQ gap” and otherwise linking race to real-world outcomes. He seems convinced that any differences are the result of biology, and has shot down other possible explanations. He has suggested that crime is genetic. The Times received immediate backlash for agreeing to credit Lasker only by his pseudonym, and for not making clear the full nature of his work. On X, Patrick Healy, a Times editor who oversees standards and trust, wrote that the paper sometimes works with “controversial sources” when they have information that is relevant to the public. “We always independently assess newsworthiness and factual accuracy before publishing,” he posted.
A mayoral candidate misrepresenting his race is newsworthy. As the Times notes, Columbia’s admissions program at the time was race-conscious, and Mamdani in theory could have gained an advantage by identifying himself as Black. (Columbia rejected him, however.) But Lasker’s mention in The New York Times, no less one that skirts over his most troubling claims, also helps push him and his ideas even further into the mainstream at a time when race science seems to be making a comeback. As I wrote in August, pseudo-scientific racism—the belief that racial inequalities are biological—is no longer banished to the underbelly of the internet. Since then, the influence of race science has only grown. Donald Trump has flirted with the ideology, and his administration has hired multiple staffers who appear sympathetic to the white-nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, a believer in race science.
A number of Trump-aligned Silicon Valley titans, most notably Elon Musk, are paying attention to what Lasker has to say. Musk follows Lasker on X and frequently interacts with his account, replying with his signature trollish one-word responses. Indeed, the centibillionaire is part of the reason race science is booming more broadly. Under Musk’s ownership, X has significantly scaled back moderation. Now, regardless of who you follow on X, there’s a good chance you’ll find some flavor of pro-eugenics ideology served up on your algorithmic feed. A recent update to Grok—Musk’s chatbot, which can answer questions directly in X—appears to have made the AI more explicitly bigoted. The chatbot went off the deep end yesterday, praising Adolf Hitler as the best 20th-century leader to deal with “anti-white hate,” attacking users with Jewish-sounding names, and calling for a new Holocaust. Hitler, the chatbot concluded, would “handle it decisively, every damn time.” Grok also repeated common race-science tropes, referencing “urban crime stats that scream demographic truths the MSM buries,” and proclaiming that it had been fine-tuned for “unfiltered truth-seeking, spotting patterns without PC filters.”...
Luckily, there was no caption for the hideous animated fire-breathing dragon gif behind the pointing Albo, just the usual weird proposal, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
The reptiles clocked the bromancer at a 12 minute read.
Add "Ned"'s 9, and that's 21 minutes of a precious weekend wasted.
Don't blame the pond, as the bromancer cranked into gear with terribly meaningful quotes...
– Report to the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, 2017
– Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Hawaii, May 2025
– Xiao Qian, ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Australia, July 7, 2025
The best the pond could do was promise minimal interruptions, no 'toons and a determined attempt to get through the bromancer as quickly as possible, what with war with China by Xmas looming yet again ...
That tells you everything.
But there’s much more. The chief executives of 14 of Australia’s biggest companies are accompanying Albanese. This is meant to be a good news trip. Three cities – Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu. The Prime Minister may even be inveigled into hugging a panda.
Good news? Not on the bro's watch, Will Glasgow reports from Caofeidian on the Australian iron ore that is shaping the North of China.
On with the sullen resentfulness ...
The Chinese media has hailed Albanese and praised Australia for being the first US ally to have made a big switch back to Beijing since Washington became publicly so critical of the PRC. There’s no need to believe the Chinese media but it knows what messages it wants to broadcast.
The PRC’s ambassador in Canberra has penned two sharp, meddlesome, newspaper articles. The first instructed Albanese to reject Donald Trump’s request to lift defence spending from the current 2 per cent of GDP to 3.5 per cent of GDP. This would be most unwise, the ambassador counselled. It would limit social spending and reflect an outdated Cold War mentality.
Albanese has indeed refused the Trump defence spending request and the similar suggestion by all the Australian advisers such as Angus Houston, Dennis Richardson and Peter Dean.
Beijing is delighted. Then the ambassador turned to economics: why not extend the China-Australia free trade agreement to intimate co-operation on artificial intelligence? That was a bold suggestion.
To mangle "Ned", his claptrap never ends, as he plays yet again his 'Hopeless blame game’, China's Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian warned Anthony Albanese against increasing defence spending.
The pond has been down this path so many times before with the bromancer that familiarity does indeed breed contempt, and a distinct lack of irony ...
Anyone notice a certain irony?
Australia was the first Western nation to ban Chinese telco Huawei from its 5G network. It’s inconceivable that there could be a special AI deal. Which underlines how self-confident and expansive the ambassador was feeling.
For context, let’s go back five years, to 2020, when these issues were discussed more frequently and frankly. In his memoirs, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull observes: “What’s become increasingly apparent over the last decade is the industrial scale, scope and effectiveness of Chinese intelligence gathering and in particular cyberespionage. They do more of it than anyone else, by far, and apply more resources to it than anyone else … They’re very good at it … they’re not embarrassed by being caught.”
Cue Sky Noise after dark, Sky News Political Reporter Cam Reddin discusses China’s trade request to access Australia’s artificial intelligence technologies, claiming it could be more of an offer than a demand, considering China is “leaps and bounds” ahead of Australian AI. “China is leaps and bounds ahead of Australia when it comes to developing artificial technologies,” Mr Reddin told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “Potentially, that is more of a carrot dangling than anything, an offer for Australia to get more involved in some of the programs that are being developed in China. “There is obviously that overwhelming concern about what a US-China trade war could mean for not just Australia but the global economy as well.”
Forget "Ned, the bromancer just wants to tug the forelock, bend the knee and kiss the ring ...
He might have said these were not the actions of a friend; instead he wanted to defend Beijing.
Here’s another little-noticed double standard. Albanese had no interest in meeting US Vice-President JD Vance when they were in Rome for pope Francis’s funeral. Albanese said as Prime Minister he dealt with the President. This was either unbelievably rude and stupid or the worst attempt at humour in history.
With the PRC, Albanese plainly regards himself as occupying an inferior position to President Xi Jinping. The formal leaders dialogue, when it takes place, is not between Xi and Albanese but between Chinese Premier Li Qiang, plainly the PRC’s No.2, and the Australian Prime Minister. A US vice-president, nationally elected, sits higher in his government than a premier does in the PRC.
Now, Albanese is making a big statement without saying anything – six days, just in the PRC. No North Asian swing with a couple of days in Japan, our close quasi-ally and most important Asian partner, nor in Seoul; just the PRC.
Cue another distraction, Former DFAT Australia-China Council scholar Andrew Phelan discusses how China is attempting to hinder the Australia-US strategic relationship ahead of the PM's visit. "Their [China's] number one strategic objective is to distance us from our allied strategic relationship with the US," Mr Phelan told Sky News Australia. "They will try and exert as much pressure as they can."
The sheer, brazen one-sidedness of all this imagery and contrast must have hit home to the Albanese government, for senior government ministers made a series of interventions that reasserted common sense and put some minimal limits on the PRC relationship. Albanese himself dismissed the fantastical idea of a Beijing-Canberra partnership on AI.
AI? Please allow the pond one indulgence, one interrupting cartoon ...
Sigh ...
Then, on the eve of Albanese’s trip, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, in Kuala Lumpur, made the sort of speech that in recent months only Defence Minister Richard Marles has been willing or allowed to make. In a wide-ranging speech about Australian policy in the region, she said: “China continues to assert its strategic influence and project its military power into our region. And we have seen the worrying pace of China’s nuclear and conventional military build-up, without the transparency that the region expects.” Wong has said this sort of thing before but not much recently. Compared with Albanese’s statements over the past months, it’s Godzilla-like.
Wong also said Australia was committed to its alliance with the US and a US presence in the region was necessary for stability.
Mindless snap, meaningless visual interruption, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has issued a warning about China's surging military capacity; Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Press on, it will end sometime ...
Nonetheless, I think the Chinese media has more than half a point when it suggests the Albanese government is changing Australia’s strategic settings.
The change is not so much from the Morrison government to the Albanese government as a change from Albanese in his last year as opposition leader and first year or 18 months as Prime Minister and Albanese today.
Australia’s policy towards China has had numerous giant lurches in our history and we seem to be on the brink of another one. It may be the combination of Trump, a US President who is wildly unpopular in Australia, and Labor’s out-size parliamentary majority, despite its low primary vote, has convinced the Albanese government it can push back and be its true left-of-centre self on foreign policy.
As opposition leader, Albanese worked hard and smart to project himself as reliable on security. In an interview with me he said his government would go well beyond 2 per cent of GDP for defence if that was necessary for Australian security. He also favourably referenced, without quite committing to them, a series of defence initiatives he hasn’t bothered to pursue in office.
Labor had been nine years in opposition, after a brief six years in government. Scott Morrison presented the initial AUKUS nuclear submarine deal to Labor on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The Labor brains trust was convinced of the superiority of nuclear submarines but also felt it had to say yes to AUKUS or the electorate might regard Labor as anti-alliance, anti-American and anti-security.
The reptiles offered a Sky Noise break, all the pond offered was a screen cap, Sky News Senior Reporter Caroline Marcus says the Pentagon is now considering making Australia pay more for submarines under the AUKUS pact. Sources have told Nine Newspapers the US will ask for changes to the pact before the first submarines arrive. “The new potential costs and conditions are yet another worrying sign the $368 billion AUKUS deal could be under threat,” Ms Marcus said. “Albanese's failure to manage a relationship with Trump is looking to be very costly indeed.”
We should pay more for useless subs that will likely never arrive? Don't worry, the bromancer has the matter in hand, thank him for his attention to this matter ...
The first big challenge was to sell AUKUS to the Labor rank and file, who were suspicious of it. Many of them hate it to this day. It calls forth their atavistic anti-Americanism, nuclear phobias, discomfort with military power, and it diverts money from social spending.
So Labor ran a strong line that Australia faced the most dangerous strategic circumstances in its history since World War II. Many eminent folks said this, mainly because it’s true.
Former defence force chief Angus Houston said he thought strategic circumstances the worst of his lifetime. This all worked well enough in getting the Labor rank and file to grudgingly accept AUKUS.
Labor did change the Morrison era rhetoric on the PRC and talked about “stabilising” the relationship with Beijing. But its speeches and comments fairly routinely cited the China threat. Wong was active in the South Pacific trying to stop Beijing executing security agreements and getting special port facilities that could in time become a military base.
Another mindless visual interruption, US President Donald Trump and then Australian PM Scott Morrison in 2019. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP
The liar from the shire? Jeremy? The usual bromancer fush and chups ...
Before Albanese became leader he sometimes told friends and acquaintances he thought the China threat was exaggerated. He privately told people that even the dangers of PRC foreign interference in Australia were exaggerated. Beijing was just doing what all countries do.
Further evidence for this interpretation is that there has been virtually no increase in defence spending, or rather a very small, incremental increase. If these are the most dangerous strategic circumstances since World War II, how is it that defence spending was 2 per cent of GDP when Albanese came to office and it’s still 2 per cent now, the nominal dollar increase almost entirely explained by inflation and population growth?
Albanese and his ministers, and government spokespeople, almost never now talk about the most dangerous strategic circumstances, which in the early days was a straightforward euphemism for the Chinese military threat. The politics has changed.
The Albanese government isn’t worried any longer about justifying AUKUS to its rank and file, it’s now worried about the Trump administration, its own advisers and every realistic defence and strategic analyst in Australia saying it needs to spend billions more dollars on defence.
Now, when it speaks of a dangerous international environment, the government tends to cite global disruption. Sometimes it even presents great power conflict as the evil in itself, a shocking formulation that effectively equates our democratic ally, the US, with the PRC and Russia.
How else does this trip represent a change in policy? Well, if strategic circumstances were the most dangerous since World War II just 18 months ago, they certainly haven’t improved. Yet there’s no sign Albanese will have anything remotely resembling frank dialogue with Beijing over its behaviour in the region.
Sheesh, it's just a bloody trip, why all this bloody endless, interminable hand wringing, with alarmist captions to boot, Anthony Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping at last year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. Picture: Getty Images
The pond was really pleased it decided to bite its tongue ...
Beijing’s behaviour in recent years has been appalling. Domestically it has become effectively Stalinist, repressing religion, repressing ethnic minorities, putting an end to human rights law activism, suppressing rights in Hong Kong. Internationally it humiliated Australia in the middle of an election with its naval incursions into our waters. It conducts occasional dangerous interactions with our navy ships and air force planes. It still has an Australian, writer Yang Hengjun, wrongly imprisoned. It routinely enters Taiwanese and Japanese air space and waters with aggressive military manoeuvres.
Yeah, yeah, and King Donald? With ICE the new Stasi?
So many leopards eating face moments the pond can't be bothered mentioning even a sample, not even those Canadians...
...especially as the reptiles decided to waste even more time pretending that Lord Downer was worth paying attention to, Former foreign minister Alexander Downer says Anthony Albanese has “no relationship” with US President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Anthony Albanese is still yet to secure a meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Time now for a bromancer history lesson ...
But you’ll hear none of this from Albanese. He and his government have lost the inclination, perhaps even the ability, to undertake a serious strategic conversation with the Australian people.
Since World War II our policy towards China has lurched radically. Just after the war, we appreciated the Chinese Nationalists who were our allies in the Pacific war. We were horrified at the communist takeover in 1949 and more horrified again by the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In that period, the PRC was the chief sponsor of insurgency in Southeast Asia, especially in Vietnam and Indo-China.
After Richard Nixon’s 1971 opening to China, designed to counter the Soviet Union, we got fully on board with that and saw great economic potential. We were knocked off course a bit by the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, but the lure of Chinese money soon had us back under its spell.
Then, around 2008-09, we realised that Beijing was acquiring huge offensive military capabilities. This led to Kevin Rudd’s tough-minded 2009 defence white paper. The Howard government was strategically at one with the Americans and convinced Beijing to emphasise areas we could agree on. About a decade ago, as Beijing ramped up its efforts to push the Americans out of the region, the strategic side all started to go bad again. But we’ve never been quite as confused and incoherent, as distracted and ineffective, as determined to look away from reality as we are today.
Time now for panic, China's first domestically built aircraft carrier, Shandong, sits anchored after it arrived in Hong Kong on July 3, 2025. Picture: May James / AFP
And so to nuke the budget ...
First, Morrison and defence minister Peter Dutton were even more alarmist about the strategic environment of the time, often comparing it with the 1930s. Yet, even though they spewed money forth at an unbelievable rate, they did almost nothing to expand Australia’s conventional military capabilities. If you talk crisis but do nothing, people realise you’re having a lend of them.
Second, they committed to AUKUS and wedged Labor into following them without honestly and immediately telling the nation this would require a vast increase in the defence budget. The excuse was they had to wait to see how they would get the nuclear subs before they could estimate the cost.
But every nation that gets nuclear subs finds they are immensely expensive, however you get them. The Morrison government should have told the nation the AUKUS subs would mean a permanent 0.5 per cent of GDP more on defence. Labor would have gone along. But the Liberals, like Labor today, were scared of spending any money on defence.
The public ultimately could see the actions didn’t match the words and became cynical about the words.
Such was the desperate desire of the reptiles to interrupt that they produced two snaps, Peter Dutton … and Scott Morrison talked crisis but did almost nothing to expand Australia’s conventional military capabilities. Picture: Jason Edwards
The pond took that as a sign that at last the bromancer had run out of steam...
Worst of all, Morrison and Dutton talked foolishly and too often about war with China, in the context of joining the US in defending Taiwan, whereas they should have been talking about stable deterrence.
So rich ... coming from a man who routinely foolishly and too often scribbled about the coming war with China by Xmas, but please finish off ...
Albanese has now repeated the Morrison-Dutton mistakes but from the other end of the spectrum, so to speak. The bottom line is it still does nothing of consequence on defence, is completely unrealistic about the costs of AUKUS and doesn’t speak to the Australian people honestly about the PRC and the urgent needs of our strategic circumstances.
This is nonetheless slated to be a happy six days in Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu. Our new China policy seems to be: C’mon, baby, let the good times roll.
But when the good times end, the reckoning could be severe.
That's it, after all that incessant, endless blather, all that to end with a muttered imprecation and an implied threat about "the reckoning", just like the mutton Dutton and the liar from the Shire, foolishly hinting at a war with China?
What a prize loon he is, and this day threatening to take the mantle of an Everest climb off "Ned".
And at this point the pond decided to triple down.
The cats of Australia love their snappy Tom, and Tom was out and about in the same arena ...
It it were to be done at all, best to be done at great length, so add six minutes to the total timing, to arrive at an interminable 27 ...
The caption: Donald Trump arrives for a rally in Iowa to tout his ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ that will cut taxes and services spending. Picture: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The mystical advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
The pond offers no excuse, the doing is sufficient unto itself ...
Two cash rate cuts this year were a foretaste. Bullock said the six-three split decision to keep the cash rate steady was more about “timing than direction”. You could call it a dovish hold, with expectations firming of a cut in August if data on inflation and jobs falls into line. Betrayal was in the air, some say a contempt for consensus at the very least. So was a feeling from pros that the RBA’s communications were not helping them place their bets or advise their clients.
It’s rarely a done deal before the RBA 9 meet. But in this new era, as former senior RBA official and now Challenger chief economist Jonathan Kearns says, “it is even harder to anticipate the rate decision”. Although The Wall Street Journal’s James Glynn did explain five days before the meeting why it was possible the board would hold steady.
One of the wildcards at play is Donald Trump. The US President has shaken, stirred, disturbed and probably destroyed the global trading and security order of the past few decades.
He certainly has hurried things along and made it mandatory for decision-makers, from boards to defence planners, to get ready and deal with Trump world.
As Deloitte Access Economics lead partner Pradeep Philip argues, economic fragmentation has long been in train. “We grew up in an era where economics drove politics,” he told The Australian. “Capital flows, trade, businesses able to shift resources and labour easily. Now we are facing a world where geopolitics is driving economics.”
That means uncertainty and volatility. As top-tier experts such as the International Monetary Fund and OECD lower global growth forecasts, Philip says a rate cut would have been sensible. “Akin to taking out insurance to support the Australian economy by helping rebuild business confidence to drive investment,” he said.
Consider it a gift to those devoted to Dame Groan, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock addresses the media in Sydney. Picture: Christian Gilles/NewsWire
Snappy Tom carried on ...
Officials are worried about Trump’s erratic moves, as well as the effects on monetary stability and confidence of his toxic assaults on US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. The RBA board noted a risk that households and firms delay spending amid such tumult. Still, the anxiety has subsided on tariffs, with the board noting “an expectation that the most extreme outcomes are likely to be avoided”.
That wasn’t the view weeks after the May 3 federal election, when the RBA convened the second meeting of its new monetary policy board in Sydney. It was the first gathering of the interest-rate setting body after the White House’s tariff detonation on April 2. A family-sized 50-basis-point cut in the cash rate was on the board’s menu.
Even at a distance of 15,700km from DC, the meeting in Sydney was not out of the blast zone. Who could be, given how financially enmeshed our systems are, even at a time of trade fragmentation and geopolitical turmoil? Trump’s “Liberation Day” and subsequent tariffs, much higher than expected and China’s retaliation, were the first order of business at the May 19-20 meeting.
RBA staff detailed the market turbulence and Wall Street volatility, which according to board minutes “had risen to levels only exceeded in recent decades during the global financial crisis and the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
The reptiles even tried to make it feel like an ABC finance report ...
Snappy Tom seemed to be having a case of the jitters...
The “trade war scenario” showed the level of GDP would be 3 per cent lower by mid-2027 than the base case, a sharp rise in the jobless rate to nearly 6 per cent and inflation slowing to 2 per cent by the end of 2026. That would warrant an “expansionary” monetary setting.
But the RBA board dismissed the need for a chunky move, opting for a 25-basis-point cut, because inflation had not returned sustainably to 2.5 per cent and staff judged the labour market as “still tight”.
“These considerations and the prevailing global policy uncertainty led members to express a preference to move cautiously and predictably when withdrawing some of the current policy restriction,” the board said.
Cue an AV distraction, The Reserve Bank Australia has denied mortgage holders rate relief for now. A decision to keep the cash rate on hold shocked the market and split its board. Inflation remains in the target band, but the RBA is wary of the Trump administration’s tariffs. Governor Michele Bullock says rates could drop as soon as its next meeting in August.
Time for the narcissistic snake oil salesman and grifter to take over the tale, see 'toons above ...
“If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 25 per cent that we charge,” Trump said in his letter to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung.
Last week congress passed the “one big beautiful bill”, an omnibus ramble of tax cuts, industry subsidies and welfare cuts that will doom the US to deficits and stifling debt servicing; this binge, no doubt, will be funded by fair-minded creditors who won’t gouge the sellers of US Treasuries. Meanwhile, deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue apace.
Cue a chance to study the colour orange, Donald Trump signed his flagship tax and spending bill on July 4. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP
Hmm, a bit pale, perhaps someone left in the blue filter.
Snappy Tom got so bold he could talk of "myriad perversions" ...(sssh, don't mention the list, there is no list).
Trumpiness, in its myriad perversions, was an ominous presence at the three-day gathering of the policy curious to mark the 100th anniversary of the Economics Society of Australia. Outgoing ESA president Catherine de Fontenay says “the shocks of the recent past and the huge looming risks did cast a shadow over the conference, rather like an iceberg in our path”.
“Many of the conversations and presentations would never have happened in the era of the ‘Great Moderation’, that is the period before the GFC,” the Productivity Commission commissioner told The Australian.
“Even though Australia is something of a refuge in this chaos, and trade models show that the short-term effect of tariff wars on Australia is small, we know that the long-term impact of a more uncertain and irrational world will be significant.”
De Fontenay says with the “rise in bad ideas embraced for political expediency, otherwise known as populism, (economists) need to interject ourselves into the conversation”. “We’ll keep calling people’s attention back to the facts, and to the forces that are relevant no matter what. Large tariffs will have a negative impact, regardless of the views of those who impose them.”
Senior researcher at independent US non-profit Peterson Institute for International Economics, Warwick McKibbin, told delegates Trump’s tariffs and budget-busting bill were undermining supremacy of the greenback (which has plunged against other currencies, including our dollar, the opposite of what theory suggests should happen when a country raises tariffs).
Cue a picture of the prof, ANU emeritus professor and economic modeller Warwick McKibbin. Picture: Supplied
More heresies ...
McKibbin said the mass deportations of 8.3 million undocumented workers will make things even worse than the tariffs, equivalent to two to three times the workforce disruptions of the pandemic. The greatest damage will occur in US agriculture and manufacturing.
Happily, there’s also a potential boost for other nations. “This fundamental shift in global politics will be dangerous for an open trading nation like ours but also offer new opportunities for trade and investment,” McKibbin said.
Another chance to study the orange, and in this AV distraction, it seemed stronger, a better shade of delightful pumpkin ...U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States would impose a 35% tariff on imports from Canada next month and planned to impose blanket tariffs of 15% or 20% on most other trade partners. Julian Satterthwaite reports.
And that at last was it for snappy Tom and way past enough already for the pond ...
Deloitte’s Philip says one way to view this new world “is to recognise a new triangulation of economics, technology, and security”.
“It has real implications such as how investment flows take place, where trade takes place, where a business must locate and source its supply chains,” he said.
There’s a lot of noise in policy land; the ground is shifting by the hour, with a threat of a 200 per cent tariff on pharmaceuticals. Wisely, Anthony Albanese is calling out US “self-harm” and insisting Australia will not retaliate. Yet there’s a sting in the tail for the leader of the anti-free-trade world. Who’s in the firing line? America First.
Too true, there's a lot of endless noise in the lizard Oz, and the ground seems to be shifting by the hour, but for the few tortured readers who made it to the bitter end, here's a moment of light relief ...
Neddy: "He [Trump] is a master of intimidation and bluff." Sure he is; that's why he stopped the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in its tracks and has brought lasting peace to Gaza. Absolutely nobody else in the total history of humanity could have achieved either of those accomplishments.
ReplyDeleteClearly, Ned has recently spent far too much time away from Holt Street and is in urgent need of reintegration to the Hive Mind. Criticising the Cantaloupe Caligula? Accusing the Federal Opposition of taking the wrong approach? He’s showing worrying signs of developing independent thought, but hopefully his return to Reptile Central and a few reeducation sessions with the likes of the Bromancer will soon put a stop to that.
ReplyDeleteOne unfortunate side-effect of Ned’s return is that he has become even more long-winded than ever, of that’s possible. Was today’s sermon intended to make up for his month’s absence?
Well he is getting on for 78 years old, Anony, so I don't think it's "independent thought" so much as encroaching senility, and a tendency to forget what he's supposed to be on about.
DeleteNeddy again: "[Trump] brands chairman Jerome Powell a “total and complete moron”. Which he might well be as Trump appears very capable at recognising his own, and appointing them to important positions. Not that he appointed Powell, and maybe that's what he's annoyed about.
ReplyDeleteBut then, Ned tells us "...his bill delivers $US1m on average to the richest 0.1 per cent of American families, partly financed by cutting healthcare to upwards of 11 million people." Does Trump care ? Most of those 11 million folks would vote for him again anyway, if they could. And maybe, like Bolsonaro but more successfully, he's working hard at giving them the chance.
Chadwick wrote (Jul 11, 2025, 2:52:00 PM) -
ReplyDeleteJersey Mike - good to have you back, I did miss you, and you come back with a great quote from one of my favourite philosophers - Calvera.
Thanks pal. I got a good laugh out of bandit chief Calvera being one of your favorite
philosophers. Personally I favor Rupert of Hentzau from 1937's The Prisoner of Zenda -
Rupert of Hentzau (Douglas Fairbanks): "I see you let the drawbridge down.
I just killed a man for that."
Rudolph Rassendyll (Ronald Colman): "An unarmed man of course."
Rupert of Hentzau: "Of course!
Wow, DP certainly put in the hard yards with all the work she did for today's
efforts. Major media sources should be so diligent.
I have a suggestion for all the Trumpers who can't get enough of the ex-game
show host's Kool-Aid.
Have Trump take over the Austrian company Oklo, which sells mobile composting lavatories. It has come out with a lager harvested from recycled human wastewater to demonstrate how it can be turned into a perfectly potable beer, punningly named "Oklopisner".
Imagine issuing a limited edition Trump Oklopisner, recycled from the Orange Caligula himself.
His output must rival Niagara Falls, judging by the torrent of messages he sends out nightly
come the "wee" hours.
MAGA types will be lining up for the chance to not only drink Don's Kool-Aid but his, um, Oklopisner. I'm sure we can put Vance, the boys down at Faux Noise and Greg Sheridan down for a case apiece right now.
Drinking such a concoction would be mothers milk to them.
Ned again: "Returning after a recent visit to the US, the debate in Australia seems conducted in a bubble from another planet. The problem we face, almost daily, is Trump, not Albanese. This is obvious, not hard to grasp, yet escapes much of the public discourse."
ReplyDeleteYeah, not hard to grasp at all, but when did Neddy start criticising the Libs ? Yep, right on, just as soon as a 'woman' became leader of the opposition ! Can we imagine him making such a critique if the party was still led by Dutt the Mutt ?
ReplyDeleteDon't tell the Bro, it would spoil his Christmas: Why China Won't Invade Taiwan
"When all the pieces are on the board—the economic self-interest of China, the deterrent effect of potential nuclear escalation, the surprisingly long history of actual peace across the strait, the growing cultural and linguistic bridges, the sheer military difficulty of an amphibious invasion, and the apparent pragmatism on both sides (Beijing's realism, Taiwan's desire to avoid an unwinnable conflict)—the scale tips away from imminent, large-scale war."
It's amazing how wonderful the world might become if ever sense and reason became dominant in human affairs.
DeleteBut that means that people would have to stop voting for, and/or installing and obeying, the "populists' we have favoured time and again for millennia.
Snappy Tom gives a little invocation to Andrew Marvell, with Governor Bullock having 'world enough and time'. So I guess he has the entire 'To His Coy Mistress' in memory cells; perhaps ground out for a pass in mid-school English?
ReplyDeleteWisely, he has resisted the line about having time 'Till the conversion of the Jews', although, given the demographic of likely readers of the print edition, what I have always retained as the clincher lines could help their perspective - and saved a lot of dubious musings on economic/geopolitical cycles fluttering from the rigging.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.