In which the pond wiles away Sunday with prattling Polonius, takes in a few lizard Oz editorials for bulk, and indulges Dame Slap's taste for black bashing ...

 

What a relief to turn to the quiet waters of privileged patriarchy, and, for the pond's opening Sunday meditation, to saunter the grounds with prattling Polonius ...

The header: Good policy, not female quotas, key to Liberal’s recovery, Despite its devastating defeat in May, some 45 per cent of Australians preferred the Coalition to 55 per cent who preferred a Labor government. It’s a big margin but not insurmountable.

The caption for hive mind readers, fooled as to her identity by the hideous 'moment of time' featured snap, showing a terrifying mix of grimace and fear: The Liberal Party needs a greater number of more female MPs in the commonwealth parliament, as leader Sussan Ley has acknowledged. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Ignoring the loss of the art of capitalization, the reptiles offered the usual mantra: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

For once the pond whole heartedly agrees with Polonius. The fewer women in the Liberal party, the better; that means even fewer will be tempted to run for a seat. The party should be strictly reserved for white males of the Polonial kind.

Might the pond even humbly suggest another improvement? 

Surely there should be an age limit. Only those over 60 should have a right to vote on changes to the party, anyone younger, or female, should be offered an associate membership, though perhaps that status could be kept for women until they pass away ...

I remember former Liberal Party deputy leader Peter Costello saying, when he was in opposition, that just because some commentators were advising you what to do does not mean that they would vote for you.
I was reminded of this when watching ABC TV’s Insiders last Sunday. Mark Kenny – a former Labor Party staffer, ABC producer and Sydney Morning Herald/Age journalist who now has a professorship at the Australian National University – provided lots of advice about how to resolve “the women problem that the Liberal Party has”.

Now Polonius has already had a go at Kenny in that newsletter where he goes full furry and purports to be a watch dog ...

The pond attempted to find the Kenny piece so that it might link to it, but remarkably those quotation marks around "the women problem that the Liberal party has" produced not one direct hit.

Did Polonius imagine the words in a fever dream?

That brings the pond to an age-old issue - the reptile refusal to link to anything outside the hive mind.

Kenny wants the Liberals to "impose quotas for females" contesting preselections. So does ABC left-of-centre journalist Patricia Karvelas. Writing in ABC News Online on June 30, she offered “some free advice to the Liberal Party” that opposing quotas “provides Labor with a free kick of monumental proportions”.

The pond could at least find the link to Karvelas, but see the quote marks about imposing quotas for females?

In the original, that was a link. 

Did it take the hive mind anywhere interesting?

No, it stayed firmly within it, because it simply sent readers to a Dame Slap outing ...

There was another alleged link within the next par, again highlighted by inverted commas...

Without question, the Liberal Party needs more female MPs in the commonwealth parliament, "as leader Sussan Ley has acknowledged". There is a photo taken in March 1996 of prime minister John Howard at Parliament House with 25 Liberal women. Howard was to say after the 1998 election, when there was a swing against the Coalition, that his government was saved by the strong performance of some female Liberal MPs in marginal seats.

Where did that link lead? You guessed it, to another place in the hive mind, featuring Sussssan ...

Undiluted click bait, but how lucky that all the pond caught was a black screen...

This is the central problem for the reptiles at the lizard Oz. No one is allowed to leave the hive mind ... they have to stay inside and cop sermons of the Polonial kind ...

Certainly, the Liberal Party has a problem with the female vote – which, on the evidence of the polls, dropped dramatically in the immediate run-up to the May 3 election. However, this is likely to have turned more on the policies offered by the Peter Dutton-led opposition than candidate selection.
It is not at all clear that women necessarily favour female candidates. As with male voters, the cost of living is the main driver in party political choice. It is conceded that the poorly presented policy to end working from home within the commonwealth public service was a turn-off for many women voters. But this would have affected Coalition candidates of either gender.

The pond trusts that the Liberal party will follow Polonius's advice, because who knows how many years they might spend in the wilderness by following it.

The reptiles then interrupted with another trip, this time into another part of the hive mind, The Liberal Party is in damage control after leaked text messages reveal the group's anguish over gender balance. In messages obtained by the Daily Telegraph, former party vice-president Teena McQueen labels the push for quotas as 'Disgraceful' Others in the party have been vocal about the changes, including Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor, who took on Sussan Ley for the position of Opposition Leader. The WhatsApp fury is in the wake of the New South Wales Liberal Women's Council meeting this week, where they discussed boosting female representation in parliament.

Having attempted to decipher what women think, Polonius turns to the arduous task of dumping on women ..

Moreover, the policy of ending work from home for public servants was presented by Jane Hume (one of the best Coalition performers during the first Albanese Labor government). And, in so far as can be ascertained, it was supported by the Liberal leadership – Dutton and his deputy, Ley. Ley was also the shadow minister for women’s affairs at the time.
As Liberal Party frontbencher Anne Ruston said on Insiders on May 18, many “fantastic women put their hand up to run for us at the last election and didn’t get up”.
The list includes Amelia Hamer (Kooyong, Melbourne) and Gisele Kapterian (Bradfield, Sydney). Both were defeated by well-financed Climate 200-endorsed teal candidates, Monique Ryan and Nicolette Boele. Both Hamer and Kapterian won preselection without quotas for women. Meanwhile, Tim Wilson in Goldstein was the only Liberal to win a seat from an opponent – in this case teal Zoe Daniel.
Quite a few Liberal women oppose quotas because they do not want to win on account of their gender but on their ability alone.

Cue a snap, As Liberal Party frontbencher Anne Ruston said ‘fantastic women put their hand up to run for us at the last election and didn’t get up’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond has a matching 'toon, to produce a matching pair ...

Polonius then had a 'tis true moment, before quickly reverting to an "on the other hand".

It’s true that Liberal women face certain problems when compared with their Labor counterparts. Many Labor MPs have a background as political staffers, in the public sector and the trade union movement.
On the other hand, many potential Liberal female candidates come out of small businesses or are self-employed. They have less experience in machine politics and less time to spend working the branches. But many achieve success. As Ruston noted, the prime reason there are few women in federal parliament turns on the fact the Liberal Party suffered a massive defeat in May. Any recovery in the next election will almost certainly see the number of Liberal female MPs rise.
These days former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull is the go-to person for ABC journalists looking for a criticism of the Liberal Party. And so it came to pass that Karvelas interviewed the former prime minister for her piece.
Turnbull criticised Liberal frontbencher Angus Taylor and former PM Tony Abbott for (allegedly) giving the impression they are happy with the male-dominated party that it is. Turnbull added “the Liberal Party has said it needs to recruit more women into its parliamentary ranks for years, and for just as long resisted quotas”.

Please note the quaintness of that "allegedly" - Tony Abbott highlights Liberal candidate Fiona Scott's 'sex appeal' during campaign event  - though the pond supposes clueless dickhead might equally apply -as the reptiles take another detour into that other world of the reptile hive mind, Shadow Cabinet Secretary Andrew Wallace says the Liberal Party has “pushed back against” the concept of quotas as it is “uncharted territory”. “I think we need to absolutely increase our number of women in the parliament,” Mr Wallace told Sky News Australia. “We’re at a very, very low point right now. “Everything has to be on the table; we have to examine all options in relation to our policies and our structures. “Australians expect us as an opposition to be a credible opposition.”

And so to a surge of hope in the aged Polonial heart as a final thrust against the likes of Malware ...

He has criticised ex-Liberal PM Scott Morrison for some years. But, as I recall, Morrison had more women in his cabinet compared with Turnbull. Moreover, there is no record that comes to mind of Turnbull calling for quotas when he was PM from 2015 to 2018.
The Liberal Party is a federated party consisting of six state divisions, a division in the ACT and in the Northern Territory (where the Country Liberal Party exists). It is difficult for the federal entity to prevail over the various divisions. This makes the imposition of quotas difficult. In the meantime, the best way for the Liberals to increase their female MPs is to do well in the next election.
When the party lost the 1972 election, journalist Peter Samuel wrote in The Bulletin on March 17, 1973 that the small-L liberals had prevailed over the conservatives such as Malcolm Fraser (as he then was) and that the conservatives were in decline. But Fraser defeated Labor’s Gough Whitlam in a landslide in December 1975.
On July 17, 1993, academic Judith Brett wrote in The Age “the Liberal Party in the 1990s seems doomed”, following Labor’s win in 1993 under Paul Keating. By March 1996, Howard was prime minister on his way to becoming the second-longest-serving PM in our history (after Robert Menzies).
Despite the Coalition’s devastating defeat in May, some 55 per cent of Australians preferred a Labor government to some 45 per cent who preferred the Coalition – indicating a move to the centre-left. It’s a big margin but not insurmountable. The path to electoral success for the Coalition, however long, depends on good policy strongly proclaimed, irrespective of gender.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Sail on ship of aged white male patriarchs ...

Long may you be trapped by Polonial emissions...

At this point, the pond had to think long and hard about what to do for a bonus.

As the pond made clear, none of the reptile tribe out and about for the weekend inclined the pond to more herpetology studies...

The pond wondered if lizard Oz editorials might do? 

They were short, image free, and parroted the party line from which none dare stray.

The pond decided to give it a go ...

Tariff letter another US let-down
Donald Trump is not the easiest of allies; the shambles of his tariff policy makes that plain, as does the review of the AUKUS defence pact. But the Prime Minister must now stand up for the national interest.
Editorial
2 min read

This almost sounded like reptile heresy, but was redeemed by the appearance of the bromancer and the lying rodent ...

Nothing illustrates the uncomfortable state of US-Australia relations more than the prospect that Donald Trump may or may not send a letter to signal what the unfair trade imposts against us will be. Anthony Albanese said he thinks a letter is on the way and is resigned to the fact we will be hit with a blanket 10 per cent tariff.
The word from Washington is there will be no letter, just the tariff. No letter and no courtesy phone call demonstrate an indifference we do not deserve. Mr Trump appears to have decided trade deals are cumbersome and “I’d rather just do a simple deal where you can maintain it and control it”.
The Prime Minister clearly is frustrated by how events have turned out with the US. While it is true that Mr Trump has been understandably distracted by other world events, the Middle East in particular, the federal government must reflect on its own actions.
This includes a reluctance to increase defence spending but also the extent to which the Albanese government has been at pains to put itself at odds with the position of Washington on global affairs. On Israel, in particular, we have favoured the positions of the UN over the US in a way that breeds mistrust, not only with the Middle East’s sole democracy but also the US foreign policy establishment.
As former prime minister John Howard tells Greg Sheridan on Saturday, Mr Albanese has comprehensively mishandled the US relationship since Mr Trump returned to the presidency. “There is really no substitute for the Prime Minister going to see the President in Washington,” Mr Howard says.
Certainly there are political risks and reasons Mr Albanese may be cautious. Mr Trump is not the easiest of allies; the shambles of his tariff policy makes that plain, as does the review of the AUKUS defence pact.
As a lifelong factional warrior from Labor’s Left, Mr Albanese will be acutely aware of AUKUS’s unpopularity among ALP and Greens voters who dislike the US on general principle and believe China is no threat.
But no other Labor Party prime minister has ever enjoyed the mandate Mr Albanese won at the May 3 election and he must now stand up for the national interest. And that means speaking up for the US alliance in a way that shores up support in the White House and, just as important, congress – where AUKUS could be undone.
Just days after winning the 2022 election, Mr Albanese seized the opportunity to meet president Joe Biden in Tokyo. It was less courteous than comradely, a meeting of leaders who liked each other’s politics. He must now do the same with Mr Trump, difficult though that may be – our national interest demands it.

What tepid muck, so the pond tried again ...

Bold reforms need big ideas and strong leadership

The Albanese government must tackle the confusion at the heart of government policy. Freeing business to grow the economy requires a more flexible workplace, smaller government and less red tape.
Editorial
2 min read

The reptiles have been reverting to the smaller government/red tape routine of late, which is a bit like the GOP promoting itself as the party of smaller budget deficits, reduction of the vast debt mountain, and deviser of efficient government ...

Poor Leon, only way too late did he realise some might take that as a sign he was lacking in empathy ...

Anthony Albanese has emphasised his claim to the reform ambitions of former Labor leaders Bob Hawke and Paul Keating but has yet to confront the fact that grand meetings are no substitute for policy outcomes. The productivity roundtable with business and unions in August is an opportunity for the federal government to develop a reform vision that must not be missed.
In a keynote speech to the Australia’s Economic Outlook event in Sydney on Friday, the Prime Minister said he would cast a wide net for reform ideas and wanted the private sector to recapture its role as the engine room of national economic growth. With a big majority in parliament and at the start of a second term, Mr Albanese is well placed to manage change. But while welcoming ideas, Mr Albanese already is limiting its options.
He is keen to encourage debate about tax reform but reluctant to consider changes to the rate of GST. “I am a supporter of progressive taxation,” Mr Albanese told the forum. “Consumption taxes are regressive in their nature.”
Properly handled, this is not necessarily the case. And without changes to the GST the tax burden will continue to fall disproportionably on PAYE taxpayers in a way that will punish younger workers and act as a disincentive to work harder and lift productivity.
As The Australian editor-in-chief Michelle Gunn told the forum, the challenge for government is to create space for ambition. But too much of Mr Albanese’s first term was spent extending the reach of government and crowding out the private sector.
The increase in the number of federal public servants tells the story, just as the care economy has been mischaracterised as an economic driver when – even if the higher wages and additional services have public merit – it is more properly seen as an additional cost for taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the federal government remains fixated on a net-zero transition in which government increasingly is taking the risk as private enterprise heads for the exits. This includes the shift in costs from energy users to consolidated revenue through energy bill rebates and a capacity market scheme that excludes gas but guarantees profits.
On Friday, Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced another $432m to revive a green hydrogen project in the NSW Hunter Valley that was abandoned in October 2024 by Orica, its main beneficiary. For a half-billion dollars, if successful, the project is expected to produce 12 tonnes a day of renewable hydrogen to displace about 7.5 per cent of Orica’s daily natural gas feedstock.
Proposed changes to superannuation are anti-investment and not supported by industry funds. Mr Albanese is on more solid ground with the need to reform the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which is unsustainable and represents a long-term threat to the federal budget.
The lesson is that no government can be all things to all people. Mr Albanese is right to highlight the role of private enterprise. But he must tackle the confusion at the heart of government policy. Freeing business to grow the economy requires a more flexible workplace, smaller government and less red tape. Bold reform needs bold ideas that can be explored beyond the confines of an invitation-only meeting of unions, bureaucrats and business.
As Mr Albanese acknowledged, the media has an important role to play, and we will continue to play our part.

Just a bog standard reptile outing, replete with the usual climate science denialism.

Amazing how the reptiles left this issue out to dry ...

The pond realised that those two detours had been a significant failure, and so, as a last, desperate resort, turned to picking over Dame Slap like a wayward crow confronted by digital data roadkill ...

The header: Tell the truth: we’re a single sovereign country, It’s a simple truth: the Yoorrook report fails to address basic needs of Indigenous children, but makes outlandish demands in serving the interests of the adults who drove it.
The caption: A long list of demands has emerged from the four-year inquiry. Poicture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Dammit it was an 8 minute read, according to reptile timings, and hadn't the pond seen that image before?

It had, it had, the very same image had adorned our Henry yesterday, tackling the very same topic ...

It was the hive mind at work, in all its nauseatingly repetitive glory ...

So the pond had already covered all this with our Henry. 

All we'd get with Dame Slap was the stripping out of classical references, and so it came to pass ...

The final report of the Yoorrook Justice Commission tabled in the Victorian parliament this week is a heartbreaking read.
The long list of demands emerging from the four-year inquiry into “the impact of systemic injustices faced by First Peoples in Victoria” veers from the outlandish to the truly tragic and back to the lunatic.
It is outlandish, for example, for the report to demand that the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People be embedded into Victorian laws.
Our federal parliament has not incorporated UNDRIP into domestic law and could never do so because it is utterly inconsistent with Australian law and our political framework.
Even a recent Labor-Greens dominated parliamentary committee stopped short of recommending it be made binding.
Among the 100 or so recommendations in the Yoorrook report, in policy areas including education, justice, health, housing and employment, the saddest ones concern Indigenous children.
Even as Closing the Gap data continues to show Indigenous children falling behind in education and suffering physical and emotional harm at higher rates than non-Indigenous children, this report fails to address the basic needs of Indigenous children.

No need for the snap, just imagine a glum-looking Jacinta, as the reptiles cut to their AV distraction, a bit of frying with Freya, Sky News host Freya Leach discusses the Yoorrook Commission’s report, claiming Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has not ruled out any of the “controversial” recommendations listed within it. “Four years and $44 million; the Victorian Government’s Yoorrook Justice Commission has delivered its report, which contains 100 recommendations,” Ms Leach said. “Some are so controversial that three of the five commissioners who authored the report didn’t even want to endorse it. “Jacinta Allan has not ruled out adopting any of those recommendations … even the Indigenous community is divided over the report.”

On and on Dame Slap ranted, but the pond already knew this script ...

The disadvantaged Indigenous child has been Disneyfied in this report, needing one thing as a priority: cultural safety.
None of the demands in this report will improve the education of a single Indigenous child or protect a single Indigenous child from physical and emotional danger in dysfunctional families.
“Cultural safety” is a term that keeps Indigenous activists and academics in jobs. But this report’s self-indulgent obsession with culture at the expense of everything else – a decent education, a safe and loving home – is beyond disappointing.
RIGHTS SACRIFICED
The individual rights of children are comprehensively sacrificed in pursuit of a collective rights agenda serving the interests of the adults who drive it.
Across more than 20 recommendations in the section headed “URGENT REFORMS: EDUCATION”, the commissioners focus a great deal on culture: on embedding legally actionable cultural rights into the education legislation, on cultural safety programs and frameworks, on culturally safe education, on mandatory cultural safety competency standards.
They focus on decolonising the curriculum, too, and on creating separate and lower expectations for Indigenous children.
The commissioners demand that the Department of Education must, guided by First Peoples, develop separate exclusions for Indigenous children “covering attendance, classroom exclusion, suspensions (formal and informal), modified timetables, and expulsions”.
Under the heading of self-determination, the Yoorrook commissioners demand in recom­mendation 61 that “the Victorian government must transfer control, resources and decision-making power over curriculum, pedagogy, governance and resource allocation for First Peoples’ education to First Peoples, to be negotiated through the treaty process”.
The recommendations will excite ivory tower academic activists who have made careers from the separatist project.
In dismal news for Indigenous children, their parents and their communities, there is not a single urgent demand to ensure that individual Indigenous students will receive a top-class education. None of the Yoorrook recommendations demands rigorous, evidence-based teaching to ensure that Indigenous children, with their current poor educational outcomes, will leave school with high levels of literacy and numeracy.
This omission is an abomination.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap designed to remind the hive mind of who to hate, Chair of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, Eleanor Bourke. Picture: The Australian/Tricia Rivera

Dame Slap continued on in her sneering, condescending way, making sure that all those Aboriginal people belonged in a Disney 'toon ...

How five highly educated commissioners – professor Eleanor Bourke (chair), adjunct professor Sue-Anne Hunter (deputy chair), Travis Lovett, distinguished professor Maggie Walter and former judge Anthony North KC – could settle on these as the priorities in education tells you a lot about the state of Indigenous activism in this country.
Alas, the Disneyfication of Indigenous children extends into adulthood in this report. There are further demands to recompense Indigenous staff at Victorian universities for the “colonial load they carry” and for the Victorian government to formally recognise the same “colonial load” of Indigenous public servants.

All the best references ...

Good old black face, never gets old, why it's just like black bashing ...

“Colonial load” is another term for ivory tower academics. The term alludes to an assumed heavy load that an Indigenous person faces by explaining their background to a non-Indigenous person. In the real world we might call these normal interactions between human beings. In a multicultural society such as ours, we often share our experiences, our cultural differences, with others. Turning this deeply human connection into a “colonial load” attracting a taxpayer-funded cheque and formal recognition relegates Indigenous people into victims forevermore.
After five decades of failed policies demanding separate rights, with no mention of responsibility, this report demands that we formally and permanently cement victimhood into Australian law – demanding more money, more separatism, ranging from the criminal justice system to education and in many other areas.
There is no mention of a genuinely empowering future for Indigenous people; the vision of living in a free and democratic country where every Australian is bound together by a social contract comprising unifying freedoms and socially cohesive responsibilities is given short shrift in favour of an outdated black-armband view of Australia.
This report, by telling another generation of Indigenous people that nothing good has come to this continent after settlement in 1788 except “genocide”, is a badge of shame. Not just for the Yoorrook commissioners and the Andrews government that created it with terms of reference that ensured this outcome. The shame of this report extends to many other elites across many years who have indulged a separatist project that leaves little children to mull over actionable cultural rights instead of their rights to physical and mental safety, not to mention their right to schooling that actually educates them.
The shame of this report extends to judges who indulge themselves by undermining High Court authority when announcing that “sovereignty has not been ceded” while delivering an acknowledgment of country.

And so to another snap reminding the hive mind readership who to hate, Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, Meena Singh, at the Yoorrook Justice Commission

Back to the black bashing, with Dame Slap breaking it down with King Donald caps ...

The shame encompasses academics who, in a coagulating consensus, have ignored clear and unambiguous Australian law to confect a “constitutional legitimacy crisis” that claims Australia is not one nation.
It covers those ABC hosts who bleed on air with more self-indulgent posturing seeking to replace Sydney with “Gadigal land”.
This band of secondary separatists will be pleased with this report.
The rest of the country will recognise it as final proof of the tragic impossibility of reconciliation between Indigenous activists and mainstream Australia.
DUELLING VERSIONS OF HISTORY
How did this happen? Part of the answer lies in duelling versions of history.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission is tolerably open in confessing that it was the story of Indigenous peoples told by Indigenous peoples. What testing of historical claims, including ones about genocide, was done? Was there any show of intellectual curiosity from the commissioners? Like Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, the “truth-telling” part of this report cries out for some careful review of its accuracy.
The gaping chasm between the two camps ultimately stems from diametrically opposite and irreconcilable views about sovereignty. It oversimplifies the issue to say that this really gets down to: who owns Australia? But I trust readers will understand this attempt to reduce complex legal terminology into practical language.
Under a big, bold heading, “The sovereignty of First Peoples in Victoria has never been ceded and continues to exist”, the Yoorrook commission claims “First Peoples exercised sovereignty before the British arrived” and asserts that “First People’s sovereignty has not been lawfully acquired under international law”.
Upon this asserted foundation of Indigenous “sovereignty”, the commission builds its entire edifice of separatism, bolstered by its own version of history, which effectively creates a new divided nation bearing little resemblance to Australia.
The key problem for the new divided nation dreamt up by Yoorrook commissioners and the associated fringe separatist industry is their views have no popular or legal support
Shaun Turner, the street sweeper who successfully challenged his sacking by Melbourne’s Darebin Council for objecting to an acknowledgment of country at a toolbox meeting, speaks for many Australians. Whether born here or having migrated here, millions of Australians dislike being told they need to be welcomed to someone else’s land.

Indeed, indeed ...

Those were the days, before the hive mind had done a full takeover, before that fall off the balcony. 

Back to the bashing of uppity, difficult, tricky black people ...

The instincts of these millions of Australians are based on the law of the land.
Whatever spurious claims activists make about international law, the Australian legal position was stated by justice Harry Gibbs in the 1979 High Court decision in Coe v Commonwealth: “The Aboriginal people are subject to the laws of the commonwealth and of the states and territories in which they respectively reside. They have no legislative, executive or judicial organs by which sovereignty might be exercised. If such organs existed, they would have no powers except such as the laws of the commonwealth, or of a state or territory might confer upon them. The contention that there is in Australia an Aboriginal nation exercising sovereignty, even of a limited kind, is quite impossible to maintain.”
Whatever your view of history, the High Court is authoritative on sovereignty.
That law on sovereignty, confirmed by courts on very many occasions since, means the recommendations of the Yoorrook Justice Commission built on the premise of Indigenous sovereignty have no legal or practical basis.
This fundamental falsehood of Indigenous sovereignty drives the separatist demands that follow. For example, the second recommendation, which provides that “the Victorian government must acknowledge the ongoing reality of legal and political pluralism in Victoria, engage with First Nations as nations, and provide the resources to support the transition to genuine nation-to-nation relationships” is unhelpful daydreaming.

Indeed, indeed ...

On with the bashing, as good a sport as snake-bashing day ...

Child Protection Minister Lizzie Blandthorn at the Yoorrook Justice Commission
Likewise, the third recommendation says “the Victorian government must transfer decision-making power, authority, control and resources to First Peoples, giving full effect to self-determination in relation to their identity, information, data, traditional ecological knowledge, connection to Country, their rights to their lands, waters and resources, in the Victorian health, education and housing systems and across economic and political life”.
Even if they can get past the impossibility, and undesirability, of creating the commission’s secessionist state, taxpayers will surely baulk at having to fund this divided Australia. In the fourth recommendation, the commissioners say “through negotiation with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, the Victorian government must establish independent funding streams, including through hypothecation of a portion of land, water and natural resource-related revenues, to support the Self-Determination Fund and other First Peoples-led initiatives”.
Further, “The Victorian government must provide guaranteed ongoing funding and support the establishment of independent funding streams at both Statewide and local levels to support healing Country, relationships and connection from the legacy of colonisation.”
The ultimate tragedy of this report is that none of this political extremism is conducive to social cohesion.
The record shows that Australians are only too happy to help any group in Australian society that needs a hand – and has certainly proved that in relation to Indigenous Australians.
But they do so because Australia is one country, with one sovereignty established under one Constitution, which aims to provide equality of opportunity to every Australian. We help each other because we are all Australian.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission’s recommendations are a useful reminder of why defeating the voice proposal was critical to national unity, to maintaining the equality of all Australians under the law of a single sovereign Australia.
Had the activists succeeded in embedding a race-based voice into the Constitution, the sorts of separatist demands made by the Yoorrook Justice Commission would surely have been made of the federal government – with the added constitutional oomph of having the power to challenge and delay, possibly until doomsday, decisions of the executive government, as well as laws proposed by parliament.
With the misguided voice project defeated by the common sense of the Australian people, the Yoorrook report is a truly tragic missed opportunity. The commissioners’ demands will divide Victoria. Well-meaning and sensible people will mourn the good that could have come from a report that encouraged a unifying project to improve the lives of disadvantaged Indigenous people.

And there you have it ... just another serving of swill in the hive mind, because there's nothing the reptiles love better than bashing difficult, uppity blacks ...

Did our Henry's pompous, portentous classical references make a difference, or was it just the same old fetid swamp, the same coagulating consensus that litters the lizard Oz?

Who knows, but the pond feels dirty, soiled, cheapened...

Might Dame Slap be persuaded to run for the Liberal party? 

On the upside, it would mean that she'd have to come out from the sheltered rock the hive mind provides; on the downside, it's unlikely that she'd risk her current situation.

What if she didn't get elected? What if, even in a safe Liberal seat, the vast unwashed couldn't stomach her? 

No, it's too risky, it's much easier to stay in house and indulge in black bashing ...

She'll never escape, she'll always be trapped in the cornfield, five fathoms deep.

And so to a related tragedy, celebrated by First Dog ...

Damn you uppity fickle womyn, must you ruin everything, every noble institution? Second thoughts, invite Dame Slap to run the show, chaps, she'll fix everything..