The reptiles are exceptionally keen that we pander to the whims of King Donald and they were at it again this weekend, pushing the urgent need to stock up on US weaponry ...
The pond can EXCLUSIVELY report that it was yet another EXCLUSIVE that lead the way ...
Pentagon’s warning to Albanese on defence budget
Pentagon officials warn Australia must lift defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP to meet AUKUS commitments and defend itself adequately.
By Joe Kelly and Geoff Chambers
Geoff chambered yet another round in the cause ...
Still room for PM to make deals with Trump
Anthony Albanese faces mounting pressure to boost defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP ahead of his first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump.
Green projects fall victim to energy doubts
By Paul Garvey
The pond didn't need to move beyond the caption to discover what it was all about - the Danes offering another chance for the reptiles of Oz to bash renewables...
Picture taken on September 4, 2023 shows windmills at the Nysted Offshore Wind Farm constructed by Danish windpower giant Orsted in 2002-2003 in the Baltic Sea near Gedser in Denmark. Long dependent on fossil fuels before emerging a champion of offshore wind power, Danish company Orsted is now struggling to restore its business after a year that saw it drop several major projects. The cancellation of a huge offshore wind farm project in the United States at the end of 2023, accompanied by nearly $4 billion in write-downs, have spotlighted the challenges faced by the Danish group as it seeks to transform. (Photo by Thomas Traasdahl / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP) / Denmark OUT
The pond wondered how long it would be before bigotry and transphobia became a staple in the hive mind and perhaps this EXCLUSIVE was an omen ...
Feminist faces 25 years for trans post
by Stephen Rice
Again the caption told the pond all it wanted to know...
Brazilian feminist Isabela Cepa (Isabela with one 'l') . Picture: supplied
Naturally Dame Slap (one sound, severe "S") was in on the game.
There's never been a form of bigotry or hate crime that hasn't appealed to her.
I never imagined that in 2025 we would be having big, angry arguments about what a woman is.
by Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist
There was also alarming news for the genocide lovers in the hive mind ...
‘Rewarding terrorism’: Netanyahu lashes Germany over ‘arms embargo’
Germany will suspend arms sales to Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved a controversial plan to occupy Gaza City.
By Amanda Hodge and Lydia Lynch
Over on the extreme far right an imported Pom made an appearance ...
What a contemptible old bean he is, peddling his devotion to genocide...
This isn’t a march for humanity. It’s a hate march. It’s a March for Hamas.
By Brendan O'Neill
Columnist
Bad news for Brendan and his ilk, it seems that Benji has lost the bromancer (no matter a correspondent his love of deploying the Bibi word)... so this is where the pond must abandon the listicle, and get down to the hard stuff ...
The header: Gaza is a mess. Israel’s Prime Minister is about to make it worse, As traditional allies – Britain, France, Canada and Australia – turn away from Israel, Gaza and Benjamin’s Netayahu’s cause are a mess. And the Israeli PM is about to make it worse.
This pathetic collage actually had a credit, when Frank might have been better off blaming AI: Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. Artwork: Frank Ling
There was also the standing advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
The reptiles clocked this as an 11 minute read, though for the pond it seemed like an eternity.
The bromancer began with a couple of quotes to show he was in a deeply serious mood:
– Ghazi Hamad,
Hamas politburo member,
speaking on Al Jazeera TV
– Michael Oren, author,
academic and former
Israeli ambassador to the US
It takes a long time for the bromancer to get to being disillusioned, even vaguely heretical, but trust the pond, he gets there.
In the meantime, much long-winded blather must be endured ...
The Israeli cabinet in a marathon meeting ratified Netanyahu’s occupation plan. However it will take weeks at least to begin to implement.Netanyahu may still be hoping to achieve his aims just by threatening occupation. And, notwithstanding the cabinet meeting, the Israeli prime minister may conceivably change his mind.
If it goes ahead it will be a descent into hell, for Gazans and for the IDF, which bitterly opposes the move.
As ever with the Middle East, there are layers upon layers of tragedy. On October 7, 2023, Hamas engaged in the most barbaric terrorism the world has seen. Yet 22 months later, Israel is the pariah and several of Hamas’s key objectives are in progress.
It didn’t take long for the world’s sympathy to run away from Israel.
Yet that does not absolve Netanyahu of responsibility for Israel’s recent actions. The overwhelming moral responsibility not only for the terrorist attacks of October 7 but for all the death and destruction in Gaza lies with Hamas, a brutal, blood-drenched Islamist terrorist organisation, motivated in equal part by old-style anti-Semitism, specific hatred of modern Israel and Palestinian nationalism.
Oren argues Hamas made many miscalculations concerning October 7, mistakenly thinking it would spark wider Arab action against Israel or fatally divide Israeli society. But Oren also argues Hamas understood one thing deeply: the West’s obsession with Israel, and the several toxic streams of anti-Semitism that flow into one toxic river of hatred, meant that no act of terrorism, no matter how extreme, would create more than temporary sympathy for Israel.
Anthony Albanese has joined with France, Britain and Canada to indicate that Australia will soon enough join in extending formal recognition to a Palestinian state, even though no such state exists.
Note that billy goat butt, which is big in bromancer world: Yet that does not absolve Netanyahu of responsibility for Israel’s recent actions.
Sure, Hamas remains a favoured piñata, for bashing thereof, but saucy doubts and fears lurk in the undergrowth, as the reptiles paused for a snap, Anthony Albanese has requested a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Picture: NewsWire
Bear with the bromancer in his despair ...
Contradicting the plain meaning of Albanese’s words, but apparently expressing what he really meant, his senior ministers have repeatedly said Australian recognition is a matter of when, not if. Albanese has been in ostentatious consultation with his new friends, the left-of-centre Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, both weak leaders under siege from their left, and the Palestinian Authority’s own Mahmoud Abbas, now into the 20th year of his elected four-year term.
Abbas responded to the conversation with Albanese in the same terms that he responded to the European left. Whatever this means for Israel and Palestine, Albanese is changing Australia’s strategic identity. Once we were a friend of Israel and the US’s closest ally. We’re no longer a friend of Israel and now co-ordinate our politics much more intimately with the European left than with Washington.
Of late the reptiles have taken to breaking up the text with a sub-header as a way of helping readers wade through the morass and so it came to pass ... as yet another hoppy toad popped out:
Yet Netanyahu also bears great blame for the way this situation has developed.
Oh dear, Brendan's despair just got real ...to paraphrase...
...this column isn’t sounding like a march for humanity. It’s a hate march. It’s a March for Hamas.
Poor bromancer, deep in agony ...
In trying still to achieve these objectives absolutely, Netanyahu is in danger of creating much greater tragedy for Gazans and for Israelis.
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving leader. His political personality is more complex and enigmatic than his roughshod, sometimes bellicose, manner suggests. Before this war, his main achievements were economic and diplomatic.
Despite his tough-guy image, he was generally reluctant to use Israel’s military more than necessary. He once told me he thought his fearsome reputation was in itself a strategic asset for Israel.
Netanyahu admires Donald Trump, his most steadfast ally, and has increasingly developed some of Trump’s qualities.
King Donald as the host of perhaps negative qualities? Quick reptiles, shove in a snap that proves all that glitters is gold, United States President Donald Trump, right, hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House in February. Picture: Getty Images
The bromancer's sorrowful parade continued:
He is, as one Israeli tells me, the supreme master at kicking the can down the road.
Thus, one debilitating weakness has been Netanyahu’s refusal to outline what he wants the governance and administration of Gaza to look like when the fighting is finished. Netanyahu has objectives but no plan. He has tactics but not strategy.
Despite the unspeakable moral infamy of Hamas, Israel also bears moral responsibility for its actions. It has every right to defend itself. But its campaign over the past six months has, militarily, done little more than “bounce the rubble”. It has not achieved significant military change, but this has come at an unacceptable humanitarian and geopolitical cost.
Hamas makes life in Gaza as difficult as possible. When there were demonstrations against Hamas’s monstrous rule, Hamas reacted savagely. People were killed, others punished. Hamas silenced dissent.
At this moment the reptiles interrupted with a distressing image, Palestinians receive lentil soup at a food distribution point in Gaza City on August 2. Picture: AFP
The bromancer doesn't go as far as outlining the tango between Hamas and Benji.
For that you might be better off at The Times of Israel, offering For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces, The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from (*archive link)
The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
And so on, but back to the bromancer...
Thus, although Israel has tried to distribute food through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, numbers of Palestinians trying to access this aid have been shot. Israel says they were shot by Hamas gunmen. Hamas says they were shot by Israeli soldiers. The IDF says it fires only warning shots to keep crowds back.
In any event, the operation has resulted in not enough food being distributed, there aren’t enough aid distribution points and there haven’t been enough security personnel to keep the process orderly and safe. Israel is now addressing these concerns.
Ehud Yaari, Israel’s foremost strategic analyst and a critic of Netanyahu, says the situation became much worse because of the push by Western nations to extend formal diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state.
Yaari tells Inquirer: “If the US is not there, recognition is symbolic. You want to reaffirm the two-state solution. But recognition without negotiation with Israel creates on the Palestinian side the impression that Hamas has created this huge victory.”
In creating this impression, the Western powers emboldened Hamas, while ever it controls some living Israeli hostages, to make maximalist demands that it knows Israel can’t meet. That helped sink ceasefire prospects and prolong the conflict.
Yaari describes the latest Hamas demands for a ceasefire and release of the Israeli hostages: “They (Hamas) now demand that 300 Palestinians sentenced for murder be released, and 55 others yet to stand trial as well. They demand everyone involved in the October 7 attacks be released. They demand that they be allowed to release the last Israeli hostages only when reconstruction of Gaza is well under way.”
No Israeli government could agree to these conditions.
Netanyahu has made a series of fateful miscalculations. He stepped up the military campaign in recent months to put pressure on Hamas to release Israeli hostages. But Hamas is now massively encouraged by the moves for Western diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state.
It believes that holding the hostages, and curating the narrative of Palestinian suffering, is its unbeatable leverage and gravely damages Israel. It could end food shortages and military campaigns in a minute by releasing Israeli hostages. It’s a deliberate Hamas decision, made by commanders who don’t live in the Gaza Strip, not to do so.
Israel’s enemies have suffered significant defeat in the 22 months since the October 7 atrocities. Iran had its nuclear and missile programs severely degraded. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been decimated and driven away from the Israeli border. Syria collapsed. Hamas itself has lost perhaps 90 per cent of its pre-October 7 capability.
Then came another balancing distressing image, This image from an undated video released on August 1, 2025, by Hamas, shows Israeli hostage Evyatar David marking a food log on a calendar inside the Gaza tunnel where he is being held. Picture via AP
The bromancer kept on raging at Hamas ...
Similarly, Hamas has for months completely controlled the narrative about the conflict in Gaza. More recently, Hamas released video of two nearly starved Israeli hostages. In a theatrical reprise of Holocaust imagery, it showed a skeletal Israeli being forced to dig his own grave.
These are the actions of a terrorist group that wants Israel to continue reacting in a maximalist way. So, far from putting pressure on Hamas, Netanyahu’s campaign, at least for the past six months, has served Hamas’s interests.
It may well be that Hamas has greatly contributed to hunger in Gaza. But there is undoubtedly immense hunger and suffering in Gaza. Israel was entitled to take Hamas out. But it’s wrong for the responsible military power to consciously allow people to be malnourished as a result of policy.
But then came a very big billy goat butt ...
It’s similarly no excuse to say that previously sufficient food was imported into Gaza to last for several months. Gaza is chaotic, deadly, lawless and terrible. It’s a basic responsibility of the Israelis to ensure that innocent Gazans have enough food, even if this allows Hamas to pilfer food and profiteer.
Cue another snap, Palestinians rush to the scene as aid pallets are parachuted after being dropped from a military plane over Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip during an airdrop mission above the Israel-besieged Palestinian territory on August 5. Picture: AFP
On with the bromancer's agonies...
There are no good choices for Israeli policy. Alternative one: accept the Hamas terms for ceasefire. There is no upside to this alternative except that it may result in the return of the hostages. Hamas has 50 remaining hostages, of whom perhaps 19 are alive. It’s not clear Hamas would or even could return them all. And it would surely string the process out. But as already mentioned, the deal is completely unacceptable anyway.
Alternative two: Yaari puts a variation of what is emerging as an option with widespread support. Israel should withdraw from most of Gaza. It currently controls 75 per cent of the territory. It would stay in strategic positions and well within the perimeter. It would allow in copious amounts of food and medicine but not one speck of reconstruction material until Hamas released all the hostages, and its remaining leaders laid down their weapons and went into international exile.
In this period, in Yaari’s plan, the IDF would still go after individual Hamas leaders if they emerged. But there would be no more big Israeli military manoeuvres unless absolutely necessary.
The idea would be to lower the temperature. This would allow exhausted IDF personnel to recover. It would impose less financial burden on the Israeli economy. Most important, it would end, or at least vastly reduce, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“Let Hamas stew in their own juices for a while,” Yaari says. Israel would have at least some chance of putting international pressure back on Hamas, where it belongs.
At this point the bromancer jumped the bromancer fridge ...
Netanyahu instead seems drawn to the worst option, which is that Israel should, for a period of about five months, occupy the whole of Gaza.
This is fiercely opposed by Israel’s military leadership. IDF Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir was widely reported in the Israeli press as saying: “Occupying the (Gaza) Strip would drag Israel into a black hole – taking responsibility for two million Palestinians, requiring a years-long clearing operation, exposing soldiers to guerilla warfare and, most dangerously, jeopardising the hostages.”
The urban warfare could be savage, despite Hamas’s degraded state. There’s no guarantee Israel would get the hostages back. The danger of renewed humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and many more needless deaths among Gazans who have nothing to do with Hamas, as well as many Israeli soldiers, would be acute.
The plan involves evacuating Gaza city and sending a million people into temporary humanitarian facilities to be set up by Israel further south. The far right of Israeli politics would hope that Gazans in these circumstances might leave the territory permanently if they could find another country to take them.
The distracting AV was no help, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza, despite intensifying criticism at home and abroad over the devastating almost two-year-old war in the Palestinian enclave. Zachary Goelman produced this report.
Then came the full turning ...
The bizarre idea that Trump briefly supported, of moving Gazans en masse out of the territory and then redeveloping it as a Riviera-style resort, encouraged the most extreme elements of Israeli politics in a fantasy of de facto ethnic cleansing. Of course, any Gazan who wants to leave and can find another country that will take them and that they’d like to go to should have freedom of movement. But for Israeli leaders to think this a serious, plausible policy at scale is almost hallucinogenic in its foolishness.
Et tu, bromancer? Even a mention of ethnic cleansing?
There’s also a real possibility it could cost Israel diplomatic relations with Egypt and Jordan. The downside in human and political terms is enormous, the upside almost wholly imaginary.
Why is Netanyahu thinking along these lines? He could be influenced by many factors.
Like Trump, he never wants to take a backward step. There must be an Israeli election by November next year but it’s widely expected as early as March. Like Trump, Netanyahu probably has a solid base of 30 per cent that he’s desperate to keep. With Israel’s complex proportional representation system a base that big often leads to a governing coalition.
Netanyahu also probably wants a plea deal on his corruption charges so there’s no danger of jail time. The corruption charges at one level seem trivial, concerning countless petty gifts, but they are triviality on an industrial scale.
All of the immediate plans, even the most sensible, are still relatively short term.
Eventually, Gaza needs reconstruction and a new model of governance. There will need to be Arab involvement and at least some participation by the Palestinian Authority, incompetent and corrupt as it has become. Netanyahu hates this, but participating Arab nations will need a Palestinian signature.
Netanyahu seems indifferent to the profound damage he has caused Israel politically, and the contribution this has made to the dreadful and unforgivable upsurge in global anti-Semitism that has accompanied this conflict.
Let me be clear: Netanyahu is not responsible for the sickness of anti-Semitism.
Netanyahu has so far refused to tell anyone what his medium-term plans for Gaza are. The closest he has come is this week saying he wants to occupy all of Gaza temporarily, then eventually hand it over to unspecified Arab forces. That’s something, but it’s still maddeningly vague.
As long ago as December 2023, I wrote, as a commentator who appreciates the magnificent contribution to human civilisation that the world’s only Jewish state represents, that “The Israeli government has only weeks to finish, or at least change fundamentally, its operation to destroy the Hamas terrorist organisation. International pressure on Israel is mounting drastically. The humanitarian cost in Gaza, though entirely the moral responsibility of Hamas, is unsustainably high.”
Netanyahu has done many good things for Israel over a long and astonishing career. But the appalling mess in Gaza is now partly his responsibility. He is about to make the worst mistake of his life.
There was just one question the bromancer didn't give full consideration to...
And so on to nattering "Ned's" Everest climb this day, clocked by the reptiles at a full ten minutes.
The pond can hear correspondents shrieking and wailing.
Perhaps like the pond, the correspondents are mourning missing the chance to read about what the butler saw.
It's to hand ...
Why was the pond reminded of a flicking old machine on Manly wharf that for a single penny offered a view of what the butler saw?
BONKERS CONVERSATION
The longtime butler of Jeffrey Epstein made some extraordinary claims in his first on the record interview. (*archive link)
But the pond isn't easily distracted. (After all, the Manly wharf butler saw very little, and a penny was well on the way to an icecream).
On a weekend, the pond's mission is to offer a geriatric offering the insights of dropkicks, losers, wastrels, wannabes and never weres...
Come on down, "Ned", in full Everest climb majesty and dignity and ennui ...
The header: Howard, Costello, Abbott tell Libs to stand up now or risk losing more ground, The message from party statesmen John Howard, Peter Costello, and Tony Abbott: reclaim your core principles and champion them every day.
There was no human credit for the risible gif on offer, which wavered, quavered and then ended up with each of the figures surrounded by a nimbus or aureole ...
It was beyond the valley of saint's halo pathetic, as was the incessant mantra, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
"Ned" wanted to mount a rally cry by resorting to the usual assortment of irrelevant ruffians ...
Sussan Ley, the new Liberal leader for less than three months, heads a badly beaten and divided party facing an ascendant Anthony Albanese. Ley must establish her authority, promote a more appealing Liberal image and begin taking the fight to Labor. No Liberal leader has faced so many challenges.
As the Albanese government confronts economic, tax and energy conundrums, strong opportunities will open for Ley. But she faces a more urgent task – the Liberals lost in 2025 because the public was confused about their purpose and values. The longer this vacuum continues, the more the Liberals will sink in the polls. Here’s the point: the Liberal Party doesn’t have the luxury of time.
There is a big lesson for the Liberals from the election – immediately champion your core values and run a sustained campaign on these principles (not the details) for the entire three years. Don’t drop surprises three weeks before an election.
Still at the navel gazing and fluff gathering stage, and pity poor Sussssan, Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The pond realises that chowing down with Petey boy is a bit like asking someone to dine on desiccated coconut, but just focus on the breathing, and the climb will go more smoothly ...
“If Liberals don’t stand for these values then nobody will. The Liberal Party went through a bad period in recent years where it lost sight of those values. There was huge spending during the pandemic and last election, a shocking tactical mistake was made to reverse income tax cuts. The party was confused about its values and it needs to acknowledge these failures. That means returning to its values of smaller government, lower taxation and greater personal liberty.”
Asked the same question, John Howard told Inquirer: “I say to people: ‘Give Sussan Ley support and give her a fair go.’ ” But Howard dismissed policy reviews supposed to cover everything: “We must start campaigning for the next election now by enunciating what we believe in. We don’t have a lot of time.
“The idea you review everything is ridiculous. We’re not going to review our commitment to the American alliance or to individual liberty or the role of family life. But we need to get serious on policy and do it early. It is still possible you can fall further (in the polls); just look at the mess the British Conservative Party is in. I mean, when it comes to net zero you can’t take a year on that, we should have a position in the next month. The Liberal Party brand is still good. I see the fundamental contest being: individual liberty versus collectivism.” Howard warned against gimmicks to reinvent the party or dressing things up like a “new Liberalism”, saying the public was distrustful of such techniques.
These days it wouldn't be the hive mind without a visit from Danica, Sky News host Danica De Giorgio discusses the Coalition’s relevance to the net zero debate after Labor’s recent election win. “Let’s talk about net zero, Opposition leader Sussan Ley seems to be really struggling to unite the party on this,” Ms De Giorgio said. “Matt Canavan said earlier it does not matter if the Coalition debate over net zero gets messy because the Coalition is irrelevant right now, does he have a point?”
"Ned" dragged in the onion muncher to ensure that the lack of oxygen seemed real and terrifying ...
Abbott said: “The best way to unite the Liberal Party is to attack the Labor Party” – a reminder of Abbott’s opposition leadership over 2009-13.
“Whether it’s immigration, energy, tax or education, any sensible Liberal position will face strong opposition from interest groups,” Abbott said.
“That’s why the Liberals need to come early to their broad positions and argue them consistently for three years. To succeed on policy and principle these days you must argue for a long period of time with great conviction. There is no other way.”
Abbott saw huge opportunity for the Coalition on energy policy. He said Labor’s doubling down on its renewables strategy guaranteed higher prices and system unreliability, with the public sure to become angrier during a second term: “The Liberal Party must start by demanding credible costings for Labor’s existing emissions reduction and energy transition policies. These details have been withheld from the public.”
The reptiles love to feature snaps of the key villains, eyes downcast, hand on despairing forehead, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
"Ned"gave the onion muncher space to preach his denialism, a routine which has produced stunning electoral triumph after triumph ...
“In my view that policy should be: no coal-fired power stations to close without a reliable alternative; the development of new gas fields at speed; ending subsidies for new renewables given their claim to be the cheapest energy; and ending the bans on nuclear. We should oppose the desecration of our rural environment inherent in the renewables rollout. What’s happening in rural Australia is an outrage and it’s urgent we take a strong stand against this.”
Liberals, advisers and independent analysts have offered Inquirer a range of different, random and speculative views about the early principles the Coalition could adopt in projecting its values; some arise from the past election, others correct for mistakes at that election. This is not meant to be a hard and fast or a prescriptive list.
At this point "Ned" began a policy listicle, numbered, so it's no spoiler to note that ten is the number, the number is ten...
Liberals need to restore their tax credentials. Pledging tax cuts at the next election won’t do that job. An immediate pledge would be the phase-in of indexation of the personal income tax rate scale, a Peter Dutton “aspiration” from the last election. Labor won’t match this. It becomes a foundation stone for Liberal tax policy standing for the entire term – and a step to tax and spending budget discipline. It would be buttressed by the reintroduction of fiscal rules to guide every budget deliberation.
The pond offers no commentary, just an introduction of the interrupting snaps, The NDIS offers opportunity for Liberals to take a position on broad principle.
The only advice the pond offers is that if Susssan and her mob decide to follow the policy advice of the reptiles in the hive mind, then they might well be exiled into political oblivion for many years, much like the lizard Oz's declining circulation and flailing business model ...
The Liberals should promise to return the National Disability Insurance Scheme to its originating mission: proper care and support for the disabled and disabled children. This is a noble idea undermined by poor policy leading to a financially unsustainable model. Labor’s pledge to reduce annual spending from 14 per cent to 8 per cent, even if achieved, leaves an untenable model, overweight on autism with one in eight boys aged five to seven years now on the NDIS. The Liberals should be able to take a position on broad principle – in the interest of the disabled and the entire public via the budget.
3. Childcare
With Labor planning a defining institution-based universal model of childcare the Liberals should offer an alternative for all Australians designed to correct the huge flaws in this model of high cost – the Productivity Commission estimates in the $17bn to $18bn range – for minimal economic gain. That means enshrining choice. Without disadvantaging people who opt for centre-based care, the principle should be allowing benefits to flow to families adopting institutional or home-based care, backing the values of competition and family choice.
4. Back to school
The Liberals should resurrect the education policy devised by former opposition spokeswoman Sarah Henderson for the last election but inexplicably kept under wraps. This would mean a three-year campaign based on revised classroom and teaching method to address one of the nation’s greatest and longest failures – declining school outcomes with consequences for students and most families. Politicians and economists have long been in ignorance of the science of learning and the need to inject the technique of explicit instruction across all school systems, with Henderson’s policy targeting reading, writing, maths and science.
This is about the future of the country. The Liberals need to call out the systematic blunder of pouring billions into defective classroom practice – with school education being a culture war where the tide is turning; witness Education Minister Jason Clare’s new approach.
Liberal backbencher Sarah Henderson intends to publicly canvass support for changes to Labor's university student debt cuts. The Senator revealed she had pushed for a 'HELP loan inflation guarantee' at the last election, in an effort to one-up the government's 20 per cent student debt reduction. She will now advocate for an indexation amendment to the bill, despite Liberal Leader Sussan Ley indicating she would be willing to wave through Labor's plan as part of efforts to appeal to young voters. The HECS indexation rate in the past four years has been above 3 per cent.
The Liberals should focus on competition policy and reducing red and green tape as critical steps in the productivity revival.
The primer on competition is the submission to Labor’s roundtable from Policy Institute Australia, headed by Amy Auster, with its analysis also drawing on former Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris.
The game plan is a bolder competition agenda based on substantial financial incentives, limiting the role of “gatekeepers” that throttle competitive behaviour and pushing greater competition into healthcare, financial services and infrastructure.
The pond sat all that out so it could get to "Ned" on climate science, and sure enough there was an epic fudge ...
The Liberals need to revise their core stance on climate change given the rapid shifts in the energy area and their conclusions from the last election. This demands both clarity and compromise given internal divisions and the need to appeal to a voting constituency that believes in climate action but is sure to become more sceptical of Labor policies.
The starting point should be a focus on independent costing of Labor’s energy transition and the full economic impact of the Labor agenda with its damage to household budgets, industry competitiveness, fiscal policy via subsidies and reliability of the system.
Presumably, the Liberals will avoid the folly of fighting against net-zero symbolism. That means realising they don’t need to attack a 25-year distant target to effectively attack Labor’s energy policy, now and out to 2030 and 2035.
This should be tied to a technological-neutral stance in relation to emissions reduction and, presumably, limiting the nuclear policy to abolition of the existing, irrational nuclear bans.
What a world a "presumably" can conjure, as the reptiles tried to help out with a snap of fiendish wind mills, A wind farm near the town of Bungendore in southern NSW. Picture: AFP
"Ned" has before this day seen King Donald as more a problem than a solution, but he folded like a pack of cards or a beach umbrella...
Given the certainty of a clash between the Trump administration and the Albanese government over defence spending, the Coalition policy at the election – with its defence pledge of 3 per cent of GDP – becomes only more pertinent and potent. Every signal from the Trump administration points to a coming collision. The US believes Australia’s defence spending is inadequate as an alliance partner, out of step with pledges by other allies and, critically, that it cannot properly sustain the AUKUS submarine commitments. Basic to the Liberal position is that most Australian analysts back the 3 per cent target as being in the national interest.
Reptiles, keep up to date with your jihads, as the pond pressed on ...
Eighth, the Coalition needs to identify its core principles on immigration and maintain them – presumably a more restrained immigration intake, with a much stronger and more explicit entry requirement relating to capacity to integrate into Australian society in the cause of social cohesion.
Yes, there's nothing like bashing pesky, difficult furriners in classic cantaloupe clown style, and so to another mango Mussolini sore point ...
Ninth, the Coalition should stand against the normalisation of identity politics in the federal bureaucracy, corporate Australia and in parts of the judiciary. Argued with skill and persuasion this will win majority support from the public. The policy edicts from the Australian Human Rights Commission reveal the extent to which identity politics is corrupting the goals of non-discrimination.
Opposition legal affairs spokesman Julian Leeser, in his previous capacity, warned that AHRC’s “existence” needed to be called into question given its failures and distortions on the issue of racism and its refusal to confront anti-Semitism in Australia. There is no sign of any genuine rethink by the AHRC. In this context the Coalition should consider radical surgery, even abolition and re-creation of the AHRC, to remove its operational commitment to identity politics and to re-establish human rights policy in this country on universal principles of equality, liberalism and non-discrimination.
Yes, and take the bromancer to court for his outrageous anti-Semitism, but the pond digresses because the reptiles slipped in another snap, Pro-Palestinian marchers burn an Israeli flag at Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023. Picture: NCA Newswire/Jeremy Piper
And so at long last to the final number, and a final Krogering..
Finally, John Howard issued a warning about the Coalition’s political vulnerability on Medicare. Pointing out that it is now 30 years since, as opposition leader, he completely endorsed Medicare, Howard said it was extraordinary that Labor was still recruiting Medicare as an electoral weapon against the Coalition on a permanent basis. In terms of political and policy priorities, eliminating the grounds for Labor’s attack on Medicare must be an urgent and sustained Liberal priority.
A number of experts suggested to Inquirer the Liberals frame their policies under two broad themes overall – the need for enterprise freedom and construction of new social contract for the country.
Interviewed by Inquirer, Michael Kroger addressed the Medicare issue: “Political parties win elections by prosecuting their own brand equities. The best examples are the Labor Party at the 2016 and 2025 elections when it was highly successful in prosecuting its number one brand equity – Medicare.
“By contrast, Labor failed at the 2019 election on tax when it prosecuted an argument on the Liberal Party’s No.1 brand equity – taxation.” The political logic is for the Liberals to restore and revive their once unrivalled brand equity – the economy, tax and productivity.
As if all that wasn't more than enough, "Ned" turned to an IPA hero, John Roskam.
It didn't occur to "Ned" to wonder if the IPA, its devotion to big tobacco, its climate science denialism, and its devotion to extreme far right policies might be part of the problem rather than offering any electorally viable solution ...
“At present, there is nothing for the Liberal Party to unite around – nothing to unite the parliamentary party around or party members or potential voters. Albanese has a point: people know what the Coalition opposes but are not sure what it supports.
“I don’t think the political class, Labor or Coalition, grasps the extent of concern in the community about the future.
“People feel the country is changing before their eyes, they see a culture they don’t recognise and they fear their children and grandchildren will have a lower standard of living. The housing debate is a proxy for the issue: do we confront a decline in our standing of living?
“Yet the Liberals don’t have the language to deal with the gravity of these sentiments, about living standards, social cohesion, national security and educational decline. And they don’t have 12 months. It is absolutely essential that the party stands up. Too many people feel the Liberals stand for nothing or, if they stand for anything, it is to oppose. If the Liberals don’t stand up now their authority will decline further, that just means more drift, perhaps years of drift.
“What’s at stake is not just the future of the Coalition but the direction of the country.
“I fear that too many MPs now don’t really know what their purpose is, and if the Liberal Party doesn’t have a sense of purpose, then it faces a crisis.”
Roskam raised an alarming point. He was told by an insider that the Trump factor had been important in the 2025 election, but in a different way to the common assumption. Roskam said: “The feeling, apparently based on the research, was that Peter Dutton couldn’t talk about any cultural issue at all, education being an example, because it was seen as too Trumpian.”
The Liberals need to speak to their values – and that means finding ways to counter the line that they are repeating Donald Trump, the kiss of electoral death in Australia.
Says "Ned", who in matters related to immigration and identity politics (not to mention celebrating the onion muncher on climate) had managed to sound very King Donald, with the result that all his blather managed to end up sounding like the kiss of electoral death in Australia ...
At the end came a curious credit the pond couldn't recall seeing before:
Paul Kelly is a director of Policy Institute Australia.
Oh FFS, he's been co-opted ...
Bibi is beginning to take on Trump’s traits, claims the Bro? Nah, he was already a deeply corrupt PM long before the Cantaloupe Caligula was first elected.
ReplyDeleteEven more amazing than the Bromancer finally criticising Netanyahu - albeit more in sorrow than in anger - was that he actually listed the PM’s pending corruption charges as a motivation for his conduct of the war. Sure, the Bro briefly included this as only one of the causes, and buried it way down in the article, well past the point at which any sensible person would have ceased reading, but it’s still an unexpected admission on the part of the Bro.
Still, he’ll probably have done another 180 degree turnaround by the time of his next screed.
BTW, what’s with the claim that Trump “briefly” flirted with the concept of the Gaza Riviera? He floated it in the first place, and has never subsequently rejected the idea.
Funniest line in the whole piece - “Let me be clear”. Maybe someday, Bro……
Gosh - a new gig for Ned ? I suppose it’s too much to hope that this will lead to a reduction in his Oz sermonising, though. It’s certainly difficult to reconcile such traits as “Imaginative, Impactful, Independent and Courageous” with the tired, reheated old dross that Ned served up in today’s listicle. Just what this country needs - yet another pack of reactionary hot-air merchants.
ReplyDeleteA Bro & rapist's justification... it was her fault for she "expertly and cruelly manipulated " me, so she made me commit war crimes and genocide...
ReplyDeleteBro; "But Hamas has also intelligently, expertly and cruelly manipulated both Israeli and global politics. "
The Bro say of Hamas "intelligently, expertly ". He will say anything to bolster his blather.
Bro bastard: "These are the actions of a [harridan] terrorist group that wants Israel to continue reacting [gang raping] in a maximalist way."
Bro "Israel should withdraw from most of Gaza [the rape vicrims]. It currently controls 75 per cent of the territory. [25% more to rape] It would stay in strategic positions [starving, begfing, dying] and well within the perimeter [so she cant escape]." .... of the personal, familial, home & social spaces, threatening rape at any time now or in the future because she "expertly and cruelly manipulated " me, so she made me commit war crimes and genocide...
Bro; "But Hamas has also intelligently, expertly and cruelly manipulated both Israeli and global politics." is the excuse
I tend to think that the anzacs wouldve been on the harbour bridge with the demonstrators
ReplyDelete🚶♂️🚶♂️➡️
DeleteAll the blather about precedents ...
Over its 86 years, the Bridge has been a site of protest, civil action and celebration in Sydney. Its first closure was in 1946, when 20,000 people marched to celebrate Victory Day at the end of World War Two. Seas of people walked across the Bridge to mark its 50th, 60th and 75th anniversaries.
In May 2000, a record-breaking 250,000 Australians of Indigenous and non-Indigenous descent marched across the Bridge in the historic Walk for Reconciliation.
The massive crowd roared at the sky-written ‘Sorry’ above the Harbour, a sight in acknowledgement of the dispossession of Australia’s First Nations peoples—a dispossession which had begun with the arrival of the First Fleet in the very same place.
And so on, and an actual unfolding genocide in real time seems as good a reason as any to bung on a do.
https://thebridge.sl.nsw.gov.au/episode-five/index.html
Dunno about the Anzacs though - if one follows 'The One Day Of The Year' then like just about everything else, some Anzacs would have been on the bridge, and some wouldn't. As usual.
DeleteDorothy, very likely you are saving the Dog Bovverer for another part of this weekend. The bait on the electronic poster for this day
ReplyDelete"My exchange with ChatGPT started with the simple question of whether Australia’s net zero by 2050 target was achievable. The response was worrying. "
- just drips with unintended irony. We can be sure it is unintended, because reptiles just do not 'do' irony. It also invites casual readers to think that the actual idea of a named writer claiming to engage with an electronic program that hoovers up anything and (eventually) everything that is associated with the search term, and offers it, without judgement on the real merits of different perspectives - certainly is 'worrying'.
If I might add part of a familiar quatrain -
Information is not knowledge
knowledge is not understanding
understanding is not wisdom.
And wisdom is not grace (or holiness if you're one of them).
DeleteI note that of the three superannuated Liberal Party duds quoted by Ned, only the Lying Rodent refers to the Party as “we”. Now in his mid-80s, and 18 years after the Australian public comprehensively gave him the arse, he still harbours the delusion that he’s a key player.
ReplyDeleteIt’s worth remembering that two of those quoted lost their own seats at general elections, with one first being booted from Prime Ministership by his own colleagues after only two years. The other never had the guts to challenge for the leadership and then ran away when faced with the hard
(Continued) slog of Opposition. These are Ned’s fonts of wisdom?
DeleteOh my, The Bro: "Let me be clear: Netanyahu is not responsible for the sickness of anti-Semitism." Well, being clear is way beyond the Bro's capability, but though Netenyahu may not be totally responsible for "antisemitism", he is certainly very responsible for very much anti-Zionism, including mine.
ReplyDeletePS: it may be worth remembering that, genetically, both Israelis and Palestinians are semites.
Delete
ReplyDeleteA rejoinder to off-the-planet Janet, Sex is a spectrum from P Z Myers.