In which the Ughmann, doing climate science denialism yet again, and "Ned", bending the knee in Chicken Little style yet again, hold forth ...

 

The reptiles were full of it early this weekend, with a pointy Putin putting it to King Donald ...

Right down at the bottom the the reptiles deigned to notice their triumph in helping end free speech at literary festivals.

Naturally the reptiles were also very excited by an EXCLUSIVE, second in the queue on the day ...

EXCLUSIVE
Chevron boss warns ALP of fatal attraction slump
The boss of one of the world’s top energy companies is worried about costs and policy settings in Australia. Future expansions and investment are now off the table.
By Perry Williams

Anybody who wanted to indulge in that EXCLUSIVE could head over to the archive, at least for as long as the archive method lasts ...wherein they could discover a new header, Chevron delivers gas warning to Labor with Australian investment souring.

The day the pond pays attention is when Chevron warns Labor of climate change disaster, with planetary conditions souring.

Instead of indulging in yet another gassing, the pond headed over to the extreme far right to see the pearls of wisdom man at the top of the hive mind ma ...

Anyone who wanted to indulge in the pearls of wisdom could head over to the archive ...

In the meantime, all the pond needed to offer was a teaser trailer ...

Ditto Dame Slap, also being singularly unproductive, by making new ways to productivity her morning mantra ...

Go the archive, devotees of Dame Slap ...

Those who ignored the pond's advice would have copped something as simplistic as a TV commercial ...

Yeah, in Dame Slap's limited universe, hard yakka fixes what ails ya, and for those too lazy to click on an archive link - so much hard yakka - they would have copped this hard yakka about the joys of hard yakka ... complete with a joke that suggests Dame Slap has transitioned into a Tooheys man ...

...It will surely be Anthony Albanese, who at the best of times is a few stubbies short of a sixpack.
Unlike McManus, Albo dreamt really big – and dangerously – this week with his childlike fantasies that (1) Australia should recognise a Palestinian state, even though one cannot exist until there is peace; (2) Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who as one wag pointed out is 20 years into a four-year term, has any intention of keeping his promises to Albo; and (3) even if Abbas broke the habits of a lifetime and called elections, this would produce a peaceful, civilised state that would live in peace with Israel.
Reality hit fast and hard the next day when it appeared Hamas – democratically elected by Gazans (albeit only once, in 2006) – celebrated Albo’s vow to recognise Palestine at the UN next month and rejected calls to put down arms.
It has been a big week for political dreams untethered from reality. So let’s return to reality about this “less work equals more productivity” palaver. What follows will be controversial, not just in union circles but in sections of some non-unionised workplaces across the nation, including at that lily-livered organisation the Business Council of Australia.
But it must be said: our living standards will improve, meaning in economist-speak that productivity will rise, only when the elites who think they speak for us realise there is no substitute for hard work.
There are myriad other contributing factors, too, such as reducing red tape, but getting the same pay for less work isn’t one.
Or is McManus saying that, for example, an office cleaner who cleans 20 offices in a shift will now clean 25? That would maintain current productivity but it’s a safe bet the union leader is not telling workers to work harder.
Multiply this by the zillion similar scenarios across our economy and you have a recipe for Venezuela, a workers’ paradise where everyone is equally impoverished.
Far from telling people to work harder, too many ACTU wonks, their aiders and abetters in academia, and other slackers want to bring us down to their level. All this metaphorical loafing and bludging does, however, have one advantage – at least for the indolent.
If we all work less, the lazier and less motivated among us won’t get shown up as, well, lazy and less motivated. That is in keeping with the zeitgeist at least. Working hard and recognising that as a virtue is so yesterday. In fact, who last posited publicly that there is dignity in working hard? Not McManus, nor any academic I can recall. No recent politician either, now that I think of it.
What does that tell us about this cohort of people? Frankly, if they don’t want to work hard, that is their business. We’ve all met these sorts of people. They talk about RPDs (rostered pyjama days), a term I heard first from a public servant who, frankly, didn’t work that hard even when the office clothes were on. They clock off on the dot, if not before. And that’s their choice. Just as you are what you eat, you are also a product of your choices about work.
There are, however, plenty of people who do want to work hard. Hold on to your socks, many people really enjoy working hard. They get a kick out of doing their best, not even for the sake of making money or pleasing their boss but because there is something innately rewarding, a private sense of self-worth, in doing a job well.
While we’re on a reality kick, hardworking people often do well in their work and careers because they get high-quality stuff done. And because a hard worker who gets high-quality stuff done stands out these days.
The Financial Times last week reported on a trait that could do with more publicity. Conscientiousness is in decline, wrote data reporter John Burn-Murdoch. “Of all personality types, conscientious people tend to fare best on a number of key measures. They live the longest, have the most career success and are less likely to go through divorce. They even manage to hold down a job during recessions. Intuitively, this makes sense. Life isn’t just about knowing what you should do, or having the resources to do it, it’s about following through.”
Burn-Murdoch wrote that some studies suggest the advantages of being conscientious grow over time, which makes sense given the growing plethora of technological distractions.
The ability to ignore all that “and put long-term wellbeing ahead of short-term kicks becomes a superpower”, he wrote. “Digging deeper into the data, which comes from the Understanding America Study, we can see that people in their 20s and 30s in particular report feeling increasingly easily distracted and careless, less tenacious and less likely to make and deliver on commitments.”
You can be conscientious and motivated four days a week, of course. But the point is that too few leaders – especially those trying to change workplace policies – speak about the virtues of working hard at all. The entire narrative appears to be that the less we work, the better off we and the country will be.
The ACTU bosses tell us that 39 per cent of workers say they are exhausted. That’s not surprising given the dog whistling from McManus and other poorly labelled “progressive” social engineers to the current generation of workers that working hard is bad for us and that when it happens it’s the fault of bad bosses, ergo workers should work less.
We talk about a generation of coddled kids and anxious university students who haven’t been raised to experience life’s quotidian frustrations and challenges, for whom resilience training is a thing you do when lifting weights at the gym, not for the workplace.
The new workplace commandments from the social engineers grow and grow in favour of less work, painting an inevitable picture that working that bit extra is bad for you. Thou shalt not answer an email at home. Thou shalt not work in the office five days a week. Work from home has become something you don’t question in polite company, lest you offend the sensibilities of people who want to slack off in the privacy of their own home.
To be clear, I have no problem with people who want to work less. I’ve been known to do it myself. And I certainly don’t intend any criticism of those who have physical or other challenges that make work tougher than usual. But the constant hectoring about less work being good for us is bound to be wrong for many, many Australians.
There will always be conscientious people who want to work hard, and they will likely be rewarded for it over those who want to work less.
The pity merchants at the ACTU appear to think that those beneath them in the work pecking order should work less to be happier. What do they know? With artificial intelligence tools lined up to do the work of us mere mortals, we might want to prove our worth rather than be seduced by fortune-tellers who tell us that working five days a week will be bad for us.
Given the confected hysteria over Sydney Sweeney’s genes has put talk of nature out of bounds, let me say something about nurture.
I consider myself very fortunate indeed that my parents set an example, showing us that working hard – and putting in longer hours when required – delivers self-respect. They weren’t lawyers, doctors or even mid-level managers or small business owners. They worked in blue-collar jobs and regarded hard work as a source of dignity and honour.
There are many signs of a society in decline. A decreed distaste for hard work is surely one of them.

No illustrations for Dame Slap? 

Nah, no need to coddle the old biddy, screeching away in her usual way ...

Getting her over quickly reduces the tendency to puke component, and besides, the pond has to make room for the Ughmann, who was also banging on about productivity like a dunny door seminarian subjected to a climate change gale ...

The header: Productivity watchdog turns its hand to editing government fantasy fiction, By being a hard marker, the Productivity Commission made government policy better and helped make Australia richer. Alas, it has turned its hand to editing government fantasy fiction.

The caption for the risible uncredited illustration/montage/collage/whatever: The Albanese government ordered Danielle Wood's Productivity Commission to conduct five inquiries to feed into next week’s economic roundtable. Pictures: Istock/John Feder/The Australian

What? No invitation to go elsewhere? The pond is stuck here?

The Productivity Commission should be the government’s policy conscience, not its copywriter.
Once upon a time, the commission’s job was to deliver independent economic advice and kill bad ideas as infants.
Alas, some of its recent efforts show it has turned its hand to editing government fantasy fiction to make it fit for publication.
From its early days as the Industry Commission, the agency was measured by the quality of its enemies. There were calls for its abolition, as it was attacked for being a nest of dry economic rationalists or, in the words of a former construction union boss, “a taxpayer-funded right-wing think tank”.
It wore the criticism as a badge of honour because it understood its mission wasn’t to be popular but to raise uncomfortable questions. 
Productivity matters because it’s how we get more value from the same effort. It’s the difference between working harder and working smarter, and it’s what makes wages, living standards and the whole economy grow over time.
By being a hard marker, the commission made government policy better and helped make Australia richer.
Australia posted its biggest productivity gains through the Hawke-Keating reforms and into the Howard-Costello years. Workers were producing 3.1 per cent more each year on average in the five years to 1999, and we doubled the long-term average of output from the same mix of labour, machinery and materials.
The surge lasted into the early 2000s before reform momentum stalled; from 2004 onward, worker productivity halved and the gains from capital and equipment flatlined.
Things have gone from bad to worse. When Jim Chalmers ordered the commission to conduct five inquiries to feed into next week’s economic roundtable, he noted that “Australia’s productivity growth in the decade to 2020 was the slowest in 60 years”.

How soon before the Ughmann gets on to his favourite climate science denialist routine? 

Not long, but first we must endure a standard shot of the chief villain, Jimbo himself, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, seen last March. The government has a five-pillar productivity growth agenda. Picture: Getty Images

Now watch how the Ughmann makes his move ...

The agency was asked to report on priority reforms under the government’s five-pillar productivity growth agenda: making the economy more dynamic and resilient; building skills; harnessing digital technology; improving care serv­ices; and shifting to “cheaper, cleaner energy and the net-zero transformation”.
Here let’s insert an idea that rarely rates a footnote in all the talk about trying to lift productivity: no element of the economy is more fundamental than energy. Without it, nothing moves, nothing is made, nothing works. Canadian energy savant Vaclav Smil calls it “the only universal currency”.
“To talk about energy and the economy is a tautology: every economic activity is fundamentally nothing but a conversion of one kind of energy to another, and monies are just a convenient (and often rather unrepresentative) proxy for valuing the energy flows,” he wrote in Energy and Civilization: A History.
Petroleum geologist Art Berman distilled that to: “Energy is the economy.”

Did he? Shouldn't he have said, "oil is the economy" or perhaps parroting the wisdom of television and Sol the mechanic, "oils ain't oils"?

Here comes the promised climate denialist rant:

Underline this point: you cannot have a productive economy with chronically high energy costs. Yet that’s the trajectory Australia’s policies have locked in.
So when the Productivity Commission was asked to examine the bid to radically rebuild our electricity grid and every other energy system in the country, it could have no greater task.
This was the moment to test every unfulfilled promise that wind and solar would deliver cheaper, greener power. The chance to ask what happens when the net-zero doctrine is extended beyond electricity generation to the whole economy. The opportunity to weigh costs, benefits and trade-offs.

How could it be a rant compleat without the help of Dan the man on Sky Noise? Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan criticises the government for not disclosing the full costs associated with the renewable energy transition. “The government has to come clean with the Australian people on what is the cost of their energy transition, because they are getting it wrong,” Mr Tehan told Sky News host Steve Price. The Productivity Commission revealed Australia's transition to net zero will be more costly than initially anticipated, necessitating increased government intervention.

That helped the Ughmann warm to his planetary heating task ...

There is no need for hypothetical models because the transition of the eastern National Electricity Market is a live proof-of-concept slow-moving train wreck. And the world offers sobering case studies in Germany, Britain and California.
One also assumes the commission would be given access to all the work the government had done on modelling future energy prices under the road map laid out by the Australian Energy Market Operator. And if no department had done that work, the commission should surely be asking: Why not? Who would embark on this journey without rigorous analysis?
Given Australia accounts for a rounding error of the world’s carbon emissions, the commission should have checked the record on how all those national pledges of cutting emissions are tracking. Because if the world isn’t serious about acting in unison, for decades, then Australia will bear the wrenching costs of mitigation and reap zero benefits. It also will have to pay the costs of adaptation, whatever those costs may be. All of this will fall hardest on the poor.

The pond isn't here to argue, it's here to record, should at some point in the future some prosecutor be looking for planetary climate science criminals, The transition of the eastern National Electricity Market is a live proof-of-concept slow-moving train wreck. And the world offers sobering case studies in Germany, the United Kingdom Britain and California.Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

What on earth is the point of that illustration?

Meanwhile, the world is currently offering sobering case studies in climate-related disasters - the pond's exponential increase in insurance costs is a very minor example - but none of that is in the blinkered Ughmann universe ...

The energy keystone of our prosperity is something worthy of serious, critical examination, something tailor-made for a body such as the commission.
So what did it do? The title of its recent report says it all, regurgitating the line from the Treasurer’s commissioning letter that reads like a press release from the Climate Council: Investing in Cheaper, Cleaner Energy and the Net Zero Transformation.
The title collapses on contact with the text. On page 10 the report admits: “But reducing emissions comes with costs. In many cases it is more expensive to use a clean product or production method than an emissions-intensive one – an extra cost known as the ‘green premium’.”
How do you square that statement with the promise of the headline? And in all the press conferences touting the virtues of net zero and the energy transition, from the Prime Minister down, has anyone heard talk of a green premium? It gets five mentions in Treasury’s Future Made in Australia paper, which argues taxpayer dollars should be poured into the void, but that’s about it.

Pause again for more "news" from Sky Noise down under,  Australia’s Productivity Commission Head Danielle Wood discusses important reform areas which will “shift the dial” on government efficiency. “What we have done is put some shape around it for people,” Ms Wood told Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood. “We’ve got, sort of, 15 broad reform areas that we think are important, that we think could help shift the dial on productivity. “We want to make it manageable, we want to make it practical, we want to make it implementable.”

On and on the Ughmann ranted, posing as something of a caring, concerned conservationist ...

A naive reader might expect the commission’s hardheads to sharpen their pencils at this point and ask: How much of a premium? On how many products and production methods? What is the cost? What is the benefit? And if the world’s carbon emissions rise every single year, as they do, what is the point? But scour the report and you won’t find another reference to the “green premium”; it vanishes like power from a solar panel at sunset.
To call this sin of omission an abject failure would be kind. This is a joke.
OK, what does the commission have to say about the “greener” promise in its report title?
Here the key recommendation is reforming environmental laws “to expedite approvals for clean energy projects and better protect the environment”.
True to the form of this document, the first half of that sentence tramples the second. The commission is advocating weaker environmental protections where they may impede wind, solar or transmission projects. If a Queensland farmer clears trees without approval they are branded environmental vandals and face prosecution. If a multinational industrial wind farm company clear-fells a forest on the Great Dividing Range, it’s saving the planet.

Then came a shocking image, Land clearing for wind farms in northern Queensland. Picture: Steven Nowakowski

Here's the sort of image that doesn't shock or terrify the Ughmann. In fact he surely loves it ...

And so to the final gobbet of rant ...

The government has provided no detailed maps of the scale of the land clearing necessary to deliver its transformation of the electricity system. The only person to have produced publicly available maps is cartographer Steven Nowakowski from Rainforest Reserves Australia. He says the total area needed is 843,902ha, but that does not include transmission lines, easements and the edge effects of clearing roads.
A recent study by Princeton University and the University of Queensland says 110,000sq km – about 1.7 times the size of Tasmania – will be devoured by 2060.
On what measure is this “greener” energy? This is burning the village to save it.
Productivity is a measure of value. The only value of this commission is in its ability to strip away sentiment and submit policy to clinical economic analysis. To speak truth to power.
If this report is any guide, its currency is in decline.

And now to the bonus for the day, a climbing of the "Ned" Everest, although to be fair, this is only an eight minute saunter, a stroll compared to his usual 11 or 12 minute efforts ...

The header: Warning signals flash as Albanese and Trump head in different directions, Anthony Albanese is a left progressive. Donald Trump is an unpredictable, populist President running an America First agenda, loathing the progressive class, demanding that US allies do more and hooked on trade protectionism guaranteed to hurt Australia. What could possibly go wrong?

The caption for the truly appalling montage/collage/whatever: Donald Trump has been in the White House for seven months but the President – tariffs aside – has had little to say or do about Australia. Artwork: Frank Ling

Oh Frank, do yourself a favour, blame AI, it'll be a lot easier and you might save your career. 

And what happened to the reptile invitation to go elsewhere? Have they finally dropped that charade?

As for "Ned", the real problem is that he's scribbling in a void soon to be revealed ...

The pond is similarly in the dark, and all that's left is Chicken Little flapping his wings and having a bed-wetting incident about "security" with our allegedly great friend, offering us a piece of the action in much the same way that they offer Vlad the sociopath a piece of the pie ... 

The gulf between the Albanese government and the Trump administration widens almost daily. So does the conun­drum at the heart of the alliance – their joint military plans are loaded with vast ambition yet their political ties are uncertain and undefined.
The great unknown is how Donald Trump will deal with Anthony Albanese when they finally meet – what is agreed or disagreed or left hanging. The extraordinary feature of the Australian-American alliance today is the sheer absence of head of government dialogue and concord. Trump has been in the White House for seven months but the President – tariffs aside – has had little to say or do about Australia.
Yet the warning signals are flashing everywhere. The potential for trouble extends over a wide spectrum – defence spending, the AUKUS agreement, China strategy, global trade, bilateral trade, the energy transition, Middle East policy and Palestinian recognition.
The phone discussions between Trump and Albanese have been warm and friendly – a good omen. Indeed, they spoke after Albanese’s May election victory with Trump announcing he was “very friendly” with Albanese, who was “very good”. Trump loves winners. The leaders should be able to navigate their differences.
Yet their governments are increasingly heading in different directions. In a sense this is unsurprising since there is a chasm separating these leaders. Albanese is a left progressive who in his election win exploited his sovereignty credentials against Trump to win votes; while Trump is an unpredictable, populist President running an America First agenda, loathing the progressive class, demanding that US allies do more and hooked on trade protectionism guaranteed to hurt Australia.
What could possibly go wrong?
Personal chemistry is a vital factor with Trump. In the end, he bonded with Scott Morrison; after an early blow-up he worked effectively with Malcolm Turnbull. With Albanese, anything is possible. If Trump gets irritated with Albanese, he has a basket of issues that can be weaponised.

What could go wrong? 

Why, the lizards of Oz could be so infatuated that we end up just like the US ...

The reptiles visual counter argument was to feature Malware, ruiner of digital networks, and that liar from the shire, the speaker in tongues ... In the end, Donald Trump bonded with Scott Morrison ... and after an early blow-up he worked effectively with Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Unfazed by the sight of these wretched miscreants from long forgotten times, the pond pressed on with the climb ...

The pressure is building on Albanese; he needs a meeting with Trump and that meeting needs to be substantial and successful. The long delay merely intensifies the stakes. Ideally, Albanese should meet Trump for an official visit at the White House. He needs to beware of any bilateral meeting in the corridors of a summit, seen as too short and too insubstantial.
The alliance is beset by a conundrum. The military partnership proceeds on high speed. Over the next five years the size of the US defence force posture on our continent will double. From 2027 US submarines will have a rotational presence at HMAS Stirling in Perth. The AUKUS agreement will tie Australia deeper into regional deterrence of China. Defence force integration with the US proceeds in air, sea, land and cyber domains.
Yet there is no head of government clarity on the core issues and directions. On what basis does Trump authorise AUKUS? Does Trump as the alliance partner insist on greater Australian defence spending? Given the delay, is Australia being marginalised in Trump’s priorities? And there are vital questions for Albanese: what price is he prepared to pay – in defence spending and China deterrence – to meet growing US demands on Australia?

The reptiles tormented "Ned" with a snap of King Donald. Surely he should do a Faux Noise act, bow down and kiss the ring of his monarch? Donald Trump is an unpredictable, populist President running an America First agenda. Picture: AFP

But what of Epstein?

It'll be past obvious by now that the pond isn't taking "Ned" seriously ... and in any case there's no need, not when "Ned" is his own audience.

"Ned" takes his pompous pontificating more seriously than anyone else ... with bonus hand wringing and wing slapping a speciality ...

The history of the alliance tells us that leaders set the direction and priorities; witness George W. Bush and John Howard, Ronald Reagan and Bob Hawke and, at the inception, Percy Spender and Harry Truman. What on earth will emerge from Trump and Albanese? In electoral terms it made sense for Albanese not to meet Trump before the May election. But the delay has extended for too long. Too many alliance issues are unresolved. Albanese will need to secure a bilateral with Trump in September – either at the Quad meeting in India if it proceeds or when Albanese visits for the UN in New York.
Failure to get a dialogue with Trump by that stage will turn into a national embarrassment. It would look like a snub. Albanese knows the stakes are getting higher. He said this week he was ready for a meeting with Trump “at very short notice, at any time”. Decoded, Australia needs this appointment.
Yet recent statements from the Pentagon to The Australian in Washington should have sounded an alarm siren in the Prime Minister’s office. If Trump mirrors the Pentagon line – which is really Trump’s line – then a political collision is possible or even likely.
The Pentagon said defence spending at 3.5 per cent of GDP was now the “new global standard” following European decisions responding to Trump’s demands. Significantly, the Pentagon tied Australia’s far lower defence spend to its capacity to honour the AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement and to make a credible contribution to regional deterrence, an obvious but unnamed reference to China.
A Pentagon official told this paper: “For Australia, in particular, it is vitally important that they are able to raise defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. That will allow them to generate and field the kind of forces required not just to defend themselves but work together closely with us to maintain deterrence in the region.

Hang on, wasn't it 3%, and then 3.5%, and then didn't it get bid up to 5%, whatever the bully feels like on a whim?

This sort of shakedown seems to be happening in any number of fields ...

Sorry, back to "Ned", whimpering in fear, and very keen to settle, like any 'umble peasant tugging the forelock, or tugging something ...

“It is not an abstraction. This is a concrete objective. AUKUS is an expensive thing. Increasing defence spending is going to be vitally important for Australia to achieve its stated objectives under AUKUS while also modernising the rest of the ADF.
“I think we can say that if Australia does not raise defence spending it is going to struggle to field the forces required to defend Australia but also to make good on its commitments to others.”
By linking higher defence spending to honouring AUKUS, the US Defence Department changes the terms of this debate. Its argument reflects that made by many Australian defence analysts. While most of the AUKUS debate in this country is whether the US would be able to sell Australia three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, the US now gives this issue a sudden twist, effectively asking: is Australia ready and able to meet its AUKUS challenge and obligation?
Given that Trump’s persistent theme is the need for allies to make a greater contribution, AUKUS is the ideal instrument for him to recruit in this quest. Whether the President will do this remains unknown. But US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has already told Defence Minister Richard Marles the US wants to see the 3.5 per cent target reached. Australia is nowhere near that. Its current plan is to reach 2.33 per cent of GDP by 2033-34, up from the current 2.02 per cent.

So we're supposed to follow the line of a womanising drunk with too many tatts? 

Seems so, President Donald Trump speaks as US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth looks on. Picture: AP

Here's the thing. Why should the pond wander down the many rabbit holes currently available?

"Ned" might want to grovel at the feet of a fascist, but all Xi's look the same in the dark ...

At week’s end a US defence official said: “Our allies have to do their part. All countries have political difficulties. All countries have fiscal difficulties. Yet we have to be able to defend ourselves in ways that are realistic, equitable and sustainable.”
Trump is President at a critical juncture in the alliance. Its military and strategic agenda and declared ambition is transformational and vast – yet this coincides with Trump’s redistribution quest: to ensure that allies assume more of the burden. And this is not just Trump’s obsession.
Senior analysts in the US defence system have reached the conclusion that the US cannot run effective deterrence against China on its own – it needs its regional allies as supporting players, notably Japan and Australia. It wants deeper military interoperability with both allies. This is a decisive admission: it means the strategic situation in the region is deteriorating rapidly. How will Albanese handle this diabolic mix of strategy and politics? Can he willingly manage the optics of deeper ties with the Trump administration? Or will he use any Trumpian pressure on Australia to kick back, aware that Trump is unpopular in this country? Albanese knows that resisting Trump in the name of Australian sovereignty is a winning electoral stance at home.
But Albanese needs to be careful; upholding the national interest demands priority over Labor’s more convenient political interest.
Sovereignty is the iron law the Albanese government uses to define its growing ties with the US. This is a message to the Trump administration but also a means of protecting its back with the Labor Party.
This was apparent recently when Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy made clear Australia would give no advance commitment on its role in a Taiwan conflict, saying this would be a sovereign decision at the time.

At least Pat scored a snap, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy.

Then came the by now surely patented fear of Colby, the reptiles' favourite boogeyman ...

The review of AUKUS being conducted by senior US defence official Elbridge Colby generated an immediate panic or delight in Australia, given Colby’s public scepticism about the sale of the Virginia-class submarines to Australia.
But the deeper issue is Colby’s belief in an American grand strategy that denies China its assertion as a regional hegemon. For Colby, that dictates a deeper relationship with America’s allies in Asia such as Australia, which will be expected to do more in financial contributions and military planning.

The quaintly named bridge too far even scored a snap, US defence official Elbridge Colby. Picture: Getty

Did someone mention financial contributions and planning?

No matter, "Ned" was finally winding down ...

The expectation from the Colby review will be upholding AUKUS but seeking a deeper commitment from Australia. How far the Albanese government is prepared to go remains to be seen. But Albanese’s stubborn refusal to increase the defence budget is untenable. On the US side, the burning question is how much Trump will embrace the views of the US Defence Department. Colby is a sophisticated analyst; Trump is an instinctive but primitive populist.
Marles must hold all this together. With the exception of the Prime Minister and Treasurer, this is the toughest gig in government. For Marles, projecting confidence is an imperative. He knows China’s military build-up is Australia’s greatest challenge – unlike most of the Labor Party, which is strategically ignorant and gesture obsessed. Marles’s message is that the US and Australia can take the alliance to greater AUKUS typified peaks. But is this the view of the Labor Party?
The Australian people aren’t there. They are ignorant of the sheer extent of the growing Australia-US military co-operation and unfolding vision. They may distrust China, but the public doesn’t grasp the role much of the security establishment sees for Australia in deterrence of China.

We're not there? Why on earth not? There's an unfolding vision?

Perhaps it's not the sort of vision some of us want to see unfolded?

And so, after this consideration by way of 'toons, "Ned" came to a close by dragging the pasty Hastie into the sordid affair ...

Perth MP and opposition home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie addressed the immediate and practical meaning of AUKUS – thousands of US personnel and their families coming to Perth. Hastie told Inquirer: “The deeper truth is that the only AUKUS tangible in the next five years will be the US squadron of Virginia-class subs out of HMAS Stirling. No one is talking about it. And the big issue with the locals is not the US presence or reactors but lack of houses, roads and infrastructure.”
Albanese’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state symbolises the growing differences between Australia and the US. Labor has broken from the US on Middle East policy, aligning with the progressive governments in Britain, France and Canada. That’s more Albanese’s natural home. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed such decisions as “largely meaningless”. Yet a White House official said Trump was “not married to any one solution” on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
What solution or future does Trump see for the Australia-US alliance? Presumably it will be transactional, instinctive and friendly. Albanese will tell Trump that Australia is carrying its weight and AUKUS fits the needs of both nations. But what will Trump say?

Who cares what the cantaloupe Caligula says ...

Let him do his worst with the United States and the world, and meanwhile, it's heads down and just get by time.

Let's hope in the process that the country isn't such a bed wetting sook as "Ned" and can manage to keep its diapers dry no matter what the bully or his bullying minions say or do ...

They're screwing up the United States, and should be appreciated for their entertainment value, but once the popcorn is consumed, best leave the cinema before the worms strike ...