In which the pond mourns the missing Henry, but is restored by the bromancer ...

 

Has our Henry abandoned Friday in the lizard Oz? Have the reptiles abandoned him? Is he so enfeebled he must now act as a team?

The pond checked and his last appearance was with the pinching Pincus back on the 24th, a strangely belated bout of climate science denialism ...

The strange mouse that is Treasury’s net-zero report
This report isn’t a policy assessment. It’s a political document, with the unsurprising consequence that it has all the rigour of a doughnut.
Henry Ergas and Jonathan Pincus

These mice roared their hardest, but there was a most disappointing absence of abstruse historical and philosophical references, save for the very last line, where the real Henry briefly popped out into the light, Ach, the Romans would sigh, O tempora, o mores! – oh the times, oh the standards.

Indeed, and ach the pond sighed, because without his august presence, this day is merely a litany of dullards...

Whither the chance for another set of our Henry's astonishing insights?

Islamophobia envoy avoids hard questions
The Malik report on Islamophobia is a wasted opportunity to seriously consider what has happened to our multiculturalism as we grappled with changes in the Australian Muslim community.
Henry Ergas

Withered indeed, but wait, the old blowhard did eventually blow, with the reptiles tricking the pondby cunningly holing him back ...

United Nations’ Palestine hope is not vision, but grand delusion
All the razzamatazz in the world can’t hide the fact that there is nothing to recognise.
By Henry Ergas

So be it, the pond is not bitter, the link is there for the fans, and the pond will attend to our Henry in the arvo, but for the moment must do its best with the clay that was to hand early in the morning ...

Astute correspondents will note at the very bottom of this day's emissions, dressed as "news"...

Liberal infighting
Andrew Hastie defends his push for a new policy direction while rebuffing criticism that he was undermining Sussan Ley’s leadership.
Hastie plays down threat to Ley as leader
By Sarah Ison

But what is to be seen over on the extreme far right?

Why Andrew Hastie is the ALP’s worst nightmare
Hastie is making serious claims on what many of us thought was Labor business. If Labor does not take notice now, it risks losing votes later.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor

And so on and so furth ...

Team Albanese can’t afford complacency. Voters are volatile the world over and will punish drift. If Labor fails to match delivery with ambition, Hastie’s brand of patriotic economic nationalism could become the rallying point that drags the Liberals back to power.
Nick Dyrenfurth is executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre.

Hey Charger, with Nick as your wheels, the pond feels even more confident about backing that lettuce...

Mischief-making of the finest kind, but what else?

Well the reptiles were rightly shocked and appalled for the sake of hive mind readers everywhere...

GOING GLOBAL
Cost of PM’s UN bid: millions for Africa and Trump’s ire
Anthony Albanese has defied Donald Trump’s UN criticism with a Security Council bid that will require hundreds of millions of dollars in new aid to Africa to succeed.
By Ben Packham and Geoff Chambers

Over on the extreme far right, there was a little sir echo full of green energy ...

The last shall lbe first, and Will was unhappy, and willing to explain why ...

ANALYSIS
Trump gives Xi cover for China’s self-interested journey to net zero
China is following what Xi Jinping has called ‘the principle of building the new before discarding the old’. He is changing the country’s energy mix on his terms at a pace of his choosing.
By Will Glasgow
North Asia Correspondent

A teaser trailer will do ...

But if Will was less than willing to celebrate, what about the bromancer? 

He was, in typical bromancer style, apocalyptic ...

The sooner PM gets away from UN’s corrupting atmosphere, the better
Labor’s foreign policy has been characterised by fads, gestures and the pursuit of domestic politics by other means. Courting also-rans at the UN is its latest folly.
By Greg Sheridan
Foreign Editor

Rootless cosmopolitanism at its most devious...

The pond appreciates that celebrating the bromancer means missing out on yet another defence of the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing ...

Palestinian recognition without reform is a dangerous illusion
By basing recognition on what will inevitably be broken promises of reform, the Australian government is undermining the very outcome it claims to be seeking.
By Colin Rubenstein

But Col would say that, wouldn't he? So it's bromancer time...

The header: Albo’s UN gamble folly ignores real powerbrokers, risks distorting Australia’s foreign policy, Labor’s foreign policy has been characterised by fads, gestures and the pursuit of domestic politics by other means. Courting also-rans at the UN is its latest folly.

The caption for the most excellent uncredited collage, AI slop of the finest quality: Anthony Albanese, centre, and UN power players, from left, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Keir Starmer and Donald Trump. Pictures: Getty Images/AFP

The bromancer was disconsolate ...

Anthony Albanese’s ambition to secure election to the United Nations Security Council in 2029-30 will have one sure consequence – it will further distort our foreign policy, and probably our aid priorities as well, and take them even further away from serving our core national interests.
The Albanese government’s foreign policy has been characterised by fads, gestures and the pursuit of domestic politics by other means.
The UN Security Council will add a new dimension to make things even worse – the pursuit of votes in the numerous African and Islamic blocs of nations, whose priorities are not overwhelmingly compatible with Australia’s priorities.
In principle, it’s a good thing for Australia to serve as a rotating, non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.
The real power, and all the real action, on the Security Council rests with the five permanent members – the US, UK, France, Russia and China. They each have the power to veto any Security Council resolution.
This arrangement is both the strength and the weakness of the Security Council.
Unlike the decisions of the UN General Assembly, Security Council resolutions are theoretically binding on UN member nations.

The reptiles introduced a snap designed to evoke Big Brother, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in New York City. World Picture: Getty Images via AFP

The pond wondered how the bromancer would deal with King Donald and his marvellous speech. For those who missed it, there's a transcript in all of its glorious details here...

It was truly uplifting and engaging stuff, modest yet prophetic ...I'm really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell. 

The bro was cagey and danced around all that ...

The veto arrangement means the Council cannot take any actions which fundamentally contradict the interests or policies of any of the great powers.
Despite Albanese mistakenly claiming that the UN is all about small and middle powers, it is in fact the accommodation of the interests of the great powers which allows the UN to continue functioning at all.
So the make-up of the non-permanent members of the Security Council is not very important.
Dear reader, without consulting Google, can you name a single non-permanent member of the Security Council right now?
The election of the non-permanent members is essentially winning a prize in a rather perverse beauty pageant.
The history of former bids by Australia is that we end up dishing out a lot of money, aid and other government projects, to nations we normally don’t have much concern with.
We are handicapped in this by the chronically small diplomatic footprint we maintain around the world.
We have one of the smallest diplomatic corps in the world for a nation of our wealth, with no Australian missions in many, many countries.
Israel risk
Seeking the votes of these countries for the Security Council we fraudulently proclaim our undying devotion to them and try to demonstrate this with money, often delivered in many creative ways.
And every vote we make at the UN in the mean time is influenced, generally badly, by our desire for votes.
There is only one Jewish state in the world, Israel, but there are many majority Muslim states, and many others which are hostile to Israel, so the election process adds another distorting anti-Israel dynamic to our foreign policy.
The Security Council bid also offers another rationale for the counter-productive policy we have recently adopted of formally recognising a Palestinian state even though no such state exists.
This new policy destroyed the previous bipartisan Australian policy of supporting a two-state solution which would, logically, come at the conclusion of negotiations between the disputing parties, the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The Security Council bid also adds further rationale to the recent Australian grandstanding on climate change.

Splendid stuff, and no need for Col when. you have the bromancer urging on a continuing genocide.

The bromancer also made a most excellent point about climate science denialism, and the pond has an infallible Pope to help in the celebrations....

Hmm, a tad excremental, almost in the Rowe style, but then the reptiles decided to draw attention to the elephant in the house, UN power player, US President Donald Trump, departs after addressing the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

Talk about a power player, leaving Macron stuck in the traffic ...

Eventually the bromancer had to go there, and as always, it was a ripper ...

It’s absolutely clear that the beauty pageant prize of a temporary seat on the Security Council will not make up for the serious distortions the whole process will introduce into Australian foreign policy.
Albanese’s speech to the UN General Assembly was in great contrast to the speech of Donald Trump to the same audience.
Trump, as you’d expect, wildly over stated his sound points and also made arguments which are just not true, preposterously claiming, for example, to have “solved” numerous military conflicts.

Oh surely not, stopping that seemingly endless war between Cambodia and Armenia is one of King Donald's most singular achievements... and worthy of that much yearned for Nobel Peace Prize ...

Eventually the bromancer came good with a gigantic billy goat butt ...

Nonetheless, there was a lot of truth to much of the critique of the UN that Trump mounted.

Indeed, but nonetheless the pond was puzzled by the way the bromancer ignored King Donald's most trenchant criticism ...

Why that yarn is worth celebrating with a cartoon ...

Better still, how about the post itself, a mad missive from the King himself?

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and thank you for attending to the bromancer's wise words...

Albanese’s speech was a much more routine assembly of generic cliches about the UN, most of which are honoured in the breach.
Albanese, for example, lamented the dictators who oppressed their own people. That was a good point for him to make.
However, you cannot hold that view and simultaneously idealise the UN, for the UN is made up in substantial number of the governments of dictators.
Albanese’s speech barely mentioned Asia, and was much more concerned with the Middle East.
This demonstrates the way in which any involvement with the UN tends to take us away from our core interests. Of course, it’s a good thing generally that we don’t mix up our serious business in Asia with all the mad falderal of the UN.
There were some good points in the Albanese speech. He publicly denounced Iran for orchestrating anti-Semitic attacks in Australia.
The Albanese Government notably expelled the Iranian ambassador because of this.
However, it’s disturbing that Iran still has diplomats stationed in Canberra. It’s only a matter of time until Canberra accepts a new Iranian ambassador and probably sends Australian diplomats back to Tehran.
These diplomats will be potential hostages from day one. Many Australians would have assumed that expelling the Iranian ambassador meant cutting off diplomatic relations with Iran.
But Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, met her Iranian counterpart in New York and no doubt in time we’ll be wanting their vote, and the vote of their friends, for our Security Council bid. When a new Iranian ambassador arrives in Australia it’s just back to the status quo ante.
Albanese in his speech also rightly denounced anti-Semitism.
That was a very good thing to do. And, for once, he didn’t feel obliged to marry a rejection of anti-Semitism with a rejection of an exaggerated notional Islamophobia.
Nonetheless, taken in total, this has been a very poor passage in Australian foreign policy.
We can’t deliver results of critical importance in the South Pacific.
We have no purchase at all with the Trump administration in Washington, despite a notional date for a proposed Albanese/Trump meeting.
But we have embraced the faux fashionable causes of the international left and the seedy moralising of the UN General Assembly.
It continues the damaging theme of unreality in Australian foreign policy.
The sooner Albanese gets away from the corrupting atmosphere of the UN the better for Australia.

And as for the corrupting atmosphere induced by the man child monarch in his most sinister circus act? 

Best head back home, leave all that behind, and turn to the immortal Rowe for a celebration of the local cricus ...

Yes, the UN's a circus, but what a fine circus we have here, and with most excellent acrobats, keen observers and cavorting clowns ...