In which the Ughmann and nattering "Ned" save the pond from being irked by yet more Kirkdom ...

 

The pond simply couldn't go there with several of the reptiles early on the weekend ... 

... but if you want to go there, you can:

Why Charlie Kirk’s service may mark a turning point for Christian revival in the US
Beyond the politics of his death, Charlie Kirk’s five-hour memorial service has ignited something extraordinary in America’s religious landscape.
By Greg Sheridan
Foreign Editor

The bromancer is generally nauseating when he gets into his evangelical proselytising phase but this was an especially nauseating effort and the pond wanted to keep down its breakfast. 

Quoting Tucker Carlson? Sure thing. Absolve Kirk of his deep-seated misogyny and abuse of sundry minorities and a bucket load of hateful positions? Easy peasy.

Ditto grating Gemma ... all yours ...

Difficult road to forgiveness begins with one choice
Of all the things Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika could speak of in that moment of sharing her devastating loss before the eyes of the world, she chose three words.
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist

The pond realises garrulous Gemma has a cult following among pond correspondents, but they can indulge in private, with no need for the pond to join them ...

She proposes forgiveness but what the reptiles at the lizard Oz do is generally unforgivable.

And the pond has never been a big devotee of Jennings of the fifth form, this time offering advice on the basis that he's some kind of King Donald whisperer ...

Albanese-Trump meeting: Go in positive or don’t go
If the PM wants to avoid being berated in the Oval Office about how little Australia spends on defence, he should go to Washington with a list of proposals to expand alliance co-operation.
by Peter Jennings
Contributor 

At least the pond has a 'toon for that one, courtesy Moir ...

Trot out blather about how your well-equipped to join King Donald on foreign adventures? And that'll sort things out and smooth things over?

Tug the forelock and be ever so 'umble is the solution? 

The Brits trotted out the royals, and look where that got them - within the week King Donald was back to bashing them.

And so on, and if King Chuck isn't the answer, then maybe there's no answer at all.

And speaking of King Donald affiliates and fellow thinkers and fellow travellers, that's how the pond, by this winnowing and a threshing, ended up with a bog standard bout of Ughmann climate science denialism for its weekend dose of reptile pleasures.

Sure it's dull and predictable, but by dint of repetition, the pond has become impervious ...

The header: Grim fear campaign risks climate of distrust, The Albanese government’s risk assessment report is a masterclass in distorting information to strike terror into the hearts of the population.

The caption diligently explaining how it's the mentions that are a problem, and if we all just looked away, there wouldn't be a problem: The explosion of extreme weather mentions fans fear in the politics of climate.

The Ughmann is clearly running out of angles, because that's the only way to explain this way into his standard repertoire:

If you were old enough to watch television in 1987 you will remember the Grim Reaper AIDS advertisement. It ranks as the most memorable, most successful and maybe most dishonest Australian government ad ever screened.
It begins with an ominous fog on an empty screen. The silence is broken by a metallic clash that echoes like the hammers of hell, followed by a satanic growl from the blackened teeth in the skull of the Grim Reaper. His empty eye sockets framed by his sackcloth cowl stare down the length of a demonic bowling alley. At the other end, 10 people are lowered through the mist to stand rigid like bowling pins as a foreboding male voice intones: “At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS.”

The reptiles, desperate to help out, and keen to show how agile they are with social media, provided a link to the ad on YouTube ...

You could look it up if you like, or you could just keep on with the Ughmann's attempt at a metaphorical flourish ...

The camera then picks out the face of a little girl weeping in the front rank of the doomed as the Reaper bowls a giant ball.
“But now we know every one of us could be devastated by it.”
The little girl turns her head an instant before she and the others are skittled. Their corpses lie in the mist as the voice continues: “The fact is, over 50,000 men, women and children now carry the AIDS virus.” More people are lowered as the Reaper selects another ball. This time a mother cradling a baby is highlighted in the firing line. “In three years nearly 2,000 of us will be dead.”
Nine fall as the ball strikes and the mother and child are left standing amid corpses as the Reaper reaches for a ball to pick up the spare.
“That if not stopped, it could kill more Australians than World War II.”
The last ball mows down the mother as her child spins in the air and the Reaper screams in chill triumph like the Nazgul in The Lord of the Rings.

Then came another cheap and tawdry attempt to drag in an irrelevance, in a way that even our Henry wouldn't have attempted, Hollywood actor Rock Hudson in his prime and after he disclosed that he had AIDS.

The pond doesn't have to wander back in time for its metaphors. Sadly there are new realities afoot, as noted in the Graudian:

A 30°C shift?!

But the Ughmann was determined to futtock on ...

Those who remember the 1980s will recall the fear caused by the spread of AIDS. It came into sharp focus for me in 1985 when it killed Hollywood leading man Rock Hudson. Then some of my friends died. So nothing that follows should be read as an argument that Australia should not have acted to curtail the spread of the disease or that anyone’s sexual orientation reduces the value of their life.
But there is no doubt that when the ad was released those behind it knew the disease mostly affected men who had anal sex and injecting drug users. In 1987, the actual number of diagnosed HIV cases in Australia was in the low thousands and the frightening figures in the script were fanciful.
The rationale behind the campaign was understandable. The federal health minister at the time, Neal Blewett, and his senior adviser, Bill Bowtell, feared the community would not be moved if it believed the only groups at real risk were gay men and drug users.
The idea was to universalise the threat to control the politics of the response and deliver the funding they needed for the fight.
Fear is a great motivator and the campaign was a thumping success. Its defenders would point to Australia’s internationally low infection rate as proof of concept, and they may well be right. Success spawned many other campaigns that leaned on the same strategy.
That does not change the fact this ad was deliberate government disinformation. The excuse is it was lying for a greater public good. The idea of the noble lie traces its roots all the way back to Plato’s Republic, where he argues rulers may propagate a myth or falsehood for the sake of social harmony or to protect the state.
The problem with lying is it’s a bad habit no matter how good the cause, and fear campaigns create imaginary monsters that can be difficult to control.

At this point the reptiles introduced an AV distraction, Foreign Minister Penny Wong is rebutting US President Donald Trump's claim that climate change is a “con job”. Speaking with Sky News, the Foreign Minister says Australia should be pragmatic in its approach to climate change, despite differing opinions from the US President. She believes some Pacific nations are already experiencing the impacts of global warming. Penny Wong also welcomes the news of a meeting between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump, scheduled for October 20.

At last the Ughmann got around to his real point, a standard exercise in reptile denialism:

There is no bigger fear campaign in human history than global warming. Many would argue there is every reason to be terrified. I can’t recall what The Guardian’s index reads at the moment but I think it is dialled up to emergency and every claim of catastrophe from any quarter is met with unquestioning assent.
This column’s position is that climate change is a problem but not an existential threat. Rich countries will manage adaptation better than poor ones, and adaptation is where this lands because global emissions keep rising. The world is not serious about net zero so over-investing in mitigation is a mug’s game if many are cheating.
Clearly, the Albanese government honestly believes global warming is a real and present danger that demands a radical overhaul of our energy systems.
It’s also clear that the raft of documents it released to support its 2035 emissions reductions targets are littered with deliberate sins of omission and commission, all made in the noble cause of stoking alarm to save the planet.
Its risk assessment report is a masterclass in distorting information to strike terror into the hearts of the population. And the government and its agencies are just the tip of an industrial-scale network of publicly and privately funded advocates, and a long vapour trail of activists all busily stoking the furnaces of fear.

The reptiles offered another distraction, Anthony Albanese has been dragged into a global climate change fight after Chinese and US presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump clashed over emission reductions and renewables amid a deepening strategic and military contest between the superpowers.

The Ughmann blathered on in his seminarian way:

Much of the education system has spent the better part of this century ensuring kiddies develop a healthy dose of climate anxiety. It has been so successful that some say they don’t want to bring children on to this burning platform of a planet.
So, congratulations one and all, you have bequeathed to your children the paralysis of despair.
There is one other big problem with the permanent climate horror show: the wind and solar-dependent electricity system the government is bent on building can’t work without gas. It will cost billions and barely function with bucketloads of gas. But thanks to the yeoman spadework of the Greens, the teals, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Labor’s Environment Action Network, many see gas as Satan’s syrup.
Never forget, Bowen told the COP28 climate change jamboree: “We need to end the use of fossil fuels in our energy systems. We can’t compromise on the science or the need to act. Words can be flexible, but we need outcomes. Fossil fuels have no ongoing role to play in our energy system. And I say this as the Climate and Energy Minister as one of the largest fossil fuel exporters in the world.”

For no particular reason, the reptiles also dragged Danica in to help the Ughmann: Sky News host Danica De Giorgio discusses Energy Minister Chris Bowen labelling people “cranks and crackpots” for disagreeing with the government’s climate change agenda. “Energy Minister Chris Bowen, well, he is going to be joining the prime minister in New York to announce Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target to the world,” Ms De Giorgio said. “Before jetting off he went on the ABC and then repeated Jim Chalmers’ charge those who disagree with the government’s climate change catastrophism are cranks and crackpots.”

Meanwhile, on another planet, a pond correspondent was kindly providing a link to this story ...

Just for a little alternative balance ...

...The report’s conclusions, while hypothetical, were emblematic of why private investors have poured tens of billions of private investment into renewable projects over the past five to six years, the authors said.
Forecasts that power price would fall thanks to the take-up of renewables – most notably Anthony Albanese’s ill-fated prediction before the 2022 election that electricity bills would be $275 lower – have proved wrong and helped fuel claims that a simple fix to higher prices was a return to fossil fuel energy.
“It is worth noting that when the various governments (NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Commonwealth) from both sides of the political divide made policy announcements suggesting renewables would be cheaper,” the authors said.
Those predictions were reasonable at the time, but “the world has changed significantly since then”.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plunged global energy markets into turmoil, sparking a spike in power prices here and around the world. Covid disrupted global supply chains and the cost of building also soared.
“Nevertheless, the current trajectory is proving cheaper than the counterfactual,” the authors said.
“This should come as no surprise. If there was a lower cost way, markets and investors would find it.”

Then the pond stood aside so the Ughmann could have a final emission:

Bowen’s career is testimony to his belief that words are flexible but, alas, ordinary people believe words mean something. The government turned those words into legislated emissions cuts. Now it must find a way to walk those words back across ground it has already salted.
So it was refreshing to hear from two Labor premiers this week who, unlike anyone in the federal government, speak clearly and actually have to run electricity systems.
South Australia’s Peter Malinauskas and NSW’s Chris Minns are signed up to decarbonisation but both highlight the centrality of gas in underpinning that project. Both also admit that more wind and solar do not add up to cheaper electricity, as everyone’s electricity bill proves. The only thing that will bring down bills is access to abundant, cheap gas, and the only road to that is increasing supply.
My mother liked to say, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.” It was a way of reminding her children that lies have a life of their own and keeping your story straight in a tangle of deceit is hard. In government, lies don’t just risk tripping up the liar; they corrode trust in every institution that repeats them. Once people learn they’ve been misled, they don’t forget and they don’t forgive. Trust, once squandered, is rarely restored.
It’s like a disease.

Actually it's like attempting a response to a scientifically observable set of events and trajectories, but never mind, the pond almost immediately began to wonder about a bonus, having exhausted for the moment all the reptiles on the extreme far right.

What a relief ...

The reptiles had cunningly placed "Ned" just below a story of Labor divisions emanating from ancient Troy....

Even better the reptiles reckoned it was a ten minute read, thereby ensuring readers would be primed for a weekend nap:

The header: Conservatives in disruption as Libs grapple with global tides, The apocalyptic language of Donald Trump – American in its quasi-religious tone – excites much of the Coalition base in Australia. But here’s a reminder: we are not America.

The caption for the wretched collage, for which unwisely Frank decided to take a credit when he'd have been better off blaming AI: Donald Trump's UN speech has ignited a Liberal Party 'civil war' in Australia. Artwork: Frank Ling

This "Ned" Everest was a challenging climb, with many levels of technical skill required to make it to the top:

Conservatism in Australia is engulfed in disruption, chaos and upheaval. It is riven by intellectual division, populist assertion and Trumpian delusion with many of its politicians running personal crusades that further demoralise a Liberal Party struggling for self-preservation.
The May 2025 election wipe-out has unleashed a torrent of experimental vibes from a conservative minority seeking a historical reinvention of the party, demanding a shift to the ideological right with an attack on so-called mass immigration, net zero at 2050 and sharpening cultural battles with Labor.
The Trumpian overtones are everywhere. In his breakouts, frontbencher Andrew Hastie repeatedly uses the enshrining slogan “putting Australians first” – selling the idea that Albanese Labor is betraying the people, from climate change to immigration to industry policy.
Donald Trump’s speech this week to the UN General Assembly – pitched as a clarion call to radical conservatives across the Western democracies – will inspire the Coalition right wing at home to more assertive demands. This was Trump in his most devastating guise as global prophet seeking to spread his revolution to other countries.

Tony Abbott told Inquirer: “It’s an electrifying speech that Donald Trump has just made. It should reverberate around the world. He’s right that misguided climate policies and scarcely controlled mass migration are grave threats to the survival of the West.”

Say what? This is what the pond heard ...

Meanwhile, "Ned" was in onion muncher hell ...

It is the apocalyptic language of Trump – American in its quasi-religious tone – that excites much of the Coalition base in Australia. Hastie now warns that unless the Liberals get their act together they will “be potentially in further decline and perhaps one day extinct”. He stages a conservative breakout driven by the view the Liberals are approaching a “reform or die” existential event. This excites and delights the pro-conservative media, anxious to play its role in the liquidation of the moderate Sussan Ley as leader.
One conservative told Inquirer the party’s future depended on installing a conservative leader before the next election. The obvious candidates are Angus Taylor or Hastie, in a party riven by leadership and factional rivalry.
In a fatalistic move, Hastie has crossed the Rubicon. Despite professing support for Ley, he is undermining her. He believes the core ideas of the Trumpian revolution – sovereignty, family, strong borders, energy security and cultural cohesion – provide a foundation for mobilisation by the Liberals and growing acceptance by the Australian public.

The reptiles then flung inn a huge snap of the pastie Hastie attempting to prove he was a heavy metal grunt and boofhead, Andrew Hastie demands Australia ‘make things’ and criticises previous Liberal policy on the car industry, in a video released on social media. Picture: Instagram

The pond decided to fling a little more money on the lettuce ...

"Ned"was agitated by that torque talker sighting ...

The central issue for the Liberals now is whether the party’s centre can hold and the conservative revolution – decisively divorced from the Australian middle ground – can be contained or accommodated by Ley on acceptable terms. The future of the Liberal Party now depends on this calculation.
Ley is vulnerable but fighting; witness her tough-minded economic speech a fortnight ago that should have been a uniting event, calling for fiscal responsibility, rejecting big government and empowering the individual – yet it sank without trace.
The lesson: the pro-conservative media won’t credit Ley and will promote her removal.
Most of the conservatives are obsessed about ideology but weak on policy. Hastie’s faith in state power, market scepticism, nostalgia for the car industry and hostility towards emissions reductions represent the policies repudiated and buried by the Liberal Party during the Abbott government 2013-15 under Abbott, Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann. That’s how crazy is the current Liberal chaos and intellectual confusion.
Hastie’s breakout has raised severe doubts about his judgment and his policy ideas, and has left wide sections of the party puzzled and angry. The tensions will only intensify when people realise that Hastie is serious and prepared to contest the leadership this term if the politics break his way.
He believes the West is in a profound civilisational crisis. He wants the Liberal Party to acknowledge this reality and be ready to act on it. Hastie has been influenced by the book Covenant written by Danny Kruger, the British Conservative MP who has just defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party declaring the Tories have become a “roadblock to conservatism”. Kruger says of the impending crisis: “But our culture has never before adopted the critique of itself as its governing philosophy. It is difficult to imagine how civilisation that essentially repudiates itself can possibly survive.”

Say what? He came from an eccentric young earth family ...

Back in the day, he tried to distance himself ...

Inter alia ...

Andrew Hastie is the Liberal candidate for the WA seat of Canning in the byelection to be held in just over a week. He is 32 and a former SAS captain who was deployed several times to Afghanistan. Last week it came out that Hastie’s father, Peter, a pastor and theologian, has written against evolution for a publication that believes the world was created by God some 6000 years ago.
When asked whether he shared his father’s views, Hastie declared that questions about his family were “totally unacceptable” and “completely irrelevant to this campaign”. The issue came up again today, when Hastie was asked whether he personally believed in creationism. He refused, repeatedly, to answer directly, though he said there was “plenty of disagreement within Christianity itself about the specifics of creation, of theistic evolution”. His views weren’t important, he argued, because “There’s no religious test in this country for public office.”
Are Hastie’s personal views here important? There’s a fair argument that they are....
...if Hastie does believe that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, he’s entitled to his belief. But the voters of Canning are likewise entitled to know about it, because it’s a belief that many of them may find a bit troubling. It’s not like simply believing that a God exists, or that some behaviours are good and others bad: it’s about material facts, which are what we hope we can all agree on, and it goes against reason and evidence and popular consensus.
What’s more, it’s the kind of belief that could have strange consequences. How does it fit with the rest of the world? How would it affect Hastie’s views of the Indigenous people who have lived in Australia for 40,000 years or more? What would he make of geological evidence about climate change?
Religious freedom is vitally important, but it’s not a shield against uncomfortable questions.

Well yes, as soon as you start blathering in a fundamentalist way, He believes the West is in a profound civilisational crisis, and bringing in Nige, there's a problem: Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage smiles alongside newly appointed Reform UK MP Danny Kruger, right, during a press conference, in London. Picture: AFP

Boofheads 'r us.

We've endured the onion muncher, the last thing we need is another bible basher ...

The ultimate issue is belief: what does the Liberal Party stand for in 2025?
Ley must answer this question and fast. Waiting for policy reviews won’t work. She doesn’t have much time. Hastie is set on providing an answer.
Our conservatives are influenced by the global movement. Two defining speeches came this week from Trump at the UN and Abbott himself at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane. Abbott revealed the depth of alarm about the party’s future. Speaking to an audience of conservative believers, Abbott apologised for past Liberal failures and delivered a desperate, almost panicked, plea – “give us one last chance to prove ourselves worthy of your trust” – his delivery interrupted with audience cheers of “Pauline Hanson” and “One Nation”. The Liberals are reduced to begging for far-right redemption.

Dear sweet long forgotten onion muncher follies, Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott delivered a desperate, almost panicked, plea during his speech at the opening of the 2025 QPAC Australia Conference in Brisbane. Picture: NewsWire/Glenn Campbell

"Ned"struggled on as best he could ...

This is the electoral lever the conservatives will deploy: unless the party goes decisively to the right, the voters will shift decisively to Hanson. Hanson is running ferociously against net zero at 2050, waiting to hoover up these votes. Hastie’s pitch is that the world has changed, so the Liberals must change – this, he says, is the world of Xi Jinping and Trump.
That’s true. But while Trump exploits genuine flaws in progressive policies, Australia must beware: Trump is an isolationist in his mad assaults on climate change and renewables while his attacks on immigration as a threat to national civilisation are excessive in any Australian context.
Here is a reminder: Australia is not America. Trump usually turns a valid point into an invalid policy prescription. His politics don’t work in Australia, not now, not ever. Peter Dutton learnt this at the last election, yet many conservatives want a re-run, blind to the character of their own country.
As Abbott suggests, Trump presents as a saviour of the nation-state and of Western civilisation. Progressives loathe Trump but seem incapable of grasping his enduring appeal against everything they represent.
Warning the democratic world, Trump said: “The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions and they’re heading down a path of total destruction. Climate change, it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong – if you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” He had a White House rule: never use the word coal, only use “clean, beautiful coal”.
On mass migration Trump told UN leaders: “It’s destroying your country and you have to do something about it – the No.1 political issue of our time, the crisis of uncontrolled migration. Your countries are being ruined.”

Then it was on to an AV distraction featuring the King in full rant mode ... President Donald Trump delivered a fiery address at the United Nations in New York, lashing out at the organisation’s global agenda and accusing it of spreading “alarmist” climate rhetoric. In a defiant hour-long speech, he dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” ever perpetrated, condemned uncontrolled migration, and declared that America would chart its own path on the world stage. Breaking from diplomatic convention, President Trump attacked both the UN and his political rivals, underscoring his nationalist vision and rejection of multilateralism.

What a weird thumb, and yet it conjures up the essence of the madness ...distilled essence of loondom, and yet not a word from "Ned" about the vast UN conspiracy designed to undermine the impact of his ranting...

"Ned" discreetly ignored all that... and turned to petulant Peta for answers, but if she's the answer, then there's no point to the question ...

Much, but not all of this, refers to illegal entry, an issue contained in Australia. But Trump delivered a powerful addition: “Proud nations must be allowed to protect their communities and prevent their societies from being overwhelmed by people they have never seen before with different customs, religions, with different everything.”
Peta Credlin, who speaks directly to the conservative rank and file, said in this paper: “Trump’s speech wasn’t so much as a salvo as it was a bunker-busting bomb at the very epicentre of a global governance structure that is crippling Western civilisation.”

Credlin called it a “direct repudiation” of the two ideas that dominate the West – the climate change destruction of national energy sovereignty and barely controlled mass migration – ideas that much of the Liberal Party and the British Conservative Party have long accepted.
These are the new battle lines pointing to a conservative revolution. But a revolution going where?

Well might "Ned" ask in his rhetorical way, but the reptiles didn't have an answer, they just had more petulant Peta, Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses US President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations overnight. “In a truth bomb designed to burst open the bunker of global bureaucracy and control that is the UN headquarters in New York, Donald Trump’s speech last night didn’t miss,” Ms Credlin said. “It was a powerful speech designed to not only kill a few woke sacred cows but also to eat them in one of his famous burgers as well. “He’s clearly decided that he’s not going to die wondering whether he could’ve made a difference second time around in the White House.”

Meanwhile, King Donald's monster mouth might subvert his fascist attempt to use the Justice Department to lock up his foes ...

Donald Trump’s Mouth May Bring A Quick End To Charges Against Comey
The president’s statements and social media posts disparaging the former FBI director could persuade a judge that the case is a "vindictive" prosecution.

What's the chances that Comey now regrets helping out King Donald with Hillary's emails?

Never mind, back to "Ned" and the schismatics busy at their schisms...

The Liberals need a mainstream anchor that accepts the reality of decarbonisation, the need for effective but more limited immigration and an economic policy that rejects pervasive state power and renews individual enterprise.
Ley’s task is daunting and perhaps it is beyond her. It is to hold the Liberals together, beat back the extremes of the conservative revolution, but still find a way to channel this conservative momentum. The party is vulnerable in urban centres, once its heartland, and unless it appeals to these voters then the fears of marginalisation will be realised.
The mistake the conservatives keep making is their Trumpian insistence that the Liberals must seek maximum differentiation from Labor. Their real task, on the contrary, is to understand and reflect the Australian mainstream in its many different manifestations. Conservative echo chambers are the great distraction. In his interview with this paper done from Washington in mid-September, Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan, in charge of the energy and net zero review, offered a decisive pointer to the resolution of this internal party crisis. It seems to run as follows: nuclear is the key, in the US micro-reactors off an assembly line are now being planned to power data centres for AI, funded by huge private capital injections, with the Australian government able to take a supervisory golden share in operations.
It’s a new dynamic. The old Dutton nuclear plan goes. There are no government-constructed nuclear plants at old coal sites. There is no huge call on the public budget. The aim is to destroy any Labor scare campaign on public cost, as seen at the last election, while selling the idea that net zero can be achieved only with nuclear and that it will be cheaper than Labor’s model. In America the AI revolution, with its massive demand for energy, is already being tied into huge private investment in micro-reactors.
The plan is to roll out asap independent costings of Labor’s model and, down the track, the Coalition’s nuclear-oriented model. This reflects two essential strategic conclusions – that the Coalition must walk down the decarbonisation path and that it must devise a superior net-zero model to Labor. The plan is to give the Coalition a policy window to the future, not the past.
Ley has already said the Coalition will not legislate for net zero. Decoded, it will not mandate net zero. This provides flexibility to facilitate an internal political settlement. The hard line conservatives won’t buy this settlement. Hastie has been unwise enough to paint himself into a corner saying that unless net zero is rejected he goes to the backbench. Yet Ley cannot repudiate net zero, nor should a rational Liberal partyroom.

Cue a snap of persecuted Susssan, Sussan Ley’s task is to hold the Liberals together, beat back the extremes of the conservative revolution, but still find a way to channel this conservative momentum — perhaps it’s beyond her. Picture: NewsWire / Josie Hayden

"Ned" really began to wear on the pond by finding even more time for onion munching ...

It is disappointing that Abbott in his CPAC speech has reversed his position and called on the Coalition to drop the Morrison government policy of net zero at 2050, since just a few weeks ago he dismissed the debate, telling the author it was best to avoid theological issues. Now he hasn’t.
He told the conservative audience of net zero: “We have got to be against it.” Abbott wants the Liberals to stage yet another political war over climate change, saying they prevailed with this tactic at the 2010, 2013 and 2019 elections.
Beyond this Abbott offered a civilisational pitch for a new aggressive conservatism: “Our society is fragmenting. We have three flags, not one. Some 80 Labor-Green councils are refusing to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day. We have too many migrants and too many of them are living in Hotel Australia rather than joining Team Australia. And yet you can hardly blame them when we have a left establishment which is embarrassed about our Anglo-Celtic core culture and does not like our Judaeo-Christian ethos – even though it’s these things that have made us great.”

Oh for FFS, not the Anglo-Celtic core culture, and the Judaeo-Xian ethos in the one sentence! 

It was too much, peak prize maroon, and needing a cracking Crace to really sent it up.

I was compounded by the reptiles flinging in even more onion munching ... Former prime minister Tony Abbott has labelled the Albanese government's climate targets a political death warrant. The former PM is calling on the Liberals to drop support for net zero as the Coalition continues to stay divided over the issue. Speaking at CPAC Australia, Mr Abbott was pessimistic about Labor's climate target and warned of the potential consequences of chasing it. Mr Abbott claims the government is 'pedalling a false environmental apocalypse' and questioned the reliability of renewable energy.

The pond doesn't usually like matching fervent cartoons, but sometimes it's better to be out and proud ...

On and on "Ned" blathered about the onion muncher and the pastie Hastie ...

Abbott is broadly allied with Hastie but certainly not on board with everything Hastie says. That’s understandable given the pitches Hastie has made. On energy, Hastie, in an astonishing line, says he wants a price target. Taken at face value that can only mean replacing an emissions target and rejecting the Paris Agreement framework of emissions reduction targets. The emissions reduction targets approved by the Abbott government in 2015 ran through the Turnbull and Morrison governments.
Hastie’s critique of former Labor and Liberal governments, claiming they “let us down in the past by letting the car industry disappear”, is equally astonishing and untenable. Having the courage to end subsidies to an uncompetitive car industry is one of Abbott’s proudest economic achievements as prime minister. His famous line about the car companies was: “I said we were not going to chase them down the street waving a cheque book at them.”
Governments these days have a strategic role to play in industry policy. But Hastie’s limited ventures into policy by backing energy price targets and lamenting the loss of uncompetitive, government-subsidised industry, raise alarming signals about a retreat to the failed policies of the 1970s. Ley, backed by her key shadow economic ministers, Ted O’Brien in Treasury and James Paterson in finance, needs to get on the front foot, repudiate false ideas and keep articulating the economic principles that will guide the Liberal Party. While Hastie is rapidly becoming the darling of the pro-conservative media, his ideas loom as throwbacks to the past, not beacons to the future.
Hastie has spent 10 years preparing for his breakout: a decade as a backbencher, never a minister in the previous Coalition government and a term in what he felt was an opposition straitjacket imposed by Dutton. On display now are his ideological resolution, leadership ambition and political inexperience. The conservative spearheads, Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price are remarkable political assets to be mobilised for the Liberal Party. The question is whether their visions for the party can be accommodated within a relatively united centre-right Liberal Party.

Remarkable political assets? All the pond could do was remember the apple not falling that far from the creationist tree ...

But the reptiles insisted, flinging in a snap of The Price is Wrong, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, along with Hastie, are remarkable political assets to be mobilised for the Liberal Party. Picture: NewsWire/ Glenn Campbell

If that sort of flag-waving is an asset, is there a way to write it off?

It looked remarkably dumb to the pond, but what would the pond know?

And that at long last put an end to this "Ned" climb...

It’s true we now live in an age of populist politics and that’s a new ball game – witness the US and the Britain today – but there is no escaping the need to fashion policies that actually work and advance the country, not just represent a justified cultural attack on the centre-left.
Reflecting the orthodoxy, former Howard chief of staff and Liberal minister Arthur Sinodinos, alarmed at the disunity, had a crack on the ABC this week about the conservatives and the need for rational politics, saying: “What all these people should be doing on the frontbench, on the backbench of the Liberal Party, is putting their heads down and getting on with coming up with specific policies and keeping the government to account.”
What prospect of this?
Abbott is both a romantic and a brutal realist. In his interview with Inquirer this week, he highlighted the dilemma facing conservatives who are enthralled by Trump but recognise that he cannot be easily translated into Australia. Abbott said: “MAGA plays well in the American heartland, but it won’t translate to Australia. Each country is going to have to find its own way to deal with these issues, given our different circumstances and different institutional cultures.”

How discreet, how apparently aware that King Donald might not be for everyone, and yet nary a word about King Donald's latest thrust. 

For that you'll need the immortal Rowe ...