In which Polonius restores faith in herpetology studies, only for bonus "Ned" to remind students it's an Everest climb ....

 

One of the things that struck the pond hard this weekend on the noggin (weekends with the reptiles frequently feel like a domestic violence battering) is the complete lack of interest of events in the United States.

The reptiles did try to keep up with changing events, resulting in some splendid typos, and the poor old dog botherer jostled up against a contradictory message ...

It's almost as if they had given up all hope for the disunited states, while still trying to import assorted American diseases into an Australian setting.

If anyone wanted talk of the shutdown, best go to Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker, wringing her hands in Donald Trump’s Shutdown Power Play, The President learned in 2019 how to undercut Congress in a funding fight, and he’s been making the same move ever since.

Or The Atlantic's The Project 2025 Shutdown Is Here, It’s become another avenue to turn power into partisan gain.

Or just enjoy a 'toon:

Want any discussion of Pete and King Donald's recent display to the generals? 

Forget the bromancer, forget the rest of the reptile pack.

Perhaps instead worry about Dan Brooks agonising in The Atlantic, ‘Warrior Culture’ Offers a Lot, but Not Everything, A growing appreciation for hand-to-hand combat has permeated nearly all levels of American life. What does that mean?

Or just enjoy a few 'toons ...

Or what to think about Portlandia? 

Again it's there in The Atlantic, Portland’s ‘War Zone’ Is Like Burning Man for the Terminally Online, There’s more absurdity than menace on the city’s streets—at least for now.

Or perhaps just enjoy a few 'toons:

That's the 'toon portion of the Sunday meditation out of the way, and some might feel free to leave ... especially as the pond's sense of ennui and alienation from its herpetology studies continues ...(the pond will try to make amends with a late Sunday arvo mad monk edition).

Is there any upside at all continuing as a herpetology student?

It turns out there is, and all thanks to prattling Polonius, on hand to give the pond some Sunday meditative cheer ...

The header: Boyers line-up talks democracy, leans decidedly left, The ABC board chooses who will deliver the annual Boyer Lectures. This year the broadcaster will ‘partner’ with The Monthly. Can you imagine it doing so with, say, Quadrant?

The caption for that glum, sour-looking, resentful refugee from News Corp: ABC chairman Kim Williams before speaking at the Melbourne Press Club in April. ‘It is customary for the ABC chairman to be the lead concerning the choice of an Australian speaker or, in this instance, speakers’ for the Boyer Lectures. Picture: NewsWire / Diego Fedele

A correspondent recently pointed out that the pond had failed to note a singularity, which is to say a column by Polonius wherein there wasn't a single mention of the ABC.

Forgeddit, that was just an aberration, an abnormality, an anomaly, a freakish foible, an irregularity...

Polonius was back in form and firing on all ABC cylinders...

For evidence that the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster is out of touch and all but devoid of viewpoint diversity, look no further than the ABC’s senior management. The ABC board is appointed by the government, with the exception of the managing director and editor-in-chief (currently Hugh Marks) and staff-appointed director (currently Laura Tingle). The former is chosen by the ABC board; the latter by ABC staff.
Marks, as editor-in-chief, has the authority to make individual decisions with respect to the organisation’s journalism. In recent years no one in this position has done so with a successful outcome. It requires considerable intellectual courage to take on high-profile ABC presenters and producers.
However, it is the duty of the ABC board, under section 8 (i) of the Australian Broadcasting Act 1983, among other things, “to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism”. It is not evident that ABC boards through the years have upheld this requirement.
The ABC board does not – and should not – determine what journalists put to air (on radio and television) or online (in print). Like all boards, the ABC board’s essential role is to oversee the operations of the organisation. This includes ensuring that the organisation is acting in accordance with the ABC Act on a long-term basis.
There is only one specific role given to the board with respect to the public broadcaster’s output; namely, the choice of who will deliver the annual Boyer Lectures, which has been in existence since 1959. It is customary for the ABC chairman (currently Kim Williams) to be the lead concerning the choice of an Australian speaker or, in this instance, speakers.
On September 9, the ABC put out a statement entitled “2025 Boyer Lecture series examines Australia as a Radical Experiment in Democracy”. It continued: “Academics, writers and policy experts will explore Australia: A Radical Experiment in Democracy across a series of five orations for the 2025 Boyer Lecture series, hosted by its creative director Julia Baird.”
In the body of the media statement, however, Williams describes her position as that of an “interlocutor”. It seems that it will be more like the latter than the former. At the end of the statement, before the 2025 speakers were identified, the following comment is made: “In another first for the Boyers, the ABC will partner with The Monthly to expand on the reach and impact of the lecture series.”

The real, if unstated problem, is that nobody at the ABC thought to tap the Polonial shoulder, give him the nod, in the same way they never gave him a radio show or made him the centrepiece of some equivalent to B. A. Santamaria's Point of View.

How grand it would have been, perhaps modernised as Hendo's POV Prattle...

But sadly it's always the bridesmaid, never the ABC bride, never a Boyer for the Sydney Institute boyar ... The then ABC chairman, Sir Richard Boyer, after whom the lectures are named, in 1954. Picture: supplied

Instead Polonius has always been on the periphery, ever since he was given the boot because he was boring people to death on The Insiders. (That boredom continues apace without him).

No matter how he tried, no matter how he was always scribbling earnest messages ...

... there was no way back into his ABC Valhalla (how the pond loves the chance to run that First Dog, as fresh as when it first appeared back in April 2008)

Then came a moment when the pond understood the pique ...

It is not clear whether Williams and his other board members know (apart from Tingle) that The Monthly (editor-in-chief Erik Jensen; editor Michael Williams) is an avowedly left-wing magazine.
How about that? Can anyone imagine the ABC partnering with, say, a conservative magazine like Quadrant? Not on your nelly, as the saying goes.
It can only be assumed that Baird, as creative director of the 2025 Boyer Lectures, played a key role in choosing the five speakers for the 2025 series.
They are Justin Wolfers, the Australian-born professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan; John Anderson, former leader of the Nationals and deputy prime minister in the John Howard-led Coalition government; Larissa Behrendt, an Indigenous professor at the University of Technology Sydney; Amelia Lester, deputy editor of Foreign Policy magazine in Washington, DC; and James Curran, professor of modern history at the University of Sydney.

Say what? They went with a gormless doofus of the Gunny-dah Anderson kind? Blathering on about the West?

We want to nurture our nation’s Western intellectual and cultural heritage so that successive generations can appreciate and enjoy the benefits of those traditions, while giving careful consideration to proposals for change and improvement. Our culture is the most prosperous and free in human history, and we believe that is good reason to continue to cultivate it. 

No wonder Polonius was agitated. 

He could eat that sort of dribble for tea. It wasn't fair, what about his share?

Through gritted teeth at the counter of the corner store, he tried to be fair in his own way ...

All five are well qualified for the task of assessing Australian democracy. But it’s fair to say that four are left of centre or “progressives” (as left-of-centre types like to be called these days). And then there is Anderson, who seems to have been handed the role of the token conservative. How’s that for balance – of the ABC kind?

Yes, how's that for balance. They could have handed the role of token conservative to Polonius, and he would have been in like Flynn.

Instead he's left to stand on the sidelines, railing at the likes of Julia Baird. Picture: supplied

Always blame the woman ... fancy giving a gig to that hussy, and overlooking Polonius... the unfairness will never end:

The Monthly describes Baird as an ABC reporter as well as an author. She also writes a column for Nine’s The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Curran, who criticises the foreign policy of the Coalition and Labor from the left, is a columnist for Nine’s Australian Financial Review. No other media organisation gets a gong.
In the ABC statement, Williams declared that the 2025 Boyer series “will not consist of one thinker” but rather five speakers “with closely argued divergent viewpoints which Julia will then explore in conversation”. How naive can an ABC chairman get? There is scant viewpoint diversity among this lot.

Time to drag in the dog botherer ... Sky News host Chris Kenny says Indigenous leader Noel Pearson delivered the first of this year's Boyer lectures at the ABC. Mr Kenny said Mr Pearson advocates for a Voice to Parliament as an “overdue national reform” and not as an “identity politics cause”. “As Pearson outlined last night, too often this debate is about non-Indigenous people, conservatives versus progressives, and vice versa, trying to fight their culture wars over race issues,” Mr Kenny said. “Pearson’s been more instrumental than any other Indigenous leader in crystallising the idea of Indigenous recognition in the constitution through a Voice to Parliament. “Pearson's views carry great weight in Indigenous communities, in our capital cities, and with both sides of politics.”

Say what? Wasn't it one of the great achievements of the Murdochians to help kill off the Voice? And what's with the sudden arrival of that capital letter? 

Hasn't it been reptile policy to only talk of the voice? voice, voice, voice...

Never mind, on with bashing the allegedly clueless Baird ...

The October 2025 issue of The Monthly contains a 5000-word article by Baird titled “Watershed: How resilient is Australian democracy?” In it the author quotes primarily from left-of-centre academics and commentators along with the World Economic Forum – in addition to the five Boyer lecturers.
As far as I can work it out, all are inner-city, highly educated types who have scant connection with those of lesser means and formal education who live in the outer suburbs and regions. With the exception of the tertiary qualified, rural-based Anderson.
In her article, Baird runs the line that President Donald J. Trump is in the process of building “an authoritarian state, or a military or parliamentary that answers only to him – that puts him in total control”.

Well yes, and he's pretty far down the road, and in an impressively short time, but Polonius is the sort of fellow traveller you might have found back in the 1930s ...

Would that Polonius gets Krugmanned some day, Declining American Democracy: Trump is a Symptom, Not the Cause, The modern GOP is inherently authoritarian.

As for that other slur, so far as the pond can work out, isn't Polonius one of those very same inner-city, highly educated types who have scant connection with those of lesser means and formal education who live in the outer suburbs and regions?

Or has he shifted the Sydney Institute to Gunny-dah, and the pond just didn't spot the shift?

Then he would have been amongst his own rustic kind including: Former Nationals deputy prime minister John Anderson in 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

And  they could have blathered on about Western Civilisation together.

Then it was on to a final gobbet ...

From this, Baird argues that “Australian democracy is at a watershed”. What a load of tosh. As to the United States, Trump is a long, long way from attaining “total control” even if he wanted to do so. Moreover, democracy in Australia is functioning well.
Perhaps Williams might have broken with tradition this year and invited British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to deliver the Boyer Lectures. In his speech this week to the British Labour Party conference, Starmer appealed to voters outside of BBC viewers and listeners and Guardian readers.
Starmer indicated that he understood the problems faced by working people, supported those who were proudly flying the Union Jack, acknowledged that Britain had placed too much faith in globalisation, stated that those who wanted secure frontiers were not racist – and more besides. He also criticised Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and, to a lesser extent, the Conservatives led by Kemi Badenoch.
Starmer’s patriotic sentiments are unlikely to be heard at the 2025 Boyer Lectures – beyond Anderson’s (token) contribution – as the ABC continues to be an essentially conservative-free zone.

By golly it's a measure of how Starmer has slipped in the world that Polonius should nominate him as a way of correcting lethal leftist bias in the ABC

And there you have it, Polonius in full post-irony mode. 

And showing such restraint. 

Only in the very last line did Polonius hit his shortcut key stroke and deliver an astonishing punchline, which the pond confesses it has never heard once before ... the ABC continues to be an essentially conservative-free zone. (but wouldn't be if they gave Sir Keir a guernsey)

Nah, the pond hasn't heard it once, the pond has heard it at least a million times before ...and still cries itself to sleep at night for not having scored a dollar each time Polonius dropped the line ...

Here, have a cartoon to celebrate ...

And so to other business.

The pond dropped the ball yesterday and didn't provide a bonus reptile.

Perhaps anyone attempting to climb the "Ned" Everest will realise why ...

The header: Multiculturalism’s best days over, challenge to find a unifying voice, Labor could embrace Noel Pearson’s national story – ‘powerful because it is true, inclusive and easily understood’ – but it fears any change on multiculturalism will hurt its migrant vote.

The caption for the thankfully uncredited collage, showing yet again the decline and fall of the Oz graphics department: Australia has been remarkably successfully in managing diversity but political extremes now threaten the social order.

Don't say that there was no warning. Eleven minutes of a "Ned" Everest climb, for so the reptiles clocked it, is incredibly dangerous, with the oxygen getting thinner by the line ...(it turns out that was nothing, what with the late arvo onion muncher special featuring a full 19 minutes of slavering and slobbering and unctuous pandering).

"Ned" began with a quote...

‘There was an aura of racism in this place they called the lucky country. It lingered in my parents’ clothes and in the greyness of their faces at the end of the long day’s work. Like the malodorous stench of a heavy smoker’s breath. And yet, like the hundreds of thousands who had come across the seas before them and the millions who would come after them, my parents understood that this was part of the Australian migrant experience.”
– Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly, July 30, 2025

And that was pretty much the end of any insight, as "Ned" plunged into the deep end of the pool ...

Multiculturalism in Australia remains strong – yet it is damaged. For the past two years Labor in office has said remarkably little about multiculturalism while our cities, symbolic icons and many suburbs have been engulfed in protests that involve hatred, support for violence and terrorism, the elevation of Middle East conflicts into our heartland and, more recently, hostility at the large migrant numbers with demands for cuts, more selectivity and more cohesion in immigration.

This sort of reptile outing is a not so covert way of giving space to the dark, ugly side, and sure enough, Protesters hold a banner during a ‘March for Australia’ anti-immigration rally in Melbourne in August. Picture: William West / AFP

And there goes the NSW hospital system...

"Ned" started out by giving a token nod to the pesky, difficult, uppity furriners ...

Labor’s new minister, Anne Aly, has ambitious plans to inject “more meaning” into multiculturalism. “I want it to apply to everybody,” she told Inquirer. That means retaining its emphasis on “cultural symbols, food, dance, traditional dress” but deepening the concept so it relates to “every Australian regardless of who you are, who your parents are, where you were born or where your parents were born”.
Aly says multiculturalism must become integral “to the character of our nation” and a living expression of “who we are”. 

But then came the billy goat butts, dressed up as "yets", or even invading yetis ...

This is high ambition and high risk. It is a response to a society becoming more fractured by economic and cultural pressures.
Surveys show multiculturalism is widely accepted as a “feel-good” sentiment – yet it is plagued by multiple meanings. The paradox is that the more multiculturalism is discussed, the more contentious it looks. In reality, the multicultural agenda is frayed; more grants to ethnic groups won’t suffice any more in a complex world where multiculturalism seems to run everywhere but achieve less.
The Albanese government commissioned a major review of multiculturalism but its 2024 report sank with little impact. Most of its proposals to promote cultural diversity and further entrench multiculturalism were overlooked. Now the concept faces fresh challenges from the breakdown of social cohesion and the global rise of patriotism manifested in a new emphasis on state power, national security and citizenship loyalty – trends that will run for years.
The upshot is likely to be another bout over multicultural meaning. As community divisions increase, the orthodoxy represented by Aly is to renew and deepen the idea – yet the contrary view is that multiculturalism has been derailed, that it is far too much about diversity and not enough about Australian unity.

Not enough? That's all the pond cops daily from the reptiles together with genocide and ethnic cleansing denialism, mixed with the heady brew of neo-Nazis, ‘March for Australia’ protesters clash with pro Palestine protesters in the Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne. Picture: Brendan Beckett; Many people were shocked at the recent sight of a neo-Nazi speaking on the steps of the Victorian parliament. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Conflict and division are the reptiles' business model. 

So it is at Faux Noise in the disunited states, and so it is down under, especially on Sky Noise ... not to mention the tabloids of the Daily Terror and Currish Snail kind ...

The pond gets why the reptiles are fascinated by Nazis, having just sat through a Gresahm College lecture Hitler, Jesus & How to Win a Culture War

"Ned" got into the good people on both sides routine ...

There is no disputing the facts of diversity. In Australia today 31 per cent of our people were born overseas – one of the highest rates of any industrialised nation – far higher than the US at 15 per cent and higher than any major European nation. Australia has been remarkably successfully in managing such diversity.
But political extremes now threaten the social order. Many people were shocked at the recent sight of a neo-Nazi speaking on the steps of the Victorian parliament draped in the national flag. The far right is organising. Former Labor minister Ed Husic said: “I haven’t seen a good fascist yet.” But Anthony Albanese offered a more nuanced view, saying there were also “good people” in the anti-immigration protests of two months ago.

Been there, done that ...

The reptiles doubled down on the need to suppress any talk of genocide and ethnic cleansing ... Assistant Deputy Commissioner Peter McKenna has addressed the media as NSW Police face increased pressure to block a pro-Palestine march on the Sydney Opera House to mark two years of the Israel-Palestine conflict. “Lodge this matter in the Supreme Court, objecting to this particular public assembly at the Opera House,” Mr McKenna said. “In discussions with the applicants, we have put to them alternate routes.”

"Ned" took up the chant ...

In coming days the Palestine Action Group wants a symbolic march going to the Sydney Opera House closely coinciding with the second anniversary of the October 7 massacres of Israelis, a provocative request certain to dismay much of the community. For two years our main cities have been filled with legitimate pro-Palestinian marches yet riven with anti-Semitism and calls for the elimination of the state of Israel. One group of Australians displaying hatred for another group of Australians – traducing our multiculturalism – with our political elites largely struck dumb and many people wondering what has happened to their country.
Many so-called champions of multiculturalism chose silence, thinking that playing down such division might be the best response. That was folly, but it revealed something else: the vulnerability of our multicultural compact when put under real political pressure.

Didn't he mean to scribble, under real Murdochian pressure? Cue a shocking sight, at least to reptile eyes, A pro-Palestine march at the University of Sydney in June 2024. Picture: Noah Yim / The Australian.

"Ned" blathered on ...

The post-October 7 ruptures are about the entire country and mock its claim to tolerance in diversity. Multicultural progressives have been exposed for their ethical failures – witness the weakness of university leaders, the tolerance of many artistic institutions for cultural prejudice, the anti-Semitism of the Greens political party and the betraying of its mission by the Australian Human Rights Commission. The lesson: you cannot be selective with multiculturalism. The public sees through the hypocrisy at work. This penetrates to a deeper dilemma: multiculturalism is strong on the surface but weak underneath.
Consider results from the Scanlon Foundation 2024 Mapping Social Cohesion report. It found 71 per cent of people agreed that accepting migrants from different countries made Australia stronger and more than four in five agreed that multiculturalism had been good for Australia. Plenty of optimism there. The results were buoyant despite 49 per cent of people saying immigration levels are too high, a view that would have intensified during 2025.
But there is another story. The report says the current climate “appears to be taking a toll on Australia”. People feel “more negatively and less positively towards people of different faiths and multiculturalism generally”.

It's true. Each day the pond feels more negatively, less positively, about a foreign corporation acting as an incitement for hate and division.

Cue another snap, Multicultural Affairs minister Anne Aly wants to cast the multicultural net as wide as possible. Picture: NewsWire/ Gaye Gerard

"Ned" decided to find new and novel ways to fear and loathe ...

If multiculturalism is about public funding for ethnic culture – and this is a central theme – then that is strongly opposed. Only 35 per cent of people agree that “ethnic minorities in Australia should be given Australian government assistance to maintain their customs and traditions”. A total of 63 per cent disagree or strongly disagree. This points to a singular rejection of a core multicultural principle.
It is beyond time to face reality: multiculturalism is here forever, but it cannot provide the narrative of Australian identity that the country wants and desires.
After nearly 50 years this should be obvious.
Opposition legal affairs spokesman, Liberal MP and multicultural backer Julian Leeser goes to the essence, telling Inquirer: “People born overseas see multiculturalism as a sign they have a place in the Australian story, and that’s important. But if we are going to succeed as a cohesive society, we need agreement on a central narrative story about Australia and I believe the best story is Noel Pearson’s three strands about our identity: the Indigenous heritage, the British foundation and the multicultural character.

Inevitably the lesser Leeser was given a snap ... Julian Leeser likes the three strands in Noel Pearson’s story: Indigenous heritage, British foundation and the multicultural character. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman;Noel Pearson’s narrative ‘is powerful because it is true, inclusive and easily comprehended’. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

On with an inspired "Ned" ...

“I think this fits with how most people see our country. It gives each strand the prominence it deserves. Through the education system and public campaigns the Pearson strands should become the cohesive narrative about our country. In my view the coming apart of Australia and Western societies generally has been because of the lack of a central narrative and that needs to be bolstered in our country.”
The Pearson narrative is powerful because it is true, inclusive and easily comprehended. It succeeds as a national story where multiculturalism, standing alone, will never succeed.
It is disappointing that the Labor Party largely shuns the Pearson formula. Labor could easily embrace it as our identity story. But it’s frightened because multiculturalism is chained to its voting tactics. The party fears any change on multiculturalism will hurt Labor with the migrant vote.
Aly is a fascinating appointment as Multicultural Affairs Minister in the cabinet. Born in Egypt, the child of migrant parents who fought for acceptance against discrimination and racism, she has powerful memories about those battles faced by her family and herself. Yet she has mellowed.
After her appointment, Aly said: “Whenever I’m asked if I think Australia is a racist country, I have to stop and think.” Reflecting on the experiences of her parents, she said: “If Australia was not lucky for them, surely it would be for their offspring.”

Cue another snap, because the reptiles can never get enough of that salute, Neo-Nazis in a recent protest against a proposed increase to immigration. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Not to worry, remember there are good people on both sides ...

When I asked Aly about racism, she said: “I think it is wrong to categorise Australia as a racist country. There are racist elements in Australia, there has been a racist tendency in Australia for a very, very long time. I think there are frequent eruptions of racism bubbling to the surface, and that worries me, it disturbs me, that is the challenge to social cohesion but Australians, by and large, have always come together and rejected racism.”
Aly wants to cast the multicultural net as wide as possible. She says she believes in a multiculturalism that “respects people’s different cultural traditions” but promotes “a strong sense of belonging in Australia as well” and that’s where the sense of unity comes in.
Fundamental to the multicultural issue is whether the politicians and elites are on side with the people. In his recent data point column in the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch published devastating survey results for European countries showing politicians “have become misaligned from the public on immigration and integration”.

Despite there being very little evidence that asylum seekers are more inclined to commit crimes than citizens, whether in the disunited states or down under, there's always a way to defame them, An Ethiopian asylum seeker, was convicted of sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl sparked angry protests outside the hotel near London where he and other migrants were being housed.

Cf this now old report in pdf form ...

And so on, and inevitably "Ned" wasn't interested in that sort of data ... he brought his own kind of data to what should have been at worst a knife fight...

On the question “immigrants should be required to adapt to the customs of this country”, public agreement ran at 87 per cent in the UK, 75 per cent in Germany, 74 per cent in The Netherlands and 61 per cent in Sweden. Yet the numbers for politicians on the same question were respectively: 47 per cent, 33 per cent, 43 per cent and 34 per cent.
Australia is not Europe. Our situation is different. The gap between the political class and the public in Australia is probably not as large. Yet the issue remains: the evidence is that in Western democracies on the question of immigration and integration, the politicians are far removed from public attitudes. Australia needs to beware.
The Scanlon survey shows in July 2024, 34 per cent of adults said they had a somewhat or very negative attitude towards Muslims, the survey calling this a “significant number”. The comparable figure for Jews was 13 per cent.
That Anthony Albanese felt obliged to appoint two special envoys, Jillian Segal to combat anti-Semitism and Aftab Malik to combat Islamophobia, testified to a damaged multiculturalism and social order that demanded special measures.
Both envoys have delivered reports – still awaiting a detailed government response – with radical recommendations. Segal said the “foundation of our nation” was at risk, that Jewish people faced fearful and disrupted lives, that anti-Semitism had become “ingrained and normalised within academia and the cultural space”, that legal, educational, police and government action was required, and went as far as recommending that universities engaged in anti-Semitic behaviour be liable for funding cuts.
Malik said Muslim Australians had “silently endured hatred, abuse, prejudice and violence for far too long”, that Islamophobia was “a pervasive and at times terrifying reality”, that it was being normalised in Australia from public places to social media. This was tied into racism and misunderstandings of Islam as a religion. Malik said Islamophobia was “not a Muslim issue but a social cohesion issue” for all Australians.

Cue a snap of the messenger, Islamophobia envoy Aftab Mali said Muslim Australians had 'endured hatred, abuse, prejudice and violence for far too long'.

Now to shoot, or at least undermine, the message ...

He recommended commissions of inquiry, sweeping changes in government, grants to combat Islamophobia, new laws to protect freedom of religion, action to curb racism and Islamophobia in educational institutions, workplaces, media and sport, along with an untenable proposal for “codes of conduct” for all parliamentarians and training in how to manage Islamophobia.
These envoys are dealing with a social cohesion crisis that extends far beyond multiculturalism, yet also goes to the heart of a multiculturalism failure. The standard multicultural remedies – more support and more funds for diverse communities – look feeble in the face of cultural, religious and ethnic tensions rooted abroad but spilling into our community.
What does the future hold given the huge size of net overseas migration numbers? The old refrain that the tensions in the home country must not be transposed to Australia now look obsolete. Have you visited a capital city at a weekend?
The Scanlon Social Cohesion Report involved 8000 people in a survey buttressed by interviews. A new set of questions was introduced to probe what people think is important to be truly Australian. The results show people to be broadly inclusive and to see Australian identity in expansive terms.
For example, Australianness was only weakly related to being born in this country, testifying to our migrant tradition. Religion, in this case mainly Christianity, was relatively unimportant in Australian nationality. English language and sharing Australian customs and traditions (though undefined) rated as important.
A total of 86 per cent of people said “in the modern world, maintaining the Australian way of life and culture is important”. But the report warns: “The extent of national pride and belonging has declined significantly over time.”
The proportion of people taking great pride in the Australian way of life and culture has declined 14 percentage points since July 2020 while the proportion who have a greater sense of belonging in Australia has declined 16 percentage points since July 2020.
Such sentiments can be driven by many factors, from financial hardship to distrust of elites. But multiculturalism is integral to the mix.

What's also integral to the mix?

A foreign owned corporation peddling hate speech on a daily basis.

To quote the keen Keane scribbling in Crikey at some length ...

...What the Liberal Party itself needs to understand is that News Corp is a foreign-owned communications business, with its own agenda of fostering hatred, resentment and division in order to sell advertising and subscriptions. Its alliance with the Liberals is in pursuit of those goals — not in pursuit of good policy. Its best interests are those of the Murdochs and other shareholders that are paramount to News Corp’s business model (which, let us remember, pays not a single cent of tax in Australia), not those of Australians.
That’s why News Corp will always encourage the Liberals to pursue policies that punch downward, that divide and alienate, that are about culture wars targeting minorities. We can complain about the toxic effects of fostering division and resentment, but in the words of that eminent statesman, Michael Corleone, it’s not personal, Sonny, it’s strictly business.
That means that any Liberal who wants to be in the business of unifying Australians (News Corp is always bleating about policies that are “divisive” but strangely silent on the benefits of bringing Australians together) will automatically face pushback from News Corp. And any failure to aggressively pursue culture wars will be regarded as evidence of weakness — not because culture wars work politically, but because they fire up Sky News’, The Australian’s and the News Corp tabloids’ angry, old, white audiences.
But that’s only the start of the way News Corp undermines the Liberals’ capacity to engage meaningfully with the electorate. The company and its pundits have a wildly inflated self-belief in their understanding of ordinary Australians. Its editors, journalists and commentators are even whiter and older than those of other media outlets (myself included). They are every bit the chattering class elitists they rail at, living in wealthy suburbs and enjoying above-average incomes or, in the case of executives, wildly inflated salaries. They have no understanding of the lot of ordinary working Australians, especially in the outer suburbs of our cities, which are good only for car crash and crime stories, and especially not Australians from migrant or non-English-speaking backgrounds.
Result: the policies, priorities and tactics they believe the Liberals should pursue only reflect the interests of those of their affluent background, not of people living in the real world. They’re people who actually think sitting through a Welcome to Country is an outrageous infringement of their rights that should be centre-stage in an election campaign, rather than the cost of living or economic precarity.
As a foreign-controlled company, News Corp is also a vector for foreign political ideas. In particular, it is a conduit for ideas from the United States’ deeply toxic and polarised political environment, including conspiracy theories and culture war obsessions. The story of the now decades-long climate denialism of the Liberal Party is only explicable in terms of News Corp’s relentless denialism and importation of the tactics of fossil fuel companies. The war on “woke” is a Made In USA fabrication imported here by News Corp. So too the ongoing assault on trans people. Conspiracy theories about election tampering — still being peddled by the Coalition on the weekend — and elite cabals plotting to destroy the country are all funnelled into Australia via News Corp.
And as more than just Crikey are now pointing out, News Corp ensures that Liberal leaders and frontbenchers are permanently enfeebled when it comes to selling policies. News Corp creates a bubble in which every Liberal policy is brilliant, every announcement or tactic is a masterstroke, in which no Liberal leader can ever put a foot wrong. Only after an election defeat does the mask temporarily come off, and its pundits and journalists reveal what a shambolic, incompetent show they were advertising all along

Well yes, all that and more, with their relentless demonising jihads (when it's not migrants or Muslims, it's TG folk), but of course that's something "Ned" could ever contemplate ...as the reptiles slipped in another downer (not his lordship) ... 'The extent of national pride and belonging has declined significantly over time,' the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s 2024 Mapping Social Cohesion report warns. Picture: Luis Ascui/NewsWire

And so another entirely meaningless image turns  up ...and "Ned" seized the moment to heighten confusion and concern, fear being the best source of uncertainty and division ...

The tension in multiculturalism has long been recognised: can diversity promote unity or does diversity over time lead to national division? The word itself implies many cultures. But promoting many cultures is incompatible with the rising demands for national unity and social cohesion in the West.

A critic of multiculturalism, Peter Kurti, from the Centre for Independent Studies, said: “The current crisis of multiculturalism almost certainly warrants renewed emphasis on the importance of the commitment to the nation’s norms, laws and institutions.

Hang on, hang on, how did that foreign-sounding name get into the mix?

The pond was so alarmed it raced off to Ancestry to check the source of the surname ...and sure enough ...

Albanian: from the Albanian Muslim personal name Kurt (definite form Kurti) of Turkish origin from kurt ‘wolf’.
Hungarian (Kürti): habitational name for someone from Kürt or several other places such as Tiszakürt, Hejőkürt, Hidaskürt, Nemeskürt named with kürt, a Turkic name for a Hungarian tribe.

Eek, wasn't Albania at war with Azerbaijan?  Didn't King Donald sort that one out?

Couldn't he at least have changed it to a Germanic-sounding Kurt?

Never mind, the air is starting to get really thin on this Everest climb ...

“This problem will not be addressed by the creation and funding of more multicultural bodies and policies, for this is to assume fundamental social and cultural attitudes can be shaped by institutional bureaucracies alone. A lingering concern is that today’s generation of political leaders have been formed by immersion in a 50-year program of cultural pluralism and diversity, so are ill-equipped to provide the leadership so urgently required.”
Australian multiculturalism has pivoted on a political compact: the customs and traditions of migrants can be preserved, promoted and championed providing migrants, in turn, integrate into the core democratic, citizenship and legal norms of the Australian way.
Its essence was conditionality. It was a balance of rights and obligations. This compact was made explicit under the Hawke government in the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, spearheaded by Sir James Gobbo, later Victoria’s governor. The Hawke policy championed a right to ethnic and cultural heritage, but only within an obligation to Australian unity.

So to the real nub of reptile discontent, the notion of noting a genocide and ethnic cleansing in progress, Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Sydney’s CBD overnight for a snap protest in support of those on the Gaza Sumud Flotilla.

"Ned" continued his sabotage ...

But over the decades this framework has collapsed. The diversity side has thrived and the unity side has withered. This was obvious in the 2024 report of the Multicultural Framework Review commissioned by the Albanese government. This showed an evolving multiculturalism around the idea of inclusivity – but an inclusivity of everyone, from Indigenous people to the LGBTI community to virtually every minority group. Multiculturalism is being asked to do far more but coming from a weaker position.
The warning from the Scanlon survey is pertinent: “High levels of support for multiculturalism and diversity do not necessarily translate to support for practical action.”
Pragmatism dictates two conclusions. First, multiculturalism is here to stay. During the 1990s there was a debate about an alternative framing but that has faded away. Indeed, in The Weekend Australian of August 30-31, 1997, the author suggested that “Multiculturalism” be replaced with “Many Races, One Culture”, an idea presumably that wouldn’t fly today.
In June this year, Kurti said: “It is highly unlikely that multiculturalism and the policies that underpin it will ever be undone in Australia. Over the past 60 or 70 years there has been too great a commitment on the part of the governments and communities of this country.”
Neither Labor nor the Coalition would consider dumping multiculturalism since the backlash from legions of ethnic voters would finish their electoral chances. The idea seems embedded in Australia’s institutional, social and political life.
The second conclusion, however, is that the utility of multiculturalism as a guide to policy is in decline. The nation has travelled far since the Malcolm Fraser era with its original multicultural institutions. The author recalls Fraser telling him in the 1983 campaign that he regarded the development of multiculturalism as his greatest achievement as prime minister.
But a diverse Australia has diverse beliefs. The task now is the political management of differ­ences within a civil and stable society. And that can be helped by having as the central identity narrative the Pearson formula: Indigenous heritage, British foundation and multicultural character.

Oh just bugger off with the blather about the "British foundation."

What about the convict foundation? What about the Irish foundation, begorrah?

The pond had to endure that claptrap about the British while listening to harrowing tales of Cromwell in Ireland.

It was the Irish that gave Australia its distinctive lack of Brit snobbery and posh airs, it was the Irish that helped enshrine mateship as a concept, and it's a crying shame that a Kelly can be caught tugging his forelock and bending his knee to the Poms ...

The pond can hear the Kings of Uí Maine rolling in their graves ...

Sorry bushranger Ned, such is life, and the perils of reading "Ned" ..

What a needless, useless bonus.

And so to celebrate the end of this almost endless wank with news from America ... (audio only)

And this, amazingly, was what that still was referencing, another King Donald tribute offered to the world, posted to his Truth Social account...

Polonius probably missed it, lucky, because even he might have got a fright ...

In which a worn-down pond could only come up with the Ughmann ...

 

The pond came across a message of hope in Politico some days ago...

The Kremlin Shut Down His Comedy Show. He Has Some Advice for US Talk Show Hosts., “This is a test,” says Russian satirist Viktor Shenderovich.

Trump hated it when Alec Baldwin portrayed him on Saturday Night Live. Putin despised the Putin puppet on “Kukly.” Why can’t autocrats take a joke?
Because laughter can’t be put on trial. [19th century Russian novelist and political satirist Nikolai] Gogol said that even those who fear nothing fear laughter. Because in a totalitarian state, you can crush the courts, you can crush elections; you can crush everything. But you can’t crush laughter.
If a caricature cracks people up, it’s because it rings true. It means the truth is hidden inside the joke. And it is absolutely irrefutable, laughter is a verdict. Laughter is public and obvious evidence that you are wrong, that you are ridiculous.
Satire is the sharpest instrument of free speech. And the first thing all dictators do is crack down on freedom of speech.

There's a lot more at the link, including the puppet saga ...

For anyone who watched Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in the early 2000s, the Trump administration’s crackdown on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show immediately brought to mind an incident from early in the Russian autocrat’s presidency: the forced cancelation of a popular satirical puppet show called “Kukly.”
As one of his first acts as president, Putin pressured an independent TV network to shut down the show, which mercilessly mocked Russia’s leading political players using grotesque puppets that caricatured both their features and their dirty dealings. For a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians could tune into Kukly and laugh at their leaders. In one memorable episode, Boris Yeltsin rocks a cradle containing a demonic baby Putin and laments his role in putting him in power. Tens of millions of Russians were watching.
The comedic genius behind “Kukly” was Viktor Shenderovich, who helmed the show from 1994-2002 and gained a following akin to that of Jon Stewart — that is, if Jon Stewart also ran “The Muppet Show.” Even after the show’s cancellation (and the subsequent shuttering of the NTV network that screened it), Shenderovich continued to live and work in Russia, becoming a prominent anti-Putin critic on the radio station Ekho Moskvy. He only fled the country in December 2021, shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after the Kremlin designated him a “foreign agent” and he faced libel charges from a Putin ally.

The pond still has the faint hope that mocking the reptiles can't be crushed, and that laughter remains, even if only a Reader's Digest cliché, the best medicine.

Sure The Simpsons has long been a waste of space ... but other jokesters in other places arise to take its place.

It's not like the pond spends time with the reptiles for the money, not like some others ...

The American comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, who boycotted the festival, posted screenshots of what she said were parts of the contract. According to the posts, organizers prohibited “any material considered to degrade, defame, or bring into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, embarrassment, or ridicule” the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Any jokes about the Saudi royal family, or any religions, were also forbidden.
One comedian, Tim Dillon, was upfront about how money had been a motivating factor to perform. Mr. Dillon — who was later dropped by organizers after making slavery jokes about migrant workers in the kingdom — said he was offered $375,000 and that others had received up to $1.6 million.

There goes the pond's atheism again, already being hounded by King Donald and his minions

The pond is just doing it for the lolz, and that's why the pond continues to take its medicine... on the basis that laughter, no matter that it's a Reader's Digest cliché, remains the best medicine, and that's why the pond plunges back into the hive mind on a daily basis ...

What are the yoicks this day?

Tally-ho, the pond cried, but no sooner had the hounds began to howl than the scales fell from the pond's eyes ...

Sad to say, the reptiles have become a caricature of themselves, and this day's caricatures already carried the stench of too much familiarity.

The breaking Hamas news pushed some items down the page, which is just as well.

What to make of this wife-beating (why do they like it? why won't they stop?) story with all the prejudice naked in the headline?

Greens leader Larissa Waters ignores pleas to stop ‘destructive’ renewables projects, despite some of her senators backing opponents
Larissa Waters appears to be resisting a push, including within her own party, for Greens to ‘call out’ renewables projects that damage biodiversity. Some of her senators are not so shy.
By Matthew Denholm

Dame Slap could be seen, banging on her usual self-hating, gender-bigoted way ...

INQUIRER by Janet Albrechtsen
The campus gender crisis no one wants to talk about
They’re losing ground by degrees. The disparity in male university enrolments relative to girls marks a dramatic reversal in educational equality that should ring alarm bells.

The pond didn't want to talk about it, and left her in that strange land Planet Janet - to be found, some say, above the faraway tree - to sound the gender alarums in her usual way.

With Dame Slap out of the way, the pond realised it was cutting off nose to spite face, this being cliché day.

The alternatives were truly dismal ...

There was the pasty Hastie story ...

EXCLUSIVE
Andrew Hastie quits Sussan Ley’s team over migration freeze-out
After months of tensions between the Opposition Leader and the former senior soldier, Mr Hastie called Ms Ley on Friday morning to tell her he was resigning from the frontbench and that he could not be tied to her expectations.
By Richard Ferguson and Geoff Chambers

Migrant bashing? The pond had thought it was about the urgent need to nuke the country ... Shadow minister Andrew Hastie says he will be 'without a job' if Liberals don't abandon net zero

So hard to keep up and to what avail, because everybody knows where this is heading, with the onion muncher no doubt a heady inspiration ...

Never mind, all that meant was that the pond's backing of the lettuce was looking like a sound investment ...

Speaking of the onion muncher, the narcissistic mad monk lurched out of the waters in Colonel Kurtz style to demand attention be paid ...

What a terrifying, deeply disturbing sight. It makes the shark in Jaws look like a pretty amiable feller.

What a complete turn off ...

‘I’m not saying we’re perfect’: Tony Abbott tells his Australian story
In a new history of Australia, the former prime minister has written a fresh perspective on the story of our great nation. Even his harshest critics are impressed.
By Nicholas Jensen

Even his harshest critics, you spineless lickspittle?

The hagiographic tone was to much for the pond, but the pond does wish those who embark on the journey a strong stomach and the ability to cope with the stench of onion eating.

The pond did a quick search to discover who these "harshest critics" but none hovered into view. It was just a cheap rhetorical device, and nstead there was a wasteland of supine devotees ...

The pond even baulked at "Ned's" Everest climb ...

Multiculturalism’s best days over, challenge to find a unifying voice
Labor could embrace Noel Pearson’s national story – ‘powerful because it is true, inclusive and easily understood’ – but it fears any change on multiculturalism will hurt its migrant vote.
By Paul Kelly

Using Aboriginal voices to carry on the campaign against migrants, diversity and such like is a new, deeply contemptible low, and it's remarkable that "Ned" should use his alleged gravitas as a senior reptile to honour the smear ...

And that was just over in the "news" section ...

Over on the far right was just as exhausting ...

The bromancer did reappear as expected, but only to ignore King Donald's and tat Pete's antics, and instead to blather on about his favourite topic ...

Demolishing the demented logic of Western anti-Semitism
There are only 16 million Jews in the world, so why are they so important to the West? It’s an insanity of our education system that so many don’t know the answer.
By Greg Sheridan

The bromancer did take a brief trip out to the far right reefs ...

Anti-Semitism among the American Right
Now there’s a new and dangerous outbreak of anti-Semitism on the American Right. It’s born of the interaction of several factors. A number of figures on the right, such as Carlson and Owens, have had tremendous success on social media. On social media the algorithms promote and reward novelty, extremism, intensity of opinion and transgression.
This, plus the collapse in authority of traditional institutions, creates an environment ready-made for conspiracy theories. Join this to the blind, almost mad, extreme isolationism of some parts of the Trump coalition, which is radically different from the simple distaste for needless foreign entanglements involved in the rational version of Trump’s America First, and you get endless new conspiracy theories involving Israel and Jews.
Israel keeps manipulating Washington into costly Middle East engagements, in this view. Beyond all this, the critique of liberal America among some right-wingers has become so intense it’s almost a hatred of modern America itself. And American Jews are an essential part of the story of modern America, which some on the right now hate.
And then the left having made such a grotesque fetish of race, some on the right are embracing the idea of a persecuted white race. So Jews once more are abused on racial grounds.
Trump himself shows no sign of being influenced by this madness. He is solidly pro-Israel. But he and Vice-President JD Vance don’t smack it down. Carlson, some of whose broadcasts lie somewhere between mad and disgusting, is still a valued part of the MAGA coalition even as he espouses policies directly opposed to Trump.

But likely the pond will never hear from the bro on that other matter ...

The dog botherer took a different angle, but was in the same turf ...

World turns on Israel as Hamas achieves its aims
It’s the footage our own Prime Minister once admitted he had not viewed. The Islamists’ barbaric strategy has delivered what they wanted at an unconscionable cost.
By Chris Kenny

Some might cut the dog botherer some slack because the breaking Hamas news caught him on the wrong foot, but the fool is always on the wrong foot... so the pond was inclined to tiptoe by ...

And then there was gormless gherkin Nick who seems in recent times to have decided that the way to beat the reptiles is to join them with some flag-waving ...

It’s time the centre-left reclaimed patriotism
If centre-left politicians and activists appear embarrassed by expressions of national pride, they gift patriotism to the ugliest causes: bigotry, greed or authoritarianism.
By Nick Dyrenfurth

The pond thought about giving him a go but the sight of all those Union Jacks in the opening snap put the pond right off ...

So how's the republic push going Nick?

Yeah nah ... you can have King Chuck, and the pond will go flag wave elsewhere.

But then the pond suddenly realised it had boxed itself into a corner.

Sure there was plenty of nonsense for correspondents to feast on in the archive cornfield, but the only story left standing early in the morning was the Ughmann doing some bog standard renewables bashing.

With a deep sigh and heavy reluctance, the pond went down that wretched path ...

The header: Information campaign really a war on dissent, The campaign against climate and energy ‘misinformation and disinformation’ is really a war on dissent. If the alarmists win, it will be your freedom that goes out with the lights.

The caption: Protesters outside the Federal Court in Melbourne in 2022. Santos was appealing to restart drilling in the Barossa gas project, located near the Tiwi Islands off the northern coast of Australia. The court found the Environmental Defenders Office’s cultural mapping of Tiwi Islanders’ underwater cultural heritage lacking in integrity. Picture: Tamati Smith/Getty Images

The pond has pounded the herpetology 101 books pretty heavily this week, and felt disinclined to conduct any argument with the Ughmann.

He's been here before many times, and the pond has been with him. 

Not in spirit, but in regurgitating his spewing ...

The best that could be hoped is that Graham Readfearn might have a read in due course, and have a go, in the way that Readfearn had a go at the Daily Terror in News Corp embraces fantasy genre by turning climate crisis into 'laughable' science fiction.

The Ughmann started with a feeble attempt at word invention, but it was so pathetic the pond felt suddenly proud to call him an Ughmann ....

We need a word for parliamentarians who demand the power to determine what constitutes myths and lies when politicians are the source of most of them. How about “shampires”?

"Shampires"?

Is there a gong handy? That joke is old and lame and has been done many times ...

Sorry, must not Tootle, must stay on the track ...

Whatever you call it, this hypocrisy has been elevated to performance art in the Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy.
The chairman, Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, made it clear at his committee’s birth that he would be trawling for echoes of his own opinions to back a conclusion he already has written.
“Aggressive and co-ordinated disinformation campaigns are increasingly spreading false information designed to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion on climate change,” Whish-Wilson’s press release says. “In the last parliament, evidence was provided to the Senate inquiry into the offshore wind industry that strategies such as establishing fake community groups – otherwise known as astroturfing – were being used in Australia to spread lies about renewable energy.”

Naturally the reptiles had a shot of the offending man, Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson speaks to the media in Hobart on Thursday, May 12, 2022.

The pond realises there's always other reading, such as Readfearn's Wildfires are getting deadlier and costing more. Experts warn they're becoming unstoppable.

But this is the pond's lot ...

People already have a fair grasp of where most lies originate, as the News and Media Research Centre’s submission to his committee shows. A poll it ran during the federal election records 66 per cent of respondents named “politicians and political parties” as the main source of misinformation. The hint that it’s not just a pox on the Coalition’s house comes from the topics list, where misinformation about nuclear energy ranked second on the list.
Politicians were deceivers ever. As Hannah Arendt noted in a 1967 New Yorker article: “No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues.”
Like so many Senate committees this is a virtue-signalling exercise in shampiring.
It will curate “evidence” to find fossil fuel interests are pouring money into Australia with the aim of derailing wind, solar and transmission projects through misinformation and disinformation campaigns fronted by local stooges. Then it will argue for laws to silence dissent.

Still with the deeply pathetic "shampiring"?

Give it a rest. The pond was perhaps a tad optimistic that the reptiles, especially an unreformed former seminarian, could ever demonstrate a sensa huma, but this is too feeble for words.

Also too feeble is the way that, whenever climate science denialism is on the agenda, the reptiles always wheel in petulant Peta to have a say ... Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses Labor’s now-defeated “appalling” misinformation legislation. “Over the weekend the government admitting defeat on its proposed misinformation, disinformation legislation,” Ms Credlin said. “It should be dead; it is an appalling piece of legislation.”

On with the disinformation and misinformation ...

In the task of building a story, the committee’s majority can count on the yeoman work of an army of government and privately funded activist groups because it is here you will find the real acres of astroturf.
The Page Research Centre’s submission shows the anti-fossil fuel lobby is groaning with cash. In 2023-24, its leading organisations pulled in more than $170m. The Sunrise Project topped the list with $76.8m, followed by Greenpeace ($25.6m), the Environmental Defenders Office ($17.8m), the Australia Institute ($10.6m), Climate Action Network Australia ($6.8m), GetUp ($6.4m), Environment Victoria ($4.1m), the Nature Conservation Council ($3.6m), Market Forces ($3.4m) and Friends of the Earth ($2.9m). A big chunk of this money is raised offshore.
When it comes to voices demanding regulations to police discordant voices there is a publicly funded manufacturing industry in that, too. Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay made an important contribution in these pages when she wrote: “Misinformation in the climate space is not confined to one side of the debate. It can stem from both climate denial and overly alarmist narratives, each contributing to confusion and polarisation.”
Amen to that. Alas, when you scour the commission’s actual submission you will find its concerns are entirely confined to one side of the debate. “False narratives distort public understanding, erode trust in science and institutions and delay urgent climate action,” it says. The commission claims “regulation is necessary” but then, typically, ties itself in knots as it tries to balance its innate authoritarianism with the awkward truth that rights belong to individuals and that free speech is important in a democracy. This is something it has always found annoying.

The Page Research Centre? 

It sounds impressive until you look it up and see who's the chairman of the bored ...

What a bunch of ne'er do wells, losers, drop kicks and time wasters have assembled under his leadership to produce assorted dodgy stats and word salads ...

We want to nurture our nation’s Western intellectual and cultural heritage so that successive generations can appreciate and enjoy the benefits of those traditions, while giving careful consideration to proposals for change and improvement. Our culture is the most prosperous and free in human history, and we believe that is good reason to continue to cultivate it. 

Meanwhile the reptiles dropped in another snap, Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay, above at a Parliament House hearing, made an important contribution in these pages. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

That sighting set the Ughmann off into another panic ...

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s endlessly expanding remit makes it one of the biggest threats to free expression, and its recent record on eroding trust in science is even more troubling. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner is arguing before the Federal Court that there is no such thing as male and female. This is an assault on biology so extreme that it puts the vanguard of climate sceptics in the shade. An institution that denies facts cannot be trusted to referee the truth.
At least the commission has the wit to soft-pedal its authoritarian impulses. There are no such constraints on UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights Elisa Morgera. Her submission is a masterpiece of totalitarian cant that demands dissenters go to jail.
“States should criminalise misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by fossil fuel companies and criminalise media and advertising firms accountable for amplifying disinformation and misinformation,” Morgera says.

The reptiles then followed with an AV distraction featuring one of their chief visual delights ... burn, baby, burn ... Energy company Santos and Australia has a desperate need to find more gas. The federal court ruled in favour of Santos, allowing it to continue work on its $5.3 billion Barossa LNG project. The Santos-operated Barossa gas project is on track for its gas to processed next year. In partnership with Santos.

And what does the special rapporteur classify as disinformation?
“Disinformation campaigns promoting misleading and false solutions – such as on the use of natural gas …”

Shocking, though the pond will concede that a better example would have been the reptile desire to nuke the country to save the planet ...

Fear not, they're still at it ...

And so on, Dan is still the man, but back to the Ughmann explaining the urgent need to gas the country to save the planet (if only global warming happened to be real, as if you'd fall for that hoax peddled by cultish religious zealots) ...

The truth, recognised from Brussels to Beijing, is that natural gas is indispensable to the energy transition. Europe has even enshrined it as “sustainable” in its bureaucratic bible of what counts as green. The fact Morgera knows little about the topic she claims some authority on is a worry. That she wants to jail those who puncture her ignorance is terrifying.
But the prize for audacity surely goes to the Environmental Defenders Office submission. It endorses the Morgera rant before demanding “that the commonwealth government enact national fossil fuel advertising bans to ensure there is less ability to spread misinformation. Political advertising should be the subject to similar provisions as contained in the Australian Consumer Law for misleading or deceptive conduct.”
Would this be the same organisation excoriated by the Federal Court when it lost its case against Santos’ Barossa gas pipeline? The court found the office’s cultural mapping of Tiwi Islanders’ underwater cultural heritage “so lacking in integrity that no weight can be placed on them”. It bore the hallmarks of “confection or construction.” The group now faces a $9m costs order.
I do not want the folk at the EDO to go to jail but a sense of shame and an appreciation of irony would not go astray. Any rational politician should assess everything it produces in the cold, hard light of its proven form in misleading and deceptive conduct.
The commonwealth doesn’t seem bothered as it has kicked in more than $8.2m taxpayer dollars into the enterprise.
Given all state and federal governments and a galaxy of cashed-up businesses and activist groups are lined up behind building a weather-dependent grid, why is it necessary to silence the dissenters? What little faith they have in their own case. If their preferred form of generation were truly cheap, green and reliable, every argument against it would evaporate like water on a solar panel. What are they so afraid of?
Perhaps it is that the truth is simply unpalatable and they recognise that to deliver their nirvana will demand permanent Covid-level interventions in people’s lives.
Be warned. The energy transition will trample more than just your right to disagree. For it to happen at pace demands the compulsory acquisition of land.

Ah the old Covid ploy, straight out of Killer Creighton's playbook, as Sarah rolled into view with a final dog bothering AV distraction ... Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson says there is “huge distress” concerning the Labor government’s renewables plans. “There is huge distress about the renewables rollout across western Victoria,” Ms Henderson told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “The high voltage transmission towers, which, of course, is all about furthering Labor’s renewables reckless scheme.”

Then it was on to a final short Ughmann gobbet ...

In Victoria, new laws allow authorised officers to enter private property to build transmission lines, and landholders who try to block or delay them can be fined up to $6000, while companies face fines of up to $42,000.
With a court order, those officers can even use “reasonable force” such as cutting locks or gates, and you can be prosecuted simply for getting in the way.
The campaign against climate and energy “misinformation and disinformation” is really a war on dissent. It is a struggle over power in all its forms, and if the alarmists win it will be your freedom that goes out with the lights.

The pond apologises for this outing, which was less than impressive. 

Just the Ughmann? And just an Ughmann in exceptionally feeble form? 

It's like that Woody Allen joke about the food being terrible and in such small portions, which now can't be told because Allen trotting off to Moscow is beyond the valley of the pitiful ...

The pond is feeling burnt out, and can only hope to do better on the morrow.

Perhaps the pond can summon the strength to indulge in some migrant-bashing, or onion muncher worship, or perhaps it's all best left to a cartoon ...