In which the Caterist arrives late, and the bromancer shrieks his one-note Johnny tune ...

 

Not happy Karen ...or if John Oliver is any guide to what's going with vulgar youff, 6-7...

Look at the time stamp on this late breaking Caterist contribution ...

October 27, 2025 - 4:16PM

Now to be fair to the reptiles that means precisely 6-7, because early this morning the time stamp had been amended...

October 27, 2025 - 6:57PM

Whatever, it's yesterday's stale pizza, warmed up for another serve and still hanging around on the extreme far right ... and of course the pond was compelled. 

Look at the feeble opposition:

Ancient Troy was still busy flogging his tome: 

Yes, Whitlam’s legacy divides opinion, but he was a mighty leader
Fifty years later, Gough Whitlam’s policy legacy remains largely in place and is mostly bipartisan. His principal legacy is leadership.
By Troy Bramston
Senior Writer

Oh come on ancient Troy, the pond has been reading the lizard Oz long enough to know that Gough was the anti-Christ, and what's with this caption for the opening snap?

1972 Archibald Portrait Prize of Gough Whitlam.

Couldn't anybody be bothered mentioning Clifton Pugh? After all that treasuring of the y'artz blather yesterday, nobody could lift a finger to name the artist?

Cruelly purloined to help ancient Troy's book flogging, but why was the portrait so cruelly mangled and cropped? Is that a metaphor for your tome?

Phsaw, as if your crude and pathetic attempt at boosterism could get in the way of  a magisterial burst of careening, careering, cratering Caterist insights, the quarry whisperer in full flight, a hearty five minute read, lavishly illustrated with compelling visual distractions (the pond keeds, it keeds).

It's hard for paranoia not to creep in. Are the reptiles aware of the pond's early morning deadlines? Did they hold the Caterist back so that it would be forced to breakfast on reheated stodge?

Or is he simply a lazy sod, who found lazy sod reasons not to hand his copy in on time? 

And so a late Monday offering hung around until the morrow, the stench from the rotting fish head permeating the air?

Whatever, the pond rushed to contemplate the quarry whisperer's homework ...

The header: Trump-style assault on Paris accord won’t work for Coalition, Sussan Ley has a golden opportunity to forge a winning narrative and unite a disparate party. Here are 10 points the Coalition should consider to arrest control of the net zero debate.

The caption for Susssan, looking startled by the need to grapple with that fiendish lettuce: Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley holds at Oran Park in Sydney's west. NewsWire / Simon Bullard.

The flood-water whispering Caterist gave the lettuce a ticking clock:

Sussan Ley has at most 130 weeks to turn the Liberal Party into a credible fighting force for the next federal election.
Whether the Opposition Leader can succeed will become apparent long before Christmas as the party reaches decision time on net zero. Arriving at a policy position that many in the partyroom might not like, but that everyone is prepared to live with, is a necessary precondition for turning attention to Labor’s chaotic energy policy.
So long as the party remains divided, Chris Bowen will be free to make spurious claims about the inexorable progress to net zero by 2050 without fear of being challenged. Every uncontested absurdity he makes today will become tomorrow’s fact. If the Coalition can’t summon up the courage to tell its own story, Labor will do so for it, fictionally embellished along the way. Labor will win the next election as it did the last one, not by winning the policy debate, but by controlling the narrative.
Climate and energy policy has been the key to the Coalition’s successes and failures for well over a decade. Tony Abbott won a landslide in 2013 by opposing Labor’s carbon tax. The party suffered a reversal in 2016 under the leadership of his pro-renewables successor.

Naturally there was a snap of the windmill-loving Satanist, Chris Bowen during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

How desperate did the Caterist sound?

Why, he was "liar from the shire and beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way" desperate...

Scott Morrison and his energy minister, Angus Taylor, won the miracle election in 2019 by uniting the party against the odds around an energy policy that few in the partyroom would have loved, but most were prepared to live with.
The party would stand behind its 2030 target of 26-28 per cent by relying on technology, not taxes.
With the party united, Taylor was able to prosecute the case against Bill Shorten’s 35 per cent 2030 target, using independent modelling by Brian Fisher to show its effect on industry, electricity prices and jobs. Every Shorten press conference turned into a pile-on along the narrative Taylor had established.
If Ley is to unite the partyroom, she could do worse than borrow Taylor’s playbook. Private polling circulating among Coalition members over the weekend suggests there is limited support for opposing net zero in the abstract. Most voters are not engaged with politics at that level.
The good news for the Coalition is support for the government’s emissions targets is extremely weak. Only a third of voters believe the targets should be kept as they are, and they are predominantly Labor and Greens voters. Most Australians sit in the middle of the argument, believing the targets unachievable and should be more flexible.

Could it possibly be a Caterist climate denialist outing without a snap of the onion muncher, even one that makes him look weirder than usual? Tony Abbott

That's a snap only a rampant narcissist, or perhaps a mother, could love ...

Meanwhile, the Caterist's agony continued, but relax, a listicle that would sort it all was coming ...

Ley’s first step should be to remind her parliamentary team how offensive fixed, legally binding targets are to the Liberal Party’s guiding principles.
Top-down, central planning is for Socialists. Innovation stems from enterprising individuals in a competitive free market, not by government fiat.
Utopian visions inspire socialists, while Liberals are constrained by reality, Liberals are constrained by reality – dealing with intractable problems with painful trade-offs.
The government’s fixation on reaching net zero by 2050 – whatever the cost – is producing precisely the perverse outcomes the policy textbooks predict.
Long-horizon goals are heavily discounted against short political cycles, rewarding optics over outcomes. Goodhart’s Law applies: Once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to measure anything. The “net zero by 2050” mantra invites strategic evasion – offshoring emissions, creative accounting and dependence on dubious offsets.
The planning fallacy leads to systematic underestimation of costs, time, and risk; mega-projects rushed to meet symbolic milestones suffer overruns, slippage, and poor value for money.
The result is compliance without substance: a theatre of announcements, re-labelling and statistical sleight-of-hand that substitutes for genuine abatement.
Policy purity, however, doesn’t win elections. Focusing on voters’ everyday concerns does. The polling shows that energy costs are the most critical factor for most voters.

Then came a snaps double bunger, though they had all the gunpowder and impact of a damp squib: Scott Morrision, Angus Taylor

Sheesh, that's cruel. The pond almost had a twinge of sympathy for the beefy boofhead, forced into such company. 

The pond already knew he was a doofus, but associating with a meta-doofus is defamatory. Is there a rapture in the house? Can't someone beam him up?

The Caterist cared not about the cruelty ...

Half say affordable energy should be the government’s top priority. Fewer than one in six nominate cutting emissions as quickly as possible. Surprisingly, 55 per cent say they would support an increase in coal and gas if it helped bring down power bills, even if it took longer to achieve climate targets.
By taking her cue from the public, Ley has a golden opportunity to forge a winning narrative capable of uniting a disparate party. It must adhere to the following 10 points:

What's with this imperial bout of "mustiness"?

The party "must adhere" to the Caterist agenda? Must it? Or must it not? 

And who's going to do that cat herding? A man who couldn't organise a decent quarry flooding?

Forget it Jake, is there anything worse than a dot point listicle?

Yes there is, it's numbers substituting for dots, what with the numbered listicle suggesting some ascending order, heaven for pedants wanting to argue if 1 should be 10, or 6-7 reversed:

1. Net zero would become an aspiration rather than a legally binding target. The Liberal Party remains committed to lowering emissions where it can, but will not sacrifice the economy to do so.
2. The fixed 2050 deadline will necessarily be abandoned. The green hydrogen debacle shows that the transition can occur only as fast as technology and economics allow.
3. The Coalition’s policy must remain technology-neutral. All options stay on the table: coal, gas, hydrogen, carbon capture, nuclear and renewables where they make economic sense. The role of government is to set standards, not to pick favourites.
4. The Coalition must reject the fallacy that wind and solar energy are free, recognising that they place a heavy demand on scarce resources with alternative uses, notably land and capital.
5. The cost to Australia’s rich biodiversity of sprawling wind and solar farms, particularly in areas of remnant native vegetation, must be measured against the assumed benefits.
6. Proposals will proceed only if they pass a simple economic test: Will they make Australia stronger and wealthier? If not, it doesn’t happen. No more subsidies for billionaires. No more bets on unproven technology.

The reptiles cruelly interrupted the flow with an appearance by Tamworth's shame: Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has spoken to Sky News Australia after he confirmed he would not be attending the Nationals party room meeting on Monday amid speculation he could join Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Mr Joyce will, however, be sitting with the Nationals during Question Time. “My position’s adamantly against net zero ... I want to get rid of net zero, get rid of it completely,” Mr Joyce told Sky News Australia.

Put it another way ...

Back to the numbers game:

7. A pragmatic policy must be grounded in engineering and economic reality. No more fantasies constructed on PowerPoint slides. Infrastructure must be deliverable, power must be reliable and costs must be transparent.8. Competitiveness must be improved, not weakened by subsidies. Energy should be our advantage, not our weakness.
9. The Coalition’s net-zero policy must enhance energy security, rather than weaken it. We will not surrender our sovereignty to imported solar panels or Chinese-made batteries. Energy must be Australian, affordable and available when we need it.
10. Above all, the Coalition’s energy policy should be fair, a virtue the Labor Party has conveniently forgotten in its race to reduce emissions, whatever the cost.

Astonishing really. Look at that list and it reads very much as if the Caterist was in full scale retreat, and urging the coalition to join him ...in a blather fest, a word salad, what with the pond having thought in the past only the fully woke talked of "aspirations".

The pond lost it right from the mealy-mouthed get go, with that aspirational attempt at verbal gymnastics ...

Net zero would become an aspiration rather than a legally binding target

What a feeble, pathetic fudge. 

Didn't the reptiles warn the Caterist that they were going to insert  Barners shaming Tamworth yet again with“My position’s adamantly against net zero ... I want to get rid of net zero, get rid of it completely”

Talk about herding cats. There's an aspiration to get rid of all that aspirational Caterist blather about aspirations, and all the rest of his half-baked dot points...

There was no coming back from Caterist aspirations, and what a mercy it ended quickly...

Australian households shouldn’t bear the cost of climate measures. Loading the price of the energy transition on to power bills is deeply regressive, punishing the poor more heavily than the rich.
Regional communities should not suffer the degradation of landscapes and the division of communities caused by rapacious renewable energy development. Bureaucratic overreach and corporate sharp practice should never override the fundamental rights of citizens.
In summary, the Coalition’s policy should represent a return to sanity rather than a Trump-style denunciation of the Paris accords, even if the IPCC process has become corrupted. The next Liberal government will have no more influence over this rotten, supra-national process than it has in reducing global emissions. Its first duty is to protect the Australian people from the insidious undermining of sovereignty and the theft of our economic future.

Truly pathetic, so have a break before moving on to the bonus ...

Keen-eyed punters will notice that the bouffant one made a desperate attempt at attention this day ...

PM Anthony Albanese boasting about the pace and range of his overseas travel

Once mocked as ‘Airbus Albo’, the Prime Minister now challenges journalists to keep up with his whirlwind diplomatic tour following successful Trump meeting.

by Dennis Shanahan

But the hapless chap could only offer a two minute read, and the pond will accept no substitutes, not when the bromancer is to hand ...

The header: PM winning the politics but still losing the plot, Albanese is having a solid series of bilateral meetings in Southeast Asia and that’s useful. But Australian policy is running at a bare minimum autopilot with no sense of what’s ahead.

The caption: Anthony Albanese attends the 20th East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The bromancer spent a goodly five minutes on impotent fulminations, which was a joy to the pond, because there's nothing so sweet as drinking the bromancer's tears in the morning.

It's the perfect start to the day. If the bromancer is distressed, and whining and all hissy, and thinks King Donald is the answer, then maybe things aren't so bad...

The silliest conclusion would be to assume that because Anthony ­Albanese had a productive meeting with US President Donald Trump everything is now going swimmingly in Australian defence and foreign affairs policy. Everything that was wrong two weeks ago is still wrong today.

The presidential meeting was a success and every commentator has recognised it as such. However, there’s still no evidence the national policy is coping with the actual challenges the nation faces.

Albanese is having a solid series of bilateral meetings in Southeast Asia and that’s useful. But Australian policy is running at a bare minimum autopilot with no sense of the enormity of the difficulties ahead.

As this column has argued before, Albanese has always had the sense to see that maintaining the US alliance is both necessary for Labor politically and good for Australia. Labor was manoeuvred in opposition into backing the AUKUS deal, under which we’re scheduled to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the 2030s, but has always made the absolute minimum commitment and effort towards this end.

The bromancer's routine is an old one. Having deplored Albo for not travelling and meeting, it was inevitable the bromancer would get the sulks, even as Albo did his best to wrangle an unwrangable critter intent on all forms of destruction, Donald Trump speaks with Anthony Albanese in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

On and on he keened and wailed ... and the pond devoured his tears...

The government’s actions are so puny and minuscule, it’s almost impossible to imagine the deal will proceed as planned. But as the deal at this stage mainly involves us paying billions of dollars to the US and UK, there’s no reason for Washington or London to quash it.

Beijing’s belligerence in imposing absurd conditions on the use of its rare earths meant the timing for the Albanese/Trump meeting was perfect. Similarly, the Gaza ceasefire allowed Albanese to lavishly praise Trump without upsetting the Labor base.

To describe this all as good luck is not to diminish the achievement of Albanese and Australia Inc in maximising this good fortune. But recognising the element of luck helps avoid our characteristic and chronic complacency.

It’s a simple fact Australia isn’t spending anywhere near enough to make AUKUS work, or to build a minimal credible defence force that includes nuclear-powered submarines. Dennis Richardson, a former head of the Defence Department and a man chosen by the Albanese government to guide it on elements of submarine policy, says Australia must spend significantly more than 3 per cent of GDP on defence to implement AUKUS and maintain its defence force.

Richardson is a sober judge, by no means an unbalanced defence hawk nor a political opponent of Labor. Angus Houston, whom the Albanese government chose to conduct its Defence Strategic Review, also argues defence spending needs to be 3 per cent of GDP. So does Peter Dean, whom the government chose to be the chief author of the DSR.

I’ve cited these men before. Many other strategic analysts make the same arguments. The point is the defence effort under the Albanese government is falling further and further behind the reality of what’s needed.

As if any sane person thinks AUKUS and subs on the never never and a despotic king inclined to malicious whims - elbows up Canada - these days reduced to tottering down stairs, is the answer, Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Did the reptiles have to remind the pond that they were out of touch? That there were later images of the King? 

No fist waving, no fist bumping or pumping, just Trump, 79, Looks Frail as He Tries to Avoid a Fall on Asia Tour

He's an old man, looking as tired as the bromancer's jaded analysis ...

Defence spending, as Marcus Hellyer of Strategic Analysis Australia points out, has oscillated within the range of 1.9 per cent of GDP and 2.1 per cent for the past seven years.

Under the Albanese government, it’s now just over 2 per cent. Yet Albanese, when he was opposition leader, told me in an interview he would spend whatever was necessary to defend Australia – and this would likely be more than 2 per cent.

Labor has been in office nearly four years and there has been no meaningful increase in defence spending. There’s been a small dollar increase, but as a share of our national wealth no meaningful increase. Yet in that time we have undertaken the immense additional cost of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. Recently we added the commitment to defend Papua New Guinea and recruit its citizens into the Australian Defence Force.

The Australian National Audit Office has demonstrated that ­Defence is not providing enough money even to sustain, in peace time, our big LHD ships. Meanwhile there’s been further news of more operational cuts in defence. The government is not remotely implementing the main recommendations of its own DSR. Even these recommendations were very modest because the government had told the DSR authors of many things they couldn’t ­challenge.

Incidentally, when Defence Minister Richard Marles says the US inquiry into AUKUS was just like our inquiry and therefore nothing out of the ordinary, this is yet another inaccurate statement on which he’s never challenged. The DSR was not authorised to review whether AUKUS was a good idea, or doable.

Just to make sure the tone was lowered completely, the reptiles introduced the dog botherer, playing the "got him not going, got him going" game ... Sky News host Chris Kenny discusses Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s no-show during Question Time as he remains overseas. “There was one very important person who was not there,” Mr Kenny said. “He’s been out of the country as often as he has been in it.”

The pond is now fully inured to all the bromance's screeching ...

The bottom line is Australia will not be able to deliver its end of the AUKUS bargain under current funding. The Albanese government has cut many previously scheduled defence capabilities, such as the fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, de-mining ships, and much else.

It has not implemented specific DSR recommendations in areas such as missile and air defences. We have moved hardly at all in the direction of acquiring swarming drones in large numbers of the type that dominate modern warfare. So we’re unlikely to be able to implement AUKUS, while at the same time virtually destroying much of our other ­defence capabilities.

How do the Americans feel about all this? They still, rightly, see Australia as a useful ally, mainly for our geography – a de facto US submarine base in Perth, a submarine maintenance facility in Australia, hundreds of Australian sailors supplementing US crews on American boats, air force and intelligence facilities in northern Australia. The point of all this is that it has nothing to do with any significant agency or proactive policy by the Albanese government. Australian policy is about as creative as Afghan government policy before the fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban. We simply assume that the Americans will always take care of us and we need do nothing for ourselves.

The Americans baby? They've got problems of their own ...

Being the bromancer, there was a reminder of the need for war with China by Xmas ...

Meanwhile, the Chinese continue to humiliate us militarily frequently and at will. The timing of the incident with the Chinese dangerously harassing an Australian air force plane at the time Albanese was to meet Trump was no coincidence. Similarly, the Chinese interrupt flights in the Tasman Sea with their live firing exercises, or circumnavigate our continent scoping military targets, laughing at our inability to respond in any military fashion at all, and confident that we won’t even work to acquire such ability.

Cue a familiar hate figure, Richard Marles during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The bromancer let forth a final howl of despair ...

Albanese finally having the courage to softly raise this with the Chinese Premier, while not telling us what he actually said, is laughably ineffective.

The Albanese government’s economic failure is even more spectacular. For nearly half its first term, Australia was in per capita recession. Our productivity performance is notoriously woeful. BHP boss Mike Henry, while trying to be diplomatic, nonetheless delivered a rude warning when he declared a few days ago that energy costs in Australia are twice as high as in Canada and 50 to 100 per cent higher than the US. Given our grotesquely constipated industrial relations system, and labyrinthine regulatory requirements, the idea manufacturing investment would choose Australia is heroic.

The only thing the Albanese government is winning is the ­politics. As a nation, we couldn’t be doing much worse.

What to say about all this? 

Well the bromancer has descended into a shrill one-note Johnny ... and the more he whines and wails, the more strident he becomes, the funnier it is, there being no need to take any of it seriously, what with it being simply the latest in a long line of serial slandering ... for example ...

19 Sept 2023 - Richard Marles must already be judged a failure as Defence Minister. 

August 20, 2024 - Both in process and in substance, the Government is failing miserably says Greg Sheridan of the Australian.

Mar 26, 2025 - The Australian's Foreign Editor, Greg Sheridan, has slammed the Albanese government for its handling of national security, calling it a "shocking comprehensive failure" in every aspect.

23rd Sept 2025 - Pattern of failure is harming our national interests. Anthony Albanese has comprehensively mismanaged the critically important US relationship to the point where Australia has never had less influence – or at least not since the disastrous prime ministership of Gough Whitlam in the 1970s – with an American administration.

There you go ancient Troy, stop trying to humbug the pond about Gough in a desperate attempt to flog your tome. 

Read the bromancer, recognise your role as a lickspittle fellow traveller in the hive mind, and don't expect a few kind words about Gough to redeem your blackened soul ...

And so to wrap up international relations with the immortal Rowe ...

Talk about an elegant set of tats, ink for the ages...