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 ...