In which there's a lot of pearls clutching and a short, dinkum Groaning ...

 

Essential news for Murdochians ...

Putting that aside aside, the pond had thought about a walk on the wild side with Nick for a late arvo post ...

The pond was sorely tempted to retrieve Nick from the archive, despite having put him in the archive earlier in the day ...

One Nation polling surge reveals dramatic shift in Australian politics
Anti-establishment populism once powered Pauline Hanson’s brand. Yet the politician who once embodied outsider defiance has become part of the establishment.
Nick Dyrenfurth

What a chance to segue to two of the rogues featured this day in the immortal Rowe's rogue gallery, dressed to the T ...

But Nick couldn't get excited about Tamworth's enduring shame ...

...Speculation that Barnaby Joyce might defect to join and lead One Nation only underscores its stagnation. Joyce, a two-time Nationals leader and former deputy prime minister, shares Hanson’s populist instincts and flair for grievance. But he, too, is a career insider. Swapping one relic for another won’t make One Nation more credible to younger or diverse voters.
Joyce might give One Nation a momentary boost but crystallise its deeper weakness: a populist outfit that can’t exist outside the political class it condemns. Neither Hanson nor Joyce embodies the generational change populist movements elsewhere have leveraged – nor, energy policy asides, can they speak credibly to material issues such as wages. In 2014, for instance, Hanson called for penalty rates to be scrapped “right across the board”.

... and nor could the pond ...

There's simply no erasing the shame, just the faint hope that in the end, a bit like the Cheshire cat, all that will be left is a smirk and a whiff of beer ...

So the pond decided to indulge in some pearls of wisdom, even at the risk of upsetting correspondents with some massive pearl clutching ...

The header: Liberals must reject net-zero agenda and the entire policy architecture underpinning it, The Liberals must resist the siren song of a halfway house position on net zero, which will only exacerbate policy uncertainty and play into Labor’s hands.

The caption for whatever that image should be called, for which no human bean was credited: Sussan Ley has a balancing act to perform on net zero. Pictures: News Corp/iStock

Right at the get go, there was a chance to feature another Rowe rogue, also dressed to the T ...

Oh that's distilled essence of Sussss ...

But the pond had a bigger problem.

What is it with this "must", as in "Liberals must"?

Might the pond politely suggest that scribblers for the lizard Oz must stop using "must" for fear it would lead to an ever-expanding stench of "mustiness" ...

Now carry on "musting" with these pearls of wisdom ...

To keep the Coalition and her own team together, Sussan Ley is being urged to water down support for, but not entirely reject, the net-zero agenda.
Its supporters have canvassed a number of ways it might be achieved. Some propose that the Liberals simply push back the net-zero day of reckoning from 2050 to later in the century.
Others suggest they promise to repeal the government’s legislated 2050 commitment yet retain net zero as a motherhood aspiration – much like eliminating the road toll or childhood poverty – but one that will not be achieved at any cost.
Far from being a clear rallying cry to take to an election, the subtlety and ambiguity of this position would confound a team of medieval philosophers.
Of course, it is a good thing the Coalition is debating the merits of net zero (one day the Labor Party will have to do the same), but the way it is doing so is amateurish and lacks policy depth.

The pond, for reasons too perverse and weird to attempt to explain, can never get enough climate science denialism, however it's dressed in the lizard Oz, as a Satanic solar fiend loomed into frame, leering, shouting, gesticulating and being pointy, Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There was a Rowe rogues gallery portrait for him too, and didn't he look good in a T ...

It was what was needed for the pond to wade through this grit in the oyster ...

Most Liberal moderates who want to retain or water down net zero – but not reject it outright – seem reluctant to state their case in public, preferring instead to background friendly journalists. Their pitch, if you can call it that, largely focuses on retail politics – and in particular their reading of public opinion on climate change, which oddly they assume to be immutable.
This is a misreading of the recent federal election, where Labor chose to run on Medicare and the electorate’s dislike of Donald Trump rather than net zero. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, a political liability, was put in witness protection during the campaign.

Could it possibly be a climate denialist column, without a mention of the IPA and the constant fear and loathing of renewables? IPA Research Fellow Mia Schlicht explains the regional pushback against Labor’s renewable projects. Ms Schlicht detailed how thew Coalition lost in a “landslide” which further pushed Labor towards its green dream. Around 79 per cent of Australians indicate affordability and reliability should be the main focus of the country’s energy policy, “not net zero”, she said.

Of course it couldn't, so how could the pond resist mentioning this yarn in the Graudian? 

On with more pearls...

Yes, Labor won a big majority in the lower house, but its primary vote languished at less than 35 per cent. And bear in mind no first-term federal government has lost at the polls since 1931.
Polls show people care much more about the cost of living than climate change action, and if prompted they are not prepared to pay much – if at all – for the latter. Anthony Albanese knows this. That’s why he flooded the electorate with well over $1bn of energy bill relief last year, belying his own claims about the low cost of wind and solar power.
But let’s put the politics to one side and consider what a watered-down version of net zero could possibly mean in policy terms.

How weird did the visual distractions get? Truly weird ... Andrew Bragg addresses the media in Paddington. Picture: Christian Gilles / NewsWire; Former prime minister Julia Gillard

The pond thought that the Parrot had dragged Juliar out to sea in a chaff bag and tossed her in, but it turns out that the reptiles can never get enough regurgitation of the past ...

At the heart of the government’s case for net zero is a lie (that a renewables-dominated grid will lower electricity costs), an evasion (about the punitive effective carbon tax, at least eight times Julia Gillard’s proposed levy, needed to achieve it) and a fantasy (that the rest of the world has embraced this goal).
Coalition federal politicians have a clear and inescapable decision to make: do they accept the government’s claim that wind and solar is the cheapest form of new power or do they reject it?
This is ground zero of the entire net zero debate, as both Bowen and Nationals senator Matt Canavan would agree.
If you accept the government’s assertion, a renewables-dominated grid will not only do the heavy lifting to get us to net zero, it will deliver a positive supply shock to the entire economy, spurring electrification of transport and industry and boosting productivity, growth and living standards.
If you reject it, this same grid is associated with a steep negative supply shock, accelerating our deindustrialisation and slowly strangling the broader economy.
In the former case, you might as well endorse Labor’s policy to massively ramp up subsidies for wind and solar. Forget about watering down net zero.
In the latter case, you should instead support the phasing out of these subsidies, which would lower energy prices (as coal and other forms of dispatchable power become more viable) but increase emissions for years or perhaps decades to come – at least before large-scale nuclear power generation becomes a reality.
On this pivotal question, there is no third way.
In the world of policy, it is far better to make a clear choice – for better or worse – than to fudge it, which a policy of capping or slowing the increase in wind and solar subsidies would represent.

The reptiles reminded the pond that the lettuce was still in the race, Sussan Ley

Sheesh, Rowe's rogue gallery had already featured her, but what the heck, if the reptiles can indulge in inane, endlessly repetitive climate science denialism, the pond can do a repeat too ...

How good she looks, but sadly that led to the final bit of sand in the oyster ...

Indeed, this would leave us with a stalled transition, risking the worst of both worlds.
With no clear policy signal from government – either for or against net zero – the flow of capital into our grid, whether in new coal and gas or new wind and solar, could dry up altogether, risking a catastrophe. The politicised Treasury department would run this line mercilessly in the lead-up to 2028.
Let’s briefly turn to the question of principle. Liberals are talking endlessly about their liberal and conservative traditions but are dodging a central question: Is a government-directed net-zero agenda compatible with either of them? How can a classical liberal ever support the idea of a top-down, government-directed world where Canberra decides what we can consume, what we can produce and how we can live our lives, regardless of purported justification?
Perhaps during a war as an unavoidable expediency, but over decades? And for what: an infinitesimally small difference to global emissions?
Bob Menzies would have never supported this agenda, which he would rightly see as socialism dressed up in a different garb.
My advice to the Coalition partyroom is this. If you want lower energy costs, more growth, higher living standards, you must reject net zero and the entire policy architecture underpinning it – just as your sister parties are doing overseas.
Labor will never admit it, but this is what it fears: a 2028 referendum on Bowen’s management of the electricity grid and capture by renewable interests.
Above all else, resist the siren song of a halfway house position, which will be seen through by intelligent voters everywhere, exacerbate policy uncertainty and play into Labor’s hands.
David Pearl is a former Treasury assistant secretary.

Excellent work ... with a lot more grit in the oyster to come ...

That 'here' is here, but you'll need to get past the Lancet paywall by registering for a free copy...

And now to show off that Rowe rogue gallery in all its splendour ... so many T's, so little time...

Cf John Hanscombe in The Echidna ...(newsletter, no link)

There's no denying it was a poor fashion choice. After the triumph in Washington, where he proved himself an adept Trump whisperer, deciding to step off the prime ministerial jet in casual clobber was poor judgment.
Or was it?
In a week when the Coalition and its Sky News carnies had so much they could have talked about, they chose instead to focus on Albanese's Joy Division T-shirt, a matter of grave national importance.
If you were the PM, you couldn't have asked for a better Joy Diversion.
Forget issues like environmental law reform, skyrocketing energy prices, the housing crisis, government secrecy, sticky inflation, dangerous Chinese harassment of Australian military aircraft ... yadda yadda yadda.
What really concerned Sussan Ley was the T-shirt featuring an album cover of a long-extinct punk band. A T-shirt worn by thousands of jowly, greying and daggy dads pining for their youth. The problem? The band's name, Joy Division, was a translation of the Nazi concentration camp brothel system. Not that anyone but Sussan Ley and Sharri Markson cared.
The punk movement was all about shocking the establishment. The Sex Pistols, The Dead Kennedys, The Clash, The Stooges, The Damned ... few band names of this era were soft and downy. Sussan should know this. She was a punk herself. And as the ever sharp Betoota Advocate pointed out, there's a Nazi connotation in the altered spelling of her own name. Not that she realised that when she added the extra S as a kid, just as few at the time would have connected the name Joy Division to the Third Reich.
Media attention is a precious thing in politics, especially when you're in opposition. Squandering it with tenuous claims about the symbolism of the PM's T-shirt choices was always bound to invite mockery. Ley took aim, fired - and shot herself in the foot. Again.

And so say all the cartoonists, and so to a bonus, and who better than Dame Groan?

Sure it's a day old reheat, sure it's just a 3 minute read, so the reptiles said, but the old chook has a devoted cult following and correspondents are always delighted to savour a jolly good groaning ...

The header: Jim Chalmers’ hubris is positively electric as reality of inflation hits, It has not been a good time for the Treasurer. First the superannuation changes, and now the release of the hugely disappointing September-quarter CPI figures.

The caption: Treasurer Jim Chalmers in question time on Wednesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond vastly preferred the portrait in Rowe's rogue gallery ...

Never mind, the pond must confess to mild astonishment at the way that the reptiles were distracted by all the summits, and by King Donald mingling with Albo, and so the inflation figure tended to slide through the lizard Oz like a slippery seal through the red sea ...

Not so Dame Groan, she was a savage shark ready to maul that seal ...

First it was the ignominy of backing down on his proposed superannuation tax plan for balances above $3m, now there is the dis­appointing inflation read.
It has not been a good time for Jim Chalmers.
The release of the September-quarter CPI figures was a huge disappointment for the government.
Even though the forecasters were betting on the trimmed mean – the measure that matters to the Reserve Bank because it factors out volatile factors – increasing in the quarter by somewhere between 0.6 per cent and 0.9 per cent, the actual figure was 1.0 per cent.
In annual terms, the trimmed mean increased by 3 per cent, putting the figure at the very top of the bank’s target band. This was also the first time the annual trimmed mean had increased since the fourth quarter of 2022.
The headline figure was even higher at 3.2 per cent.
The net effect of these CPI ­figures is that we can kiss goodbye to any reduction to the cash rate – it is currently 3.6 per cent – on Melbourne Cup day or at the final meeting of the year.
There is now a distinct ­possibility that the rate may not be reduced at all given the rearing of inflationary pressures on ­several fronts.

For no particular reason, the reptiles decided to slip in that horse race, The focus on Melbourne Cup day will now return to the race that stops the nation, rather than interest rate decisions. Picture: AFP

Damn, it's a vast equine conspiracy organised by that joyless wretch Albo.

Somehow he'd persuaded the Reserve to arrange a gaggle of punters, deliriously oblivious and distracted, determined to have a plunge ...

Confronted by this devotion to horse flesh, Dame Groan inevitably got on to groaning about her devotion to climate science denialism ,and the wretched way renewables are ruining everything ...

Two factors stand out in the result. The first is the rapid rise in electricity prices and the temporary suppression of the impact by dint of government subsidies. When these subsidies lapse, the true movement in electricity ­prices is revealed.
And bear in mind here that the commonwealth electricity rebates worth $150 that are currently in place are due to expire at the end of the year.
Using the June quarter of 2023 as a base of 100, electricity prices without the rebates rose to 122 in the September quarter just gone. According to the ABS, “the electricity series recorded a rise of 23.6 per cent over the past 12 months.” Wow.
Most of us are sick and tired of hearing Climate Change and ­Energy Minister Chris Bowen tell us that renewable energy is the cheapest. The trouble for him is that the figures tell a completely different story.

That "sick and tired" line triggered a memory in the pond ...

The row erupted after Pochin said she agreed with a caller on TalkTV who complained about the "demographics" of advertising.
Pochin said the viewer was "absolutely right" and "it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people".
She said "it doesn't reflect our society" and "your average white person, average white family" is not "represented anymore".
Pochin blamed the situation on the "woke liberati" in the "arty-farty world".
"It might be fine inside the M25, but it's definitely not representative of the rest of the country," she said.
As the penetration of renew­ables increases in the electricity grid – Bowen is wont to brag about renewable overtaking coal for short periods – electricity prices continue to rise sharply.
He tells us he doesn’t want to enter a blame game about the ­actual or impending closure of ­energy-intensive manufacturing. Many readers will also be happy to skip the game too and simply conclude that Bowen is to blame. (BBC)

Is it better to be "sick and tired" or "driven mad"?

Or can furriners and rewewables do both to Dame Groan?

Whatever, no pesky difficult furriners, this time, this time it's that Satanic solar and wind worshipping beast that has driven Dame Groan mad, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen cannot deny that electricity prices continue to rise sharply. Picture: Martin Ollman

Hang on, hang on, isn't that exactly the same snap of the Demonic One featured in that other yarn seen above?

What could the pond do but repeat the regurgitation like a reptile sub-editor?

Sure enough, that sent the old biddy into a final paroxysm of madness, grief and groaning... 

It’s impossible to see how the largest aluminium smelter in Australia, Tomago in the Hunter Valley, can continue to operate without reliable and affordable electricity.
Renewables will simply not cut it. And given that 40 per cent of Tomago’s costs are electricity, it doesn’t take a genius in maths to realise any significant increase in electricity prices will force the closure of the plant.
The other significant factor in the CPI figure is ongoing inflation in the services sector. Annual services inflation rose by 3.5 per cent in the September quarter. Given the massive expansion in the largely government-funded care economy, this result is not entirely surprising.
We are also seeing the potential for very large increases in costs in the retail sector if the junior rate of pay case is decided in favour of the unions. There are also significant wage pressures in relation to some disability support workers. Even though overall wage growth has been relatively well contained, in the absence of any growth in productivity inflationary pressures arise because of the increase in unit labour costs.
No doubt, the Treasurer will try to spin his way out this latest piece of bad news on inflation. The trouble is that the punters will be able to see through the fine words. Because as they say, fine words butter no parsnips … or pay the electricity bill.
This is the first time trimmed mean annual inflation has increased since December 2022.

Oh we'll all be rooned, no doubt, and well before the war on Xmas can begin.

How to reassure the silly old chook that things aren't quite so bad?

Perhaps by offering a seasonal reminder that things aren't so jolly elsewhere ...

Luckily there's a fearless leader standing by to do an IQ test and so lead the country out of that pumpkin wilderness ...

Here, see how you go. 

Pass the first three questions, and you too can scribble for the lizard Oz ... or drive the planet towards disaster ...