In which there's the usual Groaning and a "Ned" Everest climb hovering between portentous and delusional ...

The reptiles were back at it today ...

Never mind the ethnic cleansing, Ben was packing it today, with the reptiles Zionist bias on full display ...

October 7
Pro-Palestine’s dark heart as anti-Semitic hate on show
Fresh anti-Semitic attacks have erupted across Australia on the October 7 anniversary as Israel demands Anthony Albanese take stronger action against hatred.
By Ben Packham

There was a follow up ...

EXCLUSIVE
In Kfar Aza, memories of massacre and heroism underline hope
Artillery fire thundered nearby as hundreds gathered in Kfar Aza, many for the first time since the horror of October 7, where only 20 residents permanently remain.
By Yoni Bashan and Liam Mendes in Kfar Aza

The pond realises the archive has its drop out limitations, but there was much to see this day ...

EXCLUSIVE
Secret power price reports kept from the public
Ten reports about NSW’s power prices remain locked in government vaults despite calls for transparency about the expected trajectory of electricity prices.
By Paul Garvey

Blink and you might have missed this piece of fear-mongering ...

GAS POLICY
UK-style collapse: Bluescope’s energy alert
BlueScope chief executive Mark Vassella has a dire warning for Australian manufacturing and it’s all about energy.
By Matthew Cranston

The pond simply refused to believe the nonsense being peddled...

...Without immediate action, Mr Vassella warns the manufacturing sector would end up like the UK where four of the remaining six steel companies still operating there today are in administration or on government assistance packages. Since the 1970s UK steel production has fallen from 30 million tonnes a year to just 3 million today, while after being the fifth largest steel producer in the world, is now ranked 26th.
Mr Vassella also notes Europe’s declining manufacturing sector as a consequence of poor government energy policies.
“Future Made in Australia depends on affordable gas being made available for Australian industry,” he will say. No gas, no Future Made In Australia.”

Say what? The pond knows because the bromancer has told the pond so, that ...

Under the expert guidance of Boris, Nigel and others, Brexit has produced a stunning turnaround in the UK, and thanks to that remarkable policy - Bromancer endorsed - the UK has moved ahead in leaps and bounds. Freed from the shackles of stifling Europe, the UK has entered a golden age.

Oh dear ...that line was immediately ruined by an Xian onion muncher hovering into view to show off his profound Xianity ... as channelled by the malignant Magnay ...

MIGRANT CRISIS
Abbott tells Tories: send migrants back home on life rafts
Tony Abbott says Britain should transfer cross-channel migrants to a ‘mothership’ and return them to France on unsinkable life rafts to solve its $8.2m-a-day crisis.
By Jacquelin Magnay

Ironic really, because over on the extreme far right, the meretricious Merritt was asking questions ...

Should NSW law give the green light to glorifying murder?
After two years of rage in the streets, blind Freddy can see this is the real issue that needs to be resolved: does the right to free speech under Australian law protect those who celebrate the killing of Jews?
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

The archived header was almost poignant ...

No human right is absolute: we have lost our sense of right and wrong

What claptrap, what nonsense. 

Of course we should glorify murder, and the deeply Xian onion muncher has shown the way. 

Pack a mob into a leaky boat, dress it up with a word salad about it being "unsinkable", send them off in a stormy sea, make sure you've got a drone to catch the moment they sink - happily an excellent Xian warning to others - and then make a motza flogging the images on social media. 

It's the humane way for Xians with a deep sense of Xian care and compassion to show other Xians how to do it...

Moving along, who else was on the extreme far right?

Planet Janet, down from the faraway tree, was briefly top of the world ma ...

This human rights body is past saving – abolish it
Political meddling is so entrenched at the Australian Human Rights Commission; it is time to disband this taxpayer-funded clique.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Please, no complaints, the pond has other fish to fry, and that's why the rights-loving Dame Slap was kicked to the archive kerb. It's true she's never found a right, or a minority, she hasn't loved to abuse, but addicts can get their fix in the archive cornfield.

Now to sink the same archive hatchet into the Matchett ...

Old, rich and ‘elite’: trading on reputations long out of date
Now where do people get the idea that universities are big, rich and out of touch? Perhaps from self-promoting members of the Group of Eight. The truth about their wealth and performance.
By Stephen Matchett

Boring, and by the time the pond got to him, Shanners - attempting a feeble form of most unseemly political humour - had already been ghosted ... but his spirit could be found in the archive cornfield ...

‘Ghostbuster’ Paterson is Libs’ top performer – and in wrong chamber
James Paterson is now covering four portfolios, including finance and home affairs, and has become the political equivalent of Ghostbusters – who else can you call?
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

And so to the real treat for the day ... a dinkum five minute Groaning ...

The header: Doubling down on net zero as emissions grow, The economic costs and the fiscal burden of the decarbonisation process for Australia continue to pile up.

Not so much a caption as a political statement suggesting gullible tradies are installing gullible solar panels for gullible punters: China’s emissions reduction target was put there to ensure that the remaining gullible countries continued to buy made-in-China paraphernalia connected to the net-zero quest – turbines, solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and the like. Picture: AP

Why indulge Dame Groan?

Well she has a devoted cult following, and how else could the pond remind punters that there was a recent release of an insurance report, available here in pdf.

The pond is aware that insurers are part of a vast international conspiracy aligned with banks and run by rootless cosmopolitans, but still there are some interesting graphs ...

That news of the results of a warming planet set the tone for a Groaning determined to pretend it's deeply cool to ignore it all...

Is the world cooling on net zero? If this is so, Australia’s extraordinarily high emissions reduction target of 62 to 70 per cent for 2035 looks like a classic case of economic self-harm.
In fact, interest in net zero has been flagging in many countries for some time.
Only 15 out of the 194 countries that are signatories to the Paris climate agreement managed to submit their nationally determined contributions for 2035 on time.
Of course, there are those who desperately cling to the belief that net zero climate action is on track, give or take a few laggards. Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has claimed “around 80 per cent of global GDP (is) covered by national net-zero commitments”.
Climate Change Authority chairman Matt Kean bumped this figure up to 84 per cent.
Both numbers are absurd. Leaving aside the technical issue of calculating global GDP – nominal exchange rates or purchasing power parity – the US is now out of Paris, and that’s around one-quarter. India and Russia are not being serious. Nor are most African or Asian countries.
Most poor countries signed up to the climate agreement to get their hands on the loot that was promised, although it must be said the contributions to the fund have been extremely disappointing.

Speaking of Boris - amazing the way bad pennies manage to keep turning up like onion munchers - Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has admitted to going “far too fast” on net zero when he was in office. Mr Johnson claimed he got “carried away by the idea that sustainable and renewable forms of energy could fill the gap”. Sky News contributor Jaimee Rogers claims these are Mr Johnson’s “probably most outspoken comments” against the net-zero climate policy of which he championed.

And yet, what did that insurance report say?

Cue standard old chook head in sand routine...

China is the biggest emitter and its emissions have still not peaked.
Its pathetically low emissions reduction target of 7 to 10 per cent by 2035 was put there to ensure that the remaining gullible countries continued to buy made-in-China paraphernalia connected to the net-zero quest – turbines, solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and the like.
What has been happening to global emissions growth? It has been inexorable, save a brief hiatus during Covid.
In 2024, global emissions rose by more than 1 per cent. Emissions from fossil fuels also reached a record peak.
So, when Treasury declares “the world is continuing to move towards net zero and countries are transforming their energy systems and economies”, it’s more a statement of hope than fact.
It is imperative that Treasury reworks its modelling using the assumption that the world is not moving to net zero.
As for Treasury’s assertion that “Australia is making substantial progress in reducing emissions”, the figures tell a completely different story.
If we exclude land use, land use change and forestry, there has been only a very marginal drop in our total emissions since 2005.
Across the past three years, Australia’s emissions have been essentially flat.

Naturally Dame Groan is at one with her denialist super hero, the Cantaloupe Caligula himself, Donald Trump announces his decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Accords. Picture: AFP

The pond could keep quoting from that report - one of many, many reports - but why stand in the way of the Groaner, doing her helpful best to stuff the planet ...

For all the taxpayer money spent, the new schemes dreamt up, regulations imposed and the rights of citizens trammelled, particularly those in rural and regional areas, the progress on cutting emissions has been minor, to say the least.
The withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement has thrown a spanner in the works.
But according to the good folk down at the Climate Change Authority, “Australia now has a strategic opportunity to attract displaced capital, capability and innovation to accelerate its own transition and secure a competitive edge”.
The naivety in the last sentence is breathtaking. The notion that the (supposed temporary) interruption in US climate action will release resources for Australia is based on a complete misunderstanding of how capital markets work.
The reality is that the stock prices of companies specialising in renewable energy have been tanking.
Recent capital raisings have been undertaken at deep discounts, with Denmark’s Orsted being one example. Oil and gas majors have been fleeing the renewable energy space to concentrate on their core business.
Several renewable energy projects in Australia are up for sale by their international owners, with deeply discounted prices.

In every reptile denialist story bashing renewables, there is one sacrosanct requirement - there must be a terrifying snap of whale-killing windmills, and sure enough, The Nysted Offshore Wind Farm constructed by Danish power giant Orsted in in the Baltic Sea. Picture: Thomas Traasdahl / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP

That sort of shocking image can be guaranteed to set the Dame right off ..

Of course, if governments are prepared to subsidise projects by large and increasing amounts, there will be investors. But recent auctions in Britain point to the increasing margins that businesses require that inevitably feed into higher electricity prices. This is not a good outcome for consumers, businesses or the economy.
Even the International Energy Agency has switched its deeply biased approach to energy forecasting to make some more accurate assessments of future energy trends. Recall that this agency was set up after the first world oil shock in the 1970s. But more recently it has become part of the cheer squad for decarbonisation and openly hostile to fossil fuels.
In 2021, the IEA claimed “clean-energy technologies are slowly but surely going to replace the existing energy industry”, with peak oil occurring in 2029.
Fearing the US may cancel its membership (and funding), the IEA is now quickly rowing back. It has ditched the flawed STEPS methodology, using countries’ stated policies scenarios as the key assumption. The fact is that most countries are not close to meeting their stated targets.
A recent release of the IEA notes “renewables accounted for the largest share of the growth in total energy supply at 38 per cent in 2024. Yet higher demand for all energy sources means increases for oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power as well. So total energy-related emissions grew again by 0.8 per cent last year, driven by increased consumption.”
It turns out that renewable energy and fossil fuels may be complements, rather than substitutes.
Canada has many similarities with Australia, including the structure of their economies.
For many years, the Canadian federal government under the Liberal Party – like our Labor Party – ran with highly ambitious climate plans. The new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, also has impeccable green credentials.

How could it be certified as being authentic hive mind, without the stamp of approval of the devoted denialist dog botherer? 

Thankfully an AV distraction was there, reduced to screen cap, Sky News host Chris Kenny discusses how the Coalition will continue to support nuclear energy policy, which was central to the previous federal election campaign. “We still don't know whether the Coalition will stick with net zero or not, but it's become abundantly clear that they will stick with nuclear energy … and whether they stick with net zero or not, they obviously still need to remain committed to reducing emissions,” Mr Kenny said. “The Coalition is on the right side of history here, and the right side of logic, engineering and economics. Let the debate proceed all the way to the next election.”

Indeed, indeed, but why only to the next election? Why not until the planet is fully, comprehensively stuffed, and the insurance mob have given up issuing reports?

But Canada’s recently released emissions reduction target is only 40 to 45 per cent by 2035, following the figure of 40 per cent for 2030, which won’t be reached. Carney also abolished the consumer carbon tax when he assumed office. How Australia’s target could be so much higher than Canada is a perplexing question.
A final piece of evidence – and there is a lot – of the collapsing global support for net zero is the suspension of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance after several large US and European banks pulled out.
This follows the termination of the equivalent alliance covering insurance.
The hope of green activists was that banks could be persuaded to use their power to offer loans and other banking services to aid the decarbonisation process and prevent the funding of fossil fuel projects.

There came a snap of a new hero in the reptile denialist pantheon, Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney. Picture: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP

Elbows up Canada...

BTW, BYD is making another assault on the domestic EV market ...

The Atto 1 will be remarkably cheap, but if punters are tempted, the pond suggests forking out more for an Atto 2 will deliver a better battery management system. And as the pond isn't on a commission, there are plenty of rival offerings.

Of course all that sort of talk is an elaborate Tootle for Dame Groan, but she too was winding down ...

Even without this alliance, some Australian banks continue to spout this line, promising to eliminate any funding for fossil fuel projects in time. But again, the peak of this development may have been reached as profitable lines of business are always hard to pass up.
Sadly, neither Bowen nor Kean have bothered to read the truthful explanatory memo on this topic. The federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, continues with the costly and unjustified insistence on climate-related disclosures by companies, including the emissions of their customers and suppliers.
Common sense may prevail at some stage, but it’s not likely to be soon. In the meantime, the economic costs and the fiscal burden of the decarbonisation process for Australia will continue to pile up.

Here, have a 'toon to celebrate ...

And so to the bonus, and how could the pond resist "Ned's" Everest climb this day? Just look at the big splash and the most excellent artwork the reptiles gave it ...

Talk about a hook for an all day herpetology sucker ...

Come on down "Ned" ...

The header: Political crisis of Australia’s centre-right has been 20 years in the making, The crisis transcends the Coalition parties – this is an intellectual, cultural and political crisis of the centre-right in Australia, 20 years in the making.

The caption for the uncredited collage, which perhaps should be blamed on AI, or some wretched reptile wisely staying in the dark: From left: Nigel Farage, Amdrew Hastie, Sussan Ley, Jacinta Price and Donald Trump. Pictures: AFP/News Corp

"Ned" was in exquisitely pompous, portentous form this day ...

The Liberal crisis is unique in the party’s 80-year history. It is driven by three forces that have never coalesced before – an alarming collapse in voting support, an internal rupture over core beliefs and personality disputes over the leadership.
The backdrop is a Labor government that won a sweeping election victory – greater than its first-term performance deserved – but confronts policy challenges sure to offer the opposition opportunities over the next three years to make substantial inroads against Labor.
But that will be unachievable without unity, strategic agreement and the political skill to prosecute the case, conditions that don’t exist now and may not in future.
The crisis transcends the Coalition parties – this is an intellectual, cultural and political crisis of the centre-right in Australia, 20 years in the making, with the nation since 2020 moving decisively to the left; witness Labor’s wins at the 2022 and 2025 elections and, more important, the collapse of a consistent, conviction Coalition policy stance.
The Liberals are increasingly divorced from the centres of cultural and opinion-forming power in Australia – the education and university sectors, the professional classes, much of the corporate sector, the climate change lobby and the renewable energy industries, the not-for-profit community organisations, the arts community, the public broadcasters, public sector employees, the trade unions and constituencies vital in shaping opinion – professional women and ethnic communities.

To help "Ned", the reptiles flung in the Ughmann, in bed with petulant Peta ... Sky News political contributor Chris Uhlmann says there is a “fight for the soul” of the Liberal Party which was exemplified by Andrew Hastie’s resignation from the frontbench over immigration. “There is a fight for the soul of the Liberal Party at the moment that is going to be over issues like this,” Mr Uhlmann told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “It is quite clear that whatever Sussan Ley imagined that Andrew Hastie was going to say about immigration was not going to sit particularly well with what she had to say about immigration.”

Okay, the pond should confess. The pond has plunged heavily on the lettuce ...

To ensure the pond doesn't suffer a dire financial loss, the pond must pander to the likes of "Ned", sighing, rolling eyes, looking up at the falling sky, Chicken Littling away ...

While some of these groups are beyond resurrection for the centre-right, many are not and have little confidence in Albanese Labor. Obviously, this large-scale divorce hurts the Coalition parties at the ballot box but its more damaging impact lies in the exhaustion of ideas and the intellectual poverty of centre-right debate and policy. The Liberals are manifestly struggling to reach out beyond their party to explore the fresh ideas that should mark their time in opposition.
Facing an Australian wasteland, the right-wing fringe looks abroad for inspiration to the false prophets of our age, the so-called conservatives who are anti-conservative, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage with their ability to generate an excitement as they polarise their countries in their self-interest and score culture war victories that invite the Australian conservative response: why can’t we do that?
The story of the Liberals in the five months since the election has been the elevation of a woman and moderate, Sussan Ley, to leadership and the breakout aggravation of the populist right with Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Andrew Hastie choosing the backbench in strikes against Ley’s leadership. Given their talent, the loss to the frontbench is substantial. Yet few people expected the internal crisis would erupt this quickly.

How could the reptiles resist showing huge snaps of their heroes at this point? 

They couldn't, but the pond felt the urgent need to downsize the images, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin, Andrew Hastie. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

"Ned" rabbited on, and while his droning might send some to sleep, it was sweet lulling music to the pond ...

Political parties must renew or die. But parties that take the wrong path to renewal might die anyway. That’s why the stakes are so high from the breakout of the populist conservatives.
What exactly do they represent? They want a decisive shift to the right but the policy detail doesn’t exist beyond the attack on net zero, likely rejection of the emissions reduction framework, major cuts to immigration, a hard line on culture wars and apparently a bigger role for government in industry policy.
What is paramount, however, is the rhetorical and ideological invocation of Trumpian atmospherics. Obviously, Hastie and Price don’t trust Ley’s priorities. They want the freedom to pursue their own radical agendas, backed by a populist conservative media that openly campaigns to destroy Ley’s leadership.
When the party’s survival depends on a settlement between the conservatives and the moderates, they have decided the priority lies elsewhere – to run a populist conservative agenda in a right-wing re-make of Liberal faiths, guaranteeing internal dissension.
Hastie’s most revealing moment in his Saturday media event came when he was asked about the criticism from former Liberal minister and Howard adviser Arthur Sinodinos. He flared up.
“I think his framing is out of touch,” Hastie said of Sinodinos. “And, you know, he was serving under Howard 20 years ago. I just don’t think he’s out there in the community. He’s not listening.”

The reptiles compounded the problem by featuring petulant Peta, a ratbag in tune with the likes of the Price is Wrong, and the pastie Hastie ...Sky News host Peta Credlin has warned the Coalition that “Labor-lite Liberals lose” as they trail Labor 57 to 43 per cent in the latest Newspoll. “Is it any wonder that the latest Newspoll out today has the Coalition behind a massive 57 to 43 per cent on two-party preferred? Worse still, it’s got Anthony Albanese at near record levels as preferred PM, and One Nation at 11 per cent, soaring to its best share of the vote since 2017,” Ms Credlin said. “I am not surprised by these numbers, and you shouldn’t be either. Why would anyone vote for a Liberal-National Coalition that claims to be critical of the Labor government but is only marginally different on policy? “Labor-lite Liberals lose. That’s the truth of it that no amount of Liberal spin today can wash away.”

Keep it up reptiles, stay locked in your hive mind ...

Here are the populist conservative signposts. Politics is in a new age, don’t be imprisoned by the Howard orthodoxy, the Liberal establishment is out of touch, it has missed how people feel. The country is getting ripe for its own version of the US and British people’s revolts. How any of this translates into a coherent policy alternative, as distinct from ideological sound bites, is unknown.
Long seen as an outstanding political prospect, Hastie had a period of military service including in the SAS before entering politics, where he has been conspicuous for his conservative principles, his convictions and his willingness to take a stance on merit. But he has now put himself under immense pressure.
He backs Ley’s leadership but carries a baton himself. His message is that he wants to speak out, that big changes are needed and he thinks the core ideas of the Trumpian revolution – sovereignty, family, strong borders, energy security and cultural tradition – offer a basis for local mobilisation.

And what an inspiration he is, what a way to mobilise. Watch out Nimbin, watch out Castlemaine and Daylesford, the pastie hastie might want to do a Portland on you ...

Then came that deep weirdness, that peculiar disconnect that afflicts "Ned", his deluded imagining that somehow the lizard Oz remains respectable, set apart from the "populist conservative media"...

Deeply, deeply weird ...

The populist conservative media has already started its campaign to make Hastie the leader. The reality is that Hastie is not ready for leadership, a fact he must know in his heart; he is too inexperienced, his ideas are not sufficiently developed, he faces the difficulty of a Perth base, he has a very young family and says “I want to invest in them now as well”, his shift to the backbench has left many colleagues unimpressed, in the previous term he hardly laid a glove on Labor and he has yet to demonstrate he possesses the political skills required for a senior ministry, let alone leadership.
We live in a populist age. But the key to leadership these days is to exploit populism but not become its victim. This invites a judgment about the conservative, notably the populist conservative, wing of the party and its highly vocal media supporters.
This group loses virtually every battle of ideas it fights, border protection and the voice excluded. It is obsessed about its own obsessions, weak on Australian history, out of touch with how Australia has changed, incompetent in policy formation, brilliant at alienating sector after sector in the community, inept in understanding cultural power, disastrously bedazzled by Trump’s success – and, in its relentless espousal of conservatism as the defining ethic of the Liberal Party, it will consign the party to permanent opposition, if not worse.

It would be impossible for the pond to make this sort of stuff up ...

This group loses virtually every battle of ideas it fights

And yet there's "Ned" in the thick of it, battling away against assorted windmills in Don Quixote style, and to make that point clear, the reptiles dropped in another moment from Sky Noise down under, Sky News host James Morrow discusses the “glimmers of hope” behind Sussan Ley’s leadership of the Liberal Party. “There are glimmers of hope, the other day she gave a speech to the Committee for Economic Development Australia, and she said this,” Mr Morrow said. “She talked about restoring fiscal discipline and not relying so much on taxes, especially income taxes.”

Is "Ned" building to announcing his retirement from the hive mind?

As it bangs on about conservatism, reinforced by its media backers, it doesn’t get that conservatism doesn’t enjoy majority support in Australia. It never has and it never will. 

Or is "Ned" just in the grip of a serious, ongoing delusion that he's in the hive mind, but not of the hive mind?

Who knows, but he must be living a miserable life...

Since Federation, Australia has never been governed by a party that calls itself Conservative. There’s a reason for that. The populist conservatives are running an ideological campaign doomed to fail. The successful Liberal leaders, Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and John Howard, were determined to win the conservative vote but knew that vote wasn’t enough, that they had to appeal to centre-ground liberalism and persuade ALP voters. And they did.
Politics today is shaped by polarisation, but that’s deceptive. If the conservatives and moderates substitute pragmatism for polarisation, the Liberal Party should be able to unite around core ideas.
Labor will invite a campaign against its renewables agenda that will increase energy costs, undermine industry competitiveness, deepen power system unreliability, necessitate higher taxpayer subsidies and, in the process, show its emissions reduction targets are unachievable.
Its immigration policies demand a top-to-bottom review to deliver fewer numbers, better targeting and better screening of arrivals for compatibility with our values – the aim being a better immigration scheme enjoying stronger public support.
On the economy, as Ley has signalled, the Liberals need to shun populism and bring down policies that attack government dependency, achieve better return for public spending, initiate tax reform and are geared to productivity gains. These tasks aren’t impossible. They’re feasible.

Poor "Ned", but what a rich source of comedy, what a segue to the immortal Rowe of the day ...

So many rich details...

... but here's the one that made the pond think, "feasible" "Ned" notwithstanding, that the pond's investment in the lettuce remains in good shape, as the little plane that thinks it can chugs along ...