In which the bromancer and ancient Troy do their best for the lettuce ...

The pond had promised itself the luxury of running screaming from the room if Dame Slap and Linda Reynolds featured yet again in a big splash in the lizard Oz. Sure enough ...

EXCLUSIVE
Donate your compensation, Greens leader tells Brown and Reynolds
Larissa Waters demands the pair donate any compensation from their court battles with the commonwealth, as Zali Steggall describes scrutiny over their unfair treatment as ‘continued harassment’ of rape victims.
By Elizabeth Pike and Sarah Ison

COMMENTARY by JANET ALBRECHTSEN
Hypocrisy rules in Canberra Bubble
The leader of the Greens and the country’s most prominent teal politician claim to wear the mantle of accountability and integrity. That mantle is an illusion.

(The archive seems to have saved an earlier version, or Dame Slap did an entire rewrite, but whatever, any Dame Slap offering a storm of irrelevance can be safely avoided).

It took some considerable coaxing and persuasion to get the pond back out of hiding and contemplate the wreckage which some mistakenly call a newspaper...

The trick that did it was the promise of the bromancer doing his best to help the lettuce ...

The header: Hastie knows Libs could die if they lose this fight, While the Coalition must win fights on net zero and immigration levels, it would be suicide to alienate voters of ethnic backgrounds, who are natural conservative voters. (*archive link for those interested in the bromancer's hive mind references)

The caption for a man resembling a startled lemur who's just seen a red bellied black snake: Like a good military commander, Andrew Hastie displays ‘situational awareness’.

That's a joke right? That blather about "situational awareness" beneath a snap of the man looking like he'd spotted a man with a prosthetic leg fresh from the Roberts-Smith court case?

Jokes aside, it was, as promised, a distilled 5 minutes essence of bromancer.

Some might quibble. 

What about the attention-seeking burqa stunt, admittedly deeply lame and pathetic, but posing questions for Barners, Tamworth's eternal shame?

And what about hapless Lindsey Halligan being thrown under the bus? Can the lickspittle Supreme Court save her?

What about King Donald's desperate attempt to sell off Ukraine to Vlad the sociopath?

Sorry, the pond is designed only for students of herpetology, from those entering the course at the 101 level to those long standing observers who have reached post-doctorate level.

If events escape the blindfolded reptiles, the pond can't do anything to restore their vision.

Besides, think of the way that every time a reptile scribbles yet again about the leadership, the lettuce is empowered, gains strength, and hovers like a rapidly building cyclone ...

Could the Liberal Party actually go out of business, be replaced as our main centre-right party?
Andrew Hastie thinks it’s possible. He tells Niki Savva, in her absorbing new book, Earthquake, that without change “we should expect to become extinct at some point”. He admits the Liberal Party is very old, in its membership base and its voter base.

Hastie’s comments are paradoxically encouraging. Like a good military commander, he displays “situational awareness”; that is, he’s dealing with reality. His policy moves, repudiating net zero to concentrate on energy security and price, plus a tougher line on cutting the size of the immigration program, are designed not only as good policy but approaches that a smart, energised Coalition could sell to voters of all ages. And his own emphasis on social media is long overdue for his side of politics.
But if they don’t sell their new approach successfully, could the Liberals really disappear? Common wisdom says no. Compulsory voting, preferential voting and the substantial benefits accruing to existing parties with existing politicians, namely funding, staffers, offices etc, all make it very difficult to dislodge one of the main parties.
But it’s not impossible. The last great realignment in Australia was when Robert Menzies transformed the United Australia Party and founded the Liberal Party. The UAP was a strange beast, more an association of politicians who liked getting elected than a fully formed political party.

An extinction level event, just like the dinosaurs in a Disney wildlife porn film? Sure enough, the reptiles offered a trio of dinosaurs, rapidly approaching extinction level: Dan Tehan, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor during Question Time at Parliament in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There's nothing to say about any of this, it's all in the savouring, with the bromancer turning to Ming the Merciless and the Mad Monk for wisdom and guidance ...

Menzies founded the Libs in 1944 and by 1949 won government, never to lose again while he was leader (he retired in 1966). He created it as a non-sectional party, not beholden to a single institution as Labor was to the unions.
There was even a tinge of anti-rich populism in his famous words: “I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of organised masses.”
I take that quote from Tony Abbott’s Australia: A History. Abbott emphasises that even with Menzies’ giant personality, and existing UAP MPs, it was a slow, tortuous business building the Liberal Party. It drew on a wide, rich life of civic organisations, among them the Australian Women’s National League.
There has been no fundamental realignment since then. Splits in parties sometimes provoke the possibility. In the 1950s the ALP suffered a devastating split, with the most dedicated anti-communists forming the Democratic Labor Party. It elected a lot of senators and had a huge influence, keeping Labor out of office federally for nearly 20 years, but it never supplanted the ALP.
In 1977, former Liberal cabinet minister Don Chipp broke away to amalgamate a couple of minor existing groups and form the Australian Democrats. They, too, won a lot of senators and lasted three decades but never looked like supplanting the Liberals.
Oddly, a more relevant example might come from 100 years ago in Britain, as the Labour Party pushed aside the Liberal Party as the alternative to the Conservatives. There was massive social change in 19th-century Britain. A true middle class developed as well as an authentic working class. The Conservatives represented the middle class, Labour the working class. The British Labour Party split in a big way in 1981. Its leading moderates founded the Social Democratic Party. It won nearly as many votes as British Labour but didn’t win many seats and faded fairly quickly.
Politics now is more fluid and unpredictable than ever. Centre-right politics around the Western world has been in flux. A new approach, focused on national sovereignty more than free-market dogma, has gained traction, especially around issues like immigration, the operation of markets and the failures of globalisation.

It's impossible to capture the delight the lettuce feels at the burbling bromancer, the sly shake of the leaf, the pleasure of a little moistening before serving, with the presence of the Bolter an additional, possibly orgasmic treat ...Writer and broadcaster Esther Krakue says Reform UK’s lead in the polls is “basically calcified”. “I think Reform are so ahead in the polls that it’s basically calcified, it’s now a given that Reform is somewhat double in the polls at any given moment,” Ms Krakue told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “She’s [Shabana Mahmood] also going to announce a visa ban, apparently, on countries that refuse to take back asylum seekers.”

The more the bromancer brooded, the stronger the lettuce felt ... even as the bro headed OS to drag in irrelevant comparisons ...

This can be wholesome or it can be toxic. In some nations the traditional centre-right party has reacted to these new social and political dynamics and become more populist to survive. The textbook example is Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s populist-right party supplanted the old Christian Democrats and now governs the country. In France, Marine Le Pen’s outfit supplanted the Gaullists. It doesn’t govern but it is the main party of opposition. In Germany the Alternative for Germany challenges, but has not supplanted, the Christian Democrats. But the Christian Democrats are forced to govern in an incoherent and unsustainable coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats.
In Britain, a recent Ipsos poll discloses extraordinary results. Nigel Farage’s Reform registers 33 per cent, Labour 18, Conservatives 16, Greens 15 and Liberal Democrats 12. That is a fractured polity, something like ours and almost ubiquitous today, but an extraordinary level of support for Farage. At the next election, Farage could win government or displace the Conservatives as the main party of opposition.
It’s tempting to interpret the teal electoral success as a de facto split in the Liberal Party. It represents the social class of climate true believers in urban seats, and cleverly uses preferential and compulsory voting to get across the line. It’s also the case that the teal juggernaut represents one of the most brutal exercises in massive corporate power in Australian politics.
Defeated Liberals were often outspent by teals to the tune of $1m or more. There are enormous government subsidies and rents more generally coming out of the net-zero agenda and a new class of corporate money will readily support teal candidates.

The reptiles ignored the OS rabble, and offered a snap of Susssan.

She was in a most unlettuce pose, looking like she was wilting from the heat, Sussan Ley

The pond is delighted to encourage this useless never-ending reptile speculation, especially when the bromancer sets ridiculous challenges ...

The teals have been much less effective in state politics, where their funding options are more limited and the shallowness of their real community support evident. But Liberals must understand the ideological fight over net zero is existential. They have to discredit the concept of Labor’s net zero or they’re very unlikely to win back teal seats.
In many ways the internal fight for the Liberals over net zero was a decision about whether to fight with an uncertain chance of victory or to surrender in the hope of generous treatment by the victors.
Two final points. Four Liberal opposition leaders have become prime minister in Australian history – Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, John Howard and Abbott. Each came from the party’s right, the conservative end. Each was written off as too conservative and unelectable. Indeed Billy Snedden, who unsuccessfully led the Libs before Fraser, fatuously described himself as “on the wavelength of my generation”. Menzies, Fraser, Howard and Abbott all fought huge political battles to become prime minister – stop the boats, ditch the tax etc.
Finally, the next battle is immigration. Everyone agrees numbers are way too high. But in fighting this battle, the conservatives must not give the impression they are suspicious of or hostile to Australians of Indian, Chinese, Filipino etc backgrounds. All these folks are natural conservative voters if Liberals have the energy and capability of talking to them. Alienating them, in our compulsory voting system, would certainly be electoral suicide.

Oh Susssan, you must bash immigration, but you can't bash your natural migrant constituents ...

Good luck with that one, but please, follow the bromancer's advice. 

Here's another suggestion.

Have you ever considered donning a nun's penguin outfit and wearing it in parliament to draw attention to the outlandish garb some women are forced to wear?

Meanwhile, have a 'toon celebrating matters left unexplored and unnoted by the bromancer ...

What else? Well the lizard Oz editorialist turned up to bash the hapless BoM ...

BOM badly needs a change in its own cultural climate
A $100m cost blowout for a new website isn’t the only concern with what is perhaps the nation’s most high-profile government entity.

The pond isn't going to die on that indefensible hill, but does note that the reptiles have used the folly for a conspiratorial aside ...

...The high stakes involved in getting accurate and easily accessible data on unfolding weather events such as floods and bushfires are easy to understand. So, too, is the fact advice given on possible future climate change trends will have a big impact on government policy and ultimately costs to ordinary Australians.

Always ready to produce a note of uncertainty in relation to climate change.

The real point is the singular way that governments of every stripe insist on shoving cash down the throats of inept consultants ...in this case Accenture and Deloitte.

Remarkably the reptiles played this down, with Accenture scoring just one mention and Deloitte none at all - and yet Accenture went from $31 million to $78 million and Deloitte from $11 million to $35 million. (numbers from the Graudian)

No wonder they can afford butlers to serve morning coffee ... (true story, the pond's partner once briefly worked in one of the big consultancies and was always startled when a butler hovered into view. It was way better than the ancient tea trolley that once used to serve up delicacies to cardigan wearers).

What else?

Well the bouffant one was on hand to valiantly defend Susssan from the threatening lettuce ...

This was Ley’s most important QT performance
Sussan Ley delivers her most important question time performance
The parliamentary atmosphere has changed. Sussan Ley has probably guaranteed her survival into next year.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

Egad sir, the pond won't hear a word about the lettuce's chances (and unfortunately the story was archived in an earlier iteration which featured a Leak cartoon, and so is beyond the pale).

Cam was also out and about celebrating the deeds of a mass murdering government ...

Why Israel is stepping up strikes on Hezbollah
The assassination of a key Hezbollah leader is a blunt warning from Israel that it won’t tolerate the growing push by the terror group to rearm itself.
By Cameron Stewart

But then King Donald is inclined to murder on the high seas, so nothing to see there ...random assassinations in another country are apparently par for the course ...

The pond best leave all that to TT ...

But there had to be a bonus, there's always a bonus.

The pond ran screaming from the room at ancient Troy's mention of Ming the Merciless, but was reluctantly dragged back in ... for the sake of the bonus for the day ...

The header: What today’s Libs get wrong about Menzies’ legacy, Some Liberals are so despondent about their party’s crisis they are talking about forming a new political grouping. But what would founder Robert Menzies do?

Oh you consumable delicacies, you ancient cats and dogs, not another snap of Ming the merciless: Australian prime minister Sir Robert Gordon Menzies in 1966, before his retirement from Parliament.

It turned out that featuring Ming the merciless was a ruse, a feint, and it was really all about assessing the lettuce's chances.

Ming might lead, but ancient Troy had more modern fish to fry, and so there was a goodly four minute outing, in which yet another reptile was determined to help the lettuce by featuring a bout of navel-gazing and fluff-gathering:

As the Liberal Party is beset by rumours of an imminent leadership challenge, disagreements on fundamental policies and values, the loss of heartland seats and a generation of voters, and declining membership, there is persistent internal talk of a formal split between the party’s liberal and conservative wings.
This may or may not happen but there is no doubt discussions are under way within the parliamentary party, among the organisation and members, and Liberal elders. In the Nationals, too. Most say the trigger point is likely to be after the next election, in anticipation of losing more seats or not regaining many. The talk is gathering pace.
It would not be the first time a major party, on the centre-right or centre-left, has divided with members breaking off to form new or join other parties. The centre-right has been fragmenting for years, with votes peeling off to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party rebrand and the Liberal Democrats.
A formal split would be something entirely different, though.
The last major party split at the national level – there have been breakaways such as Steele Hall’s Liberal Movement in South Australia and Don Chipp’s Australian Democrats – was the Labor Party in 1955.

So far, so good, with the reptiles seizing the chance to slip in a snap of the hapless Susssan ...The decision to walk away from net zero – a goal that Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, among others, defended at the past two elections – will do significant damage. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond wondered if it would be too cruel to remind correspondents of the contest, and of the unwilting strength of the challenger ...

What the heck, it was just the right sort of mood setter for ancient Troy ...

The Liberal Party, of course, was formed from the ashes of the United Australia Party in 1944.
The public response to the decision by the Liberal Party to abandon a commitment to the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is in.
Newspoll, published on Monday, shows the Coalition’s primary vote remains at its lowest in the poll – a dismal 24 per cent. Labor has skyrocketed to a two-party lead of 58 per cent to 42 per cent.
If anyone in Liberal ranks gets out the calculator to translate this to an election – let’s do it for them – it means that it is unlikely the party would hold any seats in metropolitan Australia. It would be all but wiped out. The party would be a veritable parliamentary rump, having lost even more seats to Labor, Greens and teals.
The decision to walk away from net zero – a goal that Sussan Ley, Ted O’Brien, Angus Taylor and David Littleproud advocated and defended at the past two elections – will do significant damage because it signals the party is not serious about tackling climate change. This, as I have argued, is the entry price for credibility in politics.
Not only do business and farming groups – traditional Coalition constituencies – support the goal of net zero with a policy pathway to achieve it by 2050, so does every state Liberal or Liberal-National Party leader. Why? They understand the politics of climate change and public demand to find workable policies to achieve it.
The Liberal Party too, under Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg as leader and deputy leader, recognised the science, accepted the net zero by 2050 goal and argued Australia’s share of global trade and investment would be at risk if it were seen to be out of step with global acceptance of it and concerted action to meet it.
It is telling that when NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman resigned before he could be toppled last week, he cited “brand damage” done to his state party by federal counterparts.
With elections due next year in South Australia (March) and Victoria (November), and NSW in March 2027, state Liberals worry the party’s federal woes will poison their chances.
The Liberal Party’s challenge is much deeper than its backflips, contradictions and incoherence on climate change and energy policy or its anxiety over leadership, with several ambitious men eyeing the top job. The challenge is existential. This has long been denied by party leaders and elders even though it was starkly evident after the 2022 election and underscored by the 2025 election.

The reptiles were decidedly short on visual distractions, with Little to be Proud of the last interruption, National Party leader David Littleproud during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Couldn't the reptiles have somehow worked in a reference to Tamworth's enduring shame?

No? Never mind, the pond did it for them ... as ancient Troy eventually managed to work in a little self-promotion ...

The party has almost entirely lost its suburban heartland. Seats the party held since the 1940s and 50s have been lost at recent elections. I’ve noted that seats held by every former Liberal leader other than Morrison’s Cook and Malcolm Fraser’s Wannon have been lost, illustrating the decline. Most Liberal members live in seats the party does not hold.
The earthquake through the party’s electoral geography was carved by teal MPs. All held their seats apart from Zoe Daniel, who lost to lucky Tim Wilson in Goldstein. The party cannot regain government without regaining teal seats yet it has done nothing to woo these voters back to the fold. Indeed, as a result, more seats could fall to teals, Labor and Greens.
This penetrates to a bigger problem: a demographic tidal wave heading for the party. The federal party’s past two election reviews have noted the loss of younger voters – millennials and Gen Z – along with women and migrants. The party resembles an old white man’s conservative party. But even those voters are shifting to the far-right One Nation, which is surging in the polls.
All of this – policy, ideology, constituency, members, strategy and leadership – has encouraged discussion about dividing into liberal and conservative parties, leaving open a three-way Coalition with the Nationals. There are fundamental differences about whether the Liberal Party should seek to occupy the centre ground, remaining a broad church, or move further to the right chasing One Nation.
The Labor Party is no stranger to splits, divisions and rats. The party, formed in 1891, officially split in 1916 over conscription during World War I, in 1931 over the policy response to the Depression and in 1955 over communist infiltration in its ranks. Leadership coupled with organisational and policy renewal were keys to its survival.

Oh sheesh, oh wretched boredom. 

If we must saunter through history, here's a map of the city of Sydney in September 1888 ...

Click on it to enlarge, study it well, use it to assess Susssan's chances of defeating the lettuce and staying in the leadership, or perhaps just finish up ancient Troy's ongoing blather about Ming the Meerciless, naturally with a plug for his skills as a biographer ...

When Robert Menzies toiled to form the Liberal Party in 1944 from other parties and organisations, he emphasised that it be a “nationwide movement” with mass membership that supported “progress” and championed “great ideas”. He said it could not be “subservient” to the Country Party or merely a party of “reaction” pursuing policies of “negation”.
When I was writing a biography of Menzies a few years ago, I was struck by how long and hard it was to bring about a new party. Others tried and failed. It required all of Menzies’ talents of hard work, determination, conviction, advocacy and compromise.
Above all, Menzies argued, the party had to be “middle of the road” and “pragmatic and not dogmatic” to succeed.
It is a lesson Liberals should heed.

The more the reptiles rabbit on, the stronger the powers of the lettuce grows, until one day it will smote and smite hapless Susssan ...

And so, with the help of the immortal Rowe, to wrap up the day's play by mentioning events involving the exceptionally handy use of the dove of peace ... another great Munich moment: