In which Dame Slap and "Ned's" natter give the lettuce the inside running ...

 

Time to party like it's 1999... or perhaps 1925...

There's nothing like the sight of good Xian womyn doing it for their menfolk to stir King Donald's juices ...

Meanwhile, according to the NBN person who attended the burial rituals for the pond's lightning-strike-obliterated modem, it was a mass slaughter in the Newtown/Camperdown area.

In the interim, anyone who suggests pairing a phone to an iPad to do a Blogger post can join Malware in eternal communications hell.

The pond would dearly have loved to note Media Watch's celebration of the rampant hypocrisy of a tax-dodging foreign owned entity trying to make a quick buck out of a BS 'back Australia' campaign, in company with rogues of the Dick Smith kind, but it was too hard ...Faux Dinkum indeed.

...Last month News Corp filed its latest financial results and they weren’t pretty, with falls in circulation, advertising and subscription revenue and an after-tax loss of more than $27 million.
So whatever merit there might be in this patriotic feel-good campaign, let’s not mistake this for anything but a cash-grab by a 20th century newspaper business doing what it must to survive in the 21st.

Well yes, what else to say, except perhaps to note what a shameless whore Joe is in service to his foreign overlords. (Sorry, no defamation of honest whores intended).

The pond would like to have celebrated with the correspondents who came out to play in the pond's absence, but it was all too hard ...and so the pond sat in nunnish silence waiting for the NBN man, roughly akin to waiting for Godot.

Now to a tentative foot back in the water, with the pond resuming full coverage on the 'morrow.

Today the pond is content simply to honour Dame Slap in her bid to help the pond's huge plunge on the lettuce ...

Let’s face the bleeding obvious: Sussan Ley is no leader
No one likes being wrong. But I would be happy to be proven wrong about Ley. The Liberals need a strong and articulate leader to shake up the party – and the country. Alas, Ley has made no impact.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Always a prize-winning bitch when it comes to willing bitching about other women ...and never mind that appalling art work or the winner of the Melbourne Cup, what a win for the lettuce...

Go climate science denialist dame ...

And there's the problem in a nutshell. N

ot only do the reptiles want to pretend to be Faux Dinkum, they also want to stuff the planet ... with the brown out unable to hide the war that has unfolded as a result ...

EXCLUSIVE
Fight not over yet: Liberal Party moderates go to war on net zero
Moderate Liberals are warning Sussan Ley should not take their support for granted as they run an internal campaign to convince MPs the Coalition would be unelectable if it dumped net zero.
By Greg Brown

And so to the solitary reptile to make the cut this shortened day, nattering "Ned" in all his wimpy glory, still apparently unaware of News Corp's role in stoking the fires of the current follies... (here for those who want to use the archive to check out the links in "Ned's" piece)...

The header for this 6 minute mini-Everest of self-harm, akin to putting JD too close to a couch or a woman in leathers, wherein "Ned" offers even more hope for the lettuce: Liberals risk act of folly and self-harm on net-zero, What does the ­future hold? Is it ditching net zero, telling Middle Australia it must turn the clock back 20 years on climate policy, brutally overthrowing the party’s first female leader?

The caption for a woman an esteemed pond correspondent has suggested is in hot competition not just with a lettuce but with Lord Downer for shortest time in the leadership sun: Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond loves it when "Ned" entirely forgets the role that News Corp has played in driving forward the internal warfare provoked by revisionist energy policies ...

It is time to recall what Anthony Albanese did during the first six months after Labor’s devastating defeat at the 2019 election. Virtually nothing – he bided his time, concealed his hand and made his plans to re-position Labor to the political centre to deny Scott Morrison another negative campaign.
And it worked. The art of politics lies in timing, knowing when to hold your fire and when to strike. This art has deserted the Coalition parties in their forlorn yet frenetic crisis over net zero.
The Coalition, following its even more soul-destroying defeat at the 2025 election, has done the opposite of Albanese.
Spearheaded by its conservatives and its junior partner, the ­Coalition has lurched into an internal political warfare driven by the conviction that its revival depends upon a revisionist energy policy killing off net zero as part of its rush to maximise policy differences with Labor.

The reptiles immediately decided to interrupt with an archival snap from ancient times, Then Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese and Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Penny Wong speak to the media during a press conference in Canberra, May 2019.

All the pond will add is that while the pond might have gone down for the count, the cartoonists stayed on the game ...

So many details, too delicious, a year's caricatures in one 'toon.

Good old Barners, clutching at the pole, while Little to be Proud of and the Canavan caravan clutch each other, as "Ned" carried on the business of wringing his hands, worry warting and gazing anxiously up at the falling clouds ...

The upshot today is three consequences. First, courtesy of the National Party policy and the comprehensive Page Research Centre report, we know what net zero really means. It means changing the law to remove “net zero” as a target under the Paris Agreement, termination of much of Australia’s climate policies on the grounds they destroy living standards, the throttling of the renewable energy rollout, advancing nuclear, coal and gas, the stalling of emissions reductions (with a 30-40 per cent 2035 target compared with Labor’s 43 per cent by 2030), enshrining lower prices over clean energy as a formal policy goal, empowering local communities and landowners against clean energy initiatives, restoration of the Abbott government Emissions Reduction Fund as the key tool for abatement, abolition of Labor’s climate structure including the Safeguard Mechanism (a de facto cap and trade scheme) and the New Vehicle Efficiency Standards and defining success not by tonnes of carbon ­dioxide emitted but in jobs and ­industries created and retained.
It’s a top-to-bottom re-casting of policy and values that effectively buries climate change mitigation via meaningful emission reductions. There is much that will appeal in this sweeping blueprint, particularly in the regions. The ­Nationals did not sign up to everything in the Page Report but the ­report is their bible.
The message is simple and extremely contentious: opposing Labor’s policies won’t work unless you oppose net zero and then dismantle the entire edifice. It’s a thrilling and exciting idea, a bit like Fightback a generation ago. But the notion the Coalition has no option but to embrace this transformation is nonsense. There are plenty of ways of tackling Labor’s energy policy vulnerability.

The reptiles flung in a snap of the Satanic solar and windmill-whale-killer-worshipper, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

As if that sighting that could possibly compete with this one ...

So much winning ...

True-believing conservatives intend fighting Labor by offering an alternative vision in a radical leap to the right. Just six months after an election, they are desperate to make themselves the issue. And Albanese Labor is happy to enter the battle on these terms. As my colleague Dennis Shanahan wrote on Tuesday, Albanese is ­running soft on the Coalition ­dilemma, content with the likely outcomes.
The second consequence, flowing from the first, is that this version of opposing net zero cannot constitute a viable stance for the Liberal Party as an alternative government.

Just to remind "Ned" of the many News Corp flies in this ointment, the reptiles flung in petulant Peta, destabiliser in chief ... Sky News host Peta Credlin says the Liberal Party has “oscillated” in the way it's handling the climate issue, lessening its credibility and further confusing its climate policy. “The Liberal Party's Net Zero woes continued today – as they will every day until a policy position is finalised,” Ms Credlin said. “The National Party have said they're dropping Net Zero, no ifs, no buts, because why damage ourselves doing what no one else is doing, other than rhetorically. “The Liberals have oscillated between treating climate as a moral issue and treating it as an economic issue for almost two decades now. “Dumping Net Zero is less a problem for the Libs than an opportunity, if only they're prepared to grab it.”

Read that and gnash your teeth and clutch your pearls and mumble into your worry beads a little more "Ned" ...

“Dumping Net Zero is less a problem for the Libs than an opportunity, if only they're prepared to grab it.”

Yes, the woman who gave you the onion muncher is now serving up that, and showing just what a silly, stuffed hapless irrelevance poor old "Ned" has become ...

This is not a policy for Urban Australia. It is not a policy for Middle Class Australia. This policy, however, may suit the ­National Party representing the regions, and under attack from One Nation. It is, however, about something else – the playing out of a struggle within centre-right politics over core beliefs.
The centre-right is consumed about itself, in a fashion similar to the periodic bouts of factional warfare that once plagued Labor. And the trap is that the Coalition is a victim of itself – its grassroots, its media backers, its conservative wing, and its junior partner.
It is a prisoner of its 2025 defeat that saw the Liberals reduced to a rump in urban Australia, the danger being that its climate policy is the policy of a party weak in urban Australia and destined only to get weaker still.
Most of the public is disengaged from this struggle in the centre-right. It doesn’t have a horse in this battle between the Liberal moderates and conservatives. Perhaps it doesn’t even care. But it will care if the outcome is a Liberal Party that walks away from a tenable climate policy, leaves the perception it has been railroaded by the Nationals, and that its policy is all about itself and not about the nation.

It's media backers?

Faux dinkum, is he totally clueless or what?... as the reptiles slipped in huge snaps of News Corp's current heroes, Andrew Hastie; Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

The pond had thought of extending it's modem-induced break by a few days, but this was all too delicious, and a serious backlog of 'toons was to hand...

Poor "Ned"clucked and did his best to imitate a headless chook, in his inimitably ponderous way ...

The Liberals have forgotten that Albanese won his 2025 victory by depicting the Coalition as a risky proposition. He didn’t win by ­running a brilliant government; he won by exploiting the idea that the Liberals aren’t reliable, can’t be trusted, and aren’t in touch with contemporary Australia. For six months the party has only deepened this fatal perception.
Staging a massive, immediate, post-election public disruption about net zero is some of the ­weirdest, wildest politics seen in decades, letting Labor off the hook at the precise time its vulnerabilities are being exposed on energy prices, uncompetitive industry, the return of inflation, and spending excesses. In retrospect, the Coalition should have duplicated Albanese’s post-2019 tactics: stay disciplined, plot your revival, and let the government unwind.
Do you doubt for a second the polls would be significantly better if that approach had been adopted? We live in a bizarre world: Labor faces devastating and mounting governing problems but feels no political pressure. Go figure.
The third consequence is the leader is being disastrously weakened. This is partly Sussan Ley’s fault but it’s not the main reason. That lies in the undisguised conservative campaign against her in cahoots with the pro-conservative media, with Andrew Hastie and ­Jacinta Nampijinpa Price having quit the frontbench. Right now the conservative campaign to re-make the Liberal Party resembles a train wreck that won’t easily be repaired.
John Howard said last week that Ley should be supported. Howard is a realist; he knows her limitations. But Howard praised her ambitious statements on the economy – pledging a personal income tax cut at the next election, committing to smaller government and putting industrial relations back on the agenda, in contrast to Peter Dutton’s leadership. Yet nobody cares. It doesn’t matter.
In truth, these are some of the most ambitious in-principle statements made by a new opposition leader in the immediate aftermath of an election defeat that we have witnessed in many decades. You read that right. But we live in an age of cults – and the cult is that Ley stands for nothing.
She has made many mistakes. Perhaps the most serious has been her failure to send decisive signals to the conservative wing about her values.
There are three things she should have done: stood in front of the Australian flag as a patriot; ­declared for biological gender – this is a man, and this is a woman; and repudiated the state ALP pushes for Indigenous treaties as examples of divisive racial separatism and in defiance of the referendum’s sentiments.

TG bashing?That's the best the old bigot has got?

Oh and a bit of flag waving?

And a bit of black bashing?

And he's still wondering why the Libs are so stuffed?

After all that hand-wringing came a couple of other current News Corp heroes, an invitation to join with the man who has little to be proud of, or perhaps go for a ride on the Canavan caravan, David Littleproud; Matt Canavan

 

So many joyous 'toons, so little time ...

And so to a final 5°+ clutching of pearls ...

These stances would have been fully aligned with the party base and conservative beliefs while ­having overwhelming community support. In failing to take easier steps to appeal to conservatives, Ley might find she has to take far harder steps.
She now faces a diabolical ­dilemma. She must try to preserve the Coalition yet sufficiently distance the Liberals from the Nationals on net zero.
Is that possible? Can a compromise be found? Any notion she must ditch net zero just to save her political leadership would be a deeply flawed answer.
Here’s the question: who might lead a prolonged Coalition campaign against net zero fighting the onslaught from Labor, teals, greens and the progressive establishment branding the opposition as climate deniers? Neither Ley nor David Littleproud would have a hope in hell of prevailing in that political bloodbath.
The Liberals, penalised by the Nationals, have got themselves into a real fix – undermining Ley without having an alternative candidate at the ready. The only genuine alternative is Angus Taylor, a reality many conservatives thoroughly reject.
So what does the ­future hold? Is it ditching net zero, telling Middle Australia it must turn the clock back 20 years on climate policy, brutally overthrowing the party’s first female leader and expecting voters in urban seats to applaud with flowers and votes? But don’t worry, there will be plenty of conservatives assuring you things are playing out just perfectly.

Completely clueless, as always ...

Try this for an alternate ending:

...there will be plenty of News Corp commentators, columnists and 'faux dinkum' journalists assuring you things are playing out just perfectly.

Come back Dame Slap for a final word, just to remind "Ned" of the company he keeps on a daily basis...

...Liberal senator James Paterson said recently that the Liberals’ apology tour needed to stop. It pays to remember that in late January, barely 10 months ago, the Liberals were head-to-head with Labor. Paterson, by the way, has been in politics for half the time that Ley has. The difference is excruciating. Paterson has long had, and is known for, a set of firm beliefs. When he speaks, it’s with authenticity. It’s a shame he’s in the Senate. One might imagine that any attempt by Paterson to move to the lower house will be fought by some in and outside politics who think leadership is their birthright. That tells you something about Paterson, too.

There is zero joy in pointing out that Ley appears to be a ­plodder.

The Liberals could do with a terrific female leader. If that’s not available, a terrific leader will do. Right now, the pickings are slim. Ley can keep the seat warm, but that role shouldn’t go on for too long. A new leader needs time to rebuild trust with the electorate, to showcase their long ­commitment to principles and policies that will cement the ­country’s future.

Each day the pond grows more confident that its plunge on the lettuce is going to pay off, which is just as well because the pond absolutely refuses to waste money on horse races, dressed as "sport" ...

And for those wondering, the very last link in "Ned's" piece took hive minders off to get this message ...

Completely clueless, but also deeply cynical and Machiavellian in the traditional reptile way, dressed up as "pragmatism" ...and meanwhile ...