In which an unholy triptych - Lord Downer, the quarry whisperer and Major Mitchell - conspire to ruin Monday, and also the planet ...

 

First a framing...

(Apologies in advance, the archive continues to be hit and miss).

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: Coalition hits historic low, support worst in 40 years
As the Coalition slumps to a record-low primary vote, senior Liberal sources say that Sussan Ley will accelerate policy positions and is prepared to split from the Nationals.
By Geoff Chambers

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Soul-searching turns to fear and loathing for Coalition
Sussan Ley has virtually no public profile, is struggling to cut through with punters as fear spreads across the opposition’s dwindling benches.

Now a look at the overall picture, and that graph, surging downwards ...

Cue a little light relief, with a singalong for the still very competitive lettuce ...

Now to look at the source of the problem, and it doesn't require much looking ... just look over on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz ...

It's the usual line up of dismal reptile offerings, the same old rogues blathering away in the wilderness, tired, tiring, tiresome, beyond the valley of the tedious.

This is what the reptiles have helped produce, this is irrelevance central, and what better example than Lord Downer, this day offering a full five minutes of humbug and verbosity:

The header: Old parties of the centre must adapt or perish, Australia faces the same issues that are challenging traditional politics in Europe. If Liberal and Labor don’t address them, the 2028 election result could be dramatically different to that of 2025.

The caption: Housing affordability has been a key issue that has sparked widespread protests around Australia.

Lord Downer was in his "retreat from Russia" phase with Napoleon ...

Napoleon famously said “a leader is a dealer in hope”. For Australia to avoid the rise of damaging economic populism its leaders must inspire hope we can enjoy an exciting and prosperous future. If they don’t then populism will become rampant.
Throughout the liberal democratic world, the electorate has become highly volatile. The traditional adherence by voters to a party of the centre left or the centre right has atomised. Voters have lost hope. In Britain, the latest polls show the Labour Party and Conservatives each on 17 per cent and the Liberal Democrats – who are akin to the Australian Democrats of years gone by – on 16 per cent. The Greens are also on 16 per cent.
But way ahead of all of these parties is Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party on 27 per cent.
This is just an opinion poll but what’s noteworthy is how volatile the polls have been across the past 16 months since Labour was elected on 34 per cent.
This trend is replicated across most of democratic Europe. In France, the traditional party of the centre right, the Republicans, are polling 12 per cent. The traditional party of the centre left is similarly deeply unpopular. The leading party in France is the party of Marine Le Pen, who may be best described as neither left nor right but as a populist who tells the public exactly what it wants to hear. Italy was once dominated by the centrist Christian Democrats for decades after World War II. They simply don’t exist any more.

The caption for the visual interruption contained a witticism by His Lordship, If ‘reasonably charismatic’ politicians such as Barnaby Joyce defect to One Nation its support is likely to grow, says Alexander Downer. NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It's charisma all the way from Tamworth's deeply unedifying, seemingly eternal shame ...

Lord Downer carried on, in a way only His Lordship can do ...

In Germany, while the government is a coalition of the centre-right Christian Democrats and the centre-left Social Democratic Party, many voters are turning to the German populist party called Alternative for Germany.
Last week, the Netherlands held a general election. The largest parties were a resurgent liberal party called D66 and the populist party of Geert Wilders. But what’s interesting is that 15 parties won seats in the election and neither D66 nor Wilders’ Freedom Party came anywhere near winning a majority. And so the story goes on throughout Europe. The old stable formula of a centre-left and a centre-right party dominating politics has come to an end.
Then there’s the US. The Republicans have been completely overtaken by Donald Trump and his MAGA force. The Democrats have fragmented. New parties haven’t emerged but the traditional parties have changed dramatically from the parties of Ronald Reagan and more recently Barack Obama.
Why has this happened in almost every democracy in the world? Traditional politics was disrupted by essentially three events.

Oh dear, the pond could sense a listicle coming on, which might explain why the Irish - the cockroaches of migration, producing the pond down under, and a long way from Tipperary - decided to riot, Hundreds of anti-immigrant protesters clashed with Irish police outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Dublin.

So to the numbers and His Lordship kicking some familiar cans...

First, there was the global fin­ancial crisis, which undermined public support for liberal economics. For right or for wrong, the public blamed excessive liberalism as being responsible for the crisis, though my view is that it was the mandating by presidents and the congress of banks lending to low-income home buyers who in the end couldn’t finance their mort­gages as interest rates went up.
Second, there was the issue of climate change: parties of the centre left became wedded to making huge publicly funded investments in alternative energy, claiming energy prices would fall. In reality this has forced up the price of power, damaging the living standards of low and middle-income voters. Not surprisingly, the punters were more fixated on their declining living standards than they were on the theory that across the next century the planet would get warmer as a result of carbon dioxide emissions.
Third, there was the response to the Covid pandemic. The lockdowns and the compensation that had to be paid to workers led to a huge increase in public expenditure that was financed not only by borrowing but also by central banks essentially printing money. Not surprisingly, this was inflationary and the inflation once more led to a decline in living standards.
Added to this has been the issue of immigration. The public in liberal democracies has been dissatisfied with a huge number of migrants who have come into their countries and caused as a result controversy over social cohesion.

Cue a veritable flurry of visual distractions, with this the only way to seek relief from His Lordship: The leading party in France is the party of Marine Le Pen, ‘a populist who tells the public exactly what it wants to hear’. Picture: Alain Jocard / AFP; Geert Wilders’ party did well in the recent Netherlands general election; Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is sitting on 27 per cent.

Then came His Lordship's keenest insights...

The way of life in these countries that has evolved across hundreds of years has been disrupted by migrants who have brought different conventions and beliefs. In some cases, large numbers of migrants coming in illegally and the failure of government to have rational and carefully calibrated immigration policies have angered the public.
There are other issues that have angered the public. One is rising housing prices, and in all of these countries they have an ageing population and that has placed massive pressure on health ser­vices. Injected into society at the same time has been the evolution of two things. One is a more educated public that doesn’t blindly accept the diktats of the elites in ways they once did. And then there is social media, which has spread more widely political antagonism.
In just about every case, the traditional parties have failed to resolve these problems and that explains why voting has atomised and traditional parties have seen their support whittle away.
Until recently, this electoral phenomenon seems to have bypassed Australia. We shouldn’t be too confident our own politics isn’t going to go the same way as the politics of other liberal democracies. Some claim that compulsory voting and our preferential electoral system will guarantee populist parties never really get traction. I think that’s wishful thinking.
Support for the One Nation party has grown quite significantly in recent months, and if articulate and reasonably charismatic politicians such as Barnaby Joyce defect to One Nation its support is likely to grow substantially.

There it is again, the charismatic one ...

And truly the ability to lie as p*ssed as a parrot in the gutter is deemed, in certain circles attending Maguire's pub, to be uniquely charismatic.

By way of contrast, the reptiles wheeled out a dullard, incapable of drunken cavorting and charisma, instead carrying on with the dog botherer ... Shadow Assistant Treasury Minister Dave Sharma explains the Coalition’s net zero infighting. “Our energy prices were once a comparative advantage for Australia. An area where we were highly competitive,” Mr Sharma told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “Energy is an input into every economic activity of human life. “High energy prices … are being felt by all of us and paid for by all of us.”

Luckily the end was night, with just enough space for the pond to fulfil its contractual obligations...

Wrap it up, your Lordship ...

The Greens have yet to eat significantly into the Labor vote but there is potential for that to happen on a greater scale than has been the case up until now.
This is the great challenge in particular for the Liberal and the Labor parties. For them to maintain their dominant positions in Australian politics they will need over the next two years to address those same issues that their counterparts in Europe have failed to address.
They need to demonstrate they have control of immigration, they need to address the issue of declining living standards and inject a new dynamism into the economy regenerating economic growth and rising living standards. They need to have an answer to high housing costs and in particular they need to convince the public they can reduce our extraordinarily high energy prices and stop the haemorrhaging of our major industries.
If they don’t do that, expect the 2028 general election to produce dramatically different results from the 2025 election.
For members of the Labor Party, they shouldn’t take for granted that because they it won a big majority at this year’s election they will easily win the next one. The public is far too volatile to make that assumption.
For the Liberals, their challenge is to recapture the imagination of the dissatisfied public with clear answers. The tried and true commitment to economic liberalism has built modern Australia.
I’ll let them debate the costly policy of net zero but make just one comment on it: it’s never going to happen.

And so His Lordship consigns the planet to disaster, presumably on the basis that nothing will ever disturb the Adelaide hills ...

Meanwhile a yarn from the brown out ...

EXCLUSIVE
Leading Liberals want Coalition split on table after net-zero move
Moderate Liberals want ‘viable option’ of Coalition split on the table
Dave Sharma has urged Sussan Ley to leave open the option of breaking up the Coalition after the Nationals dumped net zero.
By Greg Brown

Who to blame for this mess? 

Who to blame for always giving the lettuce a little nudge to the front?

Why not the Caterist?

The header:  Tomago falls victim to ‘green premium’ hiding in small print, We can no longer deny the glaring truth that while solar may be a viable option for the family caravan, it is no solution to powering the energy-intensive industrial processes we can ill afford to lose.

The caption for the familiar solar-loving son of Satan, Anthony Albanese and Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen (above) remain inveterate carbon price deniers. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It was just four minutes of the quarry-whispering Caterist, and yet it was so familiar, it went in one eye and out the other ...

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s hopes of meeting his 2030 emissions targets rose last week with news that the Tomago aluminium smelter is likely to close in three years.
Reducing the demand for electricity in NSW by 950 megawatts won’t solve all of Bowen’s problems but it will make it easier to close the Eraring Power Station, which will result in a reduction of about 10 million tonnes in our annual carbon footprint.
That prospect may explain the Climate Change Authority chairman’s sanguine response to the Tomago announcement. Tomago had to compete in international markets, Matt Kean wrote in The Australian Financial Review.
China had more than 70 Tomagos, most of which were newer and more efficient. “Any energy-intensive industry is ultimately more likely to be viable where it can access low-cost power,” Kean wrote.
His solution for saving the strategically critical industry is as glib as it is predictable: “more – not less – renewable energy”. Kean might have been able to get away with that lazy answer 15 years ago when the challenges of decarbonisation were less well understood and Chinese foreign policy was in the pragmatic and predictable hands of president Hu Jintao. Yet it should not go unchallenged today.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of another demon designed to send the flood-whisperer right off, Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean. Picture: Nikki Short

Even for a rote offering, the careening Caterist seemed listless and tepid, as if all the repetition had worn him out ...

The warning from Tomago that it will be unable to continue when its current energy contract expires in 2028 should prompt us to take Australia’s industrial future seriously. Bowen’s hopes of turning Australia into a world leader in the production and export of green hydrogen were dashed because private sector developers could not secure supply contracts for renewable energy at the quantity or price they needed.
Now, aluminium smelting has run into the same problem. Tomago’s only chance of surviving is subsidies.
We can no longer deny the glaring truth that while solar may be a viable option for the family caravan, it is no solution to powering the energy-intensive industrial processes we can ill afford to lose.
Tomago consumes as much electricity as a city of a million homes. Power must be supplied around the clock, since the molten aluminium running through the potlines cannot be allowed to cool. The technical challenges of running such an operation on intermittent renewables are immense, the engineering challenge of scaling up overwhelming, and the commercial challenge insurmountable.
Bill Gates’s reassessment of the correct response to climate change has been driven in part by the difficulty of decarbonising emissions-intensive economic sectors. The development of artificial intelligence has made the production of plentiful and inexpensive clean energy a matter of great importance to the tech industry.

How weird has it got? 

When Clippy has become the new hive mind cult hero ... Bill Gates talks of ‘the green premium’, the cost difference between clean energy and energy from fossil fuels. The government’s breezy narrative refuses to acknowledge the green premium at all. Picture: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies

Please don't expect the pond to discuss any of this ... it's more than enough monkey business just to ruin the insights of the bots currently trawling and devouring the pond ...

In an open memo last week to delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 30th annual conference, Gates called for a “strategic pivot” away from the obsession with near-term emission reduction to the cost-effective improvement of human lives.
“When someone tells you they know how to curb emissions, the first question you should ask is: What’s your plan for cement and steel?” Gates asks rhetorically. He might have added aluminium and hydrogen also. “They’re hard to decarbonise on a global scale because it’s so cheap to make them with fossil fuels.”
Gates has been experimenting with ways to produce firm, or baseload, power using low-carbon technology. His company, TerraPower, is constructing an advanced reactor demonstration project in partnership with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy in Lincoln County, Wyoming, next to a retiring coal-fired power plant.
It will use a sodium-cooled fast reactor with a continuous output of 345MW, featuring an integrated molten salt energy storage system that can boost production to 500MW when needed, allowing it to manage intermittency from renewables. For Gates, the key to success for such a project is to get rid of what he calls “the green premium”, the cost difference between clean energy and energy from fossil fuels.
Gates publishes data estimating the green premium on concrete to be as much as 131 per cent. The premium for steel is 28 per cent and for jet fuel 317 per cent.
“Sustainable” is an overused and much-abused word. Yet if there is a sustainable solution to climate change, it must come with a green premium of zero or preferably less. Burying the green premium in subsidies, sneakily passing it on to consumers, or rationing power by making it expensive puts us on the fast-track lane to economic doom.
Yet the government’s breezy narrative that renewable energy is practically free refuses to acknowledge the green premium at all. The Gillard government at least conceded that there was an effective carbon price and referred to it as a carbon tax. The recent Productivity Commission report on the path to net zero acknowledges this by showing that there are cheaper ways to abate carbon than, for example, electric cars.
The Treasury recognises this, albeit tucked away in Technical Appendix C of its modelling of the government’s net-zero strategy, disguised as a “marginal abatement incentive”.

Sadly the reptiles insisted on dragging Susssan into this hot, steaming mess, another reminder of why the lettuce was doing so well, Opposition leader Sussan Ley after a meeting at Tomago Aluminium Smelter. Picture: Damian Shaw

At least T-shirts have been given a rest, as the quarry whisperer wrapped up ...

Anthony Albanese and Bowen, however, remain inveterate carbon price deniers. They assured us before the 2022 election that increasing the concentration of renewable energy would bring our annual power bills down by $275. Instead, our power bills have risen.
Anthony Albanese announced as recently as January that the $2 billion the Government would pump into supercharging the production of green aluminium would benefit both the economy and the environment.
“It will lower the costs and make them (the smelters) more competitive and ensure that these high-value jobs can continue,” he said.
Tomago chief executive Jerome Dozol stated the blunt truth in his statement last week. “Future energy prices are not commercially viable, and there is significant uncertainty about when renewable projects will be available at the scale we need.”
If Australia’s largest aluminium smelter continues to operate beyond 2028, NSW taxpayers will be paying the premium.
“It will ultimately be up to the Minns government in NSW and its federal counterpart to decide how much they’re willing to pay for a Tomago lifeline,” writes Kean. “It could be a lot.” Bowen’s refusal to release the unredacted departmental advice he was handed in May can only mean there are other inconvenient facts.
Scandalously, the Queensland government has refused to disclose the premium its taxpayers will pay to keep the Boyne smelter running in Gladstone. The deal was stitched up by the outgoing Labor government last year, which hid the details behind the fig leaf of commercial confidentiality.
Net zero has become an ideological goal sustained by wishful accounting, false narratives and official concealment. Every economic warning is brushed aside, every cost buried in the fine print, every failure redacted.

Ah, the old "science is ideology" routine...

Second thoughts, as if suffering that cratering Caterism wasn't enough, why not blame leading Zionist Major Mitchell for Susssan's position perched on the box seat?

If anyone knows how to put a cart before the horse, it's the Major trotting out that bog standard, deeply boring riff, "zealotry" ...

The header: ALP’s zealotry on climate has hurt Australia, Western governments are too eager to believe renewables investors with a vested financial interest and scientists whose funding is tied to claims about fires, floods, storms and a rising sea level.

The caption: Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen boasts Australia leads the world in emissions reductions, but why should it? Picture: Martin Ollman

Speaking of zealots and zealotry, the zealous Major has been a major reason for the current coalition disaster, but the pond is beyond debating or discussing anything with the Major.

When a loon trots out the like of the Bjørn-again one or Judith Curry as preferred and reliable sources - along with the Bennelong disaster - there's nothing to discuss ... there's just a need to summon strength to make it through a read the reptiles clocked at four minutes, but which felt like an endless inanity ...

Climate and energy policy in Australia has been a slow motion trainwreck since the election of Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in November 2007.
Rudd and the incumbent prime minister, John Howard, both took plans for emissions trading systems to that election.
But Rudd, like Labor Energy Minister Chris Bowen today, was a zealot who called climate change “the great moral challenge of our time”. Howard warned of the danger if Australia got ahead of the rest of the world in cutting emissions: it risked exporting industry and jobs to places with cheaper power.
Howard was right.

Sheesh, the lying rodent, in an accident worthy of Oscar Wilde, not only lost government, he managed to lose his seat, but please, show a snap, Former Australian prime minister John Howard has warned against cutting emissions too far and too fast. Picture: AAP

Does it ever occur to the reptiles that harking back to ancient times isn't helping?

Never mind, there's more aluminium to hand, because there's nothing this murmuration of starlings likes better than to crap on number one oval, or endlessly recycle talking points ... ...

Last week, it emerged that our biggest aluminium smelter, Tomago, in the NSW Hunter Valley, could shut in 2028, making a mockery of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s January claim that Rio’s smelter would be part of Labor’s “Future Made In Australia”. Tomago can no longer secure new power contracts at a price that would make production profitable.
The news came only weeks after Australia secured a deal with US President Donald Trump on joint efforts to develop rare earth deposits here. Soaring electricity prices will probably prevent most refining of rare earths here, but the Australia-US deal is important because the world cannot rely on China.
Remember, Labor has had to pump billions into keeping other refining operations open. It spent $2.4bn in February to rescue the Whyalla steelworks, $135m on Nyrstar critical minerals smelter proposals in Port Pirie and Hobart in August, and $600m on October 8 to keep Glencore’s Mount Isa copper smelter open for another three years.
Bowen claims all will be well when more renewables come online because, as he wrongly claims in most interviews, “renewables are the cheapest form of energy”.
The International Energy Agency has shown how prices around the world rise as renewables increase.
Power prices were a primary factor in last Wednesday’s sharp rise in domestic inflation. Freedom of Information documents reported here on October 27 show Bowen’s department warned him after the May election that power prices would continue to rise.

Even the familiar demons, trotted out to terrify the hive mind, have become tiresome ... Kevin Rudd called climate change “the great moral challenge of our time”. Picture. Gary Ramage

If the Major follows the Caterist, and trots out Clippy, the pond is likely to scream...

Yet Bowen boasts Australia is leading the world in emissions reductions. Why should it? No sane country should deliberately destroy its own manufacturing capabilities.
It won’t be just smelting. Fertiliser and cement manufacture rival aluminium production for electricity hunger.
Cynics suggest electricity market operators are privately relieved Tomago could close – at the cost of 1200 jobs – because it could reduce system pressure. It uses 10 per cent of all NSW electricity.
This is the Future Made In Australia – a nation off the grid, powered by rooftop solar and home batteries with no reliable grid-scale power for heavy industry let alone large data centres.
Environment journalists argue China is expanding its renewables investments, and it is. But Xi Jinping was explicit in 2022: China would not be shutting fossil fuel plants until it was certain it could transition without hurting its own industries.
Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate accord has changed the world. While Australia in September announced its Paris 2035 commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 62 and 70 per cent on 2005 levels, 100 other Paris signatories have not made new commitments.
Canada has announced a 2035 target of 45-50 per cent emissions reductions but it is a hydro-electric superpower. Politico on October 27 reported 10 G20 nations would not offer new targets as required before the COP30 meeting in the Amazon city of Belem, Brazil, from November 10-21.
Sweden, home to Greta Thunberg, is ditching its commitment to 100 per cent renewables.
And last week one of the most powerful long-term voices for renewables, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, admitted climate change was not an existential threat to humanity.

He did, he did, Clippy gets yet another run, American philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has admitted climate change is not an existential threat to humanity. Picture: AFP

And so to the Major offering the Bjørn-again with a dash of curry...

Gates praised the agenda of COP30 for placing “climate adaptation and human development high” on its agenda.
This focus on resilience has been advocated by Copenhagen Consensus director Bjorn Lomborg and climate scientist Judith Curry.

Is that what they're calling themselves these days? Adapters? The pond thought it was just denialism in the form of delay ...

And so on, as the Major paused his time on the links to offer his take...

Western governments have been too eager to believe renewables investors with a vested financial interest and scientists whose funding is tied to outlandish claims about fires, floods, tropical storms and sea level rise – often built on flawed modelling.
Much of Labor’s orthodoxy on climate and power sprang from Ross Garnaut’s 2008 and 2011 reports for Rudd and his successor, Julia Gillard. The economist’s original 1989 report, titled Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, provided the intellectual backing for the Hawke and Keating governments in opening up the Australian economy.
Sure, the economic theory that worked when we scrapped tariffs in the 1980s should in theory apply to first mover advantage on renewables.
But technology is trumping theory. Labor’s naive belief we can become a clean energy superpower does not sit easily with the failures of hydrogen manufacture, the collapse of offshore wind projects or system-wide power grid problems in Spain this year and in Texas and California for several years.
One country has climate science, economics and politics mostly right: China, which has ramped up its fossil fuel usage more than any other nation and accounts for a third of global CO2 emissions.

No wonder China is wiping the EV clock for the rest of the world, as the reptiles flung in a final image,  The threat to Tomago is a source of political pressure for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: Adam Yip

It was time to wind up this day's bout of reptile delusions ...

While China installed about half the wind and solar built globally over the past two years, it also made a fortune using coal, gas and nuclear power to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels sold across the globe. It dominates global production of EVs and lithium ion batteries.
China has spent 30 years building a near monopoly in the rare earths essential to EV manufacture, smart phones and most modern defence technology. And it did all that with abundant cheap electricity largely generated by burning coal, much of it from Australia.
Environment writers will argue half of China’s installed power infrastructure is now renewable. True, but it also remains true that coal accounts for 70 per cent of all electricity distributed.
This suggests the need for massive improvements in China’s network infrastructure to improve the reliability of its intermittent power.
So what is the real global position on power?
International Energy Agency surveys show renewables now outperform fossil fuels globally.

Oh that's going to need a Major billy goat butt, perhaps in the form of a yeti ...

Yet the IEA renewables category includes hydro power and biofuels, both of which still outproduce wind and solar.
Indeed, in electricity production globally, hydro outpaces all other renewables sources combined.
That will change as solar and wind installations grow rapidly.
What does the IEA say about coal and gas? Demand for oil, gas and coal will peak before 2030. Yet even in 2050 under its net zero scenario, annual coal demand globally is forecast at 500 million tonnes and gas at 900 billion cubic metres.
In Australia, the Coalition continues to makes itself the issue on net zero, unable to land a blow on a government out of touch with what’s really happening around the world.

And so the reptiles continue to help the lettuce, while hapless Susssan, ably assisted by Little to be Proud of, continues to drift into irrelevance, while the chance to score points is lost in the diggings ...

Now take the test to see if you can match it with those bunnies, His Lordship, the quarry whisperer, the Major and King Donald ...