Enough already with the surveys of the hive mind, with dubious links the pond is never certain anyone clicks on.
Enough with links to all the reptiles over on the extreme far right that the pond then proceeds to ignore. If anyone wants to explore them, it's off to the intermittent archive with a URL, and the "feast" awaits.
Enough with the alleged "news", be it the Brown-out rabbiting on about energy yet again in a purported EXCLUSIVE or a trio of reptiles raging yet again about the ENTITLEMENTS SAGA.
The pond is already well beyond the valley of reptile sagas.
And why bother featuring the reptiles discovering more sights featuring dozy King Donald?
These snaps are a dime a dozen and will be all over the full to overflowing intertubes, and anyway if you read the Graudian, some are hardly news ...
The president’s face in cartoon form, and the words “I’m huuuuge”, appear in another image on square packets with a sign advertising a “Trump condom” for $4.50. The novelty items were on sale prior to Trump’s first election win in 2016, and earned a place in the Smithsonian Institute’s political satire collection.
It's just sleepy King Don being classy for his mates ...
And a lot of them had the interesting bits conveniently blacked out ...
More to the point are the reptiles that the pond intends to cover today, with the remaining few of any interest - pitiful losers the lot of them - to be mopped up in the pond's meditative Sunday coverage ...
You see, the poor old bromancer has gone into psychic shock, and so has spent a an unearthly 11 minutes on the couch trying to deal with a world gone awry...
How could the pond distract from that with a parade of other tawdry reptiles?
The bromancer is a one man parade of neuroses verging on hysteria:
The header of abandonment: The new US security strategy upends global order and signals big risks for Australia; Donald Trump’s contentious national security strategy doesn’t abandon us entirely but it’s clear Australia must do much more on defence.
The caption for the King of Chaos: The new national security released by Donald Trump’s White House marks a profound change in US priorities, even purposes. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP
The bromancer is deeply concerned, and as in the way of all things, only he gets it ...
Trump’s White House released a new national security strategy. It’s a comprehensive repudiation of Trump’s previous 2017 national security strategy, which set out a clear, new approach for the US that was more explicit, and honest, than many strategies that had gone before.
In 2017, Trump’s first administration declared that strategic competition with China and Russia drove US security policy because of the aggressive, destabilising actions Beijing and Moscow take.
For some bizarre reason, the reptiles relegated Emilia's exciting, neigh astonishing artwork to second snap position: Trump’s White House released a new national security strategy that has been warmly welcomed by Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella
Blame it on AI Em, let AI cop the blame...
Anxiety suffused the bromancer ...
The key sentence in Trump’s 2017 NSS was: “The United States will respond to the growing political, economic and military competitions we face around the world. China and Russia challenge American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and grow their influence.”
The new NSS has not a single word of criticism of Russia, and with China only some implicit criticism of past trade policies. The new NSS has been warmly welcomed by Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow and by Paul Keating in Australia. Reflecting Trump’s closeness to Moscow’s talking points, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praises Trump as the only Western leader to recognise the “true causes” of the war in Ukraine. Keating says Trump is owed a debt because his NSS may avoid World War III. (Keating is not to be equated, morally or politically, with the government of Russia. But he has consistently argued the US cannot prevail in any struggle with China and should accommodate more of Beijing’s strategic ambitions in Asia.) America’s closest allies, especially NATO allies, by contrast were aghast.
The main mention of Australia is the demand we should spend much more on defence than the paltry 2 per cent of GDP we currently allocate. Tellingly, towards the end of a substantial section on Taiwan, the NSS declares: “In our dealings with Taiwan and Australia we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defence spending.” I don’t think the Americans could make it much clearer – though of course the Albanese government will never utter these words – that the near-term purpose of the US-Australia alliance is to deter Chinese military action against Taiwan. It’s also the case that everyone, except the Albanese government, knows and acknowledges that Australia’s defence budget is woefully inadequate. But that’s not the primary takeout for Australia.
The war with China is not the primary takeout for the bromancer? Astonishing.
The pond's dreams of him being the Reichsmarschall des Großaustralisch Reiches that led Australia into the great war by Xmas have been dashed forever ... Defence Minister Richard Marles with US War Secretary Pete Hegseth at the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue. Picture: X
The bromancer was so startled that he dragged in the Dibbster to talk of a break:
Dibb is clear about the implications of Washington’s new outlook for Australia: “It means we need to be much more self-reliant. That doesn’t mean complete self-sufficiency. But it does mean doing a lot more for ourselves. That’s going to be expensive.”
The reptiles considered this so important that they provided a snap of the dabbling Dibbster, We need to be more self-reliant, says Paul Dibb. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage
Of course the most important thing to do in a panic is to club the Australian government and make it all their fault ...
Dibb is withering in his judgment that the Albanese government is not doing anywhere near enough: “That means demonstrating that we are a serious ally concerned with our area of primary strategic concern, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and the northeast Indian Ocean.”
But almost immediately other saucy doubts and fears bubbled to the bro surface ...
But the new Trump doctrine marks a profound change in US priorities, even purposes. It’s a big mistake not to take Trump seriously on matters like this. It would be the height of folly to think that once Trump exits, we’ll get back the America we knew under Ronald Reagan.
Trump has brought some real strength to some international situations, has bolstered the US military and stuck close to a handful allies, notably Israel. But he has done bad things as well. The partial, quasi-isolationism that runs through this document has infected a substantial part of the MAGA movement and the US right more generally. There’s a similar or worse isolationism in large parts of the American left, combined with hostility to American military power that the right doesn’t share.
"Astonishingly rude"?!
At this point the pond began to wonder whether the bromancer might ever be allowed back into the US again, or whether he might be joining letter writers to The Age in a separate queue ...
Even worse there was a mild hint that King Donald might be a full-blown racist, though that might only be a surprise to the reptiles and members of the hive mind ... President Trump on Tuesday fumed that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar does nothing but ‘b--ch’; – insisting she should be booted from the country. The raucous crowd erupted into a loud &q …
The bromancer was in a world of pain and misery...
In all scenarios, the ideas and prejudices displayed in the new NSS, such as increased distance from allies and a narrower conception of US security, will play a part. They of course will be contested by other ideas that reflect US idealism and generosity, and an enlightened sense of national self-interest.
The thrust of the NSS is that the US will pull back from Europe and the Middle East to concentrate on Latin America. It proclaims that big nations inevitably have spheres of influence and seems to claim a God-given right therefore to smack Latin American countries around if they consort too intimately with foreigners or oppose US economic interests. The Trump administration is in a campaign, involving much military pressure, to topple Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
Generally, the NSS disregards any political or ethical values such as human rights or democracy. There’s much inconsistency here. The Trump administration has, rightly in my view, made a big deal of campaigning for religious freedom in countries such as Nigeria, yet elsewhere says it will no longer hector countries, trying to get them to change the way they govern or behave internally.
Sheesh, the reptiles even thought a snap of a suffering kid might be good ...A boy chases a truck carrying humanitarian aid by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in southern Gaza. Picture: AFP
As if King Donald's minions weren't keeping the country safe ...
The bromancer did his best to turn apologist ...
The NSS is often quite incoherent and self-contradictory. Its contradictions are evidence of the difficulty Trump is having in reconciling the divergent parts of his constituency, perhaps the divergent parts of his own personality.
The whole document could be usefully colour-coded to signify the authors of the different bits. There are several glowing references to US “soft power”, which must be the last traces of traditional State Department speak. There are a few sentences about the US working with allies, which are Marco Rubio. There are long, dominant passages about the US winning trade wars, eliminating trade deficits, taking back the wealth wrongly looted by globalist trade rules and conniving partners. That’s pure Trump.
Although subordinate to the Trump stuff, there are some solid passages about the need for the US to maintain the best military in the world, support for maintaining the status quo in Taiwan and the importance of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. These are the best, most welcome passages and reflect the Pentagon, even under Pete Hegseth.
Phew, what a relief, some solid passages, and a chance to feature that creature from Nosferatu...
Sorry, the pond meant to show this AV distraction, Trump aide Stephen Miller has accused Democrats of protecting illegal aliens committing crimes instead of American citizens. Miller claims the Democratic Party has embraced “full-scale insurrection” across the United States. This comes as the Department of Homeland Security said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could soon be headed to San Francisco. Hollywood actor and outspoken liberal Robert De Niro slammed Miller as a “Nazi” during an MSNBC interview. This follows a court ruling that the US National Guard can provide backup for ICE in Portland.
Now to be fair, the bromancer isn't going off like Cranky Keane in Crikey, who has been absolutely off his tree in recent days ...
But how unfair is the keen Keane?
Why faithful shill bromancer has taken to talking of bizarre and weirdly absolutist statements and now is blathering on about the head vampire ...
Here is the key sentence on Europe: “The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
The NSS also says Europe faces “cultural erasure”, and promises to work with right-wing European opposition parties standing against all this. So much for not interfering in other nations’ internal affairs.
All the NSS criticisms of Europe have a measure, a kernel, of validity, but this is an American national security document that elsewhere praises itself for not insulting dictatorships by asking them to change their brutal domestic policies. The policies of European democracies Trump disagrees with, on the other hand, are somehow a bigger threat than Russia’s brutal invasion of a European neighbour involving the state murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Trump doubled down on all this in interviews, saying of America’s NATO allies: “Most European nations, they’re decaying. I think they’re weak, but they also want to be so politically correct. I think they don’t know what to do.”
And to be fair, decadent Europe doesn't know what to do, not up against the dirty deeds of dozy Don ...
Sorry, this time the reptiles offered the King himself as a visual distraction: The 2025 US National Security Strategy signals a new approach to the world based on more inward-looking priorities. Picture: Patrick Smith/Getty Images via AFP
Couldn't they have shown him as a winner, with Europeans fawning all over him?
Remarkably the bromancer felt the need to stand up for Europe.
What else could a tyke do?:
Trump’s harsh, rebarbative words drew a rare response from Pope Leo XIV. While acknowledging Trump’s right to set US security policy, Pope Leo said: “Parts of it (the NSS) mark a huge change in what was for many years a true alliance between Europe and the US. (The President’s) remarks in interviews seem to be trying to break apart what needs to be a very important alliance today and in the future.”
The Pope’s criticism of Trump is well made. But this is a much more significant statement from Leo. In words that echo the great pope John Paul II, who was so instrumental in defeating communism, Leo is actually endorsing the NATO military alliance. It’s impossible to imagine the late pope Francis, genuinely holy man that he was, articulating this clear, brave, true, unfashionable moral judgment.
JPII, the greatest pope in half a millennium, understood perfectly well all the moral failures and limitations of Western societies. He also understood that democracy and the rule of law are a vastly truer, better dispensation for humanity than any dictatorship. Leo here has not criticised Trump from the left, as Francis might have, but from the viewpoint of the solidarity to be expected among democracies.
Consider the reptiles disturbed: The NSS is quite a disturbing document, says Peter Varghese.
Now the bromancer and his sources haven't gone as far as the keen Keane, railing at AUKUS yet again ...
But who knows what other scales might fall from the bromancer's eyes?
Could he be in a free fall of existential despair and alienation?
At the least, count reptile feathers as being ruffled (yes, dinosaurs did have feathers), even - gasp - quite disturbed and concerned:
Varghese tells Inquirer: “At a number of levels it (the NSS) is quite a disturbing document, with little space for the values of liberal democracy. For Australians the question of whether we go with the US or China can only be based on values.
“The characterisation of Europe I found just extraordinary. What he’s basically saying is that Europe is losing its white identity. The dismissive, divisive language on Europe gives Russia a status which is a huge departure for American policy.”
Varghese is also concerned by the way the Trump document elevates bilateral trade considerations with China over everything else: “He (Trump) seems to be saying his primary worry with China is economic. So is he really saying we don’t really care if the geopolitical balance in Asia favours China so long as our economic interests are protected? Or is he saying I don’t care about geostrategic issues because we, the US, are powerful enough to deal with China on our own? That would position Australia, Japan and India to the margins of Indo-Pacific geopolitics.
“The President has referred to the US and China as the G2. It plays to how China wants to be seen, although China is now looking to pass the US, not just catch up. It’s quite a reckless use of language … The question is what can we now rely on the US to do for us as an ally. That has become much narrower.”
As Dibb argues, Australia must do much more for itself, both in alliance terms and in the event that we ever need to take action in our own interests independent of Washington. But as AUKUS, though covered in uncertainty, cannibalises the defence budget, we’re doing much less.
Because we are paying billions of dollars to the US submarine industry, sending our sailors to help crew US subs, preparing a de facto base for US subs in Perth and inviting US forces to make maximum use of northern Australia, the Trump administration for the moment is not punishing us for our own grievous defence dereliction.
To be clear, I strongly support all moves that involve the US militarily in Australia. But this is no substitute for the essential task of building our own national capabilities. With our anaemic defence budget and woeful decision-making, we’re resolutely refusing to do that. If the US ever gets tired of providing for Australian security, and that can’t be ruled out now, we’re all but defenceless. We’re showing we can’t cope with the possible passing of Pax Americana. We apparently think happy talk an effective substitute for national power.
How to reassure the bromancer?
Don't jump ...
And so to the Ughmann ...and for those doubters and cynics who thought the unreformed seminarian talked though his bum when it came to climate science, you ain't seen nothing yet ...
The header: Playing with fire when it comes to our pristine bushland, Long before the first people arrived one tree, the eucalypt, rose to dominate the landscape and create the conditions in which fire became the signature of the land.
The caption for the truly wretched collage, which thankfully went uncredited, with not even AI willing to take the blame: Australia is a continent shaped by fire. Long before the first people arrived one tree, the eucalypt, rose to dominate the landscape and create the conditions in which fire became the signature of the land.
Right from the get go, the unreformed seminarian came up with a stunner ...
In his masterpiece Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia, Stephen Pyne calls the eucalypt the universal Australian: “Found virtually nowhere outside Australia but, within Australia, found virtually everywhere.”
Say what? Found virtually nowhere outside Australia?!
Um, has this Pyne ever been to California? (warning, that's a News Corp link):
How about Spain?
Okay, so the unreformed seminarian and his sources don't get out and about much ...
Now it's up to correspondents to do their own fact checking on the rest of the guff....
During an era Pyne called “the Great Upheaval” the continent dried as aridity became the norm and humidity the exception. The eucalypt was well placed to thrive. It had deep roots and foraged widely. It could hoard nutrients and store them for up to a decade. When drought came it could tough it out. It could grow where other trees starved.
“But if the eucalypt animated the bush, fire animated the eucalyptus.”
The tree is a pyrophyte, built to endure fire. At its base there are swollen woody organs called lignotubers that act as protected reservoirs of living tissue. They store carbohydrates and nutrients and sit insulated beneath the soil, ready to drive new growth even if every branch above ground is scorched. Many eucalypts also shelter epicormic buds beneath their bark. This is the tree’s dormant memory of itself; when the bark burns, these buds drive fresh shoots up the trunk.
“The eucalypt forest became a fire forest,” Pyne writes. “The eucalyptus could capture nutrients released by fire. Bark was thick and tough and it shed as it burned like the ablation plates of a descending spacecraft. If branches were seared off new ones could sprout from beneath the protected layer. If the bole burned, new trunks could spring from beneath the buried lignotuber.
“For most eucalypts, fire was not a destroyer but a liberator.”
The reptiles were deep into primary school instructor mode, This young eucalyptus’s bark has done its protective work, with the fire-damaged sections being shed.
On and on the unreformed seminarian droned, recycling Pyne ...
“The bush was perhaps too dominated by eucalyptus and eucalyptus perhaps too closely reliant on fire and, through fire, on Homo. The eucalypt was less a pyrophyte than a pyrophiliac: fire became a near addiction with its own peculiar perils.”
By the time the first Europeans arrived Pyne says, “the structure of the forest reflected tens of millennia of Aboriginal fire”.
Virtually the entire landscape of Australia was, as archaeologist Josephine Flood concluded, “an artefact created by Aborigines with their fire sticks”.
When English explorer James Cook encountered Australia’s east coast, his logbook records: “At noon on Sunday, 13 May, 1770 we were between three and four leagues from the shore, the northernmost part of which bore from us N13W, and a point, or headland, on which we saw fires that produced a great quantity of smoke. To this Point I gave the name of Smokey Cape.”
The pond did really think it had landed back in primary school ... Captain Cook noted fire in May 1770 and named the point Smokey Cape. Portrait: John Webber/State Library NSW
Implicit in all this of course is the awareness that the unreformed seminarian is a climate science denialist, so all this blather about the eternal nature of bushfires likely had a hidden agenda.
The main interest for the pond was whether this might bubble to the surface at some point ...
Coming at the end of a long drought, fire burned two million hectares and killed 71 people. The worst day came on January 13 and would be dubbed Black Friday.
On that day the commissioner, judge Leonard Stretton, wrote that “it appeared that the whole State was alight. At midday, in many places, it was dark as night. Men carrying hurricane lamps worked to make safe their families and belongings. Travellers on the highways were trapped by fires or blazing fallen trees, and perished. Throughout the land there was daytime darkness.”
These fires, he concluded, were lit “by the hand of man”.
“It is not suggested that the fires of 1939 could have been prevented, but much could have been done to prevent their spread and attaining such destructive force and magnitude,” Stretton wrote. Had “preventive burning been employed … such spread would have been retarded and such destruction would have been avoided”.
Stretton worried that “townships have been allowed to be encroached upon by scrub” and urged that “fire prevention must be the paramount consideration of the forester”.
“There is only one basis on which that policy can safely rest, namely, the full recognition by each person or department who has dominion over the right to enter the forests of the paramount duty to safeguard the property and rights of others. No person or department can be allowed to use the forest in such a way as to create a state of danger for others.”
As bushfire season returns there is much talk of conditions worsening with climate change. That may well be true, but the deeper truth of Australia is that our safety has always begun with how we manage the land.
As Stretton concluded, fires cannot be prevented but their worst effects can be mitigated through vigilance, good planning and sound land management.
As Pyne notes, two truths govern fire: “The more fuel the more vigorous the fire; the more wind the more rapid its spread.” We cannot dictate the wind but we should at least understand, and try to limit, the threat posed by fuel load.
Next came an insight so astonishing that for it's likely that for days the pond will be in a nirvana of enlightenment: The return of bushfire season will have firefighters on alert. Picture: DPFEM
Firefighters will be alert, and might even be armed with squirty water hosey thingies?
Amazing scenes, but the pond was still waiting for the denialist hoppy toad to make an appearance:
“As every person of Aboriginal descent, gardener, bushwalker and boy scout knows, dead leaves on the floor of eucalypt forests are highly flammable, accumulate quickly, burn fiercely, and physics dictates they are the crux of the Australian bushfire problem,” Adams told this column.
Yet Adams says much of Australia’s fire policy now rests on a model of leaf litter born in the 1960s, inspired not by ecology but by nuclear physics. It assumes that litter accumulates in a neat curve until it reaches a stable limit, like radioactive decay.
Adams has shown this is dangerously wrong.
His fieldwork, and that of others around the world, shows no such balance exists. Litter varies wildly with every hectare, every season, species and fire history. It never settles into a predictable, uniform state.
But because the model is simple and convenient, it has become embedded in the software and hazard maps used to determine fuel loads and shape hazard-reduction programs. This leads to false assumptions about risk and leaves communities exposed.
The hoppy toad did come out in this caption: Bushfire is part and parcel of an Australian summer. Picture: Paul Worsteling
You see? Those hysterics that suggest that climate change might be cranking up things a notch or two should just take a BEX, ruin their kidneys and have a good lie down ...
The consequences are serious and the clearest example is in NSW. There the Rural Fire Service’s fuel reduction burning is built almost entirely on fuel-load maps based on the assumption that every forest type has a single litter limit, supposedly reached within 20 years and unchanged after that.
Adams says this is dangerously wrong. No eucalypt forest is uniform. Litter, biomass and species mix can vary tenfold over short distances, largely shaped by the irregular legacy of past fires. The idea that fine fuels stop changing after two decades is equally absurd. If the underlying maps are wrong, and grow more wrong with time, then they are a flimsy defence against fire.
Adams argues that Australian fire science is decades behind where it should be and sliding fast. Research funding structures reward conformity. Serious researchers are sidelined unless they align with the dominant ideas of agencies. Modelling dominates because it is cheap, rapid and publication-friendly. Observation, the bedrock of science, is neglected.
This is a land that burns. For as long as humans have walked it, it always has. Climate shapes the weather, but fuel shapes the fire. We neglect this abiding truth at our peril.
And so endeth the Ughmann's lesson.
Let us have no talk of climate change or climate science, bushfires have been and will be eternal, ever since the long absent lord first put a match to paradise to teach Adam and Eve a bloody good lesson because of their impertinent desire to learn how the world worked ...
Here, have a cartoon break, likely you'll need it ...
And so to a full 11 minutes wander down nostalgia road with "Ned".
Why go there? Why do it all again? The pond has already done it with ancient Troy, and surely that's enough?
Well yes, and yet this desire to head back to a more golden age, this desire to cast the present aside, says a lot about the mood of the hive mind when confronted by the real world.
Best duck back into the cave, stare at the shadows on the wall, and slumber awhile ...
The header: ‘If we have forgotten Malcolm Fraser, that’s our fault, not his.’; The Liberal giant who crushed Gough Whitlam has become a political ghost story, erased from public consciousness despite his seminal part in shaping modern Australia.
If we've forgotten this form of Malware, it's our fault? Really?
The caption for the hideously colourised, sensibly uncredited illustration: Malcolm Fraser, ‘Big Mal’, was an all-encompassing presence, a natural leader, a man of his time. He collaborated with Yolngu leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu on the historic Northern Territory land rights bill and nominated his support for a multicultural Australia as his government’s finest legacy.
Here's the thing: from the get go, "Ned" gives his game away by using "Big Mal" as the nickname.
That was the one the head prefect liked.
Most preferred to call him the Freezer, because of his aloofness, while others thought of the toff as a squire, the last squatter, the crazy grazier from Nareen.
And that's all the pond has to say, because there's so much verbiage and so many nostalgic snaps to follow ...
Fraser did not just defeat Whitlam. He vanquished the Whitlam era, guaranteed that his prime ministership would have a democratic legitimacy and demonstrated that his grasp of the Australian character was far superior to that of Whitlam.
Yet the Australian public barely recalls Fraser. The media offers only token acknowledgment of the significance of his election victory. Our historical memory is rotting in the tyranny of the present and the fatuousness of social media.
Looking back, the Liberal Party of 1975 seems an incredibly successful yet antiquated beast, far different from its sad counterparts today. And today’s Liberals seem even embarrassed at promoting Fraser’s 50th anniversary.
Well it's probably better than wondering about how the competition between the lettuce and Sussssan is going ... as the reptiles quickly cut to the first of many snaps ... Fraser was the last prime minister to govern a socially conservative Australia and the last prime minister of the regulated, protectionist economy before the age of globalisation.
"Ned" was in a deeply ruminative mood ...
For those who dealt with Fraser and reported on him, Big Mal was an all-encompassing presence.
I covered Fraser from 1975 to 1983, from the turbulence of his coming to office, his three election victories in 1975, 1977 and 1980, and his defeat at the hands of Bob Hawke in 1983. Fraser was a big figure, a natural leader, a man of his time, tough yet consultative, a relentlessly competitive politician, utterly dominant in the country for his initial five years in the Lodge, a disciplinarian, a conservative and a reformer, always compelled by his concept of the national interest and, at the time, easily the most formidable Liberal leader since Menzies.
In his substance Fraser was an economic traditionalist and a modest social reformer – and that was the correct alignment for the country, post-1975, post-Whitlam. Many things could have gone wrong in the transition away from the Whitlam era excesses but Fraser was a stabilising force for political recovery, governing integrity and social advancement. The left can never stomach this truth.
The snaps kept coming ... A half-century later, Gough Whitlam’s imprint on our history is justly honoured; Fraser’s is unjustly forgotten.
The pond did wake from its slumber when "Ned" tried out a strategy borrowed from Our Henry:
The 1970s were defined by the titanic clash between two physical and political giants – Whitlam and Fraser – different in style, content and ideology. By crushing Whitlam, Fraser proved that the Australian people preferred Fraser’s stability over Whitlam’s vision. The intellectual class from Manning Clark to Donald Horne were repelled, but Fraser knew Australia was still a conservative nation with a demand for order and process.
As prime minister, Fraser wound back public spending, fought inflation, transformed immigration policy, resisted racism in southern Africa, campaigned against Soviet aggression, supported individual freedom, backed Aboriginal land rights and believed in state power for the public good.
A half-century later Whitlam’s imprint on our history is justly honoured; Fraser’s is unjustly forgotten. That tells much about Labor’s control of our history and the Liberal failure to promote its history. Fraser was always resented by the left and respected, but never loved, by the right.
The snaps began to turn family album ...Fraser legislated Whitlam’s Northern Territory land rights bill, a turning point in Indigenous policy; He also liked his scotch, motor bikes and fast cars.
"Ned" rambled on ... not so much an Everest climb, more a swamp of nostalgia ...
Fraser entered parliament in 1955 aged 25, the youngest MP, and watched Menzies in action from the backbench. He waited 11 long years before becoming a minister but his destiny would become apparent. In 1973, before Fraser became leader, Paul Hasluck wrote: “He is at least a man who believes in something and who works at his beliefs. He is intellectually better equipped than Snedden, Lynch, Peacock, Chipp, Killen, Gorton, or any of the others to comprehend national issues.”
Here is the first thing to know about Fraser’s leadership – he saved the Liberal Party at a time of historic weakness. In the early 70s the party under Bill Snedden was faltering and losing its sense of mission. Hasluck identified the trend: “The descent of the party is marked by the succession of leaders downhill from Menzies to Holt to Gorton to McMahon to Snedden.”
Fraser terminated the rot. His sense of mission was tied ruthlessly to political violence – in 1971 he destroyed the prime ministership of Gorton; in 1975, he destroyed the leadership of Snedden and became leader. It was a case of political violence justified by the ends. No other Liberal could have won Fraser’s sweeping 1975 majority against Whitlam and no other available Liberal could have successfully governed over the 1975-83 period. John Howard said Fraser’s leadership was “infinitely stronger” than Snedden’s.
Cue a triumphalist flourish, By crushing Whitlam, Fraser proved that the Australian people preferred Fraser’s stability over Whitlam’s vision.
Actually, if the pond could speak for some Australian people, they were bored sh*tless (Google bot approved) by the head prefect, and were very happy to forget about him, especially when his guilt about Gough turned him full-blown irrelevant leftie ... as if him discovering his errors was meant to inspire, when any vulgar youff who might stumble on "Ned" will understand he remained a gigantic bore to the end of his life...
Fraser’s victories shattered the Labor mythology that its reformist elixir was the right medicine for the nation. For much of the left this was too much to tolerate. Fraser became a hate figure, the slayer of their dreams, never to be forgiven.
He was a rural paternalist, suspicious of financial power, devoid of small talk, a regulator and a protectionist, shaped by the heroic era of Winston Churchill, dedicated to the principles of the Menzian age, he liked his scotch, motor bikes and fast cars, but his aloof personality meant he was unable to connect emotionally with the people. Widely cast as a “born to rule” Liberal, his most famous quote – “life was not meant to be easy” – was an appeal to individual sacrifice in the cause of national progress.
Yet Fraser as prime minister was repudiated over time. Australia was not destined to return to the old order, a point Fraser only half grasped. He has, therefore, a unique status. Fraser was the last prime minister to govern a socially conservative Australia and the last prime minister of the regulated, protectionist economy before the age of globalisation, free trade and deregulation.
Still the snaps came: Bob Hawke lights a cigar on a VIP flight during the 1983 election campaign. New Labor leader Hawke goes on to defeat Malcolm Fraser. Picture: Ray Strange
The pond supposes that at some point the reptiles will use a Hawke anniversary to carry on this form of anniversary commentary, but for the moment, here we are ...
At the same time Hawke and Paul Keating went where Fraser feared to go – they floated the dollar, abandoned protection for free trade, ditched state ownership for privatisation and pulled the lever on deregulation of the financial system. On the economy, Fraser and his National Party leader, Doug Anthony, were men of the 50s and 60s, much closer to Menzies than to their last treasurer, Howard, who took the path to economic reformism.
Here is the reason for Fraser’s retreat in historical memory: he was trapped between the dazzling yet destructive Whitlam era and the soaring achievements of Hawke and Keating. Even still, the Fraser record is more complex, varied and substantial than it seems.
Everything originated with his character and personality. Fraser ran his government with an intensity probably unmatched in our history – in seven years just under 19,000 cabinet decisions. He drove the system – his office, his cabinet, the public service – close to breaking point and, eventually, broke down himself, his health shattered.
The distracting snaps started to come think and fast ... US president Ronald Reagan with Fraser during his 1981 US tour; Being greeted by Maggie Thatcher in 1980. Picture: Steve Burton/Keystone/Getty Images; Enjoying the robustness of political life, 1983.
The pond realises this should have been run on Sunday, so that everyone might enjoy a few extra hours of snooze ...
On the economy, he was a traditionalist, not a radical. His bearing left the impression of a hard, dogmatic leader, but Fraser was never a Thatcherite or Reaganite on the economy. Given his 1975 inheritance from Labor, Fraser was an opponent of big government and obsessed about winding back inflation and lowering taxes.
Howard told Inquirer: “Fraser brought the show back to normality. His achievements were to reduce the rate of growth in government spending and that was no mean achievement. It is hard once you’re on a trajectory of high spending like the current Labor government.”
Average annual real spending growth was 3 per cent under Fraser, and 10.4 per cent under Whitlam. Inflation was much harder: it was 16.7 per cent when Whitlam left, by 1978-79 Fraser had wound it back to 8.2 per cent but by the end of Fraser’s time it was 11.5 per cent.
Former minister, historian and Fraser’s office chief David Kemp said: “Fraser did not succeed in bringing inflation under control, nor in ending high interest rates and high unemployment. Nor did he succeed in his stated mission to reduce the distorting effects on national policy of the powerful trade union movement, nor did he prevent recurrence of wage explosions, nor make the economy more competitive.”
Family album time ...With wife Tamie on their property Nareen, 1978; Tamie and Malcolm at Merricks in 2006.
"Ned" blathered on, showing no signs of winding down ...
Howard said there was widespread “disappointment” that Fraser was not an economic reformer. By the third term, his limitations were exposed. Historian Patrick Weller said: “He was not loved and had no charisma. He painted no vision except the need for belt-tightening and hard work.”
The irony of the Fraser era is that his achievements in social and foreign policy are more enduring. Kemp said Fraser’s greatest achievement was to carry forward “the liberalisation of Australian society” – a vision that overlapped to an extent with that of Whitlam.
Fraser legislated Whitlam’s Northern Territory land rights bill, a turning point in Indigenous policy; he introduced a system of family allowances paid to the mother; and gave immigration entry its multiracial character.
The reptiles kept the snaps coming ...One of Fraser’s most far-reaching decisions – in contrast to Whitlam – was his acceptance of Vietnamese refugees, a turning point in our history; While a small number of Vietnamese arrived by boat, most entered as a result of international agreements with an annual intake of about 15,000 during the most intense period.
You see? It's as if Stephen "Nosferatu" Miller didn't exist, as if King Donald was but a mad butterfly dream on a hot January bushfire day ...
On and on and on "Ned" went, retreating far away from current unpleasant reality ...
“That is why he was so strongly opposed to Soviet communism – he was an opponent of collectivism – and it is why he was passionately opposed to racial discrimination in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and of course South Africa. In Australia, he embraced but didn’t invent multiculturalism, which for years meant eliminating discrimination against people on the basis of their ethnic origin. All these stances fitted into his strong philosophical view about human nature.”
Assessing Fraser in global terms, Downer said: “I think he was the first Western leader who questioned the efficacy of the Western policy of detente towards the Soviet Union. Fraser was always a detente sceptic. And he was followed by Thatcher and then Reagan who called the Soviet Union the evil empire.”
His foreign policy adviser, Owen Harries, said: “Fraser was a pre-Reagan Reagan on the Cold War.”
Whitlam’s former adviser, John Menadue, who briefly remained head of the Prime Minister’s Department after the change of government, was taken aback at the first Fraser cabinet meeting when an issue was raised relating to Ian Smith, the prime minister of Southern Rhodesia. According to Menadue: “He (Fraser) said that Ian Smith was not only politically culpable for racism in Southern Rhodesia but that he was clinically ‘mad’.”
One of Fraser’s most far-reaching decisions – in contrast to Whitlam – was his acceptance of Vietnamese refugees, a turning point in our history. Fraser was pro-immigration and pro-Asian immigration. While the White Australia policy had been dismantled by Harold Holt and Whitlam it was under Fraser that the policy’s abolition had its real social consequences for the nation.
Gong time ... Fraser with wife Tamie inspecting the 2000 Human Rights Medal awarded to him, former PM Gough Whitlam, left, applauding. Picture: Angela Brkic.
Not like that dreadful gong that King Donald scored, with hands grasping that ball ... all for delivering world peace ... and terrifying the bromancer ...
At last the pond sensed that "Ned" was winding down ...
Another thing you can be sure about: Fraser would never have tolerated the flirtation of today’s right wing with Pauline Hanson’s party. Fraser would have rejected it on principle.
During the 1983 campaign I interviewed Fraser but 30 minutes after I left Treasury Place in Melbourne I got a message. He wanted me to return. Sensing the possibility of defeat, he had another, perhaps a final message: Fraser nominated his support for a multicultural Australia as his government’s finest legacy. Sixteen years later, long into retirement, he told me the same in another interview: “Multiculturalism might have been the most important thing that my government accomplished.”
The structures he created meant a new framework for migrant settlement, a greater voice for ethnic communities, the establishment of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS).
Former Liberal minister George Brandis says Fraser is “perhaps our most misunderstood PM”. Brandis says that because he was backed by the right wing to replace Snedden and was then involved in the 1975 crisis, it was easy to depict Fraser as a win-at-all costs autocratic figure. (Though Fraser did little to contradict that image.)
Ah the head prefect at his most misunderstood best, and then a snap of him with the sheets man ... Andrew Peacock with Fraser in 1982. Picture: Alan Porritt
Vulgar youffs should ask someone of an age ...
And that's the pond's one attempt to lighten the mood.
The pond lived through all those years, and can think of only one experience worse than that, and that's making any hapless stray read "Ned" rabbiting on about those ancient times ... but luckily, finally, at last, we're into end gobbet turf ...
“It was in social policy that the progressive character of Fraser’s liberalism is most evident. Heavily influenced by his then 27-year-old adviser, Petro Georgiou, he adopted multiculturalism as official Coalition policy. His abhorrence of racism was core to his values.”
One of his last political decisions was to back Andrew Peacock, not Howard, as his successor. Fraser had turned against Howard, yet Peacock never succeeded to become prime minister. It became a pointer to Fraser’s evolution in retirement: he became a fierce critic of pro-market capitalism and the economic reforms espoused by Hawke, Keating and Howard; he attacked US foreign policy in the post-9/11 era and focused on human rights and racist abuses in Australia. Fraser wanted to become federal president of the party but was forced to withdraw given hostility towards his candidature. He became a republican, voted for the republic at the 1999 referendum and campaigned with Whitlam. The two former leaders, opponents in 1975, became reconciled as Fraser’s shift to the left deepened their common ground.
Fraser said: “I have never been a conservative, always a progressive.” It revealed how far his views had changed and evolved. He became a critic of the Howard government over race, asylum-seeker policy and the Iraq war.
Fraser resigned from the Liberal Party in December 2009, complaining it was no longer a genuinely liberal party, thereby creating a permanent fracture with his former party. The hero of December 13, 1975, had abandoned his party and his party, in turn, felt unable to honour properly the genuine conservative and liberal achievements of the 1975-83 Fraser era.
"...with dubious links the pond is never certain anyone clicks on."
ReplyDeleteYeah, but we sure do feel real good about having the perspicacity not to click on them.
😄
The Bromancer certainly seems traumatised; it’s easy to imagine him curled into a foetal position, thumb stuck into his mouth, but still valiantly typing out his copy with his one free hand.
ReplyDeleteDespite his world turning upside down; his natural instincts remain in place. He strives to praise the new US security doctrine to the extent he finds possible; he still takes the opportunity for a few backhanders against his usual demons, such as Obama and Albo; and he approvingly quotes the opinions of that prize goose, Lord Downer, who remains as great a toady as ever. A thought for you, Dolly; if the USA had paid as much attention to “windmills and welfare” as Europe, perhaps that country might not be the dystopian shithole it now is.
Even nostalgia proves no comfort for the Bro -“ It would be the height of folly to think that once Trump exits, we’ll get back the America we knew under Ronald Reagan”. Yeah, well perhaps that’s because we're just a few weeks short of 37 years since Ronnie left office, Bro. It’s even longer since Tricky Dick’s Guam Doctrine departed the scene with him. Time to move on.
But of course even in the depths of his despair, the Bro remains resolute that while the US may not give a stuff for us, it wouldn’t lift a finger to help us, we must still accede to its demands and massively ramp up our defence expenditure. Anything that can help bring about the war with China in time for Christmas - if not this year, then hopefully the next.