The Australian Daily Jewish News was in full flight this day, as a mob of reptiles took to the digital ether to squawk...
The pond couldn't be bothered doing the links. Correspondents know the url/intermittent archive drill by now.
Over on the extreme far right, Mick joined in the braying ...
The demonstrators who don’t give a damn about rule of law
The chaos on Monday night was considerable but it’s clear why the pro-Palestinian demonstration turned ugly
By Mick Keelty
The chaos on Monday night was considerable but it’s clear why the pro-Palestinian demonstration turned ugly
By Mick Keelty
The pond seized the chance to indulge in its usual visual reminders ...
It was also a chance to note the scribblings of David Leser in another place ... I’m Jewish. I live in Bondi. But I take no comfort from Herzog’s visit (* archive link)
Inter alia ...
...As a Jewish man, I’d like to say that I draw no comfort from Herzog’s presence in Australia, and not because I am not grieving, like every Jewish person, what happened in Bondi, the suburb where I live.
I am not comforted because Isaac Herzog is the president of a country currently defending charges of genocide before the International Criminal Court. I am not comforted because, in the aftermath of October 7, Herzog made comments about “an entire nation” of Palestinians being responsible for the Hamas attacks, comments which a United Nations Special Commission has found “may reasonably be interpreted as incitement to genocide”. (Herzog insists these comments were taken out of context and that there is “no excuse for murdering innocent civilians”.)
I am also not comforted by the fact that Herzog previously posed to sign an artillery shell destined for Gaza with the words, “I rely on you”. (Herzog later admitted this was “lacking taste”, but said the bomb was a “smokescreen shell”.)
You see, here’s the problem. Jewish people are not a monolith. Among us are ardent Zionists, fierce anti-Zionists, religious fundamentalists, rationalists, secularists, humanists, agnostics, atheists, conservatives, progressives and everything in between.
And since the aftermath of October 7, a growing number of us have found it increasingly difficult – make that nigh on impossible – to support Israel and its actions.
That doesn’t make Jewish Australians who oppose Herzog’s visit “the servile lackeys of Hamas”, as Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid asserted scurrilously last week. It makes us people who believe the very essence of Jewishness is to engage in robust debate and oppose injustice, including the ongoing slaughter and occupation of a desperate people by a state purporting to act in our name.
October 7 and its aftermath created an unprecedented catastrophe for the Palestinian nation-in-waiting, but it also created a moral and spiritual catastrophe for the Jewish people in terms of our relationship to Israel … and to each other. It also created social upheaval in terms of how Jewish pain is being exploited to the benefit of those who do – and don’t – have Jewish people’s interests at heart.
I am not comforted because Isaac Herzog is the president of a country currently defending charges of genocide before the International Criminal Court. I am not comforted because, in the aftermath of October 7, Herzog made comments about “an entire nation” of Palestinians being responsible for the Hamas attacks, comments which a United Nations Special Commission has found “may reasonably be interpreted as incitement to genocide”. (Herzog insists these comments were taken out of context and that there is “no excuse for murdering innocent civilians”.)
I am also not comforted by the fact that Herzog previously posed to sign an artillery shell destined for Gaza with the words, “I rely on you”. (Herzog later admitted this was “lacking taste”, but said the bomb was a “smokescreen shell”.)
You see, here’s the problem. Jewish people are not a monolith. Among us are ardent Zionists, fierce anti-Zionists, religious fundamentalists, rationalists, secularists, humanists, agnostics, atheists, conservatives, progressives and everything in between.
And since the aftermath of October 7, a growing number of us have found it increasingly difficult – make that nigh on impossible – to support Israel and its actions.
That doesn’t make Jewish Australians who oppose Herzog’s visit “the servile lackeys of Hamas”, as Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid asserted scurrilously last week. It makes us people who believe the very essence of Jewishness is to engage in robust debate and oppose injustice, including the ongoing slaughter and occupation of a desperate people by a state purporting to act in our name.
October 7 and its aftermath created an unprecedented catastrophe for the Palestinian nation-in-waiting, but it also created a moral and spiritual catastrophe for the Jewish people in terms of our relationship to Israel … and to each other. It also created social upheaval in terms of how Jewish pain is being exploited to the benefit of those who do – and don’t – have Jewish people’s interests at heart.
The pond is always comforted by the awareness that Jewish people shouldn't be collectively blamed for the war crimes of the current government of Israel.
As for Minns' sturmtruppen, they sent the cranky Keane in Crikey right off ...
The furious violence directed toward protesters against the visit of Israel’s head of state, by the police of the increasingly Bjelke-esque Minns government in NSW, has in one evening comprehensively demolished the lie of “social cohesion”.
Banned from protesting, kettled, surveilled, attacked, blockaded by an effort to close the CBD, denounced and delegitimised by police and politicians — the protests were “un-Australian” according to the NSW assistant police commissioner — protesters objecting to the presence on Australian soil of Israeli president Isaac Herzog have faced the full force of the state apparatus in scenes similar to those of the actions of ICE agents in the United States. And this was hardly the first time NSW Police have used extraordinary and wholly unjustified violence against protesters opposing genocide.
Herzog has signed artillery shells to be used against Gazans, and declared there are no civilians among Palestinians, rather “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible” — words that clearly incite and are designed to justify the kind of horrific violence meted out to Palestinians witnessed over the past two and a half years. More to the point, he is the head of state of a country engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing. To ban protests against his visit, to inflict violence on those who choose to protest anyway, is a de facto endorsement of Israel’s actions, regardless of what rhetoric politicians like Minns engage in.
Minns and his ministers, and Anthony Albanese and ministers like Penny Wong, Jim Chalmers and Richard Marles, continue to insist they are pursuing “social cohesion”. If not before — but certainly after last night in Sydney — it is time to retire that phrase. Social cohesion is a scam, a strategy employed by the powerful to delegitimise and suppress the voices of the less powerful. Only the powerful and those deemed worthy by them benefit from “social cohesion”. If you are othered by powerful groups, you become the victim of cohesion, not the beneficiary; what you get from social cohesion is a punch from an armed official of the state, not protection.
Calls for “social cohesion” are a form of power speech, in which the powerful attempt to dictate what those with less power can legitimately say. Labor’s insistence on “social cohesion” has all along been targeted at those who oppose genocide: protesters, the many Jewish critics of Israel, Senator Fatima Payman, pro-Palestinian authors, the Greens. We saw the true nature of “social cohesion” after an attempted terrorist massacre at an Invasion Day gathering in Perth on January 26, which governments and the media remained almost completely silent on until goaded into a reluctant acknowledgement that it was an attempt at another mass-casualty terrorist atrocity.
When governments use power speech, however, it comes with the backing of state-sanctioned violence. The NSW Council for Civil Liberties said in 2023 about previous attacks by Minns on free speech: “NSW cannot be prosecuted into social cohesion.” We’ve not moved beyond that: the NSW government isn’t merely prosecuting protesters, it is inflicting “social cohesion” through brute force and violence against people engaged in free speech.
“Social cohesion” really only became a persistent feature of the vocabulary of Labor in mid-2024, when the government became the focus of persistent attacks from both the left and the right about its stance on the Gaza genocide: from the right came criticism that the government was failing to do enough to address growing antisemitism; from the left, that it was staying silent while Israel perpetrated atrocities and war crimes. “Social cohesion” was thus always a political tactic designed to protect the government from criticism and delegitimise its critics who, it charged, wanted to import foreign conflicts here.
Labor believes its mammoth election win over both the Coalition and the Greens last May demonstrated the wisdom of the tactic. The Bondi atrocity — the result of failures by intelligence and security agencies under both sides of politics — only redoubled Labor’s employment of the tactic as a defence against renewed charges it had failed on antisemitism.
But the violence in Sydney has stripped the tactic bare: social cohesion is ultimately about the powerful dictating the terms of free speech to the less powerful, through state-sanctioned violence if necessary. And in NSW, it is employed in protecting from criticism a state that is perpetrating genocide.
Banned from protesting, kettled, surveilled, attacked, blockaded by an effort to close the CBD, denounced and delegitimised by police and politicians — the protests were “un-Australian” according to the NSW assistant police commissioner — protesters objecting to the presence on Australian soil of Israeli president Isaac Herzog have faced the full force of the state apparatus in scenes similar to those of the actions of ICE agents in the United States. And this was hardly the first time NSW Police have used extraordinary and wholly unjustified violence against protesters opposing genocide.
Herzog has signed artillery shells to be used against Gazans, and declared there are no civilians among Palestinians, rather “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible” — words that clearly incite and are designed to justify the kind of horrific violence meted out to Palestinians witnessed over the past two and a half years. More to the point, he is the head of state of a country engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing. To ban protests against his visit, to inflict violence on those who choose to protest anyway, is a de facto endorsement of Israel’s actions, regardless of what rhetoric politicians like Minns engage in.
Minns and his ministers, and Anthony Albanese and ministers like Penny Wong, Jim Chalmers and Richard Marles, continue to insist they are pursuing “social cohesion”. If not before — but certainly after last night in Sydney — it is time to retire that phrase. Social cohesion is a scam, a strategy employed by the powerful to delegitimise and suppress the voices of the less powerful. Only the powerful and those deemed worthy by them benefit from “social cohesion”. If you are othered by powerful groups, you become the victim of cohesion, not the beneficiary; what you get from social cohesion is a punch from an armed official of the state, not protection.
Calls for “social cohesion” are a form of power speech, in which the powerful attempt to dictate what those with less power can legitimately say. Labor’s insistence on “social cohesion” has all along been targeted at those who oppose genocide: protesters, the many Jewish critics of Israel, Senator Fatima Payman, pro-Palestinian authors, the Greens. We saw the true nature of “social cohesion” after an attempted terrorist massacre at an Invasion Day gathering in Perth on January 26, which governments and the media remained almost completely silent on until goaded into a reluctant acknowledgement that it was an attempt at another mass-casualty terrorist atrocity.
When governments use power speech, however, it comes with the backing of state-sanctioned violence. The NSW Council for Civil Liberties said in 2023 about previous attacks by Minns on free speech: “NSW cannot be prosecuted into social cohesion.” We’ve not moved beyond that: the NSW government isn’t merely prosecuting protesters, it is inflicting “social cohesion” through brute force and violence against people engaged in free speech.
“Social cohesion” really only became a persistent feature of the vocabulary of Labor in mid-2024, when the government became the focus of persistent attacks from both the left and the right about its stance on the Gaza genocide: from the right came criticism that the government was failing to do enough to address growing antisemitism; from the left, that it was staying silent while Israel perpetrated atrocities and war crimes. “Social cohesion” was thus always a political tactic designed to protect the government from criticism and delegitimise its critics who, it charged, wanted to import foreign conflicts here.
Labor believes its mammoth election win over both the Coalition and the Greens last May demonstrated the wisdom of the tactic. The Bondi atrocity — the result of failures by intelligence and security agencies under both sides of politics — only redoubled Labor’s employment of the tactic as a defence against renewed charges it had failed on antisemitism.
But the violence in Sydney has stripped the tactic bare: social cohesion is ultimately about the powerful dictating the terms of free speech to the less powerful, through state-sanctioned violence if necessary. And in NSW, it is employed in protecting from criticism a state that is perpetrating genocide.
Well yes ...
As for paying attention to the other reptiles, the pond has had more than enough ...
Enough! It’s time for NSW’s A-G to take action in the Sally Dowling saga
Maintaining trust in the justice system is critical - and a prosecutor must be seen to be always acting in the interests of the proper administration of justice.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Maintaining trust in the justice system is critical - and a prosecutor must be seen to be always acting in the interests of the proper administration of justice.
By Janet Albrechtsen
These days the pond is content to note Dame Slap's ongoing obsessions, a never ending saga, and let the intermittent archive take care of them...
Speaking of sagas ...
As soon as the reptiles make visual comparison of hapless Sussssan to Malware, surely it's game over?
LIBERAL CHAOS
Ley urged to follow Turnbull’s spill playbook, as Taylor set to quit
With Angus Taylor’s backers expecting him to call for a special party room meeting, leading moderates are endorsing the need for a petition so there is ‘transparency’ around who wants to remove Sussan Ley.
By Greg Brown and Sarah Ison
Ley urged to follow Turnbull’s spill playbook, as Taylor set to quit
With Angus Taylor’s backers expecting him to call for a special party room meeting, leading moderates are endorsing the need for a petition so there is ‘transparency’ around who wants to remove Sussan Ley.
By Greg Brown and Sarah Ison
The link is to a now out of date archive record, but what does it matter, tracking the behaviour of the 'will he-won't he' beefy prime Angus boofhead is a tedious task at the best of times ...
The bouffant one managed to draw it all together and conflate and confuse the leadership struggle with the relentless Zionism to be found in the ADJN ...
The reptiles followed that first gobbet with one of their classic AI framings, which just managed to fit in the mouth and tie ...
What a sorry sight, with the reptiles reduced to AI caricatures.
How strange is it that the bouffant one should be able to use Albo as a scourge to lash Susssan and her tribe.
Does Albo even begin to wonder where his pandering might have taken him?
Just to rub it in, the reptiles flung in a snap of Susssan looking spotlesss...
The bouffant one concluded with a plea for Susssan to maintain the Zionist rage ...
Ley and the Coalition had actually benefited from Albanese being caught flat-footed on the calling of a royal commission after the Bondi killings.
Yet in the past month they have let Labor off the hook on Israel: Ley got caught unprepared for the special sitting of parliament on antisemitism; Nationals leader David Littleproud launched a Coalition split on the day of national mourning for the Bondi victims; Tuesday’s chance of bipartisanship was missed; and Angus Taylor has pushed himself to a point where he has to announce a leadership challenge against Ley on the day of Herzog’s visit.
Although Albanese is a cunning political operator, he does make mistakes. But Ley, Littleproud and Taylor are not cunning and make even bigger mistakes.
Yet in the past month they have let Labor off the hook on Israel: Ley got caught unprepared for the special sitting of parliament on antisemitism; Nationals leader David Littleproud launched a Coalition split on the day of national mourning for the Bondi victims; Tuesday’s chance of bipartisanship was missed; and Angus Taylor has pushed himself to a point where he has to announce a leadership challenge against Ley on the day of Herzog’s visit.
Although Albanese is a cunning political operator, he does make mistakes. But Ley, Littleproud and Taylor are not cunning and make even bigger mistakes.
While the pond's wandering a bit, the pond should note John Hanscombe in The Echnida newsletter attempting to bring back the lettuce ...
Surely, we're at the lettuce stage, probably well beyond it. Back in October 2022, British tabloid the Daily Star livestreamed an iceberg lettuce next to a photo of then UK PM Liz Truss in an experiment to see which would last the longest. The lettuce won.
Truss quit as PM six days into the Daily Star's live stream, before the lettuce had even begun to wilt. Sussan Ley has outlasted Truss as Liberal leader by months. Truss only managed 49 days in the top job; Ley has clung on for nine months.
Truss quit as PM six days into the Daily Star's live stream, before the lettuce had even begun to wilt. Sussan Ley has outlasted Truss as Liberal leader by months. Truss only managed 49 days in the top job; Ley has clung on for nine months.
It's true, Susssan has seen a couple of lettuces off, and the daughter of lettuce now in the saga is wilting at the way that prime boofhead Angus beef has shown a remarkable lack of ticker...
It seems he's worried about ending up like Hume highway roadkill, the kind slaughtered by those whale-killing wind machines down Goulburn away ...
Hanscombe looked for other vegetables - call any vegetable by name and they'll respond to you ...
...I'm not a betting man, especially when it comes to politics, which can throw up the totally unexpected - souffles that rise twice and Lazarus with a triple bypass come to mind.
But I can't help thinking Angus Taylor, given his woeful performance as shadow treasurer and his missteps in government, might also be an interim stand-in while the other conservative waiting in the wings, Andrew Hastie, shores up his leadership credentials. With such disastrous polling at the moment, Hastie's dodged a bullet by ruling himself out of the contest. For now.
For Hastie, cold storage might be the way to a longer shelf life.
As for Taylor, we need a different sort of vegetable. Can't be a potato because we only recently saw off one of those. A pumpkin perhaps. Properly cured and kept in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place, checked on regularly for signs of rot, they can last for months. But, if we're honest, they're never the tastiest part of the meal.
Sadly, it is beyond The Echidna 's technical ability to livestream a lettuce. But we'll be thinking of Sussan Ley at dinner time every night as we tuck into a fresh, crisp salad.
But I can't help thinking Angus Taylor, given his woeful performance as shadow treasurer and his missteps in government, might also be an interim stand-in while the other conservative waiting in the wings, Andrew Hastie, shores up his leadership credentials. With such disastrous polling at the moment, Hastie's dodged a bullet by ruling himself out of the contest. For now.
For Hastie, cold storage might be the way to a longer shelf life.
As for Taylor, we need a different sort of vegetable. Can't be a potato because we only recently saw off one of those. A pumpkin perhaps. Properly cured and kept in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place, checked on regularly for signs of rot, they can last for months. But, if we're honest, they're never the tastiest part of the meal.
Sadly, it is beyond The Echidna 's technical ability to livestream a lettuce. But we'll be thinking of Sussan Ley at dinner time every night as we tuck into a fresh, crisp salad.
They even flung in a lettuce in the illustrated credit ...
Surely there's still hope for the lettuce? Keep it in the fridge for just a little longer?
Surely someone will put a stop to "Ned's" endless brooding about the redhead?
Just to crank "Ned" up to eleven, the reptiles flung in a snap, One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation SA leader Cory Bernardi, with supporters. Picture: Dean Martin
Sure enough, "Ned"went off bigly ...
The trend is not absolute. But it is clear and identifiable, verified in polls, Australian National University election surveys and the life experiences of so many people. It punishes the Coalition at the ballot box but has the damaging consequence of undermining its confidence, seeding intellectual confusion and creating pivotal splits about what the centre-right stands for and believes.
At the risk of simplification, it has led to two apparent responses. Much of the moderate wing of the Liberal Party wants to move with the times, adopt a more progressive outlook and appeal to the voters lost to the left, a message that resounds amid seats lost to the teals. Yet the conservative wing has drawn the opposite conclusion – it sees the mounting backlash against progressivism, so virulent in the US and Britain, the impact of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, it grasps Labor’s vulnerability on energy policy, its flawed immigration agenda, its inclination towards identity politics and its equivocations on national security and social cohesion.
This internal conflict came to a head after the dismal May 2025 election result. The scale of the defeat was a shock. It provoked an agitated response as the conservatives took the initiative reversing Scott Morrison’s policy of net zero at 2050 and demanding more action against what they called “mass migration”.
The narrow election of a moderate, Sussan Ley, as leader triggered only more division, with conservative agitators pledged to her destruction from the start while others merely said just let the polls do the job. Ley has made many mistakes but, as the first woman to lead the party, she has not been given a fair go, a perception Labor will have no trouble turning into an election issue against the Liberals depending on Ley’s fate.
The centre-right has been trapped in two battles since the election – there is the fight against Anthony Albanese about who governs Australia and there is the more exciting contest of ideas about who dominates in the centre-right – with the populist conservatives demanding a decisive shift to the right.
But the problem is obvious: if you are fighting among yourselves about what you believe, you have no hope of being an effective opposition against Labor. This truism has ruined the Coalition for the past nine months.
Its origins date back to the previous Coalition government when the internal tensions over ideology were factors undermining, in different ways, each of the three PMs, Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Morrison. With the discipline of government gone, the battle is given fresh licence, reinforced by the notion that Peter Dutton blew the last election because he wasn’t true to conservative policies.
At the risk of simplification, it has led to two apparent responses. Much of the moderate wing of the Liberal Party wants to move with the times, adopt a more progressive outlook and appeal to the voters lost to the left, a message that resounds amid seats lost to the teals. Yet the conservative wing has drawn the opposite conclusion – it sees the mounting backlash against progressivism, so virulent in the US and Britain, the impact of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, it grasps Labor’s vulnerability on energy policy, its flawed immigration agenda, its inclination towards identity politics and its equivocations on national security and social cohesion.
This internal conflict came to a head after the dismal May 2025 election result. The scale of the defeat was a shock. It provoked an agitated response as the conservatives took the initiative reversing Scott Morrison’s policy of net zero at 2050 and demanding more action against what they called “mass migration”.
The narrow election of a moderate, Sussan Ley, as leader triggered only more division, with conservative agitators pledged to her destruction from the start while others merely said just let the polls do the job. Ley has made many mistakes but, as the first woman to lead the party, she has not been given a fair go, a perception Labor will have no trouble turning into an election issue against the Liberals depending on Ley’s fate.
The centre-right has been trapped in two battles since the election – there is the fight against Anthony Albanese about who governs Australia and there is the more exciting contest of ideas about who dominates in the centre-right – with the populist conservatives demanding a decisive shift to the right.
But the problem is obvious: if you are fighting among yourselves about what you believe, you have no hope of being an effective opposition against Labor. This truism has ruined the Coalition for the past nine months.
Its origins date back to the previous Coalition government when the internal tensions over ideology were factors undermining, in different ways, each of the three PMs, Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Morrison. With the discipline of government gone, the battle is given fresh licence, reinforced by the notion that Peter Dutton blew the last election because he wasn’t true to conservative policies.
The reptiles flung in another snap of a spotlesss Susssan ...Nobody watching the Sussan Ley-David Littleproud patch-up media conference announcing the revival of the Coalition could have much confidence. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Say it again...
The Liberal Party is now alienated from the new centres of power in Australia, the public and private elites and much of the shifting opinion-making brokers in the country. Over a generation this constitutes a near revolutionary shift to the left in values, if not always in policy. It has many dimensions.
That's got to be worth a Golding ...
What gets the pond is the peculiar out of body experience that "Ned" seems to have whenever he tries to think about the way that the Murdochians have ruined the country ...
The populist conservative media is fundamental in the battle over the future of the centre-right and has promoted Pauline Hanson as symbolic of conservative values, from upholding patriotism, attacking radical Islam, smashing mass immigration, defending fossil fuels, repudiating multiculturalism and opposing progressive wokism in all its forms.
Sheesh, does he ever read the lizard Oz?
Is he entirely unaware that the "populist conservative media" is largely in thrall to the Murdochians?
The pond thinks that shrinks call this condition a depersonalization-derealization disorder...
Depersonalization is described as feeling disconnected or detached from one's Murdochian employer and one's fellow Murdochian hacks. Individuals may report feeling as if they are an outside observer of their own thoughts or the hive mind body, and often report feeling a loss of control over the thoughts or actions of their employer. Derealization is described as detachment from one's hive mind surroundings. Individuals experiencing derealization may report perceiving their fellow scribblers and the hive mind world around them as foggy, dreamlike, surreal, and/or visually distorted.
Deeply weird, but then "Ned's" natter always veers off into the bog swamp of weirdness ...
The trouble with promoting Hanson was always obvious – it undermines the Coalition in its other, more important battle: the fight against Albanese Labor. Many conservatives love Hanson, but more mainstream voters loathe her. The evidence is irrefutable: the stronger Hanson’s vote, the bigger Albanese’s margin. Incredibly, some conservatives champion Hanson as the most consistent and purist exponent of true conservative values.
Indeed, Hanson has been given respectability by much of the conservative movement in Australia – a narrative of self-inflicted harm. This week’s Newspoll has Hanson’s party on 27 per cent, heading the parties of the centre-right, but history reveals One Nation is a barometer of grievance, its fortunes are volatile and Hanson can’t hold a parliamentary team together.
The dilemma many conservatives face is they want to move the Coalition in Hanson’s direction but that is a high-risk venture that risks permanent alienation of many centrist voters. History reveals that Hanson can both undermine and destroy Coalition governments. Witness the Queensland state election of June 1998 when Hanson polled 22.7 per cent compared with the Liberals on 16.1 per cent and the Nationals on 15.1 per cent. The conservative government of Rob Borbidge was defeated – just – and Labor’s Peter Beattie became premier with One Nation being decisive in up-ending traditional politics. As Beattie said in last weekend’s Inquirer, if Borbidge had survived Queensland would have had a conservative government propped up by Hanson.
The Queensland election showed One Nation could destroy a conservative government. The upshot was a cataclysm with John Howard under pressure to review his stand on tax reform, a concession he was never going to make.
Indeed, Hanson has been given respectability by much of the conservative movement in Australia – a narrative of self-inflicted harm. This week’s Newspoll has Hanson’s party on 27 per cent, heading the parties of the centre-right, but history reveals One Nation is a barometer of grievance, its fortunes are volatile and Hanson can’t hold a parliamentary team together.
The dilemma many conservatives face is they want to move the Coalition in Hanson’s direction but that is a high-risk venture that risks permanent alienation of many centrist voters. History reveals that Hanson can both undermine and destroy Coalition governments. Witness the Queensland state election of June 1998 when Hanson polled 22.7 per cent compared with the Liberals on 16.1 per cent and the Nationals on 15.1 per cent. The conservative government of Rob Borbidge was defeated – just – and Labor’s Peter Beattie became premier with One Nation being decisive in up-ending traditional politics. As Beattie said in last weekend’s Inquirer, if Borbidge had survived Queensland would have had a conservative government propped up by Hanson.
The Queensland election showed One Nation could destroy a conservative government. The upshot was a cataclysm with John Howard under pressure to review his stand on tax reform, a concession he was never going to make.
At this point the reptiles interrupted with an eternal mystery ...
The pond carried on supping on "Ned's" tears, perhaps too much salt for the diet, but delicious all the same ...
But, as Howard said, he had a “near-death experience” at his October 1998 re-election, four months after the Queensland debacle. Howard said: “As well as the GST, Pauline Hanson and One Nation contributed significantly to our big loss of seats in 1998.” His majority was cut from 44 to 12 seats. Hanson won 8.4 per cent of the primary vote and the Coalition lost 7.4 per cent of its primary vote. One Nation played a tangible role in lifting Labor’s vote and exposing Howard to the risk of defeat by Labor – a loss that would have terminated him as a one-term PM.
The moral: when One Nation soars, that guarantees convulsion within the centre-right. A strong Hanson makes the prospect of a coherent centre-right able to win an electoral majority only more remote. Conservatives need to differentiate their pitch from Hanson, not chase Hanson across the political spectrum.
Hanson is strong on brand and weak on policy. Her anti-immigration profile is critical to her current success given justified community alarm about Labor’s immigration policy. The prospect that economic issues will re-emerge as the frontline test for most of this parliamentary term is likely to limit Hanson’s ongoing appeal.
Everything depends on the Coalition parties offering a coherent front and delivering meaningful policy. But nobody watching the Ley-David Littleproud patch-up media conference announcing the revival of the Coalition could have much confidence. What did Littleproud think he was doing? He spent most of his time defending the National Party’s folly in blowing up the Coalition in the first place.
Former Liberal frontbencher Jane Hume said after the Newspoll: “Unless something changes, we will be wiped out” – a reference to leadership. In truth, lots of things must change. The centre-right is riven with competing cultural and ideological agendas. It needs to strike an internal settlement to have any chance of becoming a viable opposition in the Australia of 2026.
The moral: when One Nation soars, that guarantees convulsion within the centre-right. A strong Hanson makes the prospect of a coherent centre-right able to win an electoral majority only more remote. Conservatives need to differentiate their pitch from Hanson, not chase Hanson across the political spectrum.
Hanson is strong on brand and weak on policy. Her anti-immigration profile is critical to her current success given justified community alarm about Labor’s immigration policy. The prospect that economic issues will re-emerge as the frontline test for most of this parliamentary term is likely to limit Hanson’s ongoing appeal.
Everything depends on the Coalition parties offering a coherent front and delivering meaningful policy. But nobody watching the Ley-David Littleproud patch-up media conference announcing the revival of the Coalition could have much confidence. What did Littleproud think he was doing? He spent most of his time defending the National Party’s folly in blowing up the Coalition in the first place.
Former Liberal frontbencher Jane Hume said after the Newspoll: “Unless something changes, we will be wiped out” – a reference to leadership. In truth, lots of things must change. The centre-right is riven with competing cultural and ideological agendas. It needs to strike an internal settlement to have any chance of becoming a viable opposition in the Australia of 2026.
Indeed, indeed...
Here's the real downer (and not His Lordship).
The pond had half-hoped to be able to open this day with reference to the ongoing attempts to sell Ukraine down the river ...
But the reptiles are now so steeped in Zionism that much else happening in the world passes by the ADJN hive mind digital edition.
Others do pay attention.
Timothy Snyder, for example, was encouraging attention and if possible help, for Ukraine in The Long Ukrainian Winter, How You Can Help, Russia’s full-scale of invasion began four years ago. It began in winter, and so this winter is the fifth. And, for civilians, the worst.
Together with the Gaza ethnic cleansing, the Ukraine atrocity is in a desperate phase ...
The Russian war effort is struggling in the field. Territorial gains are minimal and come at huge cost. What Russia can do is launch ballistic missiles and drones at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in order to force Ukrainians to endure the freezing cold. Russia also simply targets Ukrainian workers at their factories and Ukrainians generally in their homes.
Sadly, we in North America and Europe share some responsibility in this. The Ukrainians are fighting well enough that we do not have to fight. And so it is all too easy to accept this war, the bloodiest since 1945, as simply part of the status quo.
And so we -- the EU and the US alike -- have taken far too long to cut off Russian gas and oil from world markets. The US government has stopped all military aid to Ukraine -- what continues are shipments of US arms to Ukraine that are purchased by Europeans, as well as European arms shipments. Even though the Ukrainian need is great and the Europeans are paying for everything, the United States has been slow to make deliveries.
We are not sending the Ukrainians the air defense they need to protect themselves. This is one reason millions of people are in the cold, and why civilians die almost every day.
The major policy of the Trump administration has been to use the word “peace.” Peace comes when an aggressor ceases to aggress and the country that is attacked can rebuild. But Trump has been unable to muster a policy that would change Russia’s incentives. He has difficulty even presenting the war as a war, rather than as a misunderstanding about real estate; his administration issues official statements that praise Russia for its desire for peace, even as the offensives continue missiles fall. Trump has put pressure on Ukrainians, who, unlike the Russians, have to fight. For Russia, this is an ego war, a war by a dictator for his own legacy. For Ukraine, this is a war of national sovereignty and physical survival.
Anne Applebaum also paid attention.
Back in the day, the pond never imagined it would be quoting Applebaum in an approving way, yet here we are ... (as the bromancer continues to be MIA) ...
Just a taster, with a graph ...
Desperate times ... and now it's time to wrap up proceedings with an immortal Rowe noting the sorry state of Australian politics ...
It's always in the details, what's on the boil, and what's stuffed in the oven ...
Not to worry, here's a little belated Bad Bunny light relief ...
Very neatly expressed by Leser, wasn't it. Just generalise from "Jewish people are not a monolith" to Homo sapiens sapiens isn't a monolith and it just about covers everything.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"L'esprit du terrorisme [The Spirit of Terrorism]
Jean Baudrillard
Translated by Dr Rachel Bloul, School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University.
"We have had many global events from Diana's death to the World Cup, or
even violent and real events from wars to genocides. But not one global
symbolic event, that is an event not only with global repercussions, but
one that questions the very process of globalization. All through the
stagnant 90s, there has been "la greve des evenements" (literally "an
events strike", translated from a phrase of the Argentino writer Macedonio
Fernandez). Well, the strike is off. We are even facing, with the World
Trade Center & New York hits, the absolute event, the "mother" of events,
the pure event which is the essence of all the events that never happened.
...
"In this vertiginous cycle of
the impossible exchange of death, the terrorist death is an infinitesimal
point that provokes a gigantic aspiration, void and convection. Around
this minute point, the whole system of the real and power gains in
density, freezes, compresses, and sinks in its own super-efficacy. The
tactics of terrorism are to provoke an excess of reality and to make the
system collapse under the weight of this excess. The very derision of the
situation, as well as all the piled up violence of power, flips against
it, for terrorist actions are both the magnifying mirror of the system's
violence, and the model of a symbolic violence that it cannot access, the
only violence it cannot exert: that of its own death.
This is why all this visible power cannot react against the minute, but
symbolic death of a few individuals.
One must recognize the birth of a new terrorism, a new form of action that
enters the game and appropriate its rules, the better to confuse it. Not
only do these people not fight with equal arms, as they produce their own
deaths, to which there is no possible response ("they are cowards"), but
they appropriate all the arms of dominant power. Money and financial
speculation, information technologies and aeronautics, the production of
spectacle and media networks: they have assimilated all of modernity and
globalization, while maintaining their aim to destroy it.
"Most cunningly, they have even used the banality of American everyday life
as a mask and double game. Sleeping in their suburbs, reading and studying
within families, before waking up suddenly like delayed explosive devices.
The perfect mastery of this secretiveness is almost as terrorist as the
spectacular action of the 11 September. For it makes one suspect: any
inoffensive individual can be a potential terrorist! If those terrorists
could pass unnoticed, then anyone of us is an unnoticed criminal (each
plane is suspect too), and ultimately, it might even be true. This might
well correspond to an unconscious form of potential criminality, masked,
carefully repressed, but always liable, if not to surge, at least to
secretly vibrate with the spectacle of Evil. Thus, the event spreads out
in its minutiae, the source of an even more subtle psychological (mental)
terrorism.
...
https://humanities.psydeshow.org/political/baudrillard-eng.htm
"Signs can be exchanged like commodities; symbols, on the other hand, operate quite differently: they are exchanged, like gifts, sometimes violently as a form of potlatch. Baudrillard, particularly in his later work, saw the "global" society as without this "symbolic" element, and therefore symbolically (if not militarily) defenseless against acts such as the Rushdie Fatwa[27] or, indeed, the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States and its military and economic establishment."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard
Ooh, 'potlatch' ... now that's a word I haven't seen or heard in a very long while.
DeleteNeddy: "But the problem is obvious: if you are fighting among yourselves about what you believe, you have no hope of being an effective opposition against Labor. This truism has ruined the Coalition for the past nine months."
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Does this vaguely remind anybody of the 'Labor split' back in the 1950s and 60s ? And how long it took for Labor to get back together again ?