In which petulant Peta goes full Pauline, there are surprising dissenters, and Dame Groan lands with yet another "we'll all be 'rooned" to help out Freedumb boy ...

 

"What fresh hell can this be?", to conscript a possibly real quote from the real Dorothy Parker.

Thursday in the lizard Oz is always a special form of hell, but to mangle the quote into discernible reality, it should have read "what stale hell can this be?"

There was petulant Peta, top of the world ma on the digital far right of the lizard Oz, sounding triumphantly Pauline...

Liberals’ turn is right on track with voters’ views on immigration
New research reveals voters have shifted right on immigration and other key issues, backing Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s focus on protecting Australian values
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

As stale as the onion muncher blathering on about the Judaeo-Xian tradition.

No need to recycle the hate, fear mongering, bigotry and dog whistling, the intermittent archive can take care of that ...

Spoiler alert, the pond ruins the ending, as the petulant one sounded triumphant in her final flourish ...

...What this tells me is that election results have more to do with how people view leaders and leadership; it’s leadership after all that most shapes most people’s views on most issues. For the Liberals, in other words, the problem is less that voters have moved away from them but that they have not provided much leadership on the issues voters care about.
Quite apart from the fact that the Liberals in 2025 inexplicably failed to campaign for their energy policy or against Labor’s unrealised capital gains tax policy, plus failed to hammer the fact that government policy had exacerbated the worst fall in living standards in the developed world, the key factors in their humiliation were the collapse of TV in shaping people’s political perceptions, the rise of social media (in which the Coalition was largely MIA) and antipathy towards Dutton who, however unfairly, the study showed had the least voter appeal in its history.
Far from needing to persuade the Australian public that migration numbers are too high and that all migrants must accept Australian values, what this says to me is that on immigration, Taylor is pushing on an open door. Based on the best available data, promising to protect the Australian way of life is exactly what voters want – as well as what our country needs, as the Bondi massacre has put up in flashing neon lights.
Meaning that far from being too right-wing for the electorate, for the first time in years the Liberals are actually taking voters where they want to go.

In short, and in essence, go on beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, go the full Pauline, go in hard, boots and all, rage at furriners, take the hate ball from her and run with it up the guts...

Why is this deeply ironic?

At this very moment, even Barners was trying to hide ... in plain sight, in a lizard Oz EXCLUSIVE.

EXCLUSIVE
‘What are you asking me for?’: Joyce swerves from Hanson
Barnaby Joyce has refused to endorse his leader Pauline Hanson’s broad criticism of Muslims, in the first sign of division within the new One Nation team.
By Greg Brown and Elizabeth Pike

That's more than enough of that from Tamworth's enduring, ineradicable shame, but you could have knocked the pond over with a feather when the Canavan caravan joined in the cock-crowing chorus ...

(In view of the Graudian's desire to extort email addresses, here's an intermittent archive link)

And Brownie took to the extreme far right of the hive mind to cry to the clouds, even though petulant Peta was posing as Pauline in drag ...

Leader’s true colours? A nasty shade of prejudice
Hanson shows conservative voters her true colours with Islam smear
Hanson’s latest controversy is hardly surprising given her record over a 30-year political career, but it carries far more weight given the extraordinary rise in One Nation’s popularity.
By Greg Brown
Chief political correspondent

It was only a two minute read, and Brownie ended with a note of caution.

It seems that, thanks to the likes of petulant Peta egging on the fuss - let's not forget the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way trying to match the mutton Dutton's electorial triumph - Pauline will thrive:

Hanson’s latest controversy is hardly surprising given her record over a 30-year political career, but it carries far more weight given the extraordinary rise in One Nation’s popularity. The latest Newspoll showed the grievance party had a primary vote of 27 per cent.
New Liberal leader Angus Taylor has made a solid start in moving to win back the Coalition’s conservative base without veering into the same rhetoric of Hanson, arguing migrants need to support Australian values and making the point that most do.
Anthony Albanese’s tough language on ISIS brides this week is perhaps a sign he is aware of the need to reassure voters he is putting Australians first, given Hanson’s resurgence. The major parties have historically served Australia well and both Labor and the Coalition must ensure they are responding to the concerns of voters or there is every chance One Nation will continue to thrive.

But not in Melbourne?

What else? Well the headlines were all about the ISIS issue, but a 'toon will take care of that ...

Only Jack the Insider bothered to take a dive into the Trumpenstein sewers ...

The Epstein files: Snorkelling with the great and the good-for-nothing
From British ambassadors to tech billionaires, the Epstein files reveal an extraordinary roster of influential figures who crossed moral lines to socialise with a convicted child abuser.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

Jack did an incredible job ... of avoidance.

Jack's singular success, his astonishing achievement?

Many names were mentioned, and yet when the pond did a word search for King Donald, there was nary a single mention. It's there in the intermittent archive for anyone wanting to check ...

Not one ... and yet ...

Well played Jack, your kissing cousins at Faux Noise are likely full of admiration and feel free to swim in the sewer with them, you won't smell a a thing ...

What else? Well the pond has already had the pleasure of seeing the weird spectacle of freedumb boy promoted to a pay grade above his level, and there he was in the lizard Oz ...

BOLD AGENDA
Top income tax rate ‘punitive’, Wilson declares
The Coalition’s new Treasury spokesman Tim Wilson argues the nation’s economic settings need a ‘complete reset’.
By Greg Brown

Bold? 

Just look how startled he looks in that wretched graphic illustration at the top of the "save the filthy rich" yarn, typical of the decline and fall of the lizard Oz graphics department ...

That's more than enough of that. The intermittent archive can take what's left of the little remaining.

But do pause to admire that look. It says he doesn't quite believe where he's landed, and the pond couldn't believe it either.

Perhaps it was an ancient reflex, inherited from ancient stone age times, but the pond found it completely implausible ... though to be fair, freedumb boy was looking after the rich ...

Once again the immortal Rowe was present with a prescient portrait, if inclined to be a tad cruel ...(the pond simply couldn't bear to note the rat tail details in those in and out trays, or the beefy boofhead at the door, seemingly interrupted in mid-consort with a redhead).

The major surprise? How little attention the reptiles paid to that other scandal, one right down their jihad alley but surprisingly absent at the top of the digital edition ...

Never mind, if the pond wants a denunciation of the satanic Jimbo, it will always turn to a beloved professional, one with a cult following amongst pond correspondents ...

The header: Jim Chalmers’ mowing your grass: real wages shrink while the Treasurer talks them up. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Anthony Albanese government’s economic strategy is heading off the rails.

The caption for the miscreant, looking all smirky and shifty, caught on the hop in the snap: Treasurer Jim Chalmers at a news conference in Logan in Brisbane’s south on Wednesday after the national wages data was released. Picture: Adam Head

It's only becoming clear now that we're heading off the rails?

Hasn't the old chook been groaning about how we'll all be 'rooned for months and months? Did she have little faith in her prognostications?

Bizarrely, considering it was a heralding of disaster of train crash proportions, Dame Groan could only muster three minutes for this assault.

Apart from celebrating her evocation of Winnie, there's no need to put a gloss on it, what with the Groaning being very standard and best left to pond correspondents ...

It was not the result the government was hoping for.
The fastest-growing sector for wages was health and social assistance. For the December quarter, public and private wages grew at the same pace. But over the year, public wages growth significantly outstripped private sector wages. In fact, public sector wages have been outstripping private gains for some time.
According to the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, the result was a tad disappointing, but it had been worse under the Coalition – that is, if the figures are very carefully cherrypicked. There must come a time when Chalmers gives up the faux, odious comparisons with the performance of the previous government that was voted out nearly five years ago. But just not now. Jimbo is the living and breathing example of that famous saying of Winston Churchill: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

The release of the December quarter figure for the Wage Price Index pointed to annual wage growth of 3.4 per cent in 2025. Over the same period, headline inflation was up to 3.8 per cent, depending on which figure you used. In other words, real wages fell over the year and by a significant margin.

How could the pond resist? Come on down Winnie, sock it to the pond:

Quote Origin: Success Is Going from Failure to Failure Without Losing Your Enthusiasm

Inter alia ...

Thanks honest Abe, and the pond moved to the rest of the groaning with a full loss of enthusiasm ...

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the government’s economic strategy is heading off the rails. The Treasurer held the truly naive and unsubstantiated view that real wages could be dictated by the government because the labour share of output was too low and needed to be adjusted upwards.
Generous award increases granted by the Fair Work Commission as well as substantial pay rises in agreements for public sector workers would set the pace for higher real wages. The fact that productivity has gone backwards since the election of the Labor government in 2022 is seen as largely irrelevant.
But we need only look at what’s been happening to unit labour costs – real unit labour costs rose by 1.5 per cent, according to the most recent National Accounts (September quarter 2025) – to understand why the Reserve Bank is worried about what is going on in the labour market and the inflationary pressures that are around.
Of course, Anthony Albanese, is working from the same talking points as Jimbo. He declared last year that the period of high inflation was over and it was plain-sailing from that point – oops, spoke too soon.
He’s not having a bar of the patently obvious proposition that government spending is contributing to the uptick in inflation – and the associated fall in real wages – and objects to anyone making the obvious point. Evidently, former RBA governor Phil Lowe is so yesterday’s man that we shouldn’t take any notice of his warnings on the dangers of excess government spending.

The reptiles did provide one visual interruption, but it was only that mystifying message that haunts the reptile pages like a Sydney cockroach, or rat tails in the in-tray ...

It was but a brief, entirely meaningless pause as Dame Groan headed into triumphantly teary gloom, as she always does ...

Albanese even fell into the trap of claiming that “when it comes to savings, we’ve produced $114bn of savings, including $20bn of savings in the mid-year forecast – that makes a substantial difference.”
If he had been paying attention to last week’s Senate estimates (and Senator Paterson’s grilling of Finance Minister Katy Gallagher) he would have realised that this is a gross figure and the net figure entails additional spending of more than $114bn. There has been some reallocation of spending, but overall, the public sector is pumping more dollars in and adding to aggregate demand.
The labour market is looking decidedly unbalanced. Too many unnecessary or low-value jobs being created in the public sector or funded by the taxpayer. Public sector wages being driven up by fiat – think childcare and aged care workers. Difficulties for private sector firms, particularly small ones, recruiting staff and being forced to increase pay offers to attract anyone. Rising rates of business failure. All up, a recipe for low productivity, inflationary pressures and higher interest rates.
This was never a good plan by the government, and it looks as though it will end in tears.

Oh yes, we'll all be 'rooned ...

And so to end with with a note on the Streisand effect, and a host that YouTube's sub-titling insists should be known as Colbear.

When the pond last checked, Colbear's interview with Rep Talarico had garnered c. 6.183 million views on YouTube.

Colbear's usual ratings in his time slot?

Last quarter 2025 the show averaged 2.42 million...

Well played CBS lawyers, well played Bari's team...

And so slowly, inexorably FTA TV drives itself into oblivion to conform to the wishes of the demented, 'second childhood' King.

The Streisand effect always puts the pond in a good mood, despite Wilcox's insistence that the pond ends this day's reptile observations on a downer and a bummer. Are you listening Jack?