In which the pond not only offers Lord Downer and the Major, there's the Caterist too ... and at least there's a link to the liar from the Shire ...

 

Elbows up Canada. It's not the end of the world. Remember Kitchener's Wood. Remember Passchendaele.

Don't let General Bonespurs get you down! Or those boofheads who escaped from Slapshot.

As usual, they only turned up in 1918 for the Battle of Kemmelberg after everybody else had done the hard suicidal yards.

The pond faced its own challenge this day and almost dropped the puck in fright and horror.

A rude awakening for Europe only strengthens Western security
If Europe believes it is being unfairly singled out, don’t fret; the US is asking similar questions of us in Australia as an Indo-Pacific ally at the centre of the century’s decisive theatre.
By Scott Morrison
Former Prime Minister

There was simply no way the pond could handle the liar from the Shire, not on a Monday morning. 

All the pond did was search for a reason and it became clear at the bottom of the intermittent archive's link:

...While stressing that alliances are valued, the US makes no apologies for making greater demands on them. That is not cynicism or abandoning a world order that favours freedom. It’s realism. And a realism that will keep free nations free. Yes, the Trump administration’s execution has been rough at times. Some statements have been needlessly provocative.
But don’t confuse style with substance. The strategic intent is clear: strengthen the alliance by forcing burden sharing, rebuild industrial capability and prioritise the theatres that will decide the next century.
In time, the noise will fade. The structural shift will remain. Europe will spend more. Build more. Produce more. Field more. And take more responsibility. That will make it a better ally, not a bitter one, with shared civilisation providing every reason for it to stand together with the US.
The West isn’t ending. It’s being tested. And tests, if met, are how strength is renewed.

There it was ...

Scott Morrison was prime minister from 2018 to 2022. He is vice chairman of American Global Strategies, a Washington-based geopolitical advisory firm.

The grifting for born again speaking in tongues types never ends.

The pond never thought it would yearn for the return of Lord Downer, but here we are, and lo, there he was ... in mourning for the Royals ...

His Lordship discreetly avoided any mention of King Donald and his nutlick minions, preferring to make plans for Nigel, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage delivers a speech in London. Picture: Getty Images

At least the Poms are trying to deal with the revelations in the Trumpstein files, but His Lordship was moved by the sight to a form of treason:

That seems to have come to an end. The Conservative Party under Rishi Sunak disastrously lost the last election in July 2024, winning only 24 per cent of the vote. Labour ended up with a huge majority, with a slightly more impressive 34 per cent.
What has happened since is remarkable. The new Labour government has plunged from crisis to crisis. It has increased taxes and substantially increased government expenditure. I suppose that’s what you would expect from a Labour government.
The result of these policies is unsurprising: anaemic economic growth, sticky inflation and rising unemployment. The public is unimpressed. Labour support has now sunk to below 20 per cent and Starmer’s personal approval rating is at historic lows.
You’d think in those circumstances voters would swing back to the Conservatives but they haven’t. The Conservative vote is now level pegging with Labour at about 18 or 19 per cent. The party that has been mopping up the disillusioned voters is Farage’s Reform UK.

Did the pond say a form of treason?

Most voters think the Conservatives delivered poor government and were divided and unstable. 

Eek, heresy, as His Lordship rambled on ...

They’re not prepared at this stage to give them another chance. Reform is a protest party. It’s led by an articulate and politically savvy Farage but it doesn’t have a coherent set of policies to address the country’s struggling economy and divided social environment.
Three things have happened in Britain across the past couple of decades that are illustrative of what could happen in Australia.
First, the public service and statutory authorities, not the politicians, have effectively been running the country. Perhaps as a consequence, policy has been unimaginative and ineffective. As you would expect from public servants, it has been very cautious and the Westminster bubble, as they call it in Britain, is divorced from the reality of small and medium-sized businesses.

At this point the reptiles doubled down with visual distractions, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Picture: AFP; Former UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson. Picture: AFP

His Lordship resolutely refused to mention King Donald, and the way that the GOP has given him a free pass ...

He was moving ahead with his numerical listicle...

Second, there is a surprising lack of coherent economic debate in Britain. With growth flat and unemployment rising, the political class should recognise the vital impor­tance of stimulating investment. You’d think it would recognise that economic growth comes out of profitable investments, not loss-making government expenditure on fantasy programs. Yet company and business taxes have been rising inexorably to pay public sector workers substantial wage increases. Government debt has steadily been growing and is approaching 100 per cent of GDP. Forty-four per cent of the government budget is spent on the deplorable socialised health system known as the NHS.
And then there’s energy prices. Britain, under both the Conservatives and Labour, became entranced with the idea that by closing gas-fired power stations and replacing them with windmills and solar panels this would somehow change the climate. Not only has it had no effect whatsoever on the climate but it also has pushed energy prices to close to the highest in Europe. As a result, industries have been closing and relocating to China and India, and instead of manufacturing in Britain, Britain has been importing manufactured goods from countries that have cheaper energy.
It’s hard to see what positive impact any of this is having on the environment, but it’s barely part of the debate there until now. Members of the public are gradually waking up to the absurdity of this policy but they know both the Conservatives and Labour have been promoting it.
Third, the explosion of social media has made the public more politically aware and more politically active. People are substantially more focused on and emotional about political issues than they were in past decades.
As Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba argued in their classic 1963 book, The Civic Culture, political stability comes from a public that, on the whole, is a passive observer of politics and respects its institutions. These days, because of the explosion of social media, members of the public no longer are just passive observers but are much more inclined to participate. They are much less accepting of the credibility of their institutions.

There was a reminder of the man formerly called Prince,  Police officers block access to the church graveyard on Saturday in Sandringham, England. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on Thursday morning on suspicion of misconduct in public office following a police investigation into the Epstein files. Picture: Getty Images

His Lordship concluded in a right royal funk ...

In Britain there has been a steep decline of trust in institutions. Let’s face it, that will be further eroded by the Epstein scandals, which have embraced both the current government and the monarchy.
It’s hard to be optimistic about a plan to fix these problems. The public may be inclined to support Reform because of loss of trust in the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, but Reform is likely to lose the public’s trust as well because Farage’s party doesn’t have a credible program for government.
For Australians the question is whether there are lessons in this for us. I think there are. We are going to have to deal with a more politically active and engaged public that has less faith and trust in traditional institutions. We are going to have to put up with an era of greater political instability than we have been used to.
The challenge is for the major political parties to come up with coherent, costed and effective programs instead of just polling the public to find out what’s superficially popular. And above all we’re going to have to start to embrace commonsense economic policies that stimulate investment in profitable activities rather than splurging borrowed money on windmills and welfare.
The more politically active and engaged public will understand that and may well appreciate it.

Indeed they will, it takes more than a shapely leg to cruel a career ...

And dammit, speaking of meaningless noise, useless blather and rude awakenings, Lord Downer didn't even mention the hustling Huckster's plans for the middle east. Forget that fundamentalist Zionist talk of "from the river to the sea".

These days, it's from the Nile to the Euphrates...

...In a jaw-dropping interview with Tucker Carlson that aired Friday, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee appeared to endorse the idea that Israel has a biblical right to much of the modern Middle East, triggering swift condemnation from Arab and Muslim nations.
Carlson invoked the Book of Genesis and told Huckabee that God’s promise to Abraham would today encompass land stretching “from the Nile to the Euphrates”—essentially everywhere across Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and large swaths of Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Carlson pressed: Did Israel have a right to that land?
Huckabee’s response: “It would be fine if they took it all.” He later added that Israel was not looking to expand and has a right to security in the land it “legitimately holds.” But the damage was done.
In a statement posted on X, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry blasted the comments as “extremist rhetoric” and “unacceptable,” and demanded clarification from the U.S. State Department.
A joint statement by at least 14 Arab and Muslim nations, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bahrain, Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt—along with the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, also condemned the remarks. (Beast)

Sadly this passed the reptiles by, and reptiles didn't have much else to offer.

At the top of the page, the fear still pulsated ...

EXCLUSIVE
One Nation’s threat to city-based doctors as party considers flat tax rate
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has proposed barring metropolitan GPs from Medicare unless they first serve in regional areas, while flagging support for a flat income tax rate.
By Greg Brown

Talk about a gaily laughing triptych of reptile terrors...

And what's the point of featuring this "disaster" and "economic madness" at the top of the digital edition of the "news" as an EXCLUSIVE?

Why every little bit helps in pushing the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way further to the hard right. 

Soon enough he'll have to agree that the earth is flat (he probably thinks it already, but can't say the quiet bit out loud). 

And it was good for the reptiles to revert to its Australian Daily Catholic News format with an EXCLUSIVE yarn of tykes in trouble ...

EXCLUSIVE
Industry super funds persuaded to stand by Apollo after Epstein files
Billions of dollars of Australia’s retirement money is managed by alternatives giant Apollo Global, which is in fresh strife following the latest tranche of the Epstein files. Its clients include Hostplus, Care Super and Catholic Super-Equip Super.
By Cliona O'Dowd

Well played reptiles, yet another story about the Trumpenstein files with nary a mention of King Donald or his cabinet nutlicks... and what a relief to be able to carry on business as usual.

The pond also baulked at the thought of dealing with simpleton Simon ...

How Labor forgot the legacy of ‘Dr No’
Peter Walsh succeeded by doing not what was popular but what was right. This resulted in Labor enacting a discipline to its budget process. Unlike today’s ALP, he wasn’t afraid of making hard decisions in the interests of the nation.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

That's more than enough of that. 

It's a lonely business, archiving the reptiles in an often failing archive, but it beats having to deal with them.

All the same that left the pond in need of content, and how the pond yearns for a dinkum Nazi story...

Instead what dismal choices there were this day.

For some strange reason, the reptiles' alleged "media coverage" refused to even mention the astonishingly clever rebranding of Sky Noise down under as "News 24".

Instead there was just routine ABC bashing and bits of this and that ...

Media Diary: ABC reporter Sarah Ferguson ‘dictated’ managing director Hugh Marks’ response to her story
Astonishing emails show how reporter and host Sarah Ferguson wrote key parts of managing director Hugh Marks’ response defending her own Four Corners series on Donald Trump.
By Steve Jackson

Got to do better, Stevo, they were wildly excited over at Sky Noise ... (warning, actual Sky Noise link for the last time), as predicted by the Weekly Beast, heralding the new dawn last Friday... (now email extortion free for the moment).

Worse, Major Mitchell was on the same bandwagon as simpleton Simon ... and even worse, he spent a bigly five minutes on his rant ...

And even much worser, it seems that this useless government couldn't even manage to take the reptiles back to the 1950s, their preferred golden era of picket fences and decent raw farm milk (with cows working out with their jeans on).

After that initial flurry, it was past time for a comical snap of Jimbo, lips pursed in whimsical way ... Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ claim he is emulating the Keating-era economics doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Picture: Adam Head

The Major proceeded to dump a jumbo sized set of grievances on Jimbo ...

Government spending has not slowed and now the IMF has warned the government may have to bail out big-spending Victoria and the Northern Territory.
John Kehoe in The Australian Financial Review warned on February 15 that Victoria’s debt would “surpass $240bn by 2028-29 and eclipse $30,000 for every Victorian”. The NT was on track to “blow past $50,000” for every Territorian.
Labor won the election by giving away free money, starting with power price rebates. It added $8.4bn to boost Medicare, forgave $19bn in student debt, and offered first-home buyers access to a 5 per cent deposit scheme.
As opposition leader, Peter Dutton did not criticise the spendathon, but new Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has.
Chalmers hopes to pay for more social programs by tapping the one group he always looks at – Baby Boomers. It helps that most of them don’t vote Labor.
Chalmers’ latest gambit is a discussion about the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount on investment properties held for more than 12 months. The Coalition hates the plan but the left loves it, even though many prominent lefties – the Greens’ Nick McKim and Mehreen Faruqi, and Labor PM Anthony Albanese – once benefited from extensive property portfolios.
The best argument against high government spending is the inflationary spike that excess public demand injects. Labor is spending at post-Whitlam government highs with outlays as a percentage of GDP up from 24.4 per cent before the pandemic to 26.9 per cent now.
Where once the Business Council of Australia was at the forefront of campaigning for tax reform, the debate today is driven by the left-wing Grattan Institute and the even more left Australia Institute, both beloved by the ABC and the Nine newspapers.
The Coalition defends older Australians while Labor and the Greens argue they are championing home ownership for the young. Ownership rates for Gen Xers and younger are at historical lows.
Kos Samaras, from the RedBridge polling group, says this is the age group defecting to One Nation. He says Xers feel the national social contract has not kept faith with their generation.
Boomers have since 2025 been outnumbered by Millennials and Gen Zs, so the tax debate is tricky politics for the Coalition. The Coalition is right that retirees who complied with the super and tax policies of successive governments of both persuasions can’t start again when governments change course retrospectively. Yet it’s not that simple.
The debate over generous tax policies favouring Baby Boomers was already front and centre during Tony Abbott’s prime ministership.
As editor-in-chief of The Australian at the time, this column was extensively briefed ahead of then treasurer Joe Hockey’s 2014 “lifters and leaners” budget about high net worth retirees who had tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars in property in concessional super accounts.

The reptiles then managed to slip in a snap of jolly Joe, Former federal treasurer Joe Hockey. Picture: Martin Ollman

Why couldn't they run a snap of the puffing grifter in his hey day?

Luckily, after all that doom and gloom, the Major donned his Dame Groan thinking cap, and came up with an array of answers that will please devotees of the old biddy ...

So what’s the answer?
First, governments do need to rein in spending because, as Warren Hogan argued in the AFR last Wednesday, the public sector is crowding out private investment, too many people are now employed directly or indirectly by governments (via wages top-ups), and the government sector is leading the collapse in national productivity.
Chalmers has bragged only Labor understands the productivity opportunities of the care economy. There are none. Aged homes and childcare are imposts we have to deal with but they are holding back public sector productivity and forcing up private sector labour costs.
Governments should reduce personal and company tax rates to rekindle aspiration. They should focus on increasing indirect taxes such as the GST while compensating the poor.
Negative gearing should be looked at. This column is aware of wealthy individuals with dozens of negatively geared properties used for tax minimisation.
Sure, lots of teachers and police also own negatively geared property. But there is no reason taxpayers should subsidise more than, say, two investment properties per family. Nor is there a public interest in allowing very high income earners to minimise tax through negative gearing – unless they are investing in productive businesses.
The capital gains tax discount is different. The Greens will be disappointed when they do the hard work on this: scrapping this concession for the old inflation adjusted model will raise little money.
Owners who do not live in investment properties will simply increase rents to offset potential changes. Yet there may be a case for reducing the capital gains tax discount on existing properties while maintaining or increasing it for new properties if increasing housing supply is the goal.
On superannuation, there may be a case for change. This column believes retirees with balances over $3m are surprised how little Chalmers’ new tax changes will affect them.
The superannuation guarantee levy was introduced by Labor in 1992 to secure retirement incomes. Super is not about estate planning and people with hundreds of millions in superannuation should pay tax at normal marginal rates rather than rely on young taxpayers to fund services older Australians mainly use.
On spending, Labor needs to do much better than limit the growth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme to 8 per cent a year. The NDIS is on course to be the budget’s single biggest line item and even its architect, former opposition leader Bill Shorten, admits it is being rorted.

Just to make sure the tour was complete, the reptiles flung in a snap of comrade Bill, just to remind us that it wasn't just jolly Joe that was a compleat doofus, Bill Shorten is considered the architect of the NDIS. Picture: Martin Ollman

The Major ended with a rousing plea to tax the rich:

Labor should ditch its plan for three days a week subsidised childcare for all Australians up to an annual family income of $530,000. Welfare needs to be targeted to those who cannot pay themselves.
Chalmers should know such taxpayer support will only turbocharge childcare fees and profits.
While it might be politically unpalatable that real wages fell last Wednesday, the real issue, as Judith Sloan argued in The Australian on Thursday, is the government crowding out the labour market with low productivity jobs.

At this point, the pond almost considered giving up there and then. 

With the Major fixing the economy lickety-split, what more did there need to be done?

Alas, the Caterist hovered into view, and with gritted teeth the pond got down to some standard union bashing, something which has been remarkably absent from reptile coverage in past few weeks ...

Just because the pond had dared to go careening Caterist - who knows when it will come in handy when next dealing with waters flooding a quarry? - it didn't mean the pond had to provide an exegesis, especially as the yarn featured a favourite reptile piñata, Former CFMEU boss John Setka in Melbourne. Picture: Jason Edwards

The extended Mafia riff at least allowed the pond to mention the way that it's currently in the grip of Bellochio's mini-series Portobello ...

Who said that the Mafia didn't do comedy? And speaking of difficult parrots ...

The CFMEU’s criminal history and connections with bikie gangs and organised criminals were no secret. Yet the extent of the corruption in the Victorian division under Setka, as revealed in the administrator’s report, beggars belief. Why Victoria? For the same reason the Mafia thrived in post-unification Italy in the 19th century. Weak government and lack of trust in formal legal institutions and law enforcement are the conditions under which criminal business empires thrive.
Mafiosi-style unions flourished in Victoria under Labor for the same reasons the Cosa Nostra prospered in Sicily after World War II. The Cassa del Mezzogiorno (“Fund for the South”) channelled money into public works and infrastructure, which were quickly captured by criminal syndicates that formed cosy relationships with government officials.
Andrews’ Cassa del Mezzogiorno was Big Build. It began as four projects: the Westgate Tunnel, the Metro, the replacement of level crossings and station improvements. At the 2022 election it added two more: $10bn to build hospitals and the $70bn train to nowhere, the Suburban Rail Loop.
This stream of money bought votes and helped Andrews repair his relationship with the union that had soured during Covid. The CFMEU authorised a poster at building sites that read: “Dan might be a prick, but he’s a prick who’s delivering for construction workers. Labor will keep you in work for another 30 years!”
A steady flow of public capital, with fragmented oversight and a complex system of subcontractors, was an invitation to cartel arrangements, just as it was in New York during the public infrastructure boom of the 1950s and 60s under urban planner Robert Moses, the city’s long-serving urban planner.
Construction unions and the Teamsters went into partnership with the Mafia to form the Concrete Club, selling stability and protection to developers.

Next came a local version, Mick Gatto

The Caterist was now in full froth mode ...

Victoria’s concrete club is a joint venture between the CFMEU and gangland. If there is a godfather in this drama, it would be Mick Gatto, Setka’s best mate, who describes himself as a “mediator and arbitrator”. Others, including a federal judge, say he is “a standover man and a gangster … closely associated with a number of violent and dangerous criminals” in Melbourne and Sydney.
The CFMEU and hardened criminals control choke points created by government legislation. The Victorian enterprise bargaining agreement system has become an old-style “pay to play” corruption in which the CFMEU is the gatekeeper. Its value to the company is awarded, and EBA is subject to a private tax or bribe.
CFMEU EBAs were bought and sold as commodities in a black market, sometimes through third-party brokers, where different types of EBAs had different values. Labour-hire and traffic-management EBAs are said to cost $1 million.
The CFMEU and its cronies abuse the Social Procurement Framework legislated by Labor, which gives priority in awarding contracts to businesses owned by Aboriginals or other groups deemed to be disadvantaged.
The administrator found numerous examples of dummy directors and shareholders installed to disguise the true ownership of a company, a system known as “black cladding” including Jarrah Resources, reportedly established by Gatto.
State and federal Labor leaders must answer their own consciences for decisions that have betrayed their party’s legacy. A movement that began by protecting workers’ rights in the 1890s depression has evolved into a vertically integrated criminal enterprise, extracting rents from both legal and illegal markets.
Albanese’s abolition of the ABCC has played no small part in the proliferation of industrial action since 2022, with the construction sector leading the way. In the September 2022 quarter, just before the ABCC was abolished, 3.1 working days were lost per 1000 construction workers. In the September 2025 quarter, it was 12.3.

And the reptiles made sure to visually associate certain types with Mafia gangsters ...Mark Irving; Sally McManus

The Caterist sustained the rage in his final gobbet ...

The Andrews-Allan government deserves most of the blame. Cronyism, extravagance and administrative incompetence combined to create the conditions in which organised crime become inevitable. It has done almost nothing to police this behaviour or bring the perpetrators to book.
Even now, almost two years after the CFMEU entered administration, industrial relations in Victoria retain the features of the wild west culture, beyond the reach of law.
The CFMEU administrator, Mark Irving, has required permanent personal protection since August 2024. Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus and former Federal Minister for Workplace Relations, Murray Watt, also required their own personal security.
Nick McKenzie, the investigative journalist whose reporting exposed many of the abuses under Setka’s leadership of the CFMEU, has on two occasions been driven from his home by credible threats to his safety.
Yet the Victorian police appear to be missing in action, seemingly incapable of investigating these crimes and restoring law and order in the construction industry.
Meanwhile, Allan has rebuffed calls for a royal commission, leaving loose and malodorous threads dangling from this sordid episode – another chapter in the story of a government at once morally compromised and administratively inept, presiding over a state showing unmistakeable signs of institutional decay.

What really surprised the pond in this tale of skullduggery? 

There wasn't a credit at the end of it, citing the Caterist's affiliation to the Menzies Research Centre ... you know, speaking as he was of assorted gangsters and stand-over merchants.

What a relief to find he was still there ... beaming away like a cat that had eaten a rat ...

And having done all that, the pond could at last relax with a closing immortal Rowe, looking at an angle, an insight into the tottering demented toddler, that was too hot for the hive mind to handle this day ...