In which the pond spends its meditative Sunday relaxing with nattering "Ned", prattling Polonius and Brownie ...

 

With a little comedy for an opening flourish ...

(Allegedly)

There were some temptations the pond could easily avoid:

Labor tried to destroy me with lies, but I’m still here
I was silenced by the lies that destroyed my life. I’m fighting back
I was made a villain by lies that had no foundation in fact. Now I’m speaking out, fighting back, and enjoying the support of thousands of Australians.
By Linda Reynolds

Just go away. Go away now. Do not pass Go, do not collect any more court-supplied tribute, just go ...

So over it, so tired of it... why not do what plucked political chooks do and turn into a feather duster? Or head off to Planet Janet and spend a year or three above the Faraway Tree.

And while you're going, take Brendan "just love me some murder in the streets mayhem while railing at the 'leets from my 'leet eyrie" O'Neill with you ...

Drawing the (border) line on elites’ slurs — why celebrity attacks on sovereignty are fuelling a populist backlash
Billie Eilish’s Grammys swipe at border enforcement exposes a widening gulf between wealthy cultural elites and voters who see secure borders as central to sovereignty and social order.

By Brendan O'Neill

Only in the hive mind do reptiles think people can't track the latest polling ...

Just go away, leave the pond in peace to enjoy a Polonial prattle for its Sunday meditation ...

The header: Liberals’ future must focus solely on policies, not personalities; When Robert Menzies helped set up the Liberal Party of Australia in late 1944, he was a person of authority dealing with a political rabble.

The caption for the timeless snap: Prime Minister Robert Menzies takes in the tennis with Sir Norman Brookes in December 1954.

Can there ever be a lizard Oz piece about the Liberal Party without a snap of Ming the Merciless? 

And does anyone remember Norman Brookes? Why does Polonius ignore him?

A dissertation on tennis might have been more interesting than this Ming-infused nostalgia, but  if you're a Polonius with a limited set of references and a keen desire to live in the past, you're certain to produce a dullard sports-free four minute read designed to sooth the hive mind:

When Robert Menzies, with the help of others, set up the Liberal Party of Australia in late 1944, he was a person of authority dealing with a political rabble.
Menzies had become prime minister in April 1939 following the death in office of United Australia Party leader Joseph Lyons. By late August 1941, Menzies had lost the support of the partyroom and he stepped down from office.
However, the first Menzies government had been an efficient administration. So when, after the opposition’s devastating defeat by Labor at the August 1943 election, Menzies resumed as UAP leader he was by no means discredited. The Liberal Party lost to Labor in 1946, but Menzies led the new party to victory in December 1949 and remained prime minister before retiring in January 1966.
The first conference of what was to become the Liberal Party was held in Canberra in October 1944. There were 77 delegates or observers and some 10 different political parties. All wanted to form a new party and all accepted Menzies as leader.
It is likely the Liberal Party will survive in spite of its current discontents. The Liberal Party has an organisation in the six states and the Australian Capital Territory. The Liberal National Party in Queensland is constitutionally part of the Liberal Party of Australia. And there is the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory whose representatives in Canberra sit with either the Liberal Party or the Nationals.
It is a difficult task to close down a main political party and set up another. Especially in a situation where the Liberal Party is not a national organisation like the Labor Party but a federation. Moreover, the LNP is in office in Queensland and the CLP in the NT.
The first task of the contemporary Liberal Party is to determine where it stands. Like so many Labor MPs, Treasurer Jim Chalmers is politically smart and also has been active in politics from a young age. His description of the opposition this week, following the collapse of the Liberal Party/Nationals Coalition, as consisting of “three far-right parties” is clever.

When not featuring Ming, it's always good to instil paranoia in the hive mind with a snap of Satan's helper, all the more devious and devilish for sometimes pretending to be "astute": Jim Chalmers’ reference to the Coalition as consisting of “three far-right parties” is astute. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond knew what it was up for when it signed on to Polonius, and stuck at the game for the sake of a long warrior line of noble fighting lettuces ...

The reference is to the Liberal Party and the Nationals plus Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. However, at the May 2022 election there was little policy difference between the Coalition and Labor. So, if the Liberal Party and the Nationals are far-right – then so is Labor.
Only four Liberal Party leaders have defeated an incumbent Labor government. Namely, Menzies in 1949, Malcolm Fraser in 1975, John Howard in 1996 and Tony Abbott in 2013. All were high-profile with a politically conservative agenda that set them apart from Labor.
The ABC is a conservative-free zone and is all but devoid of viewpoint diversity. However, producers like to talk to former Liberal Party MPs or staffers who have become vehement critics of the Coalition. During the first Radio National Saturday Extra for 2026, presenter Nick Bryant interviewed Niki Savva (who worked for some years in the Howard government), followed by former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, now a perennial Liberal Party critic.
Bryant advised Turnbull that Savva has suggested he might lead a new political party on the non-Labor side of Australian politics. Turnbull replied that this was “very flattering” but said he had retired from politics. What Savva and Bryant overlook is that the Liberal Party’s current decline commenced on Turnbull’s watch.
Having replaced Abbott in a party room ballot, Turnbull led the Coalition to the 2016 election and lost 14 seats to Labor. The Coalition survived with a majority of one. Scott Morrison, who replaced Turnbull in a partyroom ballot, attained a net gain of two seats from Labor at the 2019 election.
Then in 2022, under Morrison’s leadership, the Liberal Party lost 10 seats to Labor, six seats to teal independents and two seats to the Greens. Then in 2025 the Coalition effectively lost 13 seats to Labor.

Bored b*tshit (*google bot aware) enough already? 

Able to spot a Polonial error in the litany?

Truth to tell, the pond couldn't be bothered checking. Instead the pond got stuck on that line ...

The ABC is a conservative-free zone and is all but devoid of viewpoint diversity.

Ancient howling dogs and curling cats, does he ever pause and ponder how many times he's resorted to that keyboard short cut, and thereby forced the pond to waste endless amounts of energy noting his doddering decline into ABC-inspired dementia? 

Polonius is an ideas free zone, and all but devoid of tennis.

Now standby for a meaningless snap, The Coalition split has left Liberal and National MPs sitting separately in parliament this week. Picture: Getty Images

The pond supposes it's a relief that the reptiles didn't resort to a graph (oh wait, that's coming down below).

Want more pie in the sky?

Stand by for a last gobbet, a cry of pain and hope...

Writing in The Daily Telegraph on November 5, Perth legal academic Rocco Loiacono put it this way: “Since 2013, the Liberals have lost seven seats to the teals, but also lost another 39 elsewhere.”
In other words, the Liberal Party’s current problems go well beyond that imposed by the success of the teals in some wealthy parts of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
Reports emerged again recently about how Fraser, before he died in 2015, was intent on establishing a new political party to take on the Liberal Party. It is sometimes overlooked that the first breakaway from the Liberal Party occurred when Don Chipp quit the Liberals and set up the Democrats in 1977. Chipp let it be known that he left the Liberal Party because he was too much a “small l” Liberal (or moderate in contemporary parlance) to succeed under a conservative leader such as Fraser.
Fraser’s The Political Memoirs, which he co-authored with left-of-centre academic Margaret Simons, is littered with errors. In his book Fraser declined to deal with his decision to drop Chipp from the Coalition ministry in 1975 and got the dates of Chipp’s departure wrong. Chipp would readily fit into the teals these days.
It’s unlikely that what Fraser had in mind will succeed. However, there is a real threat to the Liberal Party and the Nationals from One Nation. Labor should also be wary of One Nation.
It is more than two years to the next scheduled election. The task for the Liberal Party is to win back the seats it has lost to Labor by focusing on the cost-of-living issues and to hope to win a few seats from the teals.
It’s time for Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley and Nationals leader David Littleproud to follow Howard’s advice that it is in the interests of both parties to restore the Coalition. It’s not a time for making non-conditional demands.
Whoever leads the Liberal Party to the next election will need to have a policy platform significantly different from that of Labor. Australians dumped Labor in 1949, 1975, 1996 and 2013 because Menzies, Fraser, Howard and Abbott did this. Potential One Nation voters will only be won back on policy issues.

He really is deteriorating at a rapid rate, getting worse each column ... but it makes for a mellow Sunday, especially as things could be worse ...

And now, as promised yesterday ...

The pond realises that there will have been some greedy gutz, who raced off to the intermittent archive yesterday after the pond provided a link to "Ned's" opus.

But hopefully a few abstained, in order to build up an appetite, because only the famished would fling themselves on this "Ned" feast:

The header: With Chalmers under pressure to effect Labor’s boldest reform, does he have the conviction, will Albanese let him? The catastrophic implosion of the centre-right has given Labor an open landscape on which to build genuine economic reform. Will they prove up to the task?

The caption for the cheesy collage for which unwisely Emilia took the credit: From left, Anthony Albanese, Sussan Ley, David Littleproud and Pauline Hanson have created a political imbalance not seen for many decades. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella.

As noted yesterday, this "Ned" Everest is a bigly 10 minute climb, and as well as the many visual distractions provided by the reptiles, the pond thought it might fling in the odd cartoon - not in any way related to the text at hand, more by way o providing a little relief, a way station on the trudge to nowhere ...

The crisis of the ­centre-right in Aus­tralia has a guaranteed consequence – it is about to reveal the true character and mettle of the ­Albanese government as a sullen public waits to see how Labor ­exploits the virtual free political landscape it is now gifted.
Our politics is being defined by collapse yet opportunity. For the past decade – at the 2016, 2019 and 2022 elections – governments had narrow majorities off tight electoral battles, but that landscape has been swept away.
Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers are ascendant with a huge majority in the house, a progressive Senate majority and a ­broken opposition likely to take years to become competitive again.

See how it works: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose Labor government continues to benefit from preference flows as One Nation rises. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Yes, but at least he's not King Donald ...

The pond thinks this 'toon strategy might make the climb a lot easier:

Labor has a discretionary power unparalleled for many decades. How will it exercise such power? Will Labor be brave, or shrink into timidity and merely pocket its huge political gains?
The decisive event is the deepest crisis of the centre-right since Sir Robert Menzies formed the ­Liberal Party – a crisis of structure, culture, conviction and fanned by chronic leadership instability. The bottom line: the centre-right today does not constitute a tenable opposition. There is no ­silver bullet solution given the damage is entirely self-inflicted and has been 20 years in the making.
Consider the debacle. Liberal leader Sussan Ley remains under permanent threat with Angus Taylor now the challenger-in-waiting, a situation where division risks being institutionalised; within the Nationals, leader David Littleproud, a practitioner of the “leadership from behind” method, is the chief architect of the disastrous ­Coalition split as he sleepwalks his party into losing its credentials as a governing entity; meanwhile, Pauline Hanson enjoys an eruption of support, with her ratings in some opinion polls leaping ahead of the Liberals – once an incon­ceivable event.

The beefy prime Angus boofhead from down Goulburn way is still playing the tease? Angus Taylor has not ruled out a leadership challenge to Sussan Ley amid Liberal anger with the Nationals and David Littleproud.

The pond is all in favour of it, because the beefy boofhead is a dumbo of the first water, and his elevation would probably result in a sinking feeling ...

The pond will concede that this tactic makes it hard to focus on "Ned", but the pond would have found it hard without any distractions.

"Ned" in Chicken Little mode is just a bunch of squawks and fearful glances at the clouds:

While the excited populist right praises Hanson for “shaking up our politics”, most opposition MPs know the grim truth: the more Hanson gains support, the more the centre-right will be fractured and discredited and the more ­Albanese will consolidate his political control.
In the current convulsion, the two big winners are Albanese and Hanson. Albanese can hardly believe his luck. The Newspoll three weeks ago showing Hanson running ahead of the Liberals for the first time – 22 per cent to 21 per cent – has reverberated across the ­centre-right. It was reinforced this week by The Australian Financial Review Redbridge/Accent Research poll showing Hanson’s party heading the Coalition 26 per cent to 19 per cent.
Hanson’s revolution is primarily a vote transfer within the centre-right that hurts the Liberal and National parties. It is not a vote transfer from Labor to the centre-right, despite the pretence to this effect from the pro-Hanson apologists. If talks to reconstitute the ­Coalition fail, the centre-right will be diminished in three separate parties – Liberals, One Nation and Nationals – fighting for primary votes. That is a dangerous outcome for the country – it means when voters grow disillusioned with Labor they will baulk at voting ­centre-right, given Hanson’s higher power and media profile in that spectrum.
There is an element of the surreal in all this. On Wednesday night, Hanson told Sky News a three-way coalition government of Liberals, Nationals and One Nation was “the only way to move forward”. That’s political gold for Labor. What’s next? Hanson running the economic critique against Chalmers’ policies?

The obvious rick for a Pauline interruption would have been a 'toon about her ... Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation SA leader Cory Bernardi. The rise of One Nation is actually weakening the centre-right rather than threatening Labor. Picture: Dean Martin

... but whenever Cory comes along the pond must abandon 'toons and celebrate body ...

Vanity, all is vanity, saith the long absent lord.

"Ned" yabbered on, oblivious to the pleasures of such a cut man ...

While the Liberals have been ­focused on One Nation’s threat from the right, Labor is planning an assault from the left, given the ­signals this week from Albanese and Chalmers opening the door to the May budget reducing the current 50 per cent discount on the capital gains tax. Labor would run on intergenerational equity, easing housing prices to help young people into the market, and striking a blow for tax fairness by cutting back tax breaks for the asset class. It would be a formidable political campaign and an obvious trap that the Liberals and the conservative media are likely to fall into.
This follows the economic ignition point for the coming year – the Reserve Bank’s increase this week in the cash rate to 3.85 per cent, with the far deeper conclusion it implied – namely that Labor’s economic model looks dysfunctional, failing to generate the productivity needed to sustain higher living standards and suggesting that Australia is trapped in a vortex of unproductive growth.
Even the growth the bank forecasts – a dismal 1.6 per cent in 2027 and 2028 – presages a rising mood of dismay and anger in the community unless the Treasurer embarks on a genuine economic reset and more ambitious reforms. Cutting the capital gains tax discount as a stand-alone step won’t do the job and would only highlight the lack of broadbased tax reform.
Economist and partner at Deloitte Access Economics Stephen Smith told Inquirer: “The latest forecasts from the RBA paint a dire picture of the health of the economy and our future prosperity. These are the weakest growth forecasts ever published by the RBA, and growth of 1.6 per cent in 2028 is a full percentage point weaker than Treasury forecast in MYEFO (mid-year economic and fiscal outlook) just a handful of weeks ago.

The reptiles decided to drop in a snap of Satan's helper in Rodin pose,  Treasurer Jim Chalmers is considering changes to the capital gains tax discount, a floated reform ‘essentially about redistribution and raising revenue to finance government spending’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It's as if Melania the movie had vanished from mind ...

What's the best distraction from this tale of coalition woes? 

Why it's to do a drum roll about the economy ...

“The RBA is telling us we have a major problem. Below average economic growth, above average inflation, negative real wage growth and soft household disposable income growth all the way to 2028 will extend households’ post-pandemic malaise to almost a decade. The cause is the collective of politicians – federal and state of all persuasions – who have failed to bring about the economic reform required to improve competition, dynamism, investment and productivity in Australia. We are now experiencing the consequences.”
Smith says the logic points to one conclusion – pressure on Chalmers to bring down the boldest reform budget seen so far from Labor. Two questions here: does Chalmers have the conviction? And will Albanese let him? The huge irony is that with Labor vulnerable to an assault on economic policy grounds, the opposition is immobilised and absent from the contest because of its internal crisis.
Professor of economics at the University of NSW Richard Holden told Inquirer: “Albonomics, like Bidenomics before it, just isn’t working. The rise in interest rates reflects an economy which basically can’t grow more than about 2 per cent a year without an inflation spike. This stems from our long-run productivity growth problem matched with excessive government spending at the federal and state level.

Sky Noise rolled into support "Ned",  Sky News Senior Political Reporter Trudy McIntosh says Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been repeatedly “downplaying” the role of federal spending on inflation. Ms McIntosh claims RBA Governor Michele Bullock has been “pretty clear” that rates may move again this year. “If they deem that necessary to get on top of this inflationary problem.”

On the other hand, it could be worse ...

"Ned" did his best to maintain the rage; the pond lost interest even more quickly, with not even an Alice reference enough to stop mind from wandering:

“Federal government spending as a share of GDP has grown strongly and at 26.9 per cent of GDP is at the highest level since 1986 (outside the pandemic).
“This Labor government has made both the productivity and spending problems worse. In the last parliament, then minister for employment and workplace relations Tony Burke took large fistfuls of sand and hurled them into the gears of the Australian labour market. Large pay rises, pattern bargaining, two-year casual conver­sions to permanent jobs, 15 per cent pay rises in the care sector, removing flexibility in the gig economy, you name it. If there was an idea that could reduce productivity, the government tried to implement it.
“We need to return to fiscal rules that both sides of politics had since the mid-1990s. Government spending needs to be curtailed. A pro-growth mindset needs to replace a redistributive mindset. It’s incredibly telling that when asked about inflation problems, the PM pointed to all the government subsidies he’s providing. They’re the cause of the inflation problem but he thinks they’re the solution.
“We’re through the looking glass. In Albonomics, black is white and up is down.”
The key challenge from Holden’s remarks is whether Labor can change its economic values. That’s a hard ask given these values are deeply entrenched under Albanese and Chalmers. The change demanded from the evidence is the shift from a redistributive mindset to a growth mindset, yet the floated reform on capital gains tax is essentially about redistribution and raising revenue to finance government spending.
Tony Barry, a director of the Redbridge polling and strategy group, outlined the risks for the centre-right along with the dangers facing Labor. He told Inquirer: “The Labor government has a lot of problems but the Liberal Party isn’t one of them. The mood direction in our last poll is 55 per cent of people thinking we are heading in the wrong direction. If you go back to the Howard government days, it was 65 per cent right direction in 2007.

At this point, and why not - we're already well down the "Ned" rabbit hole - the lizard Oz graphics department gave up the ghost ... People ‘think the economy is stuffed and they want someone to unstuff it’.

They want someone to unstuff it? 

Why not a man who knows about groceries, and can reduce costs by at least 2,000﹪, while doing a little ballot snatching and stuffing?

"Ned" was, in the end, selling exactly the same kind of hokey blarney as Polonius, the same kind of pie in the sky, castle in the air policy wishful thinking ...

“The mood today is entrenched pessimism. The great Australian dream is that the next generation will be better off than the current generation – but 55 per cent again said the next generation will be worse off. People don’t just think the ‘here and now’ is bad, that this will be a tough year. They think the economy is stuffed and they want someone to unstuff it.
“I’ve been doing focus groups and people are totally despondent, they don’t see any hope or future and they worry about their kids. Parents say ‘my kids are 19 but they won’t be leaving home for another 10 years’.
“Any idea the Liberals can go to the next election getting away with cheaper petrol for 12 months and a few bits and pieces like immigration just won’t cut the mustard. In that situation people will default to Labor, the devil you know, and conclude the Liberals are hopeless.
“People want leadership. The Liberals need to recognise that Australia is an urban electorate, that’s where the Liberals need to make progress. The Liberals and Nationals need a new mindset.”
Extrapolating from Barry’s comments, there are several critical conclusions. First, a smart Labor government could exploit the sense of “next generational failure” as a selling point for more ambitious reform. If, as expected, Labor sticks by progressive redistribution initiatives, that will miss the bigger opportunity begging from the public’s alarm about the future.
Second, Albanese needs to think about refurbishing his standing. The polls aren’t flash for the PM. His authority was undermined in the aftermath of the Bondi massacre. Newspoll has Albanese easily outranking Ley, but his satisfaction approval is minus 11 while in the Financial Review poll his favourability is at minus 10 compared with Hanson on minus 3 and Ley on minus 32. As the economic story darkens, so will Albanese’s ratings. He needs to get proactive. The current economic challenge demands prime ministerial leadership – Albanese can either seize it or lose it.

Cue a politician speaking fluent dog whistling on SkyNoise down under, Liberal Senator Jane Hume says the Liberals need to communicate a “united and credible” alternative to Labor. “There is a recognition that there is no guarantee that the Liberal Party will remain the Opposition forever,” Ms Hume told Sky News Australia. “That is a problem because a centre-right party, a credible, quality centre-right party, is so important.”

There's no doubt that Albo will go at some point, and so will the Labor party, that's the way the election cycle works in what remains for the moment a two party system (and never mind the Pauline rabble), but will Susssan beat the lettuce thanks to the power of "s"?

That's not so sure ... even the noblest Kings can face a little trouble ...

Eventually "Ned's"listicle began to splutter out and it was a relief when he stopped at number three:

Third, the message for the centre-right is about a recovery strategy, whether the Coalition is re-formed or the Liberals and Nationals are into political divorce for most of the term. They need to convert crisis into opportunity. Barry calls it a new mindset. Because they are so discredited, they have little to lose from thinking big.
That means an internal negotiation between the factions to agree upon and roll out new principles. It means getting away from the endless left-right binary that plagues the Liberals when their strategic identity is obvious: they are a centrist party that embodies both the conservative and liberal traditions and that delivers policies inclined to either the conservative or liberal side, depending upon the issue.
For instance, the immigration intake must be cut and reformed, yet the Liberals must remain a pro-immigration party overall – that’s a sensible conservative position. On the economy, the party needs a pro-growth, pro-productivity agenda with a more activist role for government – delivering incentives for the private sector while knowing the difference between enhancing sovereign capability and wasting taxpayer funds on flawed public interventions. That’s a sensible liberal position.
The Liberal Party can hold the government to account only by securing its own internal settlement. It is almost certain the Reserve Bank will increase the cash rate a second time. Both the bank and the government have been exposed for their failures. Chalmers’ extreme sensitivity this week to debunk claims public spending has been a factor in the inflation reversal reveals the depth of Labor’s vulnerability.
Big spending defines this government and comes with guaranteed economic and higher tax consequences. A competent Liberal Party would make the issue of Australia’s economic and social future the central issue of this term. That should be obvious, yet it is far from obvious to many on the populist right.

Cue an entirely meaningless illustration, Economic and social strains on the public mean grievance will intensify as data indicates 55 per cent of Australians already think the nation is on wrong track.

Grievances will intensify?

But isn't the whole point to look the other way?

Still working, or should that be slaving away, for the Murdochs?

Who can blame "Ned" for clutching at straws in these dismal times for reptiles? 

Stand back, give him some hope ...

Labor is already in trouble; witness Chalmers’ claim last year that “the worst of the inflation challenge is now well and truly behind us”, while in 2024 he accused the bank of going too hard and “smashing” the economy with rate increases. The two central economic tasks facing Labor – the two issues on which it will be judged this term – are tackling inflation and rekindling productivity, and there are serious doubts over its management of both – thereby feeding directly into whether living standards will rise, fall or languish. Sympathetic statements that “we know people are doing it tough” have a shelf life nearing its end.
Economic and social strains on the public mean grievance will intensify in our body politic. That will work in Hanson’s favour but it should mean her flawed policies, or lack of policies, come under serious scrutiny – something that hasn’t happened so far.
The ANU 2025 post-election survey found that Labor replaced the Liberals last election as the party of superior economic management, despite cost-of-living pressures and sustained interest rate increases. It is an astonishing outcome, more attributable to Liberal failure than Labor success. But there is no future for the Liberals unless this mantle is regained.
The related finding is that economic issues dominated the election campaign, and it is apparent that economic issues will dominate the current term, notwithstanding the vital role of culture.

At this point the reptiles gave "Ned" a final wretched uncredited collage ... Susan McDonald, Bridget McKenzie and Ross Cadell defied the position taken by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley.

And at this point the pond gave up on the 'toons.

It just wanted "Ned" to end...and so he did:

Finally, consider the sad plight of the Nationals. They have brought the humiliation upon themselves. Three weeks ago, the Nationals engaged in a stance that made no political sense – deciding to vote against Labor’s hate speech laws with three senators breaching the shadow cabinet position. The Nationals went in with open eyes. They could have abstained. But no, they wanted to be heroes, and kept telling us they were proud to do so.
Are they really deluded enough to think that purist free speech is a mainstream, beating heart issue in the regions and the bush, as distinct from the political activist minority?
And what did they get? A busted Coalition, their exile from the ranks of formal opposition, the loss of their prized asset – their standing and authority as an alternative party of government, their big advantage over One Nation. It has been an exercise in absurd and counter-productive politics.
Their leader specialises in “leadership from behind” tactics and history tells us that has two consequences: the leader survives far longer than he deserves, while his party sinks into decline.

The takeaway for the lettuce?

It's worth hanging in for the next month ...

As for a set of appealing policies? Might have to wait a few years, or perhaps the twelfth of never, a long, long time.

And now the pond will keep its promise to feature Brownie, but first a little detour to Parker Molloy ...

Jeff Bezos Gutted the Newsroom. He Kept the Megaphone.
Bezos didn’t abandon the Washington Post. He just decided which part of it he wanted.

Inter alia ...

...If you only looked at the layoffs, you’d think Jeff Bezos lost interest in the Washington Post. But the timeline tells a completely different story. Over the last two years, Bezos has been more involved with the Post than at any point since he bought the paper in 2013. He just wasn’t involved with the journalism.
It started in early 2024, when Bezos brought in Will Lewis as publisher and CEO. Lewis came straight from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp with phone-hacking scandal baggage and no discernible plan for the Post’s future. But he had one quality Bezos apparently valued above all others: he’d do what he was told. Within weeks, respected executive editor Sally Buzbee was pushed out. Lewis clashed with her over the newsroom’s coverage of his own legal entanglements, and she was gone.
Then came October 2024, when Bezos killed the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. The board had already drafted it. The paper had endorsed a Democrat in every presidential race since 1976. Bezos overruled them. More than 250,000 subscribers canceled in the immediate aftermath. Three members of the editorial board stepped down. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned. Columnist Michele Norris resigned. Baron called it “disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

What an excuse for a few 'toons ...

In February 2025, Bezos posted a note to the Post’s staff announcing that the opinion section would now focus exclusively on “personal liberties and free markets.” Not as one perspective among many. As the only perspective. “Viewpoints opposing those pillars,” he wrote, “will be left to be published by others.” He told opinion editor David Shipley that if Shipley’s answer to leading this new chapter wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” Shipley chose no.
Will Lewis sent a follow-up memo to staff that made the terms even more explicit. The replacement for Shipley, Lewis wrote, would be “someone who is wholehearted in their support for free markets and personal liberties.” Not someone who’d present a range of views. Not someone with editorial independence. Someone wholehearted. The CEO of a major American newspaper told his staff, in writing, that the next opinion editor would be selected based on ideological loyalty to the owner’s mandate.
The new editor, a conservative, Adam O’Neal, was brought in over the summer. And the opinion section started doing exactly what you’d expect a billionaire’s editorial page to do. In October 2025, NPR’s David Folkenflik reported that on at least three occasions in two weeks, the Post published editorials on matters where Bezos had a direct financial interest, without disclosing those interests to readers. One editorial pushed for nuclear power. Bezos has a stake in a Canadian venture pursuing fusion technology. Another argued that Washington, D.C. should speed up approval of self-driving cars, calling safety concerns a “phony excuse.” Amazon’s autonomous car company Zoox had just announced D.C. as its next market. A third editorial opposed inheritance taxes. Jeff Bezos is worth roughly $250 billion.

And again...

Ruth Marcus, the Post’s former deputy editorial page editor, told NPR: “I think telling your readers that there might be a conflict in whatever they’re reading is always important. It’s a lot more important when it involves whoever the owner is.”
Marcus would know. She’d already been pushed out by then. In March 2025, after four decades at the Post, she wrote a column criticizing Bezos’s new editorial mandate. Lewis killed it. He wouldn’t even meet with her to discuss it. In her resignation letter, Marcus wrote that the new directive “threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable.”
She wasn’t the only one forced out. In January 2025, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after the Post refused to publish a cartoon depicting billionaire media owners (including Bezos) courting Donald Trump. She called the decision “dangerous for a free press.” And by October 2025, Post opinion columnist Marc Thiessen was openly stating what everyone already knew: the opinion section was now conservative.
In two years, Bezos handpicked a publisher from Murdoch’s empire, pushed out the executive editor, killed an endorsement, wrote a new ideological mandate for the opinion pages, decided the terms under which the opinion editor would be replaced, watched as Lewis killed a dissenting column and let a cartoonist walk, and presided over an opinion section that started publishing editorials serving his financial interests without telling readers about the conflicts. This was the most engaged Bezos has been with the Post since he bought it. He just had no interest in the part that does journalism.

Read the whole piece, follow the links, heck follow Parker Molloy, she sends out handy emails as she casts a baleful eye on those disunited states ...

And now, even though the pond provided a link to Brownie in the intermittent archive yesterday, here's Brownie to wrap up the Sunday meditation ...

Sure, it's just more of the same, sure it's just digital fish and chips wrapping that likely will be made irrelevant in a week's time, but it fills the void, and saves the pond's blood pressure, which would have spiked if Brendan had got the gig.

The header: Liberal MPs brace for Angus Taylor to make his move on Sussan Ley’s leadership; After Sussan Ley and David Littleproud endured another day of fruitless negotiations, Liberals are now preparing for the potential of Angus Taylor challenging for the leadership next week.

The caption for the snap starring the beefy prime Angus boofhead from down Goulburn away (and never mind those hacks sharing the bench with him): Angus Taylor. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Brownie spent four minutes on this gig and they seemed like a way to measure an ever-expanding universe:

Liberal MPs are bracing for a potential Angus Taylor challenge for the party leadership next week, amid growing expectations the Coalition will go through a sustained separation, after Sussan Ley and David Littleproud ­endured another day of fruitless negotiations.
With the Opposition Leader expected to unveil plans to ­establish a Liberal-only frontbench on the weekend given fury within her ranks at the Nationals’ latest offer to re-form the Coalition, several senior conservative MPs said they believed it was likely supporters of Mr Taylor would call for a leadership spill next week.
This is despite some senior conservatives saying they were not convinced he had the numbers to prevail on a spill motion, which requires the support of a majority of the partyroom.

Susssan got a gig, Sussan Ley. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

All Brownie could offer was the sort of speculation you might find considering form in a horse race:

Mr Taylor’s backers say all that is required to bring on a special partyroom meeting is a written ­request from two MPs to Ms Ley and chief whip Aaron Violi.
A spill motion at a meeting to be held “as soon as practicable” would then lead to an anonymous vote. This bar is significantly lower than what Peter Dutton faced when he challenged Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership of the Liberal Party in 2018.
On that occasion, Mr Turnbull demand Mr Dutton’s supporters provide a petition signed by a ­majority of the partyroom calling for a special meeting to hold a vote to spill the leadership. This action – in a dramatic week that ended with Scott Morrison becoming prime minister — was against Liberal partyroom convention and prompted the late Kevin Andrews to codify rules in 2020.
Liberal sources say Mr Violi has a copy of the rules formalised by Andrews. Conservative MPs believe he would not be talked out of following them by Ms Ley.

How on earth Kev ended up in this sorry saga was something the pond didn't care to know about,  The late Kevin Andrews. Picture Gary Ramage

Brownie then produced a sign that essence of Angus might be a worry:

In a radio interview on Friday, Mr Taylor said he retained an ­ambition to lead the Liberal Party and had been talking with colleagues about its future direction.
When asked if Ms Ley would be Opposition Leader by the end of next week, Mr Taylor said he had “no plan” to roll her.
“I’m not going to say to you and your listeners that I don’t have and haven’t had leadership ambitions,” Mr Taylor told 2GB radio.
“I clearly have had … that’s why I ran for the leadership last time around. Ambition is a good thing. But most of all, what we all want is a better Liberal Party and a better Coalition. And we need that fast. And if we don’t deliver that, ­Australians will continue to look elsewhere.”
Mr Taylor said he did not think the Albanese government had “protected our way of life the way it should have”.

Say that again?

"protected our way of life the way it should have”.

What on earth does that mean? It's idle, inconsequential blather, and if it's a policy statement, where's the policy?

Is it a concept for a framework for an outline of a plan to protect our way of life, and never mind climate science?

Before the pond could brood too much, the reptiles interrupted with an insight fresh from Sky Noise ...

“The Libs and the Nats can’t seem to come to an agreement to get back together,” Mr Bond said. “National Leader David Littleproud has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t really want to work with Sussan Ley as Opposition leader. “The problem isn’t that they’re too right-wing. It’s that they don’t seem to believe in anything, and they don’t have a coherent policy platform. “Labor has lost nine per cent in the outer suburbs. Add up One Nation, the Liberals and the LNP up in Queensland, and you have 52 per cent of the primary vote.”

Mr Bond? Shaken and stirred?

Surely they have a policy! Why it's to protect our way of life, and never mind what that is, provided it doesn't involve climate science:

“I personally don’t believe that the government is focused sharply on those Australian values that have made our country great,” he said. “And I think some of the concerns about what happened at that terrible tragedy in Bondi have reflected that.”
While some MPs said they believed Mr Taylor would prevail if a vote was held next week, others had doubts over whether he had enough support to blast out the party’s first female MP.
Some MPs willing to shift their support from Ms Ley to Mr Taylor said they had not yet received a call sounding out their support.
Some supporters of Mr Taylor argue it would be better to wait until the March parliamentary sittings to give him time to build more support, while swing voters argue it would be a bad look to move on Ms Ley too quickly.
“Not one person has come to me and said they are convinced that Angus has the numbers,” one senior conservative said. “People are all over the place.”

The reptiles then inserted that graph yet again, and while the pond has done its best to avoid too much repetition, it's an essential part of Brownie's hysteria, a supplement to the snap found in Polonius above ...

Brownie carried on in short bursts ...

Those backing a challenge say a special partyroom meeting for next Friday, after parliament rises, would be the most logical time.
Although Ms Ley beat Mr Taylor in the post-election leadership contest by 29 votes to 25, three people who backed her – Hollie Hughes, Linda Reynolds and Gisele Kapterian – are no longer in the partyroom.
The Right faction’s numbers, meanwhile, have since been bolstered with the entrance of NSW senator Jess Collins, an ally of Mr Taylor. On top of this, Mr Taylor’s backers say there are other MPs outside the Right faction who have shifted their support away from Ms Ley.
“What are we waiting for?” one Liberal said. “When do people think it is going to get better?”

The reptiles spared a moment for the villain of the piece, the man who had little to be proud of,  David Littleproud. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Brownie was by now well out of steam - where's coal when it's urgently needed?

Ms Ley and Mr Littleproud met again on Friday afternoon to discuss the terms of a potential Coalition reunification, with the Liberals yet to provide a formal response to the Nationals’ counter offer at 6pm.
Ahead of the meeting, allies of Ms Ley said they did not think the Nationals’ latest offer was “serious” as Mr Littleproud did not accept the need for a lengthy sanction of the three Nationals senators who crossed the floor last month.
Liberal sources said the offer from Mr Littleproud instead proposed a collective suspension for all former Nationals frontbenchers until the end of February while negotiations continued on a future Coalition agreement.

At this point the reptiles dragged in the Bolter to help out ... Sky News host Andrew Bolt claims the Liberal Party got frightened and embarrassed to discuss culture wars. “The Liberals got embarrassed about talking about the culture wars, frightened about talking about culture wars,” Mr Bolt said. “Now they’ve got to learn all over again how to do it.”

Yes, they did so well with the culture wars ... everybody's doing well with the culture wars, except maybe dogs, people murdered in the streets, and the truth murdered on Truth Social ...

And so to a final short wrap ...

While the Nationals are firm on all of its former frontbenchers facing the same sanction given Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell and Susan McDonald acted in accordance with the partyroom’s position, Liberal sources say the timeframe for a collective suspension was insufficient.
A senior Liberal moderate, who did not want to be named, said the offer by the Nationals to reunite the Coalition was a “joke” and should be rejected by Ms Ley.
“It is not a serious proposal and that is kind of the end of the road,” the moderate MP said. 

The pond hopes it all ends soon, if only to put a stop to this endless agonising, this relentless introspection, this non-stop navel gazing and fluff gathering to bed.

The tedium, the sense of ennui, is made worse by the way all the real fun - if you can call murder in the streets fun - is happening elsewhere ...

Something for the season...

Fun done, this is the latest sad report on the disunited states in the reign of the demented, deeply corrupt narcissist, racist, misogynist, profoundly peculiar always posting king, determined to make King George III look like a benign sovereign ...who went, to quote Michael Wolff, "went bat*shit crazy" in his latest frothing, foaming rants ...not that you'd know it from reading the likes of WaPo or the both siderist Times...