In which the best lizard Oz minds - the Ughmann, the bromancer and nattering "Ned" - assemble to deal with the current crisis ...

 

Ever discreet, the pond tries not to gloat about the joys of EV ownership, and the current pleasure in sailing past petrol stations, with the prices only of academic interest.

After all, electricity also costs, unless you happen to have solar and a battery, a luxury outside the price range of many.

And inflation hits everyone, as does all the other goods King Donald has threatened with wild-eyed abandon (sssh, don't mention the Trumpstein files) ...

But every so often the pond can't resist reminding the reptiles where their anti-renewables, wind turbine loathing (windmills if you King Donald will) crusade has got their hive mind cult followers, especially when this piece by Bill McKibben pops into view in The New Yorker ...

The Iran War Is Another Reason to Quit Oil
What if the drone is to warfare as the solar panel is to energy? (*archive link)

Inter alia ...

...Because drones are very cheap, you can make many thousands of them, and hide them anywhere. Smaller unmanned aircraft don’t need a military airstrip to launch. Drones and ballistic missiles can often be intercepted, but the U.S. and Israeli militaries are using expensive weaponry to do that job. Eventually, the gap between a fifty-thousand-dollar drone and a three-million-dollar interceptor becomes important; there were reports, this past weekend, that Israel had begun to run low on interceptors. In other words, inexpensive “small tech” is standing up to expensive high tech—and, over time, the former can seem to gain a kind of advantage.
Something similar may be playing out in the energy sector. America can only achieve its dream of “energy dominance” for as long as the world relies on the enormous and expensive machinery of the fossil-fuel industry: tankers, refineries, gas-fuelled power plants. Much of this infrastructure depends on U.S. companies—which is why Trump recently announced, with uncharacteristic candor, that he didn’t mind the spike in the cost of crude. “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he wrote on Truth Social. Of course, the word “we” was doing a lot of work there. Big Oil makes money, and so do the parasitic politicians that the industry supports. The rest of us pay a lot of money. Gas is up nearly a buck since the war began.
And consumers have responded. In the first two weeks of the war, there has been a surge in the number of Americans looking to save money on energy—by asking for quotes on home solar systems and looking up electric vehicles online. We can expect similar trends in other countries. In India, where many kitchens depend on increasingly scarce and costly liquefied petroleum gas cylinders, consumers are racing to buy induction stoves. Many models are out of stock because restaurants have snatched them up; in the early days of the war, some Mumbai eateries shut their doors because they couldn’t find cooking gas and others stopped selling deep-fried or long-simmering foods because they required too much energy. Crematoria couldn’t find gas for their fires.

And so on ...

...Since the war in the Middle East began, a growing number of voices have been demanding that the U.K. reopen oil fields in the North Sea. But the problem with the “Drill, baby, drill” argument is that gas prices are set by global markets. The U.K. is unlikely to lower its own prices by extracting oil that it controls—and, anyway, it would take years for proposed oil wells to have an appreciable impact. “We’re a price taker, not a price maker,” the U.K.’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband, recently explained on BBC Sunday. Instead, he argued, “We need homegrown clean power that we control.”
Miliband was arguing that the U.K., like any nation, needs the energy equivalent of drones: solar panels, heat pumps, E.V.s, induction cooktops. We need the small tech that, in Miliband’s words, would let us get off the “fossil-fuel roller coaster.” The sickening effect of that roller-coaster ride was made clear in a new report from the Climate Change Committee, which advises the U.K. on its net-zero goals. It showed that coping with the last big energy price shock, from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, cost taxpayers more than forty-one billion pounds. If the U.K. invested a similar amount in homegrown clean energy, the committee found, it would get much of the way toward its net-zero goals. The best way to save Brits money—and to safeguard the country’s independence from tyrants as diverse as Vladimir Putin, Trump, and the mullahs of the Middle East—is to push ahead quickly toward a clean future.
China has already learned this lesson. As the Columbia scholars Erica Downs and Jason Bordoff wrote in Foreign Policy, recently, China has been preparing “for a world in which energy security is inseparable from geopolitics—by electrifying its economy, securing domestic sources of energy, amassing stockpiles, and dominating clean technology supply chains.” The good news is that none of these technologies are secrets, and we can buy them much more cheaply than we can buy oil. And, once we have them, we’ll no longer depend on the flow of oil through an indefensible, roughly twenty-one-mile-wide ditch. Instead, we’ll rely on a continuous stream of photons from the sun—an energy source that will last another five billion years. 

Sssh, don't mention the electrostate or the Trumpstein files.

Of course the reptiles will have none of that sort of talk, it's war mongering, coal and oil all the way in hive mind la la land, as the pond began the arduous task of winnowing out a few reptiles for weekend attention ...

First thing to note is the way the reptiles were on a "live" war footing, but early on the Saturday, the reptile updates seemed to have gone into slo mo ...

As for that Oz EXCLUSIVE?

EXCLUSIVE
Radical fuel crisis fix: use Russian oil
Australia faces importing more Russian-derived petrol as Middle East war disrupts global fuel supplies, with officials warning markets may take months to normalise.
By Greg Brown and Ben Packham

The reptiles were standing by, eager to help out Vlad the Sociopath:

Oh yes, everybody was eager to help King Donald ...

But the reptiles had the answer ...help out Vlad the sociopath:

The US temporarily eased sanctions on Russian crude shipments last week in a bid to drive down prices, opening the way for Asian refiners to use the oil, as India and China had continued to do. Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, said the US’s lifting of sanctions on Russian oil was aiding Vladimir Putin’s war effort and prolonging the conflict. He said if Australia imported more fuel derived from Russian oil, it should consider making a contribution to Ukraine’s energy fund, to help rebuild its crippled electricity infrastructure.
Australian Institute of Petroleum chief executive Malcolm Roberts said there was “a lot of uncommitted Russian crude accessible in our region” that could bolster refined fuel imports. “If we could get extra supply from anywhere that met fuel quality standards, that would be great,” he said. “We’re not going to do direct trade with Russia. But a lot of other countries … are choosing to look at whether they should bring some Russian cargoes in, since it’s there.”
Asked if motorists could expect rationing in the near future, Mr Roberts said it was a case of “wait and see”.

Moving along, the very best reptile minds were to hand to strategise and sort out the crisis, with the Ughmann in top form:

The header: Waiting for the ships that might not come: Australia’s self-inflicted fuel crisis: The latest Gulf war is a rude awakening, as the world of wishful thinking collides with the one we live in.

The caption for Frank's astonishing effort: We’re on a slow-moving tanker to a world of pain. Sources: iStock. Artwork by Frank Ling.

The Ughmann took a goodly six minutes for his victim blaming, victim shaming effort, beginning with that classic note in the header "self-inflicted fuel crisis".

Actually full credit to Faux Noise and King Donald and the United States gone wild-eyed and rogue for setting off this crisis.

Sure we could have set ourselves to the task of being full blown preppers, ready with kit for the madman appearing over the horizon, but credit where credit is due for the current crisis.

But before beginning the Ughmann torture, the pond would like to acknowledge Frank's astonishing piece of post-modernist art.

Only a genius could combine a bog standard snap of a tanker, with a vision of shards of yellow something cascading across a golden yellow setting or rising sun (how King Donald loves his gold!)

Who knows what it means but the sense of an impending apocalypse set the tone for the unreformed seminarian.

The Ughmann briefly forgot his endless war on renewables to indulge in a history lesson:

Few figures in history embody humanity’s maze of contradictions more starkly than German chemist Fritz Haber. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “making bread from air” and used the same skill to conjure poison gas and feed the machinery of war.
More than a million men were wounded by gas in World War I and it killed nearly 90,000.
Haber pioneered this diabolic slaughter in defiance of international agreements, overseeing the first large-scale use of chlorine gas on the Western Front at Ypres in 1915.
There was a personal toll. His wife, Clara, was also a chemist who was horrified by his work on chemical warfare. In the wake of his grim triumph at Ypres, she took his service pistol and shot herself.
Yet Haber also tackled one of humanity’s most enduring problems: famine.

Yep, a sure fire way to deal with the current crisis and King Donald is to drag up WWI, German chemist Fritz Haber.

The history lesson helped the Ughmann avoid any nasty talk of renewables...and get wildly excited about the wonders of plastics ... (that line in The Graduate clearly had a big impact)

The historic limit on crop yields was the availability of nitrogen. This essential element is abundant in the atmosphere but is locked in a form plants cannot use. Haber found a way to unlock it, forcing nitrogen to combine with hydrogen under heat and pressure to produce ammonia. The hydrogen comes from natural gas, which also provides the energy to drive the reaction.
The idea was industrialised by Carl Bosch and without the Haber-Bosch process billions would starve. Synthetic fertiliser cannot be made cheaply and at scale without fossil fuel. A century on, we still haven’t found a better way to feed the world.
In 2021 Sri Lanka conducted a demonstration of what not to do by banning chemical fertilisers in favour of organic farming. There followed the decimation of tea and rice crops, food shortages, soaring prices, riots, the resignation of the prime minister, a presidential apology and the abandonment of the fertiliser ban.
Synthetic fertiliser is just one example of where fossil fuel is buried so deep in the sinews of our civilisation that most people do not see it, just as most have no idea that the toothpaste they use and most of the medicines they take are petrochemical products. Oil is also the raw material for plastics, packaging, fabrics and thousands of other everyday products.
Politicians and activists talk as if energy systems can be easily unwound, but we are still bound to them in ways they barely understand. The modern world was built by fossil fuels, runs on them, and replacing them is not a choice we can simply will into existence. If it were easy, someone would already have done it.

The reptiles decided a couple of snaps of ships at sea would help, Oil tankers and ships line up in the Strait of Hormuz. Picture: AP Photo/Altaf Qadri

On with the Ughmann in a state of oil-deprivation shock:       

Civilisation’s root-and-branch dependence on the continuous flow of hydrocarbons is why nations reeled when the Strait of Hormuz was shut down and, with it, one-fifth of the planet’s supply of oil and gas. The latest Gulf war is a rude awakening as the world of wishful thinking collides with the one we live in. This is the real energy transition, from having abundant, invisible supply to a vivid and punishing awareness of what scarcity might bring.
Australia’s governments are now terrified as they stare into the abyss of the damage a liquid fuel shortage could deliver. Shaken from their sleepwalk, leaders are beginning to understand how profoundly exposed we are. More than 90 per cent of our total energy consumption still comes from coal, oil and gas. Jet fuel, petrol and diesel dominate that mix. Diesel matters most as it drives agriculture, mining and transport, and if it runs out the nation will grind to a halt.
Successive governments have manufactured this scarcity and there is little the incumbents can do at the 11th hour beyond praying that the arteries of supply from Asia are not cut.

Thank the long absent lord no one in the hive mind indulged in relentless crusading against renewables, eh Ughmann?, as the reptiles decided two more snaps were needed ... The Thailand-flagged cargo ship Mayuree Naree engulfed in black smoke in the Strait of Hormuz, after an attack by Iranian forces. Picture: AFP

Might a resilient renewables-driven economy have helped a little in withstanding the current shock, which will go on for months?

Forget it Jake, it's Ughmann town ...       

We sit at the end of long supply chains, and our energy security rests on an endless procession of ships ferrying oil, petrol, jet fuel and diesel. Every single day deliveries arrive on enormous, slow-moving tankers that creep across the oceans at a pace slower than a car edging through a school zone. Trips from refineries in Singapore and South Korea take between one to two weeks.
The major players in our market are Viva, Ampol, BP and Shell. Each has long-term contracts that secure these deliveries but Asian refineries cannot make fuel if they do not have oil. The risk is refineries run short of fuel to deliver and countries preference their own needs over exports. Talk of China halting shipments of jet fuel sent a shudder through our region.
The fuel shortage in regional Australia was triggered by its reliance on second-tier traders who get fuel from a spot market that dried up almost as soon as the first missile was fired at Iran. And it shouldn’t surprise politicians when some stampede to the bowsers to try to secure fuel when they wake up to the fact the government cannot guarantee it.
The longer the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and more damage is done to Middle Eastern oil infrastructure, the more pressure will build on refiners. The slow march of our fuel trade means there is a lag between a shock at the top of the supply chain and delivery to our market. If we hear of contracted cargoes not being loaded, it will signal that we are about to suffer real pain.
If the Albanese government gets that news, it will have to move to rationing well before our supplies begin to dwindle because we have so little fuel in reserve. There will be a hierarchy of priorities that will probably begin with supplying health and defence, then move to keeping the wheels of transport, agriculture and mining turning. Motorists present a big political problem because no government on Earth wants to suffer the consequences of what cutting their supply would mean. Our newly minted fuel tsar can do little beyond being a central point of contact in the crisis. We cannot distribute fuel we do not have.

What to do in a crisis? 

Well if you're the hive mind, you send in simpleton Sharri, Sky News host Sharri Markson says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese continues to claim there is no petrol supply issue, even as multiple Sydney service stations are running out of petrol. “Oil prices have topped $110 US a barrel - and multiple service stations are shut after running out of fuel,” Ms Markson said. “Yet Albanese continues to insist there's no supply issue and this is simply a case of panic buying.”

Panic suits the hive mind, and it certainly suits the apocalyptic Ughmann ...

For now, the supply ships are still sailing and one of the reasons we have cause to hope that will hold is because of our much-maligned trade in coal and liquefied natural gas. Our region relies on the fuels we ship to secure its energy security. We should be grateful that those who fight to end this trade have, so far, failed because if we undermine the security of those who make our liquid fuel, we cannot expect them to care about us.
Australia faces a witch’s brew of dilemmas, some beyond our control and others of our own making. The long-term danger is that we learn the wrong lessons from this crisis. The biggest mistake would be to believe there is a quick dismount from dependence on coal, oil and gas, and that electrifying everything will deliver energy security.
There seems to be a smug belief among electric vehicle owners that they will dodge any fuel crunch. That feeling may sour as their cars whirr on empty roads to deliver them first to empty supermarket shelves. There is no electric road train on the horizon that could swiftly replace our fleet of diesel trucks. The green hydrogen balloon has burst. There is no scalable replacement for making synthetic fertiliser or most of our medicine. We have yet to invent or scale up the industrial processes we will need to reach the mirage of a carbon-free world.

Oh that's gotta hurt. All those columns attacking renewables, and this incredibly smug and self-satisfied and complacent climate science denialist wants to have a go at EVs? And smug beliefs?

Does he realise his oil addiction actually might deliver him the apocalypse and rapture he so clearly wants?

Still no desire to wean himself off coal and oil? Still wants to suckle on the teat of ancient dinosaurs?

And then the Ughmann got around to the real cause of it all, King Donald ...

Our other dilemma is the American President. Remember all those stories fretting that Donald Trump was an isolationist? Would to God it was so. There is no ally on Earth that he has not insulted, few countries he hasn’t threatened, and the list of those he proposes to assault grows by the day. Cuba is the next cab off the rank.
Let’s list the Trump triumphs in the war against Iran so far. On the plus side of the ledger the despotic regime’s leadership has been culled and much of its war machinery damaged. But whoever believed it would fall or that the next supreme leader might not be worse than the last? And what is the incentive to stop fighting and open the Strait of Hormuz when Iran has demonstrated that is its nuclear option? The regime can now teach the world a lesson it will never forget, that an attack on Iran can shake every Western capital.

The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction, celebrating the "bring it all down" madness ... (sssh, don't mention the Trumpstein files) ... Former Navy SEAL and FBI special agent Jonathan Gilliam says US President Donald Trump threatened to “hit the oil infrastructure” on Kharg Island if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz US President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to announce that the United States “totally obliterated” military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island. Kharg Island is Iran’s largest export for sending oil to international markets.

At last the Ughmann seemed to become aware of all the damage that his kissing cousins at Faux Noise had helped create...

Continuing down the list of unintended, but not unexpected, consequences of this war, Iran is now selling more oil at a better price than before hostilities kicked off. Alarmed by rising prices at the pump in the US the Trump administration has eased restrictions on Russian oil. Moscow is raking in billions to help fund its war against Ukraine. China has been stockpiling oil for years in preparation for a potential conflict over Taiwan and Iran will continue to supply it as long as it can. Beijing is watching Washington exhaust its weapons inventories and shift assets from South Korea and Japan to the Gulf.
So, what does victory look like? How does Trump dismount? Marines are on their way to the Gulf. If the strait stays closed, they will be sent in and Tehran will have a single, narrow target on which to concentrate its fire.
If those forces move on Kharg Island, the terminal that handles most of Iran’s oil exports, they will be sitting on a hydrocarbon bomb. Would Iran’s mullahs hesitate to detonate it, sending body bags back to America and shockwaves through the global economy? Who can say
The only certainty is that one day Trump will declare victory as he walks away from this mess, and that he will be as deserving of a Nobel prize as Fritz Haber.

Sorry, there's another certainty. 

Faux Noise will walk away from this mess still treating it all as business as usual ...

At this point, the pond should note that cackling Claire was busy this weekend indulging in what has become a routine reptile jihad ...

When identity politics makes violence virtuous: Tame and the denial of October 7
A society that cannot name rape as rape because of the identity of the perpetrators has truly lost its bearings.
By Claire Lehmann
Contributor

The pond wouldn't have imbibed, just because this is is a wretched and pathetic jihad, but in any case the pond still has the bromancer and an epic "Ned" Everest natter to cover ...

The header: Oil crisis reveals a fat, dumb and lazy Australia; Donald Trump could achieve either victory or Armageddon in Iran. Australia is completely unprepared for either.

The caption for Emilia's feeble collage: Closing the Strait of Hormuz is relatively straightforward for Iran but causes huge global disruption; meanwhile, the destruction of the ayatollahs’ regime is not guaranteed. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

The bromancer took a goodly 5 minutes to indulge in his brand of victim shaming and blaming, but before the pond sets out on the slog, could it just record how disappointed it is in Emilia's artwork. 

After Frank's inspirational effort, the challenge was there, but Emilia comprehensively failed the bromancer and the hive mind.

Now on to the bromancer blaming us for not being prepared for what Faux Noise, via King Donald, has wrought on the world (sssh, don't mention the Trumpstein files):

Donald Trump’s war stands on the brink of strategic breakthrough, or strategic chaos, as the dangerous destruction of energy infrastructure this week demonstrates. The war has also revealed the staggering unfitness of Western nations for major warfare.
If the long-term legacy of Trump’s war in Iran is the end of the ayatollahs’ regime, the destruction of its nuclear program or even a long nuclear delay, it’s likely to be well regarded historically, no matter how messy it was. But those outcomes are not guaranteed.
Whatever happens from here, the world is looking at higher energy prices for a long time ahead. There’s surely a limit to how long US politics will allow Trump to pound Iran. So far there seems no limit to the willingness of Iran’s leaders to accept the death for themselves or the destruction of their society.

Ah, it's the unions ... Union power means Australian-flagged ships must have entirely Australian crews. That’s uneconomic so there are no such ships.

The bromancer was brimful with astonishing insights ...

Here’s something you perhaps hadn’t realised. Until now, both sides have been fighting within certain limits. The US has not targeted Iran’s energy infrastructure. Trump was furious that Israel attacked Iran’s biggest gas field, leading to Iran attacking Qatar’s gas and other regional energy infrastructure. US and Israeli purpose diverged sharply.
Washington hasn’t hit Iran’s energy infrastructure for three reasons. It wants a post-ayatollah regime to be able to rebuild. It doesn’t want to take energy capacity out of the global system. But most importantly, Iran has desperate, perhaps devastating, things it hasn’t yet done but could do.
If you offer Tehran Armageddon, it might give you Armageddon in return. Closing the Strait of Hormuz is relatively straightforward for Iran but causes huge global disruption. However, if Iran systematically hits Gulf Arab energy infrastructure this could create energy chaos on a far bigger scale. Worse, if it systematically strikes the region’s desalination plants it could cause a fantastic humanitarian crisis.
It has also threatened to set fire to oil reserves. Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait in 1991 set fire to 600 oil wells. This took months to bring under control. The Iranians could do much, much worse. The Iranians have no incentive to surrender. They don’t mind death through martyrdom, but not through surrender. That makes them particularly dangerous.
Iranian leaders have every incentive to keep inflicting asymmetric cost, and therefore asserting asymmetric deterrence, on the US and Israel and their friends for as long as they can. It’s difficult to imagine how US-led forces can re-open the Strait of Hormuz while Iran retains any state capacity at all. The distance of ships to the shore is just too small.

The reptiles decided this was the right moment to introduce King Donald ... but lest the sight disturb the hive mind, the reptiles offered only a back view ... U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday (March 19) he had told Israel not to repeat its attacks on Iranian natural gas infrastructure as tit-for-tat strikes on energy plants sent energy prices spiralling, sharply escalating the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Alex Cohen produced this report.

Heck, couldn't we at least see the team at work?

Oh that kegsbreath, what a card he is.

It was only a matter of time before the bromancer turned to his favourite topic ... the war on China by Xmas ...

It was similarly impossible, 15 years ago, to provide security for civilian ships that got too close to Somalia. A fast, small boat loaded with pirates could take over almost any non-military ship.
It was similarly impossible, 15 years ago, to provide security for civilian ships that got too close to Somalia. A fast, small boat loaded with pirates could take over almost any non-military ship. (sic, perhaps the reptiles repeated the line for emphasis, or perhaps because someone nodded off, but the pond does like to give a feel for what it's like reading the reptiles early in the morning).

There’s another lens we must view this war through and, when contemplating a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan, it’s deeply disturbing for America, and all Western nations, though no Western nation is less prepared than Australia.
According to CNN, the US used a quarter of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defence missile interceptors in the short war with Iran last June. This time, in a move that should desperately concern Australians, it has taken THAAD systems out of South Korea to deploy in the Iran conflict. According to Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in 2025 the US fired 20 per cent of its SM-3 missile interceptors.
The US is the super heavyweight champion of the world, yet it’s exhausting itself against Iran, a middleweight. According to the Centre for a New American Security, “the US has never had sufficient (weapons) stockpiles for a high-intensity fight with a near-peer adversary like China”.
Yet we’re now entering the period of peak vulnerability for a Chinese attack on Taiwan, with all that would mean for us. Tom Corben of the US Studies Centre produced a useful paper demonstrating how radically short of replacement level US production of key weapons is.

What do do? How about a snap of a ship? A cargo ship sails in the Arabian Gulf towards Strait of Hormuz in United Arab Emirates last Sunday. Picture: AP

The bro turned to considering his kit, and as always, as Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches, there was no way he could be happy ...

The US, he records, produces about 90 Tomahawk land attack missiles a year, it needs to produce 1000. It produces about 1200 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles of the type we’ve donated to the United Arab Emirates but needs to make 1900. It produces 600 Patriot interceptor missiles a year but needs 2000.
While US stockpile levels are classified, as are precise usage numbers in Iran, it’s clear the US is producing many thousands short of replacement levels. Planned increases will be years coming. Even under Trump, the US hasn’t invested sufficiently in its arsenal. Shyam Sankar, in his important book Mobilize, argues the US won world wars mainly because of its huge industrial base. Now, like Western Europe, it has dangerously deindustrialised. And in deindustrialising, the West, compared with China, is effectively disarming.
Australia is in the worst shape. Australia ranks a shocking, dismal 74th on the Harvard Economic Complexity Index.

The reptiles flung another AV distraction into the breach ... Iran maintains a substantial stockpile of short and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of striking targets across the Middle East and reaching parts of Europe. Key US military installations in the region, including the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, are within range and could be potential targets in any retaliation. The Strait of Hormuz remains a strategic flashpoint, with any disruption threatening global energy supplies, while Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen could also play a role in widening the conflict. The situation unfolds amid ongoing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and recent US strikes on Iranian facilities, further heightening instability across the region.

The bromancer was also hooked on the teat of long ago pulped dinosaurs ...

Our oil deliveries have arrived on schedule so far but we have no capacity to withstand any prolonged energy supply disruption. Before he was first elected Prime Minister in 2022, Anthony Albanese promised in speeches (and incidentally in an interview with me) to establish a “strategic fleet” – namely a merchant fleet. But according to Peter Court, an authoritative maritime consultant, there are now zero international trading vessels under an Australian flag.
This is a critical capability gap because a government can requisition in an emergency – for example, to transport oil – only ships that travel under its flag. There are only nine such Australian vessels. These are mainly passenger ships operating between the mainland and Tasmania or odd specialist vessels supplying Antarctic missions and the like.
This is a model for everything else the Albanese government has conspicuously failed to do in national security. It identified the problem, talked big, delivered nothing. Union power means Australian-flagged ships must have entirely Australian crews. That’s uneconomic so there are no such ships. The government’s strategic fleet plans were pathetically reduced to a tender for three trial vessels. Four years after the first promise, nothing has been heard of this for months.

There came a snap designed to terrify the bro, A Chinese J-15 fighter jet landing on the deck of the Liaoning aircraft carrier during military drills. Picture: AFP / STR

And so to the final gobbet:

Remember Albanese’s earnest pledge before the last election to take back ownership of the Port of Darwin? Zilch. Almost nothing the Albanese government says about national security is believable or consequential.
Many failures have been bipartisan. It was a catastrophic mistake to get rid of the car industry. We have almost no advanced manufacturing, nor can this be resurrected through a few Dreamtime defence projects alone.
We lazily run a trade surplus on commodities and overspend the revenue. As a nation we’re fat, lazy and dumb.
Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie wants to rebuild advanced manufacturing. He says: “A key input for manufacturing is energy. But Labor’s Future Made in Australia is all about net zero and decarbonisation. As long as we’re bound by the net-zero straitjacket we won’t revive manufacturing. (It) relies on cheap baseload power, advanced robotics, AI and cutting-edge processes.”
Hastie’s right. But his side of politics is also responsible for today’s mess, with 99 per cent of our trade carried by sea, a pitiful few weeks’ fuel reserve, no merchant fleet and a vacuum in most areas of critical capability.
We could end up an unexpected but major victim of the Iran conflict and its fallout.

Um, we could end up a major victim of Faux Noise and its MAGA pet, but relax, due consideration is being given to all the important matters under some kind of threat..

And so to "Ned" .... and here the pond should begin by noting that the reptiles thought this a matter of major importance, so much so that they splashed "Ned" across the top of the digital edition. 

Top of the reptile world, ma...

What a disappointment was to follow, in a way only "Ned"can manage, wringing hands while shouting at clouds ...

The header: The Albanese government now faces the most important six weeks of its life: The PM and his Treasurer have a big decision to make about how to govern in this moment — and must not waste this crisis.

The caption for another disappointing Emilia effort: While Anthony Albanese faces a big call, Jim Chalmers is raising expectations as much as he dares – yet he is putting his authority as Treasurer on the line. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella.

Oh Emilia, Emilia, you've done it again.

We're about to embark on an excruciating, almost unendurable ten minute Everest climb with "Ned" and you send us off with that pitiful collage?

As for that header and the instruction, "must not waste this crisis", with the implication that somehow this gigantic mess might be fixed in the next six weeks or so?

Sssh, don't tell the reptiles this crisis is going to run for months, and whatever you do, don't mention the Trumpstein files.

"Ned", together with the hive mind, doesn't have a clue, and must waste a whole word salad delivering said cluelessness ...

Australia has been caught out by the erupting global energy and inflation crisis. Our interest rate settings, our national budget, our weak fuel reserves and our poor productivity mean the nation is exposed by global shocks of a devastating but unpredictable dimension.
The Albanese government now faces the most important six weeks in its life. In the budget deliberations it must decide whether to reset its ambitions and its economic policy or hunker down on a more modest “steady as she goes” resilience agenda to dodge the electoral risks of big reform.
The public remarks this week from Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese, with their different emphasis, are akin to the private debate about Australia’s economic future spilling into the public arena. The moment of policy truth is approaching.
Chalmers is raising expectations as much as he dares – yet he is putting his authority as Treasurer on the line. He warns the global energy crisis from the Iranian war is “extremely serious and potentially enduring”. He recruits the crisis to drive a more ambitious budget, his central argument being that war in the Middle East must “reinforce”, not “replace”, the imperative for reform. “We will make hard decisions in May,” Chalmers pledges. But does the Prime Minister agree?
A more troubled future for the Australian people
In the process Chalmers is more open than before about our national risks: inflation “already too high” before the war is likely to rise past 5 per cent; productivity growth – the key to living standards – has been “too weak for two decades” and will take far longer to return to trend; while capacity constraints are locking the nation into disappointing GDP growth of about 2 per cent.
In his Melbourne speech on Thursday previewing the budget, Chalmers said it would contain a government savings package, a productivity and investment package and a tax package. In effect, a troika of reforms.

Jimbo turned up as a distraction ... Treasurer Jim Chalmers has addressed concerns about a potential recession following the Reserve Bank’s latest rate hike, which takes the cash rate to 4.1 per cent.

"Ned" sounded traumatised...

At the same time, he revealed the government’s 1.2 per cent productivity growth target will take five years to reach, not the hoped-for two years. And overall economic growth is now likely to be a quarter to half a percentage point weaker in the middle years of the forward estimates. This is a higher cost, lower growth, rising interest rates, more troubled future for the Australian people during the Albanese government’s second term.
If realised, such hardship will accentuate public disillusion with established politics and probably assist the Pauline Hanson party that feeds on grievance while bankrupt when it comes to worthwhile policy to address the nation’s challenges.
The situation demands a reform-based economic policy reset where Labor enjoys a centre-left majority in the federal parliament. Chalmers doesn’t duplicate the dramatics of Paul Keating – recall the “banana republic” where Keating would strike out ahead and lock in the rest.
The big question is how Albanese and the cabinet colleagues feel about a dose of reform with the public hurting from rising inflation, higher fuel costs and shortages, rising interest rates and mounting political scepticism about both Labor and the Coalition.
The dilemma facing the government
The politics may ruin Chalmers’ ambitions. As the government’s four-year anniversary looms, at stake is Chalmers’ claim to conviction as Treasurer along with the authority he actually possesses at the cabinet table.
Assessing the dilemma facing the government, economist Chris Richardson told Inquirer: “In the next period the good policy opportunity is probably as great as anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. This is because we have failed to address a whole bunch of chronic problems, and now we face an immediate challenge.
“The opportunity to act on good policy is high as one side of politics is essentially in flames. But if you see your main role in life as fighting Tories, you might prefer the good politics of not doing much, handing out some Band-Aids, doing things like the capital gains tax reform that is essentially promised, basically staying a small target and keeping as much attention as possible on your opponent in the hope that you can effectively wipe them off the map.”

The reptiles followed up with an image of doom, An oil tanker burns after being hit by an Iranian strike in the ship-to-ship transfer zone at Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, Iraq, (sic, why use a full stop when a comma will do?)

Blather followed:

Albanese’s caution on reform is proven, but this week he offered his own prescription on the budget. It overlaps to an extent with Chalmers’ but the differences cannot be missed.
Significantly, Albanese also wants to seize the moment. His message: it’s self-reliance, economic resilience and making more things in Australia, an intensification of his existing Future Made in Australia agenda.
Albanese said: “For Australia to compete, succeed and prosper in this decade, we have to upgrade to a new economic model. We want to make sure that we do everything we can to shield the Australian economy, households and businesses from the worst of global uncertainty. That will be a focus of the budget, but we won’t be waiting until the budget.”

At this point the reptiles introduced a significant stylistic flourish, and eager as always to recreate the reptile experience, the pond thought it was best to revert to the original ...

What did the indentation and italics mean? 

The pond grew a tad weary wondering, but abandoned the futility inherent in the task to press on with the climb ...

After the supply-side message arising from Covid, Albanese now nominates fuel reserves, expanding manufacturing, critical minerals, digital and the tech sector. But this merely looks like more of the same from Labor. More of the same doesn’t cut it, notably if it’s about “shielding” our households and businesses. Economic resilience is a necessity, but seeking higher growth via supply chain resilience won’t work unless tied to productivity improvements.
Assessing the story of the Albanese government, Richardson said: “So far, they haven’t fought the productivity fight, they haven’t fought the budgetary fight, they took temporary windfalls and made permanent promises. We are not as a nation prepared for this situation, not the economy, the budget, the central bank, the government or the strategic oil reserves.”
Reflecting on the history of relations between prime ministers and treasurers, Richardson said: “It’s the prime minister’s view that will win the day.” Chalmers’ rhetorical message is correct: “All this economic uncertainty and volatility is a reason for more reform, not less. A supply-side strategy to lift the speed limit of the economy and make it more resilient. So we can sustain stronger growth without adding to inflation.” Unsurprisingly, he said: “I am confident that there is appetite in our team now.” We shall see.
The imperative for sovereignty
There is a framing fusion that could work for both Albanese and Chalmers – it is the imperative for sovereignty in today’s world. That means both more economic resilience and a higher performing productivity-driven economy. But delivering this is probably beyond Labor’s vision or capabilities.

The reptiles again interrupted with a geography lesson some gif style animation, with this the finished look ...

The pond skipped past the next few lines ...

The current crisis looms as the defining event that determines whether Labor can govern successfully by meeting the demands of the times. The risk is it remains locked in the politics of big spending (with spending as a portion of GDP now touching a high of 27 per cent of GDP), universal social programs (with childcare the next looming blunder), excessive taxation on individuals and corporations, unsustainably high overseas net migration, anti-productivity regulation of the industrial relations system and an addiction to red and green tape.
By raising expectations, Chalmers invites decisive budget judgment on the Albanese government. He says the government is working on “substantial savings options”. He talks up “substantial” productivity gains through investment, faster approvals, greater competition and capturing the upsides of artificial intelligence. He admits the tax system is “outdated”, pledges greater tax reform but is weaker on detail.
The Australian people, meanwhile, have not been helped by the ineptitude of Donald Trump and the misjudgments of the Reserve Bank.

... because the pond wanted to get to this classic Neddism:

President Trump is indirectly responsible for much of the pain being inflicted on the Australian public.

Roll that around on the tongue, savour the feel, enjoy the taste on the back palate ...

President Trump is indirectly responsible

The pond took that as classic reptile avoidance, what with Faux Noise and News Corp having been directly responsible for helping foist King Donald on the world, and King Donald, whether by tariffs, by berating allies ("cowards"), by supporting Vlad the sociopath, or by embarking on sundry ventures and excursions, being directly responsible for the current mess.

No indirectly needed, or required.

Carry on Nedding ...

.. He was an irresponsible instigator of the Iran war having made no proper, prior assessment of the regime’s ability to block the Strait of Hormuz, thereby creating a global energy crisis that damages most of the global economy including Australia.
Trump’s related blunder was to announce regime change as his goal, thereby telling the mullahs they were fighting for their survival and driving them to measures of desperation and chaos.
Chalmers has unveiled Treasury modelling scenarios involving short-term and more serious long-term projections stemming from the closure of the strait. The more long-term had the oil price going to $120 a barrel and taking three years to return to its pre-conflict price. In this scenario GDP would be 0.6 per cent lower in 2027 and even by 2029 would be below where it would have been without the conflict. Warning: the pain from the energy shock might be protracted. The risk is higher interest rates to combat higher inflation.

Not being able to blame King Donald, "Ned" was forced to look to others to blame... RBA Governor Michele Bullock. bank’s mistake has arisen from noble motive. Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

What a relief ... it's a bloody useless woman, always useful to have around when you want to blame someone for being bloody useless:

Misreading the economy
The Reserve Bank’s decision this week to lift the cash rate to 4.1 per cent – the second increase in successive months – testifies to its misreading of the economy over the past two years and raises questions about the operation of the new central bank model. Governor, Michele Bullock, made clear this increase was about domestic inflation, not the war impact. That still lies ahead.
Rates are now just below their 4.35 per cent at the peak of the fighting inflation cycle. The implication is hard to miss – the bank failed to raise rates sufficiently high on the upward cycle and cut them too far on the way down. The statement by the bank monetary policy board reflected concern about “inflation expectations” – that inflation will get embedded in pricing decisions – and warned of a “material risk” that inflation will remain above the target for longer than previously anticipated.
The bank’s mistake has arisen from noble motives – it wanted to control inflation with the least possible damage to the employment market. But in the process it failed on the main job – curbing inflation – and it will be judged accordingly.
In her media conference Bullock seemed anxious to reclaim the bank’s inflation-fighting credibil­ity. She issued a hawkish warning that the bank would pursue inflation with future interest rate increases to the point of a recession if necessary. Neither the government nor the bank wants or is predicting a recession. But the bank needs to convince markets and businesses that it will adopt a more committed outlook combating inflation in the world of energy shortages.
It is also tempting to see in Bullock’s remarks that she wants help from the government. As governor she has made the mistake of dodging comments on government fiscal and spending policies when those policies obviously affect the bank’s decisions. Nobody expects her to criticise the government but projecting excessive timidity is equally unwise.
A related problem is the 5-4 split vote on the rate increase suggesting serious division on the board despite Bullock’s insistence it was about timing, not direction. This was a highly sensitive decision and a split vote of this magnitude cannot help the bank’s authority. Was the bank’s advice to the board inadequate and unpersuasive? Did no board member feel the need to display solidarity around this decision? What does this say about future monetary policy decisions and the effective operation of the new Reserve Bank model?
Have no doubt, the bank will now face even more intense scrutiny. How smart was it to change the model and publicise the internal vote? Can you imagine the havoc if federal cabinet released the details of split votes on the rare occasions when they occur? That would be absurd and manifestly counter-productive.
Global shock

EQ Economics chief Warren Hogan told Inquirer: “The sadness is that 10 central banks are meeting and none will raise interest rates. Ideally, you do not raise rates when you have such a severe shock globally. Central banks should be able to look through such oil price shocks. The irony is that the bank got itself into this position because it refused to take out insurance for any upside on inflation or surprise event.

This being "Ned", how could the reptiles resist inserting yet another a geography lesson?

That set "Ned" off on his final gobbet, but buckle up the Everest summit is to hand ...

“We are probably the most household-indebted country in the world with floating interest rates. It’s an easy story for the media and others to jump on and it means the bank is fighting a broad political battle most of the time. I think the review of the bank clearly hasn’t improved things at all, doing monetary policy by committee.
“Ian Macfarlane and Glenn Stevens would feel the economy in their bones. You need that sixth sense. We have people sitting at the top of the RBA who are great Australians but we’ve come up a bit short and we’re getting ourselves into trouble.
“If we get this wrong, if inflation gets away from us, the costs are measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, they’re not small. The best thing you can do for the people of Australia is to keep inflation under control.”
Addressing the reform agenda, Richardson said urgent changes were needed to both the spending and taxation side of the budget: “Our spending and our taxes are littered with errors. If we improved both sides of the budget that would be a massive win.” He calculated the government was spending about $75bn a year more than a few years ago as a proportion of GDP.
He said: “We used to be known internationally for the targeting of welfare, we gave money to people who needed it and we didn’t give money to people who didn’t need it. But that’s changed because of the politics – electricity subsidies to everyone, a shift in childcare subsidies, look at the NDIS, the increases in Medicare spending goes to doctors rather than patients.”
Albanese is deeply attached to the idea of universal social benefits, a far cry from the ALP emphasis on equity via means testing during the 1980s. But how do universal benefits square with a decade of budget deficits and a public sector that increases economic demand when supply capacity is too constrained, leading to inflation?
The home battery subsidy scheme has been a fiasco. The West Australian GST deal is a huge political gift largely devoid of policy gain. On tax, a litany of reforms is needed. Personal income tax and corporate tax are too high while capital is taxed too lightly. If Labor decides cutting the capital gains tax discount is the full extent of its budget tax reform, it will invite ridicule.
Richardson said: “Going back to the Prime Minister’s phrase, if you are going to be the natural party of government then at some stage you must act like that.
“At some point, you have to do the good policy.”

Put it another way. 

At some point, you have to 'fess up to the dismal failures of Faux Noise and News Corp, because thanks to their preferred President, good policy has suddenly turned into a marathon descent into madness.

And finally, for those who survived the "Ned" experience, and made it to the bitter end, a soupçon of News Corp fun, found in another place, and in the intermittent archive ...

One year ago, News Corp columnist Rita Panahi used her Sky News platform to label Gina Rinehart’s estranged son, John Hancock, a “man-child” and “spoiled brat with a chronic case of entitlement”.
He did not respond. But on Wednesday, Hancock, who lives overseas to give his family some distance from his Australian legal entanglements, found a golden opportunity.
This masthead had reported on Panahi’s 50th birthday party on a $25,000-a-day boat floating off the Florida coast, which one guest said was hosted by Rinehart.
“This ‘journalist’ calling me a ‘spoiled brat’ appears to have celebrated her 50th onboard a boat funded by Gina, complete with a ‘present table’, and wearing the hat after months of singing from Gina’s PR flacks’ songbook,” Hancock told On Background.
“In contrast, I pay for my own boat and parties with money I’ve earned – not Gina’s, the origins of which are currently before the courts.
“Australians have a great radar for irony – here it writes itself.”

The pond knows that Rita, meter maid, has a cult following amongst pond correspondents, and this after dinner mint treatwas up there with the venerable Meade noting that John Lyons had once worked for the lizard Oz ...

... in a reference to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s extensive use of Rinehart’s private plane, Hancock questioned whether it was just the boat party that appeared to have been gifted to the Sky News host.
“Did Gina also pay for the flights? Was it on the company jet? And what further personal comments are expected in return?” he asked.
News Corp’s standards of business conduct state no employee should accept gifts or hospitality unless they have a business purpose and are “clearly appropriate in the context of a reasonable business relationship”.
Staff should also “refuse or return any gift, even a minor one, which appears to be given for the purpose of or with an expectation of reward or influence”.
Panahi, News Corp, Sky, Sky CEO Paul Whittaker, Herald Sun editor Sam Weir and representatives for Rinehart were all approached for comment. None responded.
The attention has not stopped Panahi pronouncing on propriety in the media. On Thursday, she was taking aim at the “pile-on” by reporters and commentators who covered the Hawthorn racism saga in 2022, saying they had “abandoned any pretence of fairness” and should “feel eternal shame”.
Uh-huh, but aren’t there some questions for Panahi on ethics a bit closer to home?

And with that, now this ...

A final bit of jocularity featuring James, the UK Terror, the Beeb and King Donald ...