In which the bromancer leads the war mongering, the Canavan caravan arrives in the hive mind, and Dame Groan spends words on Spender ...

 

Yet more Murdochiana for herpetology students:

Where earlier writers have drawn parallels with Shakespeare’s King Lear, Sherman thinks King Midas is a more appropriate comparison:
"Like the mythical monarch whose touch turned everything to gold, Rupert built a $17 billion fortune but destroyed everything he loved in the process. His media outlets stoked hatred and division on an industrial scale, and amassing that wealth required him to damage virtually anything he touched: the environment, women’s rights, the Republican Party, truth, decency – even his own family."

Much more at The Conversation.

The pond is content to note that he, his spawn, and his minion at the lizard Oz continue to damage virtually everything there is to damage ...

I've seen the rags and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every reptiles's like a settin' sun

And so to the damage done this day, and this day the reptiles decided to get very solemn about Iran, yet try as it might the pond simply couldn't discern a mention of the 150+ schoolgirls murdered in the recent American bombing - a bombing denied by King Donald, but widely acknowledged as an infamous American act, performed during an entirely needless act of adventurism, which if anything has helped entrench the mad Mullahs while making the long suffering Iranian civilian population suffer even more (while news trickles in from Venezuela that that odious regime is still conducting torture under King Donald's mandate, provided they keep forwarding him oil money).

You shouldn't be able to get away with deploring the mad Mullahs, oppressive as they are, while at the same time, ignoring a million or so displaced in Lebanon and the many other civilians killed in the current campaign - apparently, if you trust King Donald's words, being done "for fun".

Down at the bottom of that litany, garrulous Gemma made a bog standard appearance. 

Off to the intermittent archive with her ...

Commentary by Gemma Tognini
At the Oscars, some victims are just more worthy than others
Hollywood’s stars rarely miss a chance to champion fashionable causes, but the silence on Iran at this year’s Oscars highlights what critics say is a pattern of selective activism.

The pond isn't much interested in the sight of a whining snowflake, always with a grievance to hand, but does regret that it didn't watch the Oscars. 

Apparently Sean Penn didn't show up and instead went off to show support for Ukraine, but no doubt grating Gemma stands proudly with Vlad the sociopath.

As a result of only catching theWeapons-inspired cold open and the opening monologue, the pond entirely missed the key awards ...

Now on with the pond's favourite warmonger.

The header: No nation has had more wake-up calls than ours; Though we are the biggest island nation in the world, the Americans know that as a military force the Australian navy is essentially non-existent.

The caption for the bromancer's villains: (R-L) Anthony Albanese, Chris Bowen, Richard Marles and Penny Wong address the media at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire /Martin Ollman

The bromancer was, in his usual way, itching for a bit of kit so that he could take part in the adventurism, and never mind that there was no sane reason to join King Donald in his folly ...

That the Albanese government has gone out loud and proud to announce, without even being asked, that it’s certainly not going to send an Australian navy ship to help keep the Strait of Hormuz safe for international shipping is much more significant than it looks, and bespeaks a shocking Australian impotence.
The Iran war is another wake-up call for our nation. No nation has had more wake-up calls, yet on defence we’re determined to stick to our Mogadon habit.
The decision was somewhat weirdly announced by Infrastructure Minister Catherine King, presumably because Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles want to restrict themselves to happy talk.
Here’s the real significance. Though we are the biggest island nation in the world, our navy is effectively defunct. Donald Trump announced a long list of nations he would like to contribute to escorting cargo vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. We weren’t on it.
Trump specifically mentioned China, France, Japan, South Korea and the UK, and later expanded the demand to include NATO allies generally. It’s worth noting just what a horrible strategic mess Trump has created by first insulting allies, then demanding their military support.
British television coverage, when Trump’s demand was first published, was full of patriotic outrage at Trump first insulting Keir Starmer’s offer of an aircraft carrier, then days later demanding British ships.

Well yes, the whole sordid, mismanaged affair has been extremely stupid ...

But the bromancer has always shown a lingering affection for the mad King ... President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn upon his arrival to the White House. Picture: Jose Luis Magana / AP Photo

But even the bromancer had to admit that the orange clown had come up with some strange notions in recent times ...

Even more bizarre was Trump’s request for Chinese naval support given that Beijing is a close partner of Iran and has condemned the whole American action in Iran, though Beijing is delighted to see how much American materiel is being used up in the Iran war. It’s tremendously chuffed that Trump has withdrawn significant military resources from South Korea and Japan to send to the Middle East.
But it’s notable that despite Australia being the second or third closest ally to the US, after Britain and, all things considered, probably Japan too, we weren’t asked for a naval contribution. This is because the Americans know that as a military force the Australian navy is essentially non-existent at the moment.
In our surface fleet we notionally have seven Anzac-class frigates, though they are so old that to send them into harm’s way now would rank surely as a species of elder abuse, and three Hobart-class air warfare destroyers. The frigates each have eight vertical launch cells, just eight. Many modern destroyers have well over 100.
The Iranians fire missiles and drones at ships. The Anzacs deploy fairly short-range Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles in their vertical launch cells. In terms of self-defence, that’s pretty much it. In the conflict with the Houthis in the Red Sea, the US Navy mainly used much longer-range SM2 and SM6 missiles. That’s because if you miss an incoming missile with a long-range shot you can have another go with your short-range defence systems. If you miss with a short-range effort, you’re dead.

The reptiles tried to placate the bromancer's death wish with a bit of kit ... Cargo including bombs are removed from a C-130J-30 Super Hercule after landing at RAF Fairford in Fairford, England. The US is using the RAF base as part of its military operations in Iran. Picture: Matthew Horwood / Getty Images

How he yearned to get involve in a stoush ...

Nor do the Anzacs have sophisticated counter-drone systems. The Ukrainians, Iranians and Houthis have all shown that drones can be used to devastating effect against conventional navy ships. If our Anzac frigates ever did fire off their missiles they would be exhausted and in need of replenishment in five minutes. The commander of any US taskforce would regard the Anzacs as a liability, just another ship the Americans had to defend. Of our three Hobart-class destroyers, one is in a long-term upgrade and therefore out of action. Of the other two, perhaps one could be sent. They are optimised for air defence, not what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz.
They have 48 VLS each, about half a US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Beyond that they have Phalanx Gatling guns, which can be a last line of defence against incoming drones. They don’t have complex counter-drone systems.
To be effective in high-intensity environments, ships need layered systems of defence. The Hobarts don’t have them. And of course they would be completely reliant on the US for what are becoming extremely scarce missiles as we have pitiful, truly pitiful, stocks of such missiles ourselves.
The Hobart-class is much more capable than the Anzacs, but its utility would be marginal in the Strait of Hormuz. And if we sent one we would in effect be sending the entirety of our surface fleet capability.

And what's the point of being ready to set sail on a futile attempt to prove the old adage that if you break it, you own it? 

Not much beyond offering the bromancer shots of kit, Leading Seaman Aircrewman Liam Sulley looks out towards HMAS Brisbane as the ship transits through the Prince of Wales Channel, off the coast of Queensland.

At this point the bromancer came up with a line that had the pond rolling Jaffas down the aisle:

It’s probable that Trump can’t open the Hormuz strait even with allies’ help. 

So futility is the game?

“If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus (Or perhaps experience a city-wide fire bombing?)

Bravely the bromancer tried to redeem the situation with a billy goat butt ...

But our absolute lack of defence capability is the greatest national scandal of our time. It’s bipartisan in creation. The previous Coalition government was almost as bad as the Albanese government in defence.
Australians should recognise the decisions we’ve made. Just as we’ve decided to keep barely a month’s worth of fuel in reserve so that we couldn’t withstand any interruption to supply, so we have decided not to have any meaningful defence capability.
We’ve not made any significant investment in the kind of drones devastatingly effective in the Ukraine, Iran and Houthi conflicts – swarming, cheap drones in huge numbers.
The Wedgetail air reconnaissance and control plane we’ve sent to the United Arab Emirates is a useful plane if you have an air force or missile defence system to direct. We don’t have significant missile defence in Australia so it’s best used overseas.
The Albanese government has faithfully re-created the worst of Liberal-National defence policy. We take an eternity to procure a tiny number of sophisticated platforms that can be used only as niche capabilities folding into an American operation.
Marcus Hellyer, the best defence budget analyst in Australia, recently published a paper showing that Defence’s Portfolio Additional Estimates Statement discloses that the Albanese government has actually cut defence spending. It has imposed a $1.5bn “efficiency dividend” (honestly, you can’t make this stuff up) on defence, which it had not imposed before, and the entirely fictional “dividend” goes back to consolidated revenue, it’s not kept by defence.

There came a final bit of kit, thankfully lying idle, and not off on a gulf adventure,  HMAS Ballarat (II) in Darwin is the sixth of eight Anzac Class frigates built by Tenix Defence Systems at Williamstown, Victoria for the Royal Australian Navy.

How the lizard Oz's war monger in chief mourned the way we couldn't join this fabulous gulf excursion ...

Further, in famously bringing forward some defence spending in the last budget, the government has cut planned spending across the forward estimates so that, according to Hellyer, by 2027-28 defence spending, on the government’s own figures, will still be just 2.05 per cent of GDP.
If we ever lose the US alliance we are completely defenceless. No doubt Beijing will never want to do this, but in terms of sheer military capability China could do everything to Australia that the US has done to Iran. The difference is, unlike Iran, we couldn’t fight back. And unlike Iran, we’d run out of fuel in five minutes.
We are a deeply foolish nation to let this entirely avoidable set of circumstances continue.

Trust King Donald? We're already completely defenceless, keeping company with a clown car ...

Luckily as something of an offset, that lesser member of the Kelly gang, Joe, was on hand to question the wisdom of it all, and as he only took two minutes to do it, a couple of screen caps covered his thoughts.

Riddled with contradictions? That's an understatement for the mad King, who of late has started to sound bonkers ...

All those incoherent fascist ramblings did was set off Brendan of the FFC and help produce panic buying ...

No wonder Joe was sounding cautious:

With Joe done and dusted, the pond also took to a screen cap for the Canavan caravan:

And that's it for the pond, which has such a contempt for this doofus that it simply couldn't stomach the nonsense, and sent the rest off to the archive ...

(Those are just to wash the Canavan caravan stench from the nostrils).

On the upside, that cleared room for Dame Groan's usual Tuesday groaning ...

The header for the complacent old biddy: Allegra Spender’s tax white paper misses the mark; Older people have always been wealthier than younger folk. This is just a natural outcome of the life cycle of work and family formation.

The caption for the portrait, shown with the sort of grimace the reptiles love to have on hand for their enemies: Allegra Spender. Pictures: iStock/News Corp

Why did Dame Groan decide to have a go at an indie, who has no effective mechanism for doing anything much beyond doing reports?

Because it's easy ...

It must go with the territory. The member for Wentworth puts out a report on tax reform. It’s done for the greater good, not to address the local concerns of constituents. It’s the sort of thing that school captains do.
Early in his term, Malcolm Turnbull released a report outlining a series of tax reform proposals. Now teal member Allegra Spender has put out a report entitled Rewarding Effort in Taxing Times, using the services of known advocates of changing the tax system.
There is nothing new in Spender’s effort. Indeed, we had a federal election in 2019 when the electorate was asked for its opinion on many of the issues canvassed: changes to negative gearing, capital gains tax, the taxation of trusts and several other proposals. We all know the result of that election.
The fundamental problem of Spender’s report is the false premise that wages are taxed too much relative to capital. Of course, we may be overtaxed overall, but it’s the sensitivity of the relative burden that Spender doesn’t seem to understand. She really thinks she’s on to something when she simplistically refers to someone earning $100,000 a year. If it’s from wages, the tax is $23,000; if it’s from capital gains it’s $7000; and if it’s from superannuation, it’s zero if the person is retired.

Naturally the reptiles dragged another enemy into the affair, Malware himself, Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: David Gray / AFP

But if Dame Groan wanted to have a go at someone, why couldn't she tackle this sort of Canavan caravan drivel?

...Things have not been this dire for Australian families since the 1970s, the last time the world faced a major oil crisis. Australia then withstood the shortages better than most because we had just started pumping oil from the Bass Strait. While we were impacted by the global economic downturn of the 70s, Australian petrol bowsers did not have labels put on them, “not in use”.
That was because the Menzies government had the foresight after World War II to subsidise the drilling for oil. BHP, partnering with Esso, took up the offer and the Bass Strait helped provide the fuel for Bathurst 500 winners for a generation – along with other important things.
Just 25 years ago Australia produced 96 per cent of our raw petroleum needs and we made 70 per cent of our demand for refined liquid fuels. Today, the Bass Strait has dried up and we produce less than half of our raw petroleum needs, with less than 30 per cent refined here. While this is the bad news, the good news is that we can restore our living standards because we have all we need here in Australia. We have enormous oil reserves under our feet, but if we don’t drill we will never find them.
If we end our obsession with net zero we can get back to using our resources for the Australian people again. Our artificial ban on the use of our own resources (coal, gas and uranium) is at the heart of why we have gone from some of the lowest energy prices in the world to some of the highest.
There is nothing wrong with Australia that cannot be fixed with what we have here. We do not need to import basic commodities, we do not need to import foreign ideas, we do not need to import people to artificially pump our economic statistics.

Profound apologies.

The pond had promised to ignore the Canavan caravan, but simply couldn't help itself. 

Not when Dame Groan is spending all her verbiage on Spender.

Still, the desire to plunge back into the Canavan caravan cesspool must help explain the pond's fixation on regurgitating Dame Groan's talking points:

But here’s the point. Those capital gains have been made because people have used post-tax income to buy assets. And that tax-free income for superannuants is after a great deal of contributions and earnings tax has been paid. In fact, calculated in cumulative terms, the current tax burden on superannuation is already high.
There is also the further important point that capital is much more mobile than labour. It’s why around the world capital is taxed concessionally relative to wages and other income. Given the importance of capital accumulation to economic performance, it’s very important to get this balance right.
Australia’s capital gains tax is already high by international standards. Several countries don’t even have one, including Singapore and New Zealand, and the rate is highly concessional in the US.
Spender is keen to see the longstanding arrangements for taxing trusts altered, notwithstanding the fact she is a beneficiary of several family trusts. Weirdly, she doesn’t seem to be fully au fait with how the taxation of most trusts work. Each beneficiary pays income tax at their top marginal rate and all the trust income must be distributed each year. It is only the return on assets that can be split, not income from labour.
She makes the point that trusts are also about asset preservation but fails to note that many small businesses are set up as trusts. To impose a minimum tax rate on all beneficiaries – her proposal is 27.5c in the dollar – would be punitive for many mum-and-dad businesses as many of these businesses are struggling to survive.

The reptiles decided to interrupt with an AV distraction featuring the dog botherer on Sky Noise down under (still no rebrand?): 

Sky News host Chris Kenny says Australians “pay too much” tax to the government for them not to “spend it wisely”. Mr Kenny said the “latest champion” for tax reform is the “multi-millionaire” teal MP, Allegra Spender. “I mean she's wealthy beyond the dreams of most Australians, good on her, but when you look at her complex web of companies and trusts, one of its functions must be to minimise the tax payable. “Clearly she knows the tax system very well, but nobody should fall for the pretense (sic) that she can cut taxes for anyone else.”

All very well, but meanwhile the Canavan caravan was getting away with this sort of bilge, a kind of deeply weird variation on "more gruel":

We just need more Australia. More Australian farming, more Australian mining, more Australian manufacturing, more Australian jobs, more Australian everything.
Many of the solutions can be found in regional Australia. Regional Australia is where we can expand farming, mining, energy production (of all types!), manufacturing and tourism.
It is also in regional Australia where we can protect our way of life. The Australian dream should include the birthright to own a home with a backyard big enough to play a game of cricket in. Backyards will become as extinct as the Tasmanian tiger if we keep stacking people up in our capital cities.
Unique in the world, Australia crams in more than half of its population in just five mainland capital cities, all on our coast. The top five cities in the US house around 15 per cent of their population.
Attracting people to the regions needs investment in roads, industry and hospitals. But we also need to encourage more work from home opportunities. It takes two jobs for most families to move now, and work from home allows people in the bush to have many professional jobs (in law, finance and the like) away from where the “sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall”.
If we spread our population out more, that will reduce demand for the scarce land left in our capital cities, which will put downward pressure on housing costs.
Not everyone will want to move to a country town but the people who do will free up a home for those who don’t.

Sorry, the pond has lived in a country town, and not just Adelaide, and doesn't need any of that kind of crap. 

The Canavan caravan might want to quote Clancy of the Overflow in the cause of skin cancer, but the pond endured the Tamworth flies for way too long.

Dame Groan sailed on oblivious, still spending words on Spender. Take that younglings, back in your box vulgar youff:

The larger theme behind Spender’s earnest report is growing intergenerational inequality: “Young people today face challenges of their own, particularly in establishing financial security in the way their parents did. We see this in the stalling levels of household wealth of younger generations, most acutely felt by those finding it difficult to afford housing that is close to family, opportunities and employment.”
Here’s the thing: older people have always been wealthier than younger folk. This is just a natural outcome of the life cycle of work and family formation.
Young people invest in their education, work on their careers, consume rather than invest. It is only after several years that individuals and couples can start to accumulate wealth.
Is it possible that the extent of intergenerational inequality has worsened? Those 60 and older have benefited from that purple patch of economic reform; think Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello. Younger generations, by contrast, have had to put up with nearly two decades of zero reform and stalling living standards.
When it comes to housing affordability, that demand was allowed to grow far too strongly thanks to excessive migrant intakes meant that supply could never keep up. Negative gearing has been part of the tax code for more than a century and the current CGT arrangements have been in place for a quarter of a century. They simply can’t be the main explanation for recent rising house prices, which have been a global phenomenon.
In fact, the main weakness of our tax system is a top marginal income tax rate that is too high and drives a great deal of behaviour, and not just by the well-off. Even Bill Kelty and Paul Keating agree on this point. But Spender was never going there.
The member for Wentworth would have spent her time and resources more effectively by concentrating on the expenditure side of the budget ledger.

Tax cuts for the rich! Always the best solution:

Then there came a final snap of the villainess of the day: Allegra Spender MP during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond should play fair and note the final Canavan carry on, but what a creepy image to start, three men smirking while talking about women's wombs and the need for them to revert to the kitchen ...

Shades of a recurring, never ending pond nightmare ...

All the pond can do is hope that the Canavan caravan runs out of ticker like that insanely grinning loon ... as Dame Groan had a final groaning in her ...and eventually she reverted to her usual mission, ravaging Jimbo ...

That federal government payments as a percentage of GDP have increased by two percentage points under Labor really doesn’t bear thinking about. Do we all feel miraculously better off as a result? It is surely obvious that a great deal of government spending is effectively squandered by greedy providers and outright fraud.
In the meantime, Jim Chalmers is working on a federal budget that will meet the “reform” test being imposed by the press gallery. Read my lips: This is not the most important budget of this century, not even close.
To rush complex tax proposals is to invite chaos and confusion. Let’s not forget here that it effectively took four years to finalise the GST package. Look also at how long it took to pass the new superannuation tax laws on large bal­ances, including the deeply misguided proposal to tax unrealised capital gains, since dropped.
My advice is to hang on to your hat. There is no reason to have any confidence in the decision-making ability of Chalmers or the quality of the advice he receives from Treasury.
With inflationary pressures building and likely rises in interest rates, it’s not a good time to be implementing radical tax changes with uncertain consequences. Sadly, this is unlikely to deter our Treasurer.

Any concession for the way that the world is currently being turned upside down by a narcissistic king in the grip of dementia, and cowardly minions strutting about in shoes a couple of sizes too big?

Nah, it's not the way of Dame Groan, but you've got to admire how the entire world is being redacted as a form of distraction ...

Finally, a little more propaganda from the Poms ...