The reptiles are intent on ignoring the real villains for the current world-wide crisis, King Donald and his minions, and those who encouraged him in his folly, such as the Emeritus Chairman ...
Instead there was the chance for a crowing amidst the carnage ...
The reptiles also dropped the pastie Hastie off the front page, and you had to head to another place to read the likes of Hastie’s truth bombs on tax and war will rattle the Liberal Party (*intermittent archive link)
The war would dent American prestige and cast doubt on the president’s judgment, Hastie said, plunging Australia into a new, truly multipolar era in which military and economic self-sufficiency will be crucial.
The effect of Hastie’s interview, which came after weeks of outspoken interventions, will accelerate the conversation about the potential upside of a Hastie-led Liberal Party.
Or you could turn to the source, the ABC, Andrew Hastie says Iran war a 'huge miscalculation' by Donald Trump
Or The Conversation, Andrew Hastie calls out Trump’s war strategy
Where's the bromancer when he's needed to repent and recalibrate? Where's Lord Downer, in his finery, high heels and stockings, ready to explain it all away?
What reptile dared to stand up with the hastie pasty, gone wild-eyed rogue?
None.
Instead it was left to hapless Geoff to chamber a round on the extreme far right ...
There are two big questions that will be answered ahead of the 2028 election: will Anthony Albanese run for a historic third term and will Andrew Hastie make his move on Angus Taylor?
By Geoff Chambers
Sublimely, the chambering managed to avoid any mention of King Donald's war as he contemplated that rogue pasty Hastie...
The Coalition’s primary vote in Newspoll is up, the Opposition Leader has narrowed the gap to an increasingly unpopular Prime Minister and the popular vote for One Nation appears to have plateaued.
The challenge for Taylor and his senior team is to keep out of their own way and ensure they don’t give Labor easy ways out.
The fuel excise policy intervention, which recycled one of Peter Dutton’s election losing ideas, was not needed.
While plenty of Australians would like cheaper petrol, the issue right now is finding fuel.
The Coalition needs to better understand when to intervene and when to not.
The Albanese government is under massive pressure.
Similar to the pandemic, the opposition should attack the government’s mistakes while not providing ammunition for Labor or One Nation.
Despite returning to shadow cabinet, Hastie on Sunday showed he will not be muzzled and will continue to speak his mind on whatever issue he chooses, even if it is contrary to formal Coalition policy.
Hastie’s intervention, which included being open to increasing taxes on the gas industry and clamping down on capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing, will be weaponised by Labor during the final parliamentary sitting week before the Easter break and the federal budget.
Taylor needs to keep his team on the same page.
The oil crisis has magically turned up out of nowhere - likely greenies are to blame - and the team just has to stay solid, and ssshh, don't mention the war.
This was the one disassociated mention of the war in that feeble Chambering ...
The Iran war and its associated impacts will fundamentally alter Treasury’s forecasts and the nation’s economic outlook.
You don't say, Sherlock ...
What a pity you were completely clueless about who caused it, and it was left to the pastie Hastie to bell that cat (yes, even broken clocks ...)
Naturally, the careening, cratering Crater was an astute diviner of the real reasons for the crisis, up there with his analysis of flood waters in quarries.
The header: Labor has turned its back on real victims of this oil shock; The party’s natural constituency is no longer those who drive the economy, but those who interpret it.
The caption for the opening snap? Sorry, there was none. Yet again the reptiles forgot to tag it, but no matter, the gesticulating man looks incredibly sinister and is likely a villain.
Ironies never cease, and reptile mischief makers abound, and so it was that prize blatherer, that "interpreter" braying about "those who interpret it", who spent four minutes blaming everyone but King Donald ...
Yet Chris Bowen’s decision to skip the last national cabinet to attend informal net-zero discussions with Pacific climate ministers suggests his mind is elsewhere. Bowen prioritised attending an open-ended talkfest about the energy system of the future over addressing the crisis in the energy system we actually have.
As we enter the fifth week of the war against Iran, Bowen maintains that all is quiet on the western front. He says fuel reserves remain strong and more is on the way. Australia’s two refineries “are working absolutely full pelt”, he told ABC Insiders last week. He insists we have the same, if not slightly more, petrol and diesel in Australia than before the crisis began.
Yet his narrative jars with the mood on the Metro filling station forecourt on Hoxton Park Rd in western Sydney, where motorists were lining up last week to top up their tanks at $2.50 a litre.
Bowen calls this panic buying. Yet, with fuel prices rising week by week, others might call it prudence. Motorists are doing exactly what rapid inflation encourages: buying earlier, buying more often and avoiding exposure to higher prices.
Just remember the advantages of EVs, and renewables, the pond suggests, as the reptiles did manage to tag the next snap, Anthony Albanese holds a press briefing about the fuel crisis with Chris Bowen in Sydney. Picture: Jeremy Piper
Inevitably the Caterist was all in on fomenting hysteria, and panic - that's what flood waters in quarries diviners do best ...
“The way things are going, I won’t be able to afford to go to work,” Shane said. “It’s either pay the bills and starve or eat and not pay the bills.”
Bowen appeared unmoved. He insisted the government could not be blamed for rising oil prices and referred Shane to the state government app that gives real-time service station prices.
Not for the first time, the Albanese government has fallen into the trap of mistaking the mood in inner-city coffee shops for that of the country as a whole.
In Erskineville, in Sydney’s inner west, for example, public transport and cycle paths are so plentiful that a quarter of households don’t bother to own a car.
Normal life is impossible in the outer suburbs without a car. That’s why three out of five households in Penrith go to the expense of owning two or more vehicles compared to one out of five households in Erskineville.
Nine out of 10 people who travel to work in Penrith use a car. On average, they travel further to work, and a few enjoy the luxury of paying for fuel with a company credit card. The effects of the fuel crisis are deeply regressive. It is punishing the working poor in outer-suburban districts far harder than households with higher incomes in more fashionable suburbs.
The government’s response to rising fuel prices has been to wash its hands of responsibility, blaming international markets and hinting at fuel company price gouging.
There is no evidence whatsoever of predatory behaviour by retailers, nor would there likely be in a fiercely competitive market where a range of independent companies competes aggressively on price.
Roll that one around on your tongue again, and enjoy the Menzies Research Centre flavour ...
There is no evidence whatsoever of predatory behaviour by retailers, nor would there likely be in a fiercely competitive market where a range of independent companies competes aggressively on price.
And so to the wretch himself, thankfully reduced to a screen cap, Menzies Research Centre Senior Fellow Nick Cater says Australians are seeing political figures as taking the public for “granted”. “These revelations about Anika Wells and others in the party,” Mr Cater said. “They think the political class are taking them for granted.”
Time to bash renewables and alternatives such as home batteries ...
The biggest price component beyond the Singapore benchmark, which was around $1.07 on Friday, is fuel excise duty and GST.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s proposal to halve fuel excise duty for three months would cut the pump price overnight by around 26c a litre. Taylor also announced a 50 per cent reduction in the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge to assist the transport industry.
The Treasurer will be reluctant to cut revenue, but Taylor has helped him by identifying commensurate cuts: scrapping the electric vehicle fringe benefits tax exemption, slashing green hydrogen projects and freezing the home battery scheme, which offers consumers an attractive 30 per cent subsidy.
In a rational world, these cuts would be uncontroversial. The FBT exemption is transparently a tax cut for the rich, the kind of measure to which the Labor Party would once have been resolutely opposed.
The generosity of the home battery subsidy has made it wildly popular. The cost blew out to $7.2bn in less than six months, triple its initial budget. Once again, it is an example of government largesse to the already privileged: homeowners wealthy enough to install solar panels on their roofs and with enough spare capital or borrowing capacity to bear the upfront costs while amortising the returns over time.
Poor beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, struggling to stay relevant as the pastie Hastie made his play ...Angus Taylor proposed to halve fuel excise duty for three months. Picture: Martin Ollman
And so to a rousing 'oils is oils' climax ...
Yet none of these cuts would be easy for Bowen, who remains fixated by the real energy crisis, not a shortage of fuel but an excess of emissions.
Labor once understood itself as a party of material interests: wages, prices, the universal provision of health and education. Its instincts were shaped by the pressures of everyday life, with particular concern for the downtrodden and dispossessed.
Those old-fashioned socialist instincts have dulled. In their place is a politics more concerned with systems than outcomes and the future rather than the present. Its natural constituency is no longer those who drive the economy, but those who interpret it.
The party has become remote – and not a little disdainful – of the people who grow things, make things, import and distribute things. All of which, inconveniently, require energy in real time, not 30 years hence.
The oil crisis gives the government a chance to recalibrate, to acknowledge the limits of current assumptions and the indispensability of hydrocarbons. It is an opportunity that will almost certainly be squandered.
Major Mitchell was also on a war footing ...
The header: Outright hostility to Donald Trump and Israel colours media’s reporting of Iran war; Analysis of the war should not gloss over miscalculations by the US and Israel. Equally, the rush to doomsday pessimism undermines journalism’s credibility.
The caption: Bulk carriers sit anchored at Muscat anchorage in Oman. Picture: Getty Images
The Major spent a bigly five minutes filing and filling his report for the Australian Daily Zionist News, but before beginning, the pond did wonder if that correspondent's suggestion that he matched up with Colonel Blimp was in any way fair ...
And so to the Major doing his best to defend King Donald, his minions, and above all, the current government of Israel's quest for a greater Israel, and never mind a little ethnic cleansing...
The Nine papers in Australia, most commercial broadcasters and the ABC last week reported Iran’s denials that it was negotiating with Trump, based on statements from Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the speaker of its parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
The Iranians would say that. Several layers of the regime have been eliminated and it is unlikely anyone privately talking to the US via intermediaries would admit to it given what the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps might do to them.
Journalists don’t realise the regime paranoia triggered by Trump’s claims Iran was “desperate for a deal” could actually help the US.
As Mehdi Parpanchi, executive editor at US-based Iran International TV, wrote on Tuesday on Substack, the US President’s statement “is already producing an outcome Trump wants: psychological pressure inside Tehran and calmer energy markets outside it”.
As The Wall Street Journal argued on Wednesday, Iran’s regime had plenty of incentive “to deny, deny, deny and keep markets roiled”.
Yet by Tuesday morning it was already clear Pakistan was involved in brokering a deal with Iran. Egypt and Turkey were helping.
The Gulf states were pressuring Iran. Saudi Arabia’s leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the UAE said they wanted the war to continue.
At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of a journalist butcher, just the sort of man the Major loves quoting, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. Picture: AAP
The Major kept on with his padding ...
Nine Newspapers’ international editor Peter Hartcher on Tuesday wrote an opinion piece under the headline “Trump has no idea what he is doing”.
Now fair should be fair.
All the links in the next Major gobbet just kept reptile readers inside the lizard Oz hive mind.
There was no link to Hartcher, harumphing Trump has no idea what he's going. Now his hubris has put the world on edge... (*intermittent archive link)
It takes a lot for the pond to admit that the harping Hartcher had a point, but this is was his opening thrust ...
Donald Trump allowed a little extra time for his planned war on Iran. He was confident of defeating the Islamic Republic in four days, according to a credible expert. It’s now halfway through its fourth week.
The war is turning out to be full of surprises for the American president. First, before the war began, his administration assured anxious officials in Turkey that the US-Israeli assault on Iran would be over in four days, says Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkish scholar with the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The administration had convinced itself that if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were removed, the entire Iranian regime would collapse in short order: “Trump wanted to carry out a hit-and-run move, and now he is stuck in an open-ended war,” she says.
Trump should not have been surprised. His own peak intelligence adviser had told him not to expect the regime to fall: “A classified report by the National Intelligence Council found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the US would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment,” reports The Washington Post.
The intelligence assessment had been informed by a raft of government experts on Iran. It seems Trump consulted no Iran specialists anywhere inside or outside the government.
Bloomberg, however, reports that he was urged by the well-known authority on Iran, Rupert Murdoch, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran. Should we be surprised that the president who advised his population to try injecting bleach to cure COVID also did no homework on going to war?
Nor did the Emeritus Chairman do his homework.
Naturally the Major couldn't mention that little tidbit in his summary ...
Hartcher saw the weekend’s revelation Iran had fired two long-range missiles at Diego Garcia, 4000km away in the Indian Ocean, as a reason the US should be cautious. This column reckons long-range missiles and 400kg of enriched uranium are reasons to hit Iran hard.
And what of the potential for success? What if Iran’s hard line speaker can become a leader the West can deal with?
What if the UK and NATO countries do end up patrolling the Persian Gulf, which they need but Trump does not because the US is self-sufficient in fossil fuels?
What if?
That's the best the Major has got while the world goes to hell in a handbasket, and it will take years for the world to recover from King Donald's deed?
What if the Major is a major twerp and a fool?
The Jerusalem Post has examined the war’s progress and on Wednesday produced an assessment more sober than reporting in Australia and in the US.
Strikes by the US and Israel on Iranian targets have fallen dramatically, possibly to as few as 240 a day, compared with 1000 a day by both the US and Israel in week one.
There is separate evidence Iranian strikes against Israel, and against the Gulf states, have also fallen, probably because Iran’s launch capabilities have been severely degraded.
The way the reptiles work is always to toss in a billy goat butt ...
Analysis of the war should not gloss over miscalculations by the US and Israel.
But that's always so the butt can be refuted ...
If Trump derangement syndrome rules in much of the coverage, outright hostility to Israel’s right to defend itself dominates reporting of its war aims in Lebanon, where Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to drive Iran’s Hezbollah proxy from positions south of the Litani River, perhaps even occupying southern Lebanon.
Sadly the Major has a case of Trump delusion syndrome, accompanied by a severe dose of Zionism, and a seemingly endless devotion to Benji ... Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. speaks during a video released on social media. Picture: X
As always, it's the fault of the cardigan wearers ...
The ABC, like Britain’s BBC, is always on the lookout for innocent Lebanese civilian victims but seems unable to find innocent Israelis affected by Hezbollah rockets across northern Israel.
Remember, 60,000 Israelis had to leave their homes in the country’s north for almost two years before the November 27 2024 truce.
Readers may have seen footage of a journalist being fired on near the Litani River on March 19. He claimed he was being deliberately targeted by the IDF as part of Israel’s war on journalists. It made compelling television.
The reporter, Steve Sweeney, is the Lebanon bureau chief of RT: Russia Today. Australian networks that aired the footage did not say the IDF had specifically warned in advance of that date that it would soon be targeting bridges across the Litani for destruction.
So to the Major's source, and here the pond must do a pre-emptive reference to a wiki for CAMERA...
CAMERA's critics have called it an "extreme Israel advocacy group" and said it is aligned with hawkish right-wing viewpoints, pays stipended fellows to write anti-Palestinian articles, and employs smear and intimidation tactics, routinely targeting media and journalists critical of Israel and pro-Palestinian activists on campuses.
Well yes, you don't get more peak Zionist than the Major, so naturally he was all in ...
By last Wednesday, Lebanon had decided to expel the Iranian ambassador. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on March 2 demanded Hezbollah disarm.
While Al Jazeera sided with Hezbollah against the ban, Salam told Saudi television on March 22 that Hezbollah’s “rocket fire towards Israel had led to heavy damage in Lebanon and undermined the government’s credibility”, the Times of Israel reported.
Trump is no doubt the most mercurial president the US has ever had. Netanyahu certainly has used the latest conflict to build his domestic popularity ahead of an election later this year.
But these facts do not invalidate the desire of the Arab Gulf States, Israel, Lebanon and long-suffering Iranians for an end to the violence the country’s mullahs have spread throughout the Middle East.
Trump on Wednesday said Iran had offered a precious gift, related to oil and gas.
The Times of Israel on Thursday reported Arab and US sources saying Iran had let some tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz as a sign of good faith.
As usual, Trump had made too much of a gesture that won’t alleviate high oil prices.
The reptiles decided to fling in a snap of King Donald looking a tad the worse for wear ... US President Donald Trump. Picture: AP
The Major finally wrapped up ...
On Friday, Trump extended the deadline on threats to destroy Iran’s energy system to April 6. He was trying to appease markets that on Thursday night (AEST) had their worst trading session since the start of the war.
No journalists know if a truce is possible. Negotiations are more difficult because the regime’s leaders are mainly dead.
The WSJ suggested on March 25 the way ahead may be a temporary truce that opens Hormuz but leaves the tough questions about Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and the longer-term arrangements in the Strait for future negotiation.
Don't be surprised?
The only time the pond will be surprised is if the Major ever stops sounding like the Australian Daily Zionist News.
Then we can turn back to other more gilt-edged and important matters...
And so to a few also rans, who should be noted as reptile contributors, not because the pond cares but because they were there on the Monday morning ...
One was Clive ...
The coming weeks will clarify whether Tehran opts for de-escalation and survival or continued defiance.
By Clive Williams
The pond was happy to do a teaser trailer for that intermittent archive link ...
Clive counted as his credentials a role in two of the most astonishing US victories in recent times...
Clive Williams served with the US 173d Airborne Brigade in Vietnam, was an instructor at a US Army school, and was an adviser to the US commander in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2012.
Oh well, if it turns out as well as Afghanistan, Iranians will be sure to rejoice.
Clive was keen to see boots on the ground ...
Trump’s established pattern – issuing ultimatums, allowing brief pauses for negotiation or mediation, then escalating – suggests any decision window could arrive sooner rather than later, though recent extensions indicate diplomacy is still being tested.
Success in securing Kharg and its oil, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz under controlled conditions, could deliver a tangible strategic victory for US and allied interests. Importantly, this would not constitute an open-ended invasion or occupation of mainland Iran. It would represent a limited operation aimed at seizing a key economic chokepoint, protecting global commerce, and reasserting deterrence. Iran would retain the option to avert it through timely capitulation or a viable agreement.
Easy peasy ...
Simplistic Simon was also on hand ...
Forget the oil shock, the pond had a SloMo, liar from the shire shock at the next snap ...Scott Morrison was the last PM to cut the fuel excise in response to the oil supply shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Picture: Getty Images
Simplistic Simon quickly began to sound like one of those Monty Python sketches where old stagers tell young pups that things aren't so bad as the days when you got out of your bed at 4 am to enjoy a hearty breakfast of cheap tar. It was a bit of a surprise, given the way that the crackhead Caterist had tried to lather up a panic...
But the context of today’s supply and price shock is different as it’s occurring during an ongoing cycle of pain for households and businesses.
The big story of the past four years that rarely rates a mention anymore is that the domestic economy has grown around 7.5 per cent. This is about the same level at which the population grew over the same period. In other words, GDP per capita has barely moved and GDP per capita has been virtually in recession for most of this period. The only reason GDP per person has stayed the same is because people are now working more hours to keep ahead of their declining standard of living.
The productivity shock across the economy has been profound. In effect, the response from the Albanese government has been to effectively transform a free-market economy to a government-directed one. While living standards have shown signs of finally beginning to lift again – marginally – few people will be feeling it. The current fuel price shock is set to put a torch to that.
It’s true Australia may have lifted slightly on this measure in the OECD rankings; its performance is still about a third of that experienced by comparatively wealthy countries. It is no wonder, then, that for many Australians the surge in fuel prices might feel like the straw that broke the camel’s back. While a temporary fuel price spike is not really a crisis in the same league as those we’ve recently witnessed, such as Covid and the global financial crisis, for many people it may feel like one.
The reptiles kept pumping the gas on the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, Angus Taylor has called for a temporary cut to the fuel excise. Picture: Martin Ollman;Pauline Hanson was the missing element in the 2008 crisis. Picture: Martin Ollman
Simpleton Simon kept spreading oil on troubled waters ...
Yet precedent alone is not enough because the underlying circumstances now are different. The opposition has the luxury of not having to deliver it, which makes this a political issue rather than a genuine economic one.
While Scott Morrison was the last to cut the fuel excise in response to the oil supply shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it seems we have forgotten the more acute episode just after Kevin Rudd was elected, when the Coalition – this time in opposition – was demanding the same action. There have been many comparisons with today’s experience and that of 1973. But the 2008 oil shock should stand out as the better and more proximate domestic comparison.
There are competing theories on the causes of the 2008 crisis, but the general consensus is that a combination of a cut in supply by Saudi Arabia, a spike in demand from China and rampant price speculation in the commodities futures market saw the price rise to what is still its highest on record, at close to $US150 a barrel.
The cause may differ, but the result is the same. Price shocks at the bowsers. It is estimated that the price rise added almost one percentage point to inflation at the time, which peaked at 4.5 per cent in 2008. A federal by-election was also under way in the seat of Gippsland, with Brendan Nelson leading a demoralised Coalition. Fuel prices were central to the campaign.
Nelson was demanding a cut to fuel excise and proclaiming that fuel prices would be a central issue at the next election. The political dynamic to today’s contest is eerily similar – a fuel price spike, rising inflation, a by-election and a Liberal Party struggling for relevance. With one exception: an absence of Pauline Hanson in 2008.
How dire was this trip down memory lane with the simplistic one? Brendan Nelson and Kevin Rudd had much to ponder in 2008.
That dire, but luckily that was the signal that the final gobbet was on us ...
Shovelling money into the economy to favour one affected group, in this case motorists without electric vehicles, while taking money out for others is not an extraordinary concept.
What economists hate, though, is when it becomes so politically tribal that the economics becomes the victim. One side seeks to prop up its own constituency while taking from its opponent’s people.
Had it not been for One Nation, Taylor may not have decided to go down this path as he is now also seeking to get his own people back. Just as Nelson was facing a by-election with fuel as the local concern, so too now is Taylor facing the same battle with a May by-election in Farrer but with a very different opponent.
As economist Chris Richardson has said, Australia has become pretty good at dealing with crises when they arise but appallingly bad at dealing with the chronic problems that cause them.
Enough Australian motorists have seen this horror movie before to know better than to panic. The question is whether there are enough politicians who have learned anything from it.
Did this simplistic analysis have any purpose?
Yes, it served as an introduction to the immortal Rowe ...and the good, gassed-up times ahead ...
Good times down the road for the beefy boofhead, with the sort of grille any reptile would envy ...(the pond denies any resemblance to flying pigs whatsoever).
Meanwhile, in another country ... with a man who confesses he's recovering from a hangover.
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