In which the intermittent archive does the reptile heavy lifting, while the pond indulges Lord Downer and Major Mitchell...

 

The pond can't live by bread or reptiles alone, and so recently enjoyed a two part documentary about the 1950s Suez crisis.

It won't be for everyone. Filmmaker Chris Holt seemed to think he was doing a Christopher Nolan, and so the timeline swings wildly all over the shop.

And like many documentaries, there's only so much room, so there's no mention of the Hungarian uprising happening around the same time, nor of minor players in the folly. 

Our own Ming the Foolish's role in the folly isn't mentioned. For any of that you need the wiki at a minimum. (Ming travelled to London and "became an informal member of the British cabinet discussing the issue").

But what the pond did enjoy was the way a team of experts wolves were let loose to ravage Britain, France, and Israel, and the delusional Anthony Eden, who presided over the end of Britain as empire (though there was a twitch in the old lion's tail in the Falklands, and the likes of Tony Bleagh kept living the delusion).

Much was made of the enormity of the folly, and there are obvious echoes in King Donald's current "excursion", with the show suggesting that history rhymes, repeats and resonates.

The show also reminded the pond that stupidity is endless, and Lord Downer was on hand in today's reptile display to prove the point yet again ...

The header: Energy policy has turned this country into a land of nonsense; In 50 years, historians will look back at what we were doing during the 2010s and 20s and think we had gone slightly mad.

The caption for a standard demonising collage featuring Satan's little helper, for which Sean unwisely took a credit, thereby revealing himself to be a pathetic hack of the lower kind: Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Artwork: Sean Callinan

The pond has been here before with the reptiles and will doubtless be here again, but there's something additionally poignant about Lord Downer harumphing away about being a child of the Victorian era: 

When I was a child, my father used to read me limericks from Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense. I used to love them. They were nonsense.
I’m reminded of this book whenever I contemplate Australian public policy because Australia has descended into the land of nonsense. We’ve been through a few years when the government has been telling us we have to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. We have to invest in renewables. We have to increase the price of fossil fuels to make them less attractive and cross-subsidise investment in windmills.
We’ve been told that for years, and many people have been persuaded that by doing this we’ll somehow change the weather. What’s more, we are told we have to move away from carbon-emitting industries because that, too, will change the weather. So instead of emitting carbon dioxide from our own industries, we have moved to importing products that in their production are high carbon emitters.
Since global warming is a global phenomenon, how does that make sense? We produce only between 1 and 1.3 per cent of global emissions. Nothing we do is going to make the slightest difference to the global climate. Sure, we should make a contribution to a global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but not a disproportionate effort that will be all costs and no benefit.

The pond always likes to take its victories where it can when confronted by this form of apologetics, and here it came with Lord Downer's startling admission: global warming is a global phenomenon.

That's almost enough to get him drummed out of the reptile school of climate science denialism for heresy.

Of course Lord Downer doesn't actually believe that, he's just using the notion of "why bother, it's all futile and meaningless" to cudgel his enemies...Anthony Albanese with Chris Bowen during a press conference following National Cabinet on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

It's the inanity that gets the pond. Every so often the pond likes to joke about the "windmills" down the beefy boofhead's Goulburn way, but actually we're talking about wind turbines. 

Does Lord Downer catch the difference? Nah ...

What is incredible is so many people believe that by building more windmills and solar panels we will stop bushfires and floods. And, quite apart from anything else, we believe by doubling up on our energy production and thereby reducing productivity in the electricity sector this would somehow bring prices down. That’s nonsense: using intermittent renewables, and having to back them up with coal and gas, has increased the price of electricity, not reduced it, and it’s obvious why. The renewables don’t give us 24/7 electricity.
We need to maintain coal and gas-fired generation to produce constant energy but we have reduced the output of those power stations. We have to run two energy systems where once we ran one. The government says we have a productivity problem in Australia. It’s the government that is causing it. Productivity in the electricity generation sector has declined by 30 per cent across the past 20 years. You see what I mean by nonsense.
Then the Iran war came and we saw more nonsense. Once upon a time, Anthony Albanese was running around the world telling everyone we had to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Now he’s climbing on board his fossil-fuel driven aircraft and flying from country to country, begging them to maintain supplies. Yes, you guessed it, supplies of fossil fuels.
At home we’re told we need to move to electric cars, and the government has been subsidising electric vehicles in many ways to make them cost competitive with petrol and diesel cars. While there are heavy excises on petrol and diesel, EVs are free of that impost. What has happened in the past few weeks? The government has reduced the tax on petrol and diesel, but surely an increase in the price of petrol and diesel will encourage people to move towards EVs. Introducing subsidies now for all forms of transport is just nonsense.
Then there are the steelworks and the smelters in South Australia and Tasmania. By increasing the price of electricity – and steelworks and smelters need electricity – these fossil-fuel dependent industries have become decreasingly competitive.
Surely that’s good. That’s what the government wants: to get rid of industries that are big carbon dioxide emitters. These industries are subject to the so-called safeguard mechanism that limits their carbon emissions. If they exceed those emissions, they pay a penalty.
Once these industries struggled financially, what does the federal government do? It introduces subsidies for these industries to keep them going.

The pond bit its tongue about EVs, no point in arguing with the clueless, as yet again the reptiles reminded the hive mind of the real point of the exercise ...demonising: Anthony Albanese meeting works at the Whyalla steelworks. Picture: Supplied

It was a relief to reach the final gobbet, with Lord Downer intent on showing the Eden spirit never really died in the Adelaide hills...

The government and its counterpart government in South Australia are spending around $2bn to keep the Whyalla steelworks going. Subsidies also are being poured into smelters.
In the world of nonsense, no one does a cost-benefit analysis before spending money. Take Snowy 2.0. It’s now estimated the total cost of the project could be as much as $40bn. That is just a staggering amount of money, which even a wealthy country such as Australia can ill afford. Snowy 2.0 is essentially an electricity storage system, like a huge battery. That’s fine, but at $40bn it’s just a staggering waste of money.
Not surprisingly, much of the world thinks Australian energy policies are just nonsense. How is it that a country so rich in coal, gas and uranium has its Prime Minister flying around begging for energy from neighbouring countries? Australia has substantial reserves of oil as well, but they’re not being exploited.
The Dorado field off the coast of Western Australia is said to contain 155 million barrels of oil. Because the federal government is against fossil fuels (or it used to be anyway), that oilfield is lying fallow. And when it comes to gas, we are one of the world’s two biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas. But our governments, state and federal, have been restricting the exploitation of gas. Victoria, which has huge reserves of gas underground, is building an LNG receival terminal. That’s just nonsense.
Finally, there is uranium. We export uranium and we have the world’s largest exploitable reserves of it. However, uranium mining is apparently controversial. But it’s fine to export it from designated places. We’re happy to provide fuel for nuclear power stations abroad but opposed to nuclear power stations at home. Our government is happy to have nuclear reactors in submarines but it thinks nuclear power is too dangerous as a source of electricity.
You see what I mean? It’s another example of a country that is descending into nonsense. In 50 years, historians will look back at what we were doing during the 2010s and 2020s and think we had gone slightly mad. I think they will be right.

"I think"? What an abuse of the word, and what a feeble rhetorical flourish for a closer.

Did we really need 50 years to realise what a gormless waste of space Lord Downer was as a politician?

And as for Lear being mere nonsense ... why Ellen Vrana even manages to drag in Camus when considering the meaning of his work.

Why, consider the ways that birds can talk and act ...

And now thanks to the intermittent archive still working, the pond felt comfortable assigning a number of items to that cornfield, if only because there's going to be much budget blather in the next few weeks and the pond only takes its advice from Dame Groan.

Geoff was a very busy reptile this morning and chambered many EXCLUSIVE rounds ...

EXCLUSIVE
Bosses plead with PM, Chalmers: get a grip on debt
Business chiefs to PM and Jim: It’s time to stop the spending
Australia’s biggest employers are pushing Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers to impose strict limits on spending, debt levels and the tax-to-GDP ratio, as the Treasurer promises to save more than he spends in next week’s budget.
By Geoff Chambers

EXCLUSIVE
Push to keep young in work, especially men, as welfare recipients near 1.4m
Despite relatively low unemployment and near-record participation rates, an additional 122,000 people aged under 34 have moved on to welfare payments since the 2022 election.
By Geoff Chambers

And he even found the time to put it in a column form as well:

Watch for devil in budget detail, as business finds voice
Australia’s business leaders are finding their voice after keeping quiet for most of 2025 following Labor’s emphatic federal election victory.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

For some reason, the reptiles had marked down the Caterist early in the morning but one look at the headline explained why ...

He helped create the problem, now Jim wants you to pay
The sin taxes on thrift Jim Chalmers is about to impose are an act of desperation.
By Nick Cater

You can head off to the archive if you like, but the flood waters whisperer was sounding like Geoff in drag, or poor old oLord Downer whining about history ...

Future historians may look back on this blinkered, small-minded, economically ignorant government as the architect of a new era of intergenerational inequity. Ignorant of the lessons of history, it imagined taxes and transfers as the answer to every woe.

All that was missing was a petulant stamp of the foot, and perhaps a sulk in the corner.

Roll on Dame Groan ...

All that left the pond feeling quite exhausted and perhaps that explains why the pond also avoided this 'top of the Australian Daily Zionist News world ma' headline ...

EXCLUSIVE
First witness: ‘Give us justice for the dead and freedom from the worst of us’: Alex Ryvchin takes royal commission stand
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin will be the first community leader to take the stand at Virginia Bell’s inquiry into antisemitism on Monday, kicking off the royal commission’s first two weeks of public hearings.
By Richard Ferguson

This was by any standards a beat up because Ryvchin hadn't actually taken the stand, yet here he was being channeled by the reptiles. Talk about an inside job by the ADZN ...

The pond also skated by this effort from simpleton Simon ...

Forget ideology, anti-establishment sentiment is what counts
Trying to resolve unconventional problems with conventional politics just isn’t going to work anymore.
By Simon Benson

The pond did at least want to acknowledge the stunning opening artwork by Emilia ...a collage for the ages, and in such vibrant, vivacious colours too ...

Simon struggled to make sense of it all, so the pond doesn't mind skipping to his closer...

... Nepean shows the public polls are putting about 3 to 4 per cent more on the One Nation vote than what’s occurring at the ballot box. But assuming they are closer to being correct in Farrer, where one poll has One Nation leading on 30.8 per cent of the primary vote, then what other choice does the Coalition have but to be putting One Nation ahead of its traditional enemies?
And how is it any more controversial than the teals, Greens and Labor combining in some seats at the last election to the point where volunteers were swapping shirts and how to vote cards and Labor organisers were co-ordinating with all of them?
One Nation may end up being to the Coalition what the Greens are to Labor. The Coal­ition needs to fight One Nation but at the same time it will have to find an accommodation if it is to counter the left-wing alliance it is also up against.
For Labor, the danger is it seeks to indulge the myth that its election victory in 2025 reflected a more progressive Australia. All evidence points to the opposite.
The combined size of the primary vote on the centre right remains higher than that on the left in the current polls. A study by Advance Australia in November 2025 illuminated the contradiction. Whereas most people ended up putting their vote in the left-of-centre column, a significant ­majority identified as being politically right of centre.
If Labor wants to run the argument that the Coalition is preferencing a party of bigots, it will backfire on the basis that it will have fundamentally misunderstood what the anti-establishment movement represents and how much this is starting to eat into its own base.

Really? Of course the Coalition is preferencing a party of bigots, led by a bigot who got kicked out of the party for being a bigot ...but there's a simpler attack line, because it's also a party of bigots being sponsored by Gina, trying to do a Clive ...

Or as the immortal Rowe put it ...

Such a nicely demonic image.

And with that all done and dusted it was time to turn to the Monday Major ...

The header: Albo’s meagre reforms don’t amount to a hill of beans; Many journalists and politicians misunderstand the point of economic reform. It’s about making the country richer by working smarter.

The caption for the snap of the very naughty boy: Jim Chalmers must understand reform is not to help finance an endless expansion of public sector employment Picture: Liam Kidston

The Major spent a bigly five minutes channeling Rick and his hill of beans, and the pond only went there because he showed the inclination of the reptiles these days to live in the past.

The pond can understand why. The world is currently in dire Hormuz straits, and so it makes it much easier to brood about economic reform if you ignore the current situation and circumstances, and instead head back to ancient times for comforters...

Many journalists and politicians misunderstand the point of economic reform.
Reform should not be about fairness, intergenerational equity, social cohesion or getting back at “greedy multinationals”. All have been cited as reasons for changes to the capital gains tax discount, negative gearing and taxes on gas exporters.
Economic reform is about making the country richer by working smarter and improving incentives within the tax, welfare and industrial relations systems. It’s about making governments at all levels more efficient.
It’s not about a tax grab to help a lazy government pay off the nation’s debt, or to help finance an endless expansion of public sector employment.
The reforming Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s and ’90s told voters upfront that the world does not owe Australians a living.
Hawke and Keating floated the dollar, opened the economy to international competition, deregulated banking and industrial relations and, cut personal and company tax rates.
John Howard’s Coalition government introduced a GST and privatised lazy government-owned businesses.
These governments wanted Australia to be able to compete with the rapidly growing open economies of Asia.

Sure enough, the reptiles reinforced the Major's desire to live in the past... Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating exchange words in Parliament House in Canberra prior to delivering the federal budget in August 1986.

We could well be living in a very difficult world if the mad Mullahs and mad King Donald keep on carrying on, what with shipping still in peril, but the Major prefers to live in a void and howl about the way things were ...

Their reforms gave Australia 30 years of productivity improvements that underwrote growth and kept the nation out of recession.
Political wins today come from giving away free money on the national credit card.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won the May 2025 election with handouts to subsidise soaring power prices. He cancelled $16bn of student debt accumulated by people who would go on to become high-income earners.
He signalled subsidised childcare for families earning up to $530,000 a year and an $8bn boost to bulk billing that gave doctors $3 for every dollar saved by patients.
The only tough thing his government has promised since 2022 was last week’s decision to limit NDIS growth to 2 per cent a year and cut 160,000 people from the scheme. The big question is will it happen or is it just a number for the forward estimates when Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down the budget on May 12?
Albanese last Wednesday linked possible changes to the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount and to negative gearing to building national resilience. Seriously?
The PM believes populism is rising globally because people feel governments are not listening to them. Yet he thinks this can be solved with minor tinkering to taxes on investments.
Albanese and Chalmers say changes to the tax treatment of housing would deliver more “intergenerational equity”, yet they refuse to deal with the biggest threat to future generations – the $1 trillion national debt.
The Australian’s economics correspondent Matthew Cranston on April 25 reported Chalmers was likely to axe the 50 per cent tax discount introduced in 1999 for all assets held for more than 12 months, not just housing.
Tax will be paid on an inflation accounted basis, so only real gains will be taxed.
Cranston said negative gearing could also be axed for existing properties, but the change would be grandfathered. He reported on Wednesday that several within the government wanted revenue from the changes handed back as tax cuts, an idea the PM and Chalmers do not support.
Just as well, given the likely savings would be minimal, would not pay for meaningful PAYE tax cuts, and won’t even do much to boost housing supply for the young.
As this column pointed out on February 22, such changes will only increase rents as investors offset costs the only other way possible. The government seems unable to move the dial on housing supply, partly because it is also unable to control immigration.
Such tax changes will not improve productivity or increase incentives to work and save. Yet much of the media – especially the ABC, Guardian Australia and Nine’s city tabloids – has treated these meagre plans as serious reform.
Many journalists of the left never accepted voters were correct to reject these policies when they were put forward by then Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten in 2019.
Imagine how Australia would have been placed had Shorten’s huge spending program been met less than 12 months later by the Covid pandemic. Smart governments save in good times so they have the finances to handle bad times.
The best that can be said of the latest property plans is they won’t do much damage. But as a PhD student of Keating, Chalmers should know the last time Labor scrapped negative gearing in 1985 it had to reverse course 18 months later because investors stopped building homes.
More dangerous is the idea being floated by the anti-reform crowd at the Greens and their favourite think tank, the Australia Institute.

Institute boss Richard Denniss, the Greens and federal independent senator David Pocock have been pushing for a 25 per cent federal charge on all gas export revenue.
Senior journalists such as ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson and ABC Melbourne Radio’s Ali Moore have treated the proposal reverentially, apparently unaware Labor’s favourite post-war economist Ross Garnaut actually designed the much-maligned PRRT (Petroleum Resources Rent Tax).

Such ritual incantations, such railings, at such predictable foes ...

especially the ABC, Guardian Australia and Nine’s city tabloids 

the anti-reform crowd at the Greens and their favourite think tank, the Australia Institute.

Does the Major ever get tired of it? Is there another track, or will it always be a one-track mind?

It's certainly very tiring to read, especially when the reptiles conjure up an image designed to terrify the hive mind ... ABC's 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson appears in favour of a 25 per cent federal charge on all gas export revenue. Picture: ABC

The Major's a fossil fools sort of dude, and so he carries on in the Lord Downer way...

The PRRT is a virtual super profits tax payable once development costs of a project have been paid down. Today’s gas exporters will end up paying 60 per cent tax on all profits, not as high as Norway but Norwegian taxpayers are co-investors in big resources projects and Australians are not.
Resource operators here also pay state royalties for onshore gas plus payroll tax, so the idea we are giving our resources away for free is silly. Yet ABC online has run pieces making that claim. Journalists seem unable to understand most large gas export projects in Australia are relatively new and just at the start of their PRRT liabilities.
At least the Prime Minister ruled this out last week. A large new tax on projects that have cost more than $400bn since 2010 is precisely the wrong strategy during a global energy crisis as he tries to secure oil products from countries that buy our gas.
Journalists should apply scepticism to a resources tax proposal from a think tank that has long advocated against gas and all fossil fuels. Yet many reporters covering this story reserve their scepticism for critics of the tax plan, claiming arguments against it are “gas industry talking points”.
Moore, like the Greens-led Senate inquiry that took evidence over three days from April 21, even gave airtime to a social media activist, Punters Politics host Konrad Benjamin, to advocate for the tax idea.
Benjamin and Pocock have been claiming the gas industry pays in PRRT less than the annual excise on beer. The comparison does not account for the imminent ramp up of the PRRT. The gas industry last year paid $22bn in tax, and the PRRT will eventually be a multiple of that.

Could the Major's outing be complete without a truly terrifying image, designed to send the hive mind into panic mode ... Senator David Pocock claims the gas industry pays in PRRT less than the annual excise on beer. Picture: Martin Ollman

It seems to the pond  a pretty fair bet that neither federal nor state Labor will rock the fossil fuels boat, especially in these straitened times, but that won't stop the likes of the Major howling and whining into the ether ...

This is how far journalism has fallen. Journalists who can’t understand a 40-year-old tax think it’s OK to give airtime to social media activists with no tax or resources background.
Centre for Independent Studies boss and former editor of this newspaper and editor-in-chief of The Australian Financial Review Michael Stutchbury got it right in the AFR last Saturday week. Labor should use the energy crisis to give certainty to international investors so Australia can become the world’s leading gas exporter, he wrote.
That would be a reform to make our children wealthier. A retrospective 25 per cent tax based on revenue would ensure investors never put money into another gas project in Australia.

What makes this truly funny? 

It's the major railing at social media activists being given airtime, when there's absolutely no sign that the Major himself has any meaningful background in tax or resources ... unless you count ranting like a right wing ratbag in the lizard Oz in recent times, and before that making a name for himself and the Currish Snail by tracking down Order of Lenin medials.

On the other hand, the Major's desire to block or silence dissenting voices is very Soviet ...so perhaps there's some sort of consistency there.

And now to play fair with the immortal Rowe, the pond really should show the full cartoon from which that excerpt was taken, and if it's a repeat, it's because it's worth repeating ...

And finally a soupçon of social media, with Vlad the Sociopath's Russia always good for a laugh ...