It's been a considerable time since the pond heard from "Ned", and frankly the pond hasn't much missed his patented bland of pomposity and the borrowing of the thoughts of others.
He was last sighted way back on 27th March offering Burn-down-the-house mentality that has splintered the right is coming for the left too; Establishment politics is under massive assault in a nation that is losing its way — but don’t be misled by Hanson’s ‘consistency’ myth. (*intermittent archive link).
That was an interminable ten minutes of humbuggery, but on his return "Ned" could only manage a more seemly five minutes of his natter.
All the same, climbing any "Ned" Everest is part of any sensible herpetology student's warm up routine, so it was off to base camp:
The header, which immediately made the pond wonder why anyone in their right minds would want to keep up with King Donald: Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have remade the world - can Australia keep up? Whether the nation possesses the political and bureaucratic brain power to create a new economic model remains in grave doubt.
The caption for the collage which was unwisely given a credit. (Sometimes, Frank, discretion is the better part of AI slop valour): Artwork depicting Xi Jinping alongside Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump. Artwork by Frank Ling.
"Ned" has some bizarre ideas about "transforming the world".
Neither role model on offer seemed particularly beguiling, but remember this is "Ned", so he's determined to compete, bung on a do, and in the process, it won't belong before the borrowings start to appear:
Strategic competition now spills into economic and technological warfare. It is all-encompassing. In their relentless competition Xi and Trump have retreated from the era of market-based interdependence – the age of globalisation and liberal free trade – and embraced a fusion of economics and security, creating what many call the “economic security state”.
This trend has been on display for a decade. As China expert Elizabeth Economy has identified, Xi has repudiated liberal reforms in favour of supply-side controls, maximising security capabilities, huge government subsidies and promoting a fusion between the civilian economy and military prowess. Beijing runs the globe’s most ambitious industry policy.
In the US, Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have rejected the previous “neoliberal economic philosophy of the past 40 years” – to quote former national security adviser Jake Sullivan – with Trump using tariffs as a strategic weapon and deploying protection, reindustrialisation, support for hi-tech and artificial intelligence in an economic and security rivalry with China set to last for decades.
The pond does appreciate the way that "Ned"conformed to GOP talking points and dragged poor old Scranton Joe into the current mess, and the reptiles helped him out with a snap... Joe Biden speaks at the International African American museum, January 2025.
He's certainly one of the worst of the Biden era for entirely missing the point:
In May 2024, Sullivan expressed concern at the Irish, Norwegian, and Spanish recognition of Palestine and Israel's growing diplomatic isolation, saying that "we certainly have seen a growing chorus of voices, including voices that had previously been in support of Israel, drift in another direction. That is of concern to us because we do not believe that that contributes to Israel's long-term security or vitality."
And that fog of words could be found in a Foreign Affairs piece...
The foreign-policy establishment need not come up with the next economic philosophy; the task is more limited—to contribute a geopolitical perspective to the unfolding debate on what should follow neoliberalism and then to make the national security case for a new approach as it emerges.
But the pond digresses, because it was then on to the gnashing of teeth and wailing into the ether, and running about clucking that the sky was falling down, a genre in which "Ned" is as adept as Dame Groan is in her "we'll all be rooned" carry ons ...
In this new world false prophets and fraudulent ideas are everywhere. The most penetrating analysis of the epic challenge facing this country comes from John Kunkel in his monograph for the United States Studies Centre titled Paradigm Shift: The End of the Washington Consensus and the Future of Australian Economic Statecraft.
Recently Anthony Albanese has become far more open about the sweeping strategic change in Labor’s framework, telling the National Press Club we cannot “continue to rely on an economic model designed in a different time and built for a more predictable world”. His message: the nation must become “more self-sufficient and less vulnerable”.
The Prime Minister pledges to deploy state power to make Australia “more resilient” because in the new world “economic policy and national security are bound together”. He says global supply chains are now “instruments of economic power and strategic competition”. The Iran war reinforces the message, with Albanese desperate to secure vital fuel supplies, the lesson being that we cannot rely on “somewhere else because it’s cheaper” – a direct repudiation of the economic law of the globalised age that helped to make Australia a rich, high-income country.
Actually there are some countries, European ones and Asian ones too, that still cling to the notions of a globalised world, what with it bleeding obvious that we're all in the mess together, and must cope with rogue nations of the King Donald kind by forming new alliances.
Never mind, have a snap of Jimbo ...Treasurer Jim Chalmers addresses the media at Parliament House. Picture: Martin Ollman
Stuck back in Hawke/Keating and fossil fuels days, "Ned" was startled by the shock of direct repudiation.
But the sobering insight has been the government’s estimate that providing 90 days’ fuel supply would cost $20bn or $230 per adult a year or nearly $500 annually for an average family. And that’s just the fuel supply story.
Herein lies the hard truth: resilience comes at a higher cost. The Australian people will pay more for having to inject the security paradigm into economic policy, just as the people of China and the US will pay. The revolution in global economic policy may sound thrilling, but it comes with a hefty price tag.
Um, don't blame the world for this "revolution".
Perhaps instead blame the Emeritus Chairman and his Faux Noise chums, who helped guide the United States into rogue banana republic status?
Albanese boasts about his government’s new agenda; witness its Future Made in Australia policy, its National Reconstruction Fund, its Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve, its strengthening of defence manufacturing and its 82 per cent renewables target by 2030 – some are justified and worthwhile but many of these state-driven investments and subsidies are flawed and highly dubious; witness the serial bailing out of smelters.
Productivity Commission chief Danielle Wood, in The Australian Financial Review, has delivered a lethal warning about the pitfalls of resilience, saying our politicians and advisers must separate the support that makes our economy stronger from those “costly follies for taxpayers and consumers”.
Wood said that while insuring for essential products made sense, beware falling for local production as the default position since co-operative deals with trading partners might be more cost-effective. She warned of the latest political con job: “old-fashioned industry assistance arguments for bailouts of copper and aluminium smelters dressed up in shiny supply chain security and economic sovereignty wrappers”.
Once again the pond had to check out the source of "Ned's" borrowings, and luckily Wood could be found in the intermittent archive.
But by this point the pond hadn't a clue what "Ned" was on about.
He seemed to start off in the resilience camp, and then he ended up suggesting that reverting to co-operative deals in a still globalised economy might be a better bet.
The reptiles didn't help out by throwing in a snap of comrade Ablo, Anthony Albanese holds a press conference at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
"Ned" kept up his borrowings, and then emerged triumphantly to blame the victims:
Kunkel said: “Australia’s economic policy settings remain ill-prepared for this new era. The task of making our economy more resilient is multidimensional, necessarily bound up, for example, with fostering economic growth, improving budget discipline and pursuing pro-productivity structural reform. Resources will remain scarce and Australian governments will need to set priorities in a way that is both uncomfortable and outside current policy mindsets.”
He said the task ahead is the “need to forge a new marriage between economic rationalism and state capacity” that equips Australia to succeed in the “more fractured and contested world” bequeathed by Xi and Trump.
Conceptually, this is new territory. Yet our efforts so far seem uncoordinated, piecemeal, a mishmash of different initiatives largely driven by politics. Who in the Albanese government is supposed to be devising what constitutes a new economic model for Australia? Do we have these days a political and bureaucratic class capable of meeting the challenge? Not on the evidence so far. We await a judgment on the budget.
Is anyone capable of meeting the challenge of mad King Donald and his mob of minions? Is it possible to reverse the damage done by the Emeritus Chairman in his lust for money and power?
Perhaps we need to retreat to a bunker until the storm blows over, or somehow works out how to do better potty training for dragons ...
The pond always gets a tad disturbed when the immortal Rowe goes into anal mode, but that 'Trump in Iran' turd is a pretty big one.
As usual there were any number of reptiles the pond chose to overlook this day, but the pond did personally supervise their storage in the intermittent archive, so those who might care could check them out.
Amongst them ...
Without major changes, the country will find itself repeating this trauma and too many of our children will remain powerless.
By Denise Bowden
The cranky Cranston was bold enough to support the RBA - as big a reptile heresy as going the round - but the pond made sure he was in the intermittent archive for anyone who might care:
Michele Bullock makes the right rate call for the nation
The two things might have sent a shiver down the spine of consumers and businesses on Tuesday were the effectiveness of interest rates and the brief talk of the ‘r’ word.
By Matthew Cranston
Economics Correspondent
The pond routinely ignores the lizard Oz's pearls of wisdom, on the basis of predictability, and there was no sign in the header that things would be different this day:
The budget the Treasurer is set to deliver next week is likely to deepen, not lessen, our economic predicament.
By David Pearl
The indefatigable Geoff was also at it (the pond is tired of joking about him chambering another round, yet this day more shots were heard, with an exceptionally inflamed header):
Budget bonfire as inflation inferno engulfs Reserve Bank
A week out from Jim Chalmers handing down his fifth budget, RBA governor Michele Bullock stated the bleeding obvious in warning governments (again) to stop spending and driving up demand.
Dimitri also lurked below the fold, but why settle for a B lister, when you can have a main woman to do the hatchet job ...
Jacinta Allan’s sleight-of-hand budget ‘surplus’ is just the latest deception from Victorian Labor.
By Dimitri Burshtein
That should keep herpetology students busy, but f the pond wanted a 'toon to summarise the reptiles in a budget frenzy, this one by Fiona K. seemed to do the job ...
Speaking of a main woman, the pond had to abandon all those reptiles because in a rare outing Dame Groan immediately followed news of the scuppering of a rail link to nowhere:
The pond couldn't immediately see a connection, but ignoring a Dame Groan offering would be like rejecting some of St Paul's letters because they were written by someone else.
They're all infused by the holy spirit, right, and so infallibly correct ...(cf. Adam Gopnink in The New Yorker on St Paul)
Similarly groaning must always command the pond's attention, because Dame Groan cultists salivate at any sighting of her.
The header: Fiscal fiction: Why Victoria’s economy is basically buggered; The rate of deterioration in Victoria’s fiscal position is quite extraordinary. It is the nation’s biggest basket-case state.
The caption for what looks like a rare find, an actual reptile visual gotcha: Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on state budget day. Picture: NewsWire / David Crosling
It was only a three minute excursion, but this time Dame Groan did for Jacinta what she'd usually do to Jimbo:
Michael Brennan, the CEO of e61 Institute, has described Victoria’s budget position as “boxed in”. I wouldn’t be as kind: it’s basically buggered.
For those who don’t live in Victoria, you might think this doesn’t matter. But at the end of the day, the commonwealth will make sure the state doesn’t become insolvent. Short of the big bailout, the feds will play a role in funnelling additional grants and more GST payments to the state – it has already begun this – to keep it afloat.
There was only one AV distraction for the excursion, which named and shamed Jacinta, but on the evidence, it seemed to point the finger at that arch villain, comrade Dan, though the framing was so weird and wild, who can say? Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan will try to sell a budget littered with billions of dollars in extra spending.
What a reprehensible way to treat an always recurring reptile shibboleth.
As usual, just as Dame Groan refuses to make any allowance for the current dire straits the world is in, this time the steely Groaner refused to allow any attempt to buck pass on Covid.
If you can't handle the plague and emerge with a booming economy, you must be in charge of a cruise liner suffused with rats ...
Let’s be clear here: the Victorian public finances began to deteriorate before Covid. To be sure, spending went through the roof during Covid, in part because of the excessive periods of lockdown the state endured.
The rate of deterioration in Victoria’s fiscal position is quite extraordinary. When Dan Andrews came to power in December 2014, the state’s net debt was a tad over $20bn. It is now heading towards $200bn at the end of the decade.
(The quoted figure in the budget of $199bn in net debt for 2029-30 is essentially fictitious, made to come in under $200bn for political reasons. It’s what economists call spurious precision.)
It’s worth recalling here that state budgets are divided into two parts: the recurrent and the capital. Typically, but not always, states will run a net operating surplus while accounting for capital spending in the other account. (The Victorian government will run a trivial operating surplus of $1bn next financial year.)
But there is some fudging that can go on in relation to the operating balance. Grants are part of the revenue recorded for the operating balance, but some of these are essentially for capital purposes. Some grants from the federal government are routed through the recurrent account and recorded there, but they are just capital spending.
Allan and Symes have been making a great deal of the possibility that the ratio of net debt to gross state product may fall over the forward estimates. Again, this is a contrived figure made up of overly optimistic forecasts of GSP as well as an underestimation of future expenses.
Real GSP growth is expected to be 2.5 per cent in 2027-28, for instance. These forecasts contrast with the more sombre (but more accurate) ones of the Reserve Bank.
Dame Groan was feeling her oats, with a b*gger here, and a b*llocks there ...
The fact is that over the course of the past decade or so in Victoria, state government spending has ratcheted up by around two percentage points of GSP and there is no indication the Allan government is capable of – or is of a mind to – reducing this proportion. The Victorian Labor government has a lot in common with the Albanese government in this respect.
Unsurprisingly in an election year, the Allan government is looking to offer up some sweeteners notwithstanding the fact that the budgetary position should prevent it from doing so. Free public transport, discounted motor registration, meeting the teachers’ pay demand to avoid strikes, additional healthcare services – and this is just for starters.
The argument is that these benefits will simply be paid for by transferring some of the future operating surpluses to 2026-27 and there will be no net change in the budget settings. The trouble with this argument is that when those future years come around, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make those savings.
There is no indication in this state budget that the political leaders are prepared to acknowledge the fiscal hole they have dug or to think about means of paying down debt. It will probably blow up at some stage, but Jacinta Allan is likely to be gone by then, sitting on a few well-paid government boards.
Ah, the bitterness.
What chance of a place for Dame Groan these days on a well-paid government board? Instead she must pocket a few pitiful shekels from the Emeritus Chairman for her regular "we'll all be rooned" groans...
Meanwhile, back in that notorious banana republic and speaking of dragons ...
Today’s good new is that a News Corp contributor has finally cited an author other than George Orwell, with Denise Bowden’s rather opportunistic use of the work of the late Ursula K LeGuin. I can’t really see the Reptile regulars following her lead though, given LeGuin’s positive depiction of an anarchist society in “The Dispossessed” or her gender-switching humanoids in “ The Left Hand of Darkness”, but who knows? They’ve been deliberately misinterpreting poor of George for decades, so perhaps it’s someone else’s turn.
ReplyDeleteBTW speaking of Orwell, have the Reptiles’ sung the praises of the new version of “Animal Farm”? By all accounts it’s a dumbed-down travesty that completely ignores the message of the original (not to mention its producers are best known for QAnon-adjacent material), so it should be right up their alley.
So we can take it from Sloan that if the Conservatives were in government that there will be no free public transport, no discounted motor registration, teachers would not receive wages comparable with other states and there would be no additional health services – and that would just be for starters! That makes it easy to decide where my vote will not go.
ReplyDeleteVery similar to Opposition Leader Jess Wilson’s Budget comments. You’d almost think that she and the Dame get their talking points from the same sources…….
DeleteNed is just a useful fool tool, enabled by newscorpse. Ned must also have a plagurism checker open at all times for his, pun intended, COPY of right wing war monger Trump lovin' scribblers at...
ReplyDeleteChina expert Elizabeth Economy knows China, and is employed by the Hoover Institute.
John Kunkel
"Some advisers had become “the ‘junk yard attack dogs’ of the political system,” wrote Weller, “the hard men and the hitmen.”
The trend didn’t abate under subsequent governments of either stripe. Morrison’s office has been less high-profile than some — notably Tony Abbott’s, led by the formidable Peta Credlin. But it has worked to afford Morrison plausible deniability and has been intimately engaged in preserving secrecy when transparency was called for. It beggared belief that Morrison appointed his chief of staff, John Kunkel, to investigate pernicious activity by his own PMO media team, as he did in relation to Brittany Higgins’s claim that PMO staff had briefed against her partner after she made allegations of rape in Parliament House. Kunkel’s circumspect report was sufficient for Morrison to insist that his office had been “cleared,” but it turned out to be a gift for the opposition."
...
https://insidestory.org.au/power-without-purpose/
"Dr. John Kunkel is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre and has extensive experience as an economist, speechwriter, and policy analyst, including serving as Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison. He has also held significant roles in the mining industry and has contributed to economic policy discussions in Australia."
(Some ai response plagurised by goog el fu.ku, and DDGo is now almost useless forcing one to use the generate ai. Then go to el goog for an answer)
Gee, Ned didn't attribute... "How Australia’s coal madness led to Adani" ... "The real reasons keeping the Carmichael mine alive"... "But it is not difficult to find other examples. Scott Morrison’s chief of staff, John Kunkel, came to Morrison’s office after six years as deputy CEO of the Minerals Council and a two-year stint as head of government affairs at Rio Tinto; "
Deletehttps://www.themonthly.com.au/april-2019/essays/how-australias-coal-madness-led-adani
Ned: "Resources will remain scarce...".
ReplyDeleteWell, we're so lucky that the human population is only increasing by a bit less than 70 million per annum. Anything much more than that and it would become "Resources are disappearing...". And what would we do then ?
But 70 million is only about an 0.85% increase compared with the number of 2.2% in 1963 when the human population was a mere 3.2 billion. But then, 2.2% of 3.2 billon is also about 70 million.
Anyway, I know what we'd do: find a way to 'mine' the oceans: megatons of metals and minerals are dissolved in the oceans and the amount increases day by day and year by year. Won't help us out with fuels, lubricants and fertilisers though.
"it seemed to point the finger at that arch villain, comrade Dan".
ReplyDeleteYes, well it has some reason to, hasn't it. Not everything can be down to Dan though, can it.
Haven't heard anything much about Dan lately, have we. At one with yesterday's seven thousand, maybe.
Ninny Ned says "Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have remade the world - can Australia keep " ... from being blown up?
ReplyDeleteXi has this to to cower Trump... even MAD seems a forelorn hope... "and then [Ned] emerged triumphantly to blame the victims"... themselves...
"Given these observations and our results, deterrence in Asia is no longer a feasible foreign policy objective for the United States."
"An Equilibrium Model of Counter-Base War in the Western Pacific"
Policy Tensor
May 05, 2026
...
"The next graph collects our main results. We have shown that US bases are extremely vulnerable to Chinese precision-strikes. Except in the highly implausible scenario where the US wins the electronic warfare arms race, the US loses over 200 aircraft. These losses are prohibitive.
[Bigly bars for US]
...
To add insult to injury, Western estimates of Chinese missile inventories may be off by as much as an order of magnitude. For if Western estimates are Chinese inventories are correct, then Iran has already fired as many SRBMs and MRBMs as are estimated me to be in China’s missile order of battle.14 At any rate, if the US can invest in HAS [hardened aircraft shelters], China can invest in missile stockpiles.
China’s defense-industrial base is as large as that of America and Europe combined. The US is the strategic defender in Asia meaning that China gets to choose when to attack. It can simply choose to time the attack at the peak of its war-preparedness, including stockpiling a large number of missiles and drones. All of this means that the US will find it very hard to win an arms race against China.
In addition, the balance of resolve is favorable to China because the US will be fighting for an extended deterrence commitment while China will be fighting for what they see as national reunification. The unfavorable balance of resolve rules out any hope that the US could prevail in a nuclear crisis by threatening nuclear escalation.15
Given these observations and our results, deterrence in Asia is no longer a feasible foreign policy objective for the United States."
References
https://policytensor.substack.com/p/an-equilibrium-model-of-counter-base
Cory Doctorow reaching the same conclusion... Trump defeating Trump...
Delete"it's past time for a post-American world, and Comrade Trump is delivering it."
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/05/three-is-a-magic-number/#coalitions
Talking about a post-American world ...
Deletehttps://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-societies-evolved-into-fear-dominated-goliaths-then-collapsed-263800
The Fiona K. cartoon is just a reminder of how ignorant and thick the great majority of the human race is. After all, what can be said about a species with billions around and below 100 IQ points. There plainly just isn't enough intelligence and sense to go around, is there.
ReplyDeleteCult of Groan Elders are in awe of the Dame's ability to pick cherries. They are in even greater awe of her capacity to seek convenient phrases from the Books of e61, apparently without being affected in any way by the content and conclusions of many of their research papers, which (inconveniently) show that so many of her own assertions have no foundation in the Australian experience.
ReplyDeleteThe Michael Brennan, from whom she borrows this day, was introduced back in August 2023 with -
"e61 Institute today announced the appointment of Michael Brennan as CEO.
This is the first CEO appointment of the e61 Institute which was born from a motivation to bring together problem-solvers from academia, industry and government to push the knowledge frontier so that we can tackle the big problems facing our society.
Prior to joining e61 as CEO, Mr Brennan commenced a 5 year term as Chair of the Productivity Commission in September 2018.
Previously Michael was Deputy Secretary, Fiscal Group, in the Federal Treasury with responsibility for budget policy, retirement incomes, Commonwealth-State relations, social policy and infrastructure financing.
Before that he was Deputy Secretary, Economic in the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance. Michael has worked as an Associate Director in the economics and policy practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and as a senior adviser to Treasurers and Ministers for Finance at the State and Federal level.
Michael also holds a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) from the ANU."
The Elders did find a likely source of Mr Brennan's 'boxed in' - borrowed from the 'Fin' for 3 days back, from a broader budget analysis by Brennan and Aaron Wong. The full context - " 'Victoria is not broke, but it is increasingly boxed in,' Brennan said. 'The finances are weak with limited room to manoeuvre. This isn't the moment for the kind of pre-election spend-up we'd normally expect six months out from a poll.' "
Which seems a tad more 'considered' than the Groan.
According to the Sydney Morning Property Speculator, the next Federal President of the Liberal Party is likely to be either the Onion Muncher or Lord Downer.
ReplyDeleteNo, it doesn’t appear to be a delayed April Fool joke.
Wow. Back to the Future…….