For old times' sake, the pond decided to restore prattling Polonius to the top for the pond's last Sunday meditation, in what might be for some fair time ...
It was also a little bit self-serving, because Polonius decided not to be involved in the current lizard Oz budget jihad, and instead went looking for rats in the Liberal ranks, and the pond loves a good rat hunt:
The header: ‘Miserable ghosts’ should stop their anti-Lib moaning; From Robert Menzies to Malcolm Turnbull, disillusioned ex-leaders have repeatedly lashed the Liberals - often after losing power or influence.
The caption for Ming the merciless (and assorted nobodies the reptiles clearly had trouble identifying): Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies, second from right, became disillusioned with some of his successors in the 1970s.
This sort of navel-gazing and fluff-gathering has its own kind of charm.
First up Polonius has to redeem Ming the Merciless, casting him not as socialist Labor but as tyke socialist Labor, though only tykes will appreciate the difference:
Robert Menzies, the Liberal Party founder and Australia’s longest serving prime minister, let it be known to the anti-communist activist BA Santamaria in the early 1970s that he no longer voted Liberal. This is sometimes interpreted as Menzies voting Labor.
Not so. What it meant was that Menzies had voted for the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party and then preferenced Liberal ahead of Labor.
Menzies had become disappointed in his successors as Liberal leader, particularly William McMahon and Billy Snedden. But when Malcolm Fraser replaced Snedden in March 1975, Menzies went back to voting Liberal. The DLP wound up in 1976.
That mention of Fraser introduced a real sore point for Polonius, the bloody head prefect, the treacherous squatter of Nareen, the man who turned more bloody socialist than the bloody socialists...
It was not long after Fraser was defeated by Labor’s Bob Hawke in March 1983 that he publicly turned on his old party. Fraser supported Andrew Peacock over John Howard to become his successor and was relatively quiet. But when Howard replaced Peacock in September 1985, Fraser began criticising the Liberal Party leadership. He let it be known in 2010 that he had resigned from the party.
Without the Liberal Party, Fraser would have been a successful grazier and businessman. But he turned on the organisation that made it possible for him to become Australia’s fourth longest serving prime minister, who had a significant impact on both national politics and international affairs.
The selfish cad.
Time then to contemplate a bunch of dropkicks and losers... with the GST cake man just as bad as Fraser, and Malware just as bad as the lot of them...
But not John Hewson, who led the Liberals to defeat in what was classified as the unlosable election against Labor’s Paul Keating in 1993. Hewson followed in Fraser’s footsteps in becoming a vehement critic of the Liberal Party in general and Howard in particular.
A lot of the criticism made by Fraser and Hewson of Howard (Australia’s second longest serving prime minister) turned on personal dislike. Fraser and Hewson were also critical of Tony Abbott, who narrowly lost the 2010 election due to rural independents supporting the Julia Gillard-led Labor government.
But Abbott, who replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader in 2009, went on to achieve a landslide victory in 2013. He was overthrown by Turnbull in 2015. Abbott’s attitude at the time was that he did not intend to let one event ruin his life. Despite disappointment, Abbott did not campaign against Turnbull in the 2016 election, in which his successor lost 14 seats to Labor.
The Liberal Party has never recovered from Turnbull’s disastrous campaign in 2016. Perhaps overshadowed only by Peter Dutton’s campaign in 2025. But, unlike Dutton, Turnbull had the advantage of incumbency. Moreover, Scott Morrison achieved an unexpected win in 2019 without Turnbull’s support.
Despite his disappointment, Dutton accepted defeat graciously and attended the recent Liberal Party celebration of Howard’s victory in 1996.
Former Liberal Party deputy leader Peter Costello spoke at the occasion, despite his disappointment that Howard did not step down in his favour before the 2007 election.
For his part, Morrison has a life outside the Lodge and has not criticised the party that made it possible for him to be prime minister.
And then there is Turnbull and, perhaps now, Sussan Ley. Turnbull’s criticism of the Liberal Party since he ceased being prime minister has been relentless, despite having declared, soon after leaving office, that he would not become a “miserable ghost” intervening in politics from out of office.
Turnbull has played this role for close to a decade, partly in his Malcolm Turnbull: A Bigger Picture (Hardie Grant, 2020). Unlike Fraser and Hewson, Turnbull has not resigned from the Liberal Party, possibly because he is much likelier to get a run on the ABC if he is criticising the Liberal Party as a Liberal.
Turnbull’s main targets have been Abbott, Morrison and Dutton, all of whom were involved in his replacement as Liberal leader in 2009 or 2018.
Turnbull was reported in The Nightly on May 11 as addressing a recent conference in London at which he stated that the Liberal Party had been in decline “pretty much since (he) was defenestrated in 2018”. Others would put the time back to 2015.
So many rats, so little time, and so eventually and at last to possible rat Susssan.
The pond never gave Susssan an easy time, but nor did her colleagues.
Indeed, the treatment of women in the Liberal party by the beefy bunch of boofheads who assume an eternal right to male power is frequently astonishing.
Naturally Polonius was keen to fit into that patriarchal traditions ...
This was an ungracious statement.
Ungracious? That's what they're calling a statement of the bleeding obvious these days?
I never publicly criticised Ley. But she had been in politics for more than two decades without stating any significant policy positions. Journalist Niki Savva is no fan of the contemporary Liberal Party but she said no politician, male or female, could have survived Ley’s numbers. Once Ley resigned her seat, it was evident that the Liberal Party could not win the resultant by-election.
New Liberal leader Angus Taylor has an extremely difficult job to restore support for the Liberals. But the likes of Hewson and Turnbull and perhaps now Ley along with members of the Fraser fan club could at least lay off the criticism. Most former Labor Party leaders have refrained from publicly criticising the party that made them.
Roll that one around on your tongue again and savour the flavour:
Most former Labor Party leaders have refrained from publicly criticising the party that made them.
The pond would love to be able to live in the alternative bizarro universe that Polonius seems to inhabit.
Was he referring to former Chairman Rudd?
And after that is where the pond came unstuck.
All that was to hand were typical offerings from the Australian Daily Zionist News, with the dog botherer leading the way:
The public broadcaster’s distorted reporting contributed to a climate of hostility to Jews.
By Chris Kenny
The pond can't stand that sort of simple-minded abuse and simpleton analysis of cause and effect, and so it was off to the intermittent archive with him, with this as a teaser trailer:
The pond didn't even bother with a teaser trailer for the next bit of Zionism ...
Israel and Jews of the diaspora are being held to a different standard to anyone else.
By Julie Bindel
Julie wrapped up her offering this way ...
I doubt these same leftists would hold ordinary Muslims accountable for events such as 9/11 or to answer for Islamist extremism.
What is happening to Jews today may be dressed in a progressive cloak, but that doesn’t hide what it really is.
Julie Bindel is a feminist campaigner against sexual violence based in the UK. She is co-host of The Lesbian Project podcast.
Uh oh, she went there, so the pond thought it might offer a bit of counter-programming to both of them, as featured in the both siderist NY Times ...
The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians (*intermittent archive link)
And so on - there's more - and inevitably that led to a typical response from the government of Israel, always intent on silencing any alternative versions, as noted in the Graudian (with links to the Graudian's own reporting on the abuse of Palestinians).
Media law experts cast doubt on viability of a defamation lawsuit promised by Netanyahu over Nicholas Kristof essay
And then the day fell into a complete heap.
The pond had done its best yesterday with the reptiles' endless budget jihad. Surely the Ughmann and "Ned" had said more than enough already?
But what to do with the rest of the parade of clowns?
In best Arthur Miller tradition, attention had to be paid.
The pond decided all it could do was note down the reptiles, offer a teaser, and send them off to the intermittent archive, where correspondents could graze at their leisure (even though the archive is sometimes tough on grazing, a bit like a Nareen squatter)
The reptiles stayed big on the 'death tax' angle ...
After death we do tax: breach of trust
Labor has defended controversial budget changes targeting 100,000 investors using estate planning trusts, despite critics warning grandparents and parents will be caught in the crackdown.
By James Kirby and Sarah Ison
The bittersweet irony of Jim Chalmers’ budget
Investors need to review all strategies following a dramatic budget. There will be more losers than winners.
Tradies joined long suffering billionaires as victims:
Tax shock for owners of small businesses
Tradies forced to ‘hit the handbrake’ on investment after tax changes
Young business owners have abandoned expansion plans after federal budget tax changes forced a 24-year-old electrician to ‘hit the handbrake’ on his multimillion-dollar investment strategy.
By Paige Fryer and Will Seitam
The canny Cranston also had a go, by dragging some weird dropkick into the fray:
‘Millions’ line up for tax grab fight
Geoff Wilson has declared war on Labor’s tax changes, promising a ‘vicious’ campaign involving ‘millions of Australians’.
By Matthew Cranston
TAXATION
Less than 40pc of CGT is from property: data
The government’s claim that CGT changes will help young homebuyers have been contradicted by tax data showing most capital gains come from shares and trusts.
Joseph Carbone and Perry Williams
Snappy Tom was also on hand to woo the cats of Australia and warn young voters ...
Budget mission to woo young voters and destroy enemies cuts deep
Anthony Albanese has stirred up a war between the ages and picked the side that is not dying off.
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist
Exhausting...
... but there you have it.
The pond doesn't like to be reduced to doing surveys - who knows when the intermittent archive might clap out? - but it's the only way to handle this sort of jihad.
Those who want to can plunge in, those who don't will realise they're missing nothing but a minor crusade ...and at least everybody can understand that it could be worse...
There's no way in the world that the pond would usually pay attention to the ABC, but just because the dog botherer carried on like a pork chop, here's The fascism expert at the heart of Palantir
So farewell to Polonius for the time being. Appropriately he focuses yet again on one of his handful of regular themes - the post-Ming Liberal Party. A sour, small-minded obsessive criticising others for being sour, small- minded obsessives. There’s nothing really new here, other than Hendo adding Susssan to his enemies list for having the temerity to point out the results of her shafting. The remainder was the usual Polonius history lesson, with a dry repetition of the historical record masquerading as analysis; there are a few spits of venom but again, mostly whinges we’ve read far too many times. Of course there was the expected bitter dig at the ABC - how dare they continue to showcase Turnbull, rather than a Genuine Conservative Voice such as his own - but he missed a golden opportunity to trot out that classic phrase for the umpteenth time.
ReplyDeleteOne point - I very, very much doubt whether anyone familiar with Ming’s claim to have ceased voting Liberal ever assumed that he instead voted for the ALP. Perhaps that’s Polonius’ little fantasy; mine is that Pig Iron may have simply written in his own name or scribbled “Fck the lot of you” on the ballot papers.
BTW, I’ve also no idea who those blokes are with Menzies in the header photo. I assume it’s a gaggle of the gormless second-raters who made up the bulk of his Ministries, nearly all of whom are deservedly long-forgotten.