In a short time, the pond will be upping stakes lock, stock and barrel, leaving Sydney and moving south.
That means that after next weekend, the pond will perforce cease to trade, perhaps for quite some time.
At such moments, the pond tends to get a bit nostalgic.
It's been a long road, which started way back on 20th July 2008, when a piece by a certain Michael Duffy, Strength of US evangelicals is one of the big myths of our time (*intermittent archive link) sent the pond into such a frenzy that the pond immediately set up a blog and began abusing the hapless chap.
(To revive that ancient argument, the pond trusts that any female friend of the Duffster in a US state run by fundamentalist Xian bigots isn't in search of an abortion, or even, it seems in the near future, contraceptive services. The pond also hopes that the Duffster has caught up on the way the evangelicals gave the world King Donald the redeemer).
In those days, the pond traded under Duffy's name, which the pond regrets, but the pond does take credit for turning the Duffster into a much more useful member of society than being a Fairfax hack keeping company with the likes of Paul Sheehan (oh the texture and the cost of Paddington bread).
Over the years, after dallying with the likes of the fat owl of the remove in the Daily Terror (the much loved Akker Dakker) and little Timmie Bleagh, the pond settled on the reptiles at the lizard Oz, what with them being the most pretentious and dangerous of the Emeritus Chairman's brood.
Some eighteen years of blogging, allowing for medical emergencies of the heart attack kind, and some time off, is a long time to be in the company of reptiles, and in the last few years, the pond has only stayed in the game for the pleasure of reading correspondents' commentary below the fold.
The pond isn't saying never - never say never, because otherwise you could end up appearing in a really bad James Bond film - but perforce the pond will have to focus on making the shift, so this week's tour of duty will be the last major outing with the hive mind for some time to come.
The pond intends to relish the opportunity, starting with what's on offer this Monday in the lizard Oz.
The pond had hoped to begin the celebrations in a bigly way with Lord Downer's latest insights about the best ways to fix the country and the planet, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Could this be a sign? The pond had been certain his incredible genius would have allowed him to save the Liberal party while still being a scribbler for the lizard Oz, but maybe not. Maybe arcane intrigues distracted him this week ...
Instead the pond was left with the Caterist trying to cope ...
The header: ‘Sick of the lot of you’: Farrer insurgency a warning for both Liberal and Labor; Farrer voters have delivered a stunning rejection of Australia’s major parties, with four out of five casting ballots for minor parties and independents in a dramatic political uprising.
The caption for the Pauline peril showing off her status as Gina's new pet: Pauline Hanson departs from Albury in her new private plane after One Nation candidate David Farley was elected in the federal seat of Farrer. Picture: Ash Smith
That headline including the line insurgency a warning for both Liberal and Labor made the pond wonder just how badly the Labor candidate had done in terms of votes.
When the pond checked the tally, the pond was reminded that Labor hadn't actually bothered to run a candidate.
The TCP battle was between an independent and One Nation, and it was the Liberals and The Nationals that had copped the thrashing.
There's no doubt the Labor government is on the nose in some quarters - the lizard Oz reminds the pond on a daily basis - but this was totally on the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, not to mention a reluctance to join the Canavan caravan (who has even less to be proud of than that band of ragamuffins' former leader).
Don't drag everyone into a mess entirely of the Liberal party's making, what with the way they reduced one time local member Susssan to competing with a lettuce ...
Now marvel at the way that the Caterist attempts to conflate and confuse...
On Saturday, the old normal was flipped as four out of five cast their votes for none of the above.
Released from the discipline of choosing the next prime minister, voters were free to indulge emotions normally suppressed and tell the political elite what they really thought. The message, written so large it was visible from space, could be summarised in seven syllables: we’re sick of the lot of you.
The scale and deliberateness of the Farrer insurgency suggest this was more than a knee-jerk reaction to the resignation of a sitting party leader.
It was the clearest expression yet of the political realignment that has ended the political duopoly that has held since the formation of the Liberal Party in 1944. That also happened in Albury, as it happens, where the party convened for the first time in an unassuming room above the Mates department store.
That, too, was a revolt against the elite of sorts. The real life of this nation, Robert Menzies maintained, was not to be found in great luxury hotels, the so-called fashionable suburbs or in the officialdom of the union movement.
“It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised,” he said, “who see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race.”
Albury? Again the pond had to check, and as Antony Green patiently explained, around Albury voters were pretty much all in for the independent; it was out Woop Woop way that the voters went One Nation, proving that NSW in spots can be as deep north as any cane toad.
Again don't try to drag Labor into the mud in a seat that has always been held by a Liberal or Nationals party member.
But the Caterist has to do his best to cope at the dire spectacle of a man wearing a scarf ... David Farley the day after his election. Picture: Ash Smith
Eek, a rustic poseur with the fashion sense of a frump.
In classic flood waters in quarries mode, the water whisperer did some field research:
These were hardly the dickheads and dinosaurs veteran journalist Ray Martin described in his revealing description of the archetypal No voter at the voice referendum. It’s worth noting that 75 per cent of Farrer voters rejected that elitist frolic too.
Jindera is as conservative as it gets. The absence of a Labor candidate was barely noticed (especially by the Caterist) and the sole Greens representative sat brooding on a wall under an Akubra, hugging a small pile of how-to-vote cards close to his chest.
There were conservative candidates to suit every taste: One Nation, Family First, People First and a bunch of independents. With the Liberals and Nationals standing separately, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers were the only coalition on the ballot paper, although a split between the gun owners and rod-bearers is surely only a matter of time.
Then there was Michelle Milthorpe, a Jindera local who turned up to vote surrounded by a coterie of the national press. Milthorpe denies allegiance to any party, especially the teals who shun party status. Independence, or its appearance, is the favoured political currency of the day.
My lengthy drive down the Hume Highway to spend a day at a polling booth proved far more agreeable than it sounds. It was also informative. During 10 hours of pleasant conversation among volunteers in the late autumn sunshine, climate change was not raised once. Discussion about fossil fuel was confined to the price of diesel.
The reptiles then decided to remind the pond that it was man who had little to be proud of who drove Tamworth's enduring shame into Pauline's arms ...Barnaby Joyce, speaks to voters outside a polling booth in Albury for the Farrer by-election on Saturday. Picture: Getty Images
Around this moment in his navel gazing, the Caterist seemed to realise that Labor hadn't fielded a candidate ...
Yet it hardly needs stating that in a town in which half of households are paying off a mortgage and three out of four households own two or more cars, interest rates and the cost of energy bite hard.
The Liberals – the party of homeowners and sound economic management – should be romping home in Jindera. The party that believes in rewarding enterprise and thrift should be crushing a loose-spending, big-government government in the polls.
That they are not is no credit to Labor, which by declining to field a candidate denied voters the opportunity to test whether a second Albanese term commands any greater enthusiasm than the first.
So why bother? Why turn up to a flogging so that the likes of the Caterist and the lizard Oz could mock them?
Finally the Caterist had to attempt to deal with the fate of the beefy boofhead, and in the first refuge of the scoundrel, turned to Shakspere, as a way of dragging Labor into the affray in classic both siderest way ...
Voters were not railing against a single party any more than the scorn of Mercutio distinguished between the Montagues or the Capulets in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
The sentiment on Saturday is captured in the play’s crowning phrase, “A plague o’ both your houses! They have made worms’ meat of me”, albeit expressed in more prosaic language. Both parties have been given a chance and both in the eyes of Farrer voters have irredeemably blown it.
Nah, the Labor party wisely didn't stand, so it was all on the beefy boofhead ... Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor in Laverton on Saturday could at least enjoy a lighter moment with a young voter of the future. Picture: Getty Images
Then came a final gobbet of the Caterist trying to cope, and sounding a bit like a defamation judgement had been awarded against him, and though it's perhaps wrong, the pond was vastly amused:
It was an emphatic repudiation of the old order without articulating what might follow. Farrer voters clearly want Labor out. Yet the question of how Labor can be toppled under the novel rules of asymmetric politics was left hanging.
Australia’s peculiar instant run-off preferential voting system inevitably reduces general elections to a two-sided presidential contest. Taylor remains the clear favourite for the role of challenger.
What role will One Nation play in this? No one, not even Pauline Hanson, appears to know.
As the federal election draws closer, Hanson can expect tougher questions about One Nation’s true intentions, beyond the eminently achievable ambition of holding the balance of power in the Senate and scattering conservative preferences willy-nilly.
In the meantime, Taylor’s task is not to drag the Liberal Party to the right or the left. That sterile debate in the party has pretty much run its course. His job is to pull a top-heavy party with too many chiefs and precious few Indians back into the real world, the one outside the metropolitan bubble, exemplified by the seat of Farrer, a three and a half-hour drive and half a world away from the Canberra parliamentary triangle.
Amid the multipolar confusion of the new political landscape, Menzies’ conception of the Forgotten People remains the defining reference point.
Our future is in the hands of the great, sober and dynamic middle-class – the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones. As the Liberals discovered on Saturday, we dismiss them at our peril.
At that point, a Golding 'toon came to mind ...
Or Lord Downer?
After all that the pond had to pass over simpleton Simon's analysis, and here the intermittent archive came in handy, as the simplistic one went full apocalyptic...
The Liberal Party’s collapse in Farrer is not a story of gradual decline. It has been rapid and spectacular.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst
The pond couldn't bear to show the dire opening Leak cartoon, but this teaser trailer will show just how desperate the reptiles are sounding, with the simplistic one going against the Caterist's remedies what ails them, by suggesting an alliance with Pauline, proposing that the Nats might split or just disappear, and calling on the beefy boofhead to somehow fix things ... (as if, this Angus ain't so prime)...
Indeed, indeed ...
What else?
Saul was over on the far right ...
Populist sentiment is now driving energy policy from every direction. But the knee-jerk solution – more government
By Saul Kavonic
For those who came in late, Saul is a reliable renewable energy basher, with a devotion to the private sector (how else to make a living as a consultant?) and oodles of implied climate science denialism.
There's only so much Saul the pond can take, even on a celebratory tour of duty... and so the pond checked the other far right offerings, and as expected of the Australian Daily Zionist News ...
The royal commission’s findings will be critical but it’s the openness of the bulk of the population and their willingness to respond in kind, that will be equally critical in healing our country.
By Vic Alhadeff
Perhaps it was the news of the defiling of a grave by West Bank settlers that made the pond a tad less interested... Settlers force exhumation of Palestinian man from West Bank grave, family says
Usually at this moment, the pond would turn to the Major for a final word, but the Major had gone there ...
Indigenous children will continue to suffer unless media confronts uncomfortable truths
A five-year-old’s death has triggered the same political paralysis that has plagued Aboriginal child protection for three decades.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist
The pond has more than a fair degree of contempt for anyone attempting to make political capital out of the death of a child, and to use that death to bash rival news organisations, but Major Mitchell has no sense of shame. That doesn't mean the pond has to pay attention to him as he seeks new ways to find new lows ...
So the pond turned back to the triumphalism over in the "news" section, which saw news of the dire straits the world is in pushed down the page early in the morning ...
Always with the renewables bashing, this time with Katy helping the reptiles ...
‘Supercharged’ climate funding can’t last forever, Gallagher admits
The Finance Minister concedes the government cannot sustain its current rate of climate spending as Labor lays the groundwork for breaking promises in Tuesday’s budget.
By Greg Brown
Well played Katy, and just after that the reptiles dug up an entirely new snap of Jimbo smirking and simpering ...
The indefatigable Geoff chambered another round, and what better way to do it than by invoking Comrade Bill?
Labor’s budget threatens legacy of division, as voters rage against the machine
Perhaps Bill Shorten’s name should feature as a co-author of the Albanese government’s fifth budget.
Could Geoff have done better? Easily ... perhaps comrade Bill Shorten's and Comrade Dan Andrews names should feature as co-authors of the budget ...
Fixed.
Geoff eventually ended with a whimper...
Pragmatic Liberals and Nationals realise that dealing with One Nation is not the same as in the 1990s. That means preferences deals at state and federal elections and political alliances to unseat Labor governments will be considered.
That didn't stop Geoff from trying again, this time team tagging to pump up the volume for Gina's pet performing seal...
Migrants are on our side, Hanson claims
One Nation believes migrants are on their side as they target Labor
One Nation has set its sights on Labor’s western Sydney strongholds after claiming migrant voters helped deliver its historic Farrer victory.
By Geoff Chambers and Elizabeth Pike
In that "news" splash there was one other "top of the world ma" story, an accompaniment to Major Mitchell's outing ...
Where are all these town camp millions going?
Millions in funding questioned as Alice Springs residents decry unliveable homes
Residents live without working doors or taps while the corporation meant to help them outspends an entire city council on wages.
By Liam Mendes and Christine Middap
Finally the pond simply had to admire this latest example of never ending reptile jihads ...
Antoinette Lattouf invited back by ABC to spruik her book and uses opportunity to unleash
Antoinette Lattouf has used her ABC comeback to unleash on the broadcaster, claiming she suffered trauma while admitting she forgets supporters vandalised ABC buildings in support of her.
By Steve Jackson
Once you're the target of a lizard Oz jihad, the elephant never forgets and keeps carrying out the jihad with the ferocity of the Taliban ...
And so to a few notes on weekend reading. This one in Bezos's shame caught the eye, as it's unusual for the lamestream media to pay attention to this sort of caper ...
Once ascendant in right-wing media, the “anti-woke” company now faces contentious layoffs, ideological battles and dwindling relevance online.
“Somebody should do it” and its variants have become increasingly popular online memes.
And now it's up to the immortal Rowe to have the final word ...
And as one comment on this video noted, "I wouldn't trust Putin to walk my dog".
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