In which Our Henry yearns for blut, Killer Creighton kills off EVs, and of course there's a Groaning ...

 

This morning the reptiles of Oz were wildly excited by the alleged death of the alleged "death tax" (remember to always use scare quotes when making things up), allegedly the result of an allegedly astonishing reptile jihad.

This wasn't the reason the pond rose with the cockies of the 'Gong to rush to the lizard Oz to gaze in awe on the rag, but for those who care, the whole platoon of reptiles assigned to the task could be found in the intermittent archive.\:

FLIPPIN' NOT ENOUGH
Brutal rejection of the Albanese-Chalmers budget backdown
Business groups, tech founders and a former Labor premier have united to dismiss the Albanese government’s capital gains tax concessions as a ‘patch-up job’ with ‘devastating consequences’.
By Greg Brown, Matthew Cranston and Jared Lynch

From ‘lies’ to ‘certainty’, Labor’s CGT change that makes no money 
On June 4, Jim Chalmers described concerns expressed by business owners over proposed tax changes as ‘rubbish’. A fortnight later, he backed down.
By Matthew Cranston

EXCLUSIVE
Labor’s just put a ‘ceiling on ambition’
Capital gains tax changes promise small business relief but may starve mining companies of capital and disproportionately hit female founders.
By Julie-anne Sprague and James Dowling

Mining industry blasts government’s tax changes as a ‘kick in the guts’

Jim Chalmers has handed tech start-ups a tax lifeline while leaving the industry that ‘finds the mines of the future’ out in the cold – and critics say Australia will pay the price.
By Perry Williams, John Stensholt and Brad Thompson

Labor axes ‘death tax’ but the damage is done

The move always smacked of overreach. Now it’s official, raising tax on testamentary discretionary trusts was a mistake.

By James Kirby

Associate Editor – Wealth

What a line up, what a jihad.

When the reptiles go on a jihad, you can never accuse them of being half-hearted, with reptiles dragooned into the fray, shrieking at the hive mind.

Of course others of the Graudian kind tend to see things differently.

The CGT ‘backflip’ is more tweak than transformation. Labor hasn’t changed its mind on housing
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Do the concessions undermine the original objective of helping young Australians buy their own home? No.

But none of that was what got the pond going.

Even the revival of perhaps the most ancient and revered reptile jihad still doing the rounds - Higgins! - failed to move the pond, except to the intermittent archive.

EXCLUSIVE
Million dollar question: what happened to Brittany Higgins’ $2.4m payout?
More than $1m of the $2.4m Brittany Higgins received in her compensation payout is yet to be located by her appointed trustee in bankruptcy, with just $3000 remaining in the account.
By Stephen Rice

The boiling rice - just asking questions - didn't even need Dame Slap's help to get wildly overcooked about that one, but to be fair, it did feature an entirely irrelevant and astonishingly crude collage featuring a wedding snap.

Frankly Frank, you should give the game away and leave the graphics to AI ...

By this point regular correspondents will know the real reason for the pond's enthusiastic embrace of the lizard Oz.

How was Our Henry, esteemed hole in bucket repair man, coping?

How was the valiant Zionist, and noble crusader, dealing with everything?

Please, stand back, allow the pond a little indulgence:

The header: The West no longer wants to invest in real war with all its costs; We have substituted money for blood. Protecting our troops is entirely desirable; but as the fiscal costs soar, opposition to wars soars with them.

The caption for the depressing snap, which thankfully avoided the need to show dead Iranian schoolgirls: Flag-draped coffins of US war casualties aboard a cargo plane returning to the US.

Lordy, long absent lordy, Our Henry was deeply depressed about the will to fight, and sounded just like that German documentary Eine Symphonie des Kampfwillens , at least if you turned the symphony into a requiem for the will to fight:

While the full details of the agreement between the US and Iran remain to be seen, its broad outline confirms what has long been clear: the West has lost the will to fight. Seduced by the fantasy of wars that cost no lives, require no sacrifices and harm no civilians, it has condemned itself to premature capitulation.
We demand wars that resemble peace – or, at worst, a televised cage fight: never fatal for those who wage them, painless for those who watch them. But war is neither a spectacle nor a defective form of peace; it is the opposite of both. And it is precisely because it wreaks death and destruction that the credible threat of “the calamity of warre” can, in Hobbes’s famous phrase, act as life’s “most violent master”, teaching states and peoples alike to treasure peace and fear its loss.
Yet every element of the mindset in which we are trapped undermines that effect. The logic is inescapable. Convinced that war must be without victims, we have become willing to incur almost any financial cost to avoid bearing fatalities.

Poor valiant crusader, perhaps made even more depressed by the way that the reptiles stripped him of all snaps and AV distractions.

The pond felt the need to cheer him up with the odd 'toon ...

Being Henry, a little history celebrating "blut und boden" always comes in handy ...

In the Korean War, the United States spent roughly $16m, in today’s dollars, for each of the 36,500 lives it lost. By the war in Afghanistan, that figure had reached $1.4bn. In this year’s confrontation with Iran, it exceeded $3bn per American fatality – a 200-fold increase compared to Korea, capping a decades-long trend across the Western world.
We have, in other words, substituted money for blood. Protecting our troops is entirely desirable; but as the fiscal costs soar, opposition to wars soars with them.
Moreover, that bargain’s costs appear not merely in the ledger but in the conduct of war itself. Determined to minimise casualties, Western militaries increasingly rely on stand-off warfare through the massed application of air power. In reality, air power can destroy territory; it cannot secure it. Yes, adversaries can be bombed into submission. But that requires devastation on a scale that causes enormous civilian casualties.

Hey, sh*t happens, as noted in the both siderist NY Times ... (sorry, paywall):

Our Henry was hampered, constricted, by saucy doubts and fears. What a tragedy we can't do a dinkum sort of do like we use to do in world war days:

The only alternative is troops on the ground. Yet combat in densely populated areas, against enemies who regard civilian deaths as a propaganda tool, entails civilian-to-combatant fatality ratios on the order of those seen in Gaza – roughly two civilians for every enemy fighter killed – or even the four to five experienced in Iraq.
Both options – devastating air power and brutal urban combat – have become politically untenable. And nor are Western societies, which seek security without suffering, willing to bear the economic sacrifices major wars involve.
Nowhere are the consequences more evident than in Europe. Like the children of Peter Pan’s Neverland, Europeans have persuaded themselves that reality yields to desire. Germany stands out as the only major Western European country in which a majority appears willing to contemplate reductions in social expenditure to finance rearmament – and even that majority evaporates when specific cuts are proposed.
Elsewhere, resistance to explicit welfare-defence trade-offs predominates: 50 per cent in France, 53 per cent in Britain, 57 per cent in Spain and 61 per cent in Italy oppose reducing public services or other government spending in order to increase defence outlays.

 Quelle catastrophe. What was it that bloody useless bible once said?

...they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.

O dammit, it's come to pass, the worst of the worst stalks the impotent land ...

Those preferences translate into budgetary choices: the four largest EU countries today spend eight dollars on pensions for every dollar they spend on defence – and pension spending becomes harder to curb as the population ages. The aversion to sacrifice extends beyond money: having wished away the realities of war, Europeans remain fiercely opposed to participation in serious military operations.
The American situation is more complex. Gallup finds that 64 per cent of Americans say it is important that the United States remain the world’s number one military power. Yet support for military predominance should not be confused with support for military intervention.
In February, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 63 per cent opposed sending US troops to defend Ukraine, despite majority support for military aid. Similarly, during the Iran crisis, only 14-28 per cent endorsed deploying US ground forces.
The result is a striking paradox. The United States, buoyed by public support for military predominance, accumulates an extraordinary military arsenal – but one that shines far more than it serves. Meanwhile, the gulf between American defence spending and that of its allies continues to widen.
In the 1950s, the spending asymmetry was large but it rested on a massive wealth gap. The United States spent far more because it was far richer; however, allies such as Britain – then devoting 7.6 per cent of GDP to defence – were exerting themselves almost as hard as the United States, where defence spending amounted to 8 to 10 per cent of GDP.
Today, the combined GDP of America’s allies exceeds that of the United States, yet the spending asymmetry remains stubbornly large. It now rests almost entirely on an effort gap, as high-income allies – Australia among them – devote a much smaller share of their national income to defence.
That only fuels Americans’ sense that – as George Washington observed in his Farewell Address, which is still read out in the Senate each February 22 – “there can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from nation to nation”. And the resentment the gap creates makes it harder still to persuade Americans to engage in complex, risky and potentially prolonged military operations that benefit the West as a whole.
The political consequence is that presidents, in trying to justify deploying American military force, promise vast outcomes from operations whose actual objectives are necessarily much narrower. Moreover, the character of the post-Cold War world aggravates that mismatch. For almost half a century, American strategic thinking was shaped by a concentrated, existential confrontation with the Soviet Union; the challenges that now demand military action are diffuse, localised and deeply entrenched.

Who or what to blame for this rampant sort of impotence? This gormless refusal to bung on a bloody do?

Our Henry knows ...

The grandiose, almost messianic, promises of painless success are therefore increasingly detached from the realities they are meant to address. When the easy triumph fails to materialise – as it invariably does – it reinforces what Louis Hartz identified in The Liberal Tradition in America (1955) as a characteristic American tendency: to “oscillate between fleeing from the rest of the world”, including the responsibilities it imposes, “and embracing it with too ardent a passion”.
Donald Trump has undoubtedly intensified that tendency. A politician who confuses showmanship with statesmanship and dresses vulgar opportunism in the language of high principle, he acts as a weathervane that amplifies, rather than just reflecting, the oscillation in public opinion. But can anyone believe the other “leaders” – such as Macron, Merz and Starmer, who relentlessly warned of the dangers Iran posed, merely to urge capitulation the moment crude oil prices started to rise – are, for all their greater polish, any better?

Why just for a moment there it sounded like Our Henry was channeling Pete Kegsbreath: Pete Hegseth blasts NATO members and announces review of US forces in Europe

Let's face it, only mad mullahs know how to do a jihad right...

The Iranians may be fanatics, but they are not fools. They may be Islamists, but they are also faithful Leninists, believing that “for a revolutionary, peace is only the continuation of war, waged by different means”. And above all, they know one big thing: there is no Neverland. It would be a tragedy if we discovered that only when it was too late.

Um, is it worth noting that the entire thing was a folly best stood clear of? 

One that did nothing for Iranians, sensible dissidents or regime sheep, or the world economy, but instead has enabled the mad mullahs in ways they could only have dreamed of before King Donald got going...

And with that splendid bout of mourning for days of war mongering past, it's time for a 'toon.

While on the subject, the lizard Oz editorialist knew who to blame. He (or she) was at one with Our Henry, blaming those gutless wimps who blinked at the thought of a world depression or a middle east in meaningless flames ...

The header: EVs migh (sic, so and thus) feel right for the wealthy, but they will destroy our planet; Imagine the damage should net zero zealots replace two billion-odd, mostly internal combustion engines, with EVs.
The caption for a terrifying sight (at least to the hive mind): Robotic arms work on the assembly line of new electric vehicles at factory in China. Picture: Getty Images

Killer Creighton could only muster a three minute read, and he was also stripped of all AV distractions and snaps, but bear with him, because he was keen to give Pauline some tips on how to tackle climate change (which doesn't exist. Allegedly.)

As a user of EVs,  the pond took particular pleasure in this shriek of pain, this howl of IPA anguish, and just let it roll ...

Pauline Hanson’s broadside against net-zero policies in her Press Club speech on Wednesday included a subtle dig at electric vehicles, products the government wants everyone to pay for – whether they want to or not.
The One Nation leader pointed out how their plastic interiors are still made from petroleum and other fossil fuels, putting the lie to the zero-emissions claim so beloved of their proponents.
She could have gone a lot harder on EVs, which are as dependent for production on subsidies and climate change fanaticism as solar panels and wind turbines.
They are also devastating – and vastly worse than ordinary combustion engine cars – for the environment. And by that, I mean the environment we actually live in, as opposed to the imaginary doomsday one decades hence that is projected by climate models unless we all buy EVs and slash emissions to zero.
High-income EV buyers, many of whom would honestly believe they are helping the planet, should be appalled that their shiny new BYD is in fact destroying the environment at a faster pace than their neighbour’s Ford Ranger.
The International Energy Agency itself says EVs require at least six times the mineral content of a conventional car during production, including graphite, nickel, lithium and cobalt.

You have to admire Killer's ability to cherry pick, and fling around the names of nasty minerals, while avoiding mentioning the way that lithium ion phosphate batteries (LFP) contain no cobalt and don't rely on high-nickel chemistries (see the actual report, for which the reptiles provided no link)

In this context, weight is an entirely meaningless measure, so naturally Killer deploys it ...

No wonder EVs weigh up to 500kg more than traditional cars.

Killer then does a reptile classic. Pick on a small consultancy which has pandered to its client base with scare stories of this kind...

EV myths, real numbers: driver misperceptions around EVs

Under the hood: The untold environmental impact of EVs (electric vehicles)

It's easy to see the cut of their jib, which is why Killer cut to them.

Sadly for the scare mongers, once you've tried an EV, it's hard to go back, unless you like feeding gas guzzlers from your hip pocket rather than from solar, and unless you like cars to match Harley Davidson sounds, what with the size of your exhaust pipe being a good indication of the size of your penis.

Roar away Killer, and perhaps attach a set of truck nuts ...

Melbourne-based Frontier Economics, an independent economics consultancy, is researching “whether Australian consumers should be protected from unknowingly supporting environmental damage through their purchase of EVs, especially from manufacturers who source raw minerals from suppliers who have poor environmental practices”.
In a 2025 research note titled Under the Hood, it wrote of the untold environmental impact of EVs, pointing out how the planned shift to EVs would “drive a massive increase in mining activity … along with other significant environmental impacts associated with mining”.
“Meeting this demand will require significantly more mining activity and place greater environmental pressure on mineral-rich locations – oftentimes in locations far away and out of sight of EV consumers,” Frontier Economics reported.
Indeed, imagine the damage to Earth should net-zero zealots actually try to replace the world’s two billion-odd vehicles (overwhelmingly powered by combustion engines) with EVs, and then update their batteries every few years. Literally hundreds of massive new mines that irreversibly destroy their surrounds will be required around the world.
Indeed, as Frontier points out, hundreds of thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforests are set to be wiped out around Weda Bay, where China sources much of the nickel required to assemble EVs using electricity generated by coal-fired power stations.
“The government prohibits the importation of illegal, unsustainable logged timber to prevent Australian consumers from unintentionally contributing to environmental harm,” Frontier economists also point out. Yet the same government says nothing about the permanent destruction of pristine areas of Africa, Chile, The Philippines, Indonesia and even Papua New Guinea stemming from mindless EV boosting. Carbon dioxide isn’t the only thing worth conserving.

Now what could cap all this? Government intervention, and taxation, as only a free market IPA stooge could want ...

If One Nation were looking for a tax increase that would inject some industrial and environmental sanity into Australian policymaking, it should roll out a road user charge on electric vehicles, which would raise more than $300m a year by 2028, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. As it stands, EV drivers don’t pay fuel excise, which is meant to contribute to the upkeep of roads.

Perhaps realising he'd gone too far, Killer hastily promised to help out the gas guzzlers by doing a DOGE ...

One Nation could also tear down a complex array of state and federal government tax credits, stamp duty exemptions and subsidies totalling thousands of dollars for vehicles that flow only to EVs, equalling rates of support per car that earlier governments provided Ford, Holden and Toyota to make cars here, according to a report in The Australian last October.
Inefficient no doubt those subsidies were, but at least we got some full-time well-paid jobs out of them. Quite aside from the accelerated, permanent environmental damage to poor nations that EV subsidies and tax breaks encourage, the benefits accrue mostly to China, a nation that arbitrarily slaps embargoes and quotas on our exports when it feels like it. The Albanese government has helped supercharge Chinese EV manufacturers’ share of the domestic EV market to almost 60 per cent last year from about half that in 2024. These are vehicles numerous experts across the US, UK and Australia have worried could be shut down by embedded kill switches from mainland China.

Throw in a bit of generalist climate science denialism ...

Science and economics are providing inevitable wake-up calls to the net-zero fantasies seemingly in every country except Australia, where governments are ploughing on with ludicrous, obscenely expensive and globally pointless emissions targets of which EV take-up is a critical part.
Just as climate change has fallen well down voters’ concerns compared to only a few years back, EVs will once again become a niche product for higher-income earners. Taxpayers will ultimately baulk at the absurd cost of providing charging infrastructure, just as they will quadrupling the nation’s transmission lines to make way for wind turbines that work only a fraction of the day.

...and bob's your equivocating Killer uncle...

Debate rages over whether greenhouse emissions from EVs or combustion engine vehicles are greater in total over their entire life cycle.
But there’s no debate over which type of car causes more environmental damage in the here and now. If buyers cared more about the planet they live in, the EV bubble will burst sooner.

Debate rages?

Professor of Economics at the University of Birmingham Robert Elliott acknowledge that while an EV initially had a higher manufacturing carbon footprint, “a long-lasting electric vehicle can quickly offset its carbon footprint, contributing to the fight against climate change – making them a more sustainable long-term option.

Nice alarmist, hysterical try Killer, just no carbon-producing cigar... 

Perhaps you need to make bulldozer noises to attract Pauline's attention ...

And now some correspondents might be wondering if the pond had overlooked the latest Groaning from Dame Groan.

How could you think such heretical thoughts?

There'll always be room for Dame Groan in this inn, though it was so familiar the pond thought a few screen caps could do the job.

If anyone wants to catch the text for a cut and paste, it's at the intermittent archive ...

Sad to say, it's just the usual jihad jeremiad.

It's all such familiar stuff that Dame Slap really needs to find new components for her word salad.

Henry VIII provisions? Fiascos? 

What happened to the good old days of "we'll all be rooned"? 

The old biddie's now so hysterical she's running out of word puff ...

A better way? The pond knows what that means, it being code for the new era of One Nationisation at work in the lizard Oz.

It was time for the immortal Rowe celebrating the new and better way ...

So much winning, on so many fronts...