You are invited to a Sunday morning tea with a reptile ...

 

Now where were we?

Colbert? Long gone, though some say they saw him in Monroe. Whatever, CBS and Paramount were dead to to the pond in 60 seconds, made easy by the intertubes being dead to the pond for some time.

Gaza? The pond felt the urgent need to shriek about well-meaning activists, which in terms of Australian media produced a new formula: one maltreated activist equals 10,000 Palestinians (and Lebanese people) displaced, brutalised, starved, murdered people, subject to ethnic cleansing and life under apartheid rule. White phosphorus anyone?

Benji's government and King Donald's war on Iran? Think that song lyric, same as it ever was.

The United States under mad King Donald? Just a long slide into dementia, surrounded by sycophants, dropkicks and losers.

Ukraine? Vlad the Sociopath also scored himself a never ending war.

While away, the pond didn't take a single squiz at the lizard Oz, and what a relief that was.

Instead the pond spent its days moving as far south as it could before getting nosebleed, which is to say to the mighty 'Gong, home of awesome Aunty Jack, plucky bleeder Norman Gunston and other luminaries (younglings, ask your elders).

As a result, the pond has gone full rustic. How rustic? Consider this: on signing the lease, the real estate agent gave the pond a box of Cadbury Roses Chocolate. 

The real estate agent! A box of chocolates! (cue Forrest Gump).

The pond was swept back to its earliest days, growing up in Tamworth, once the centre of the known universe. 

In those ancient times, men would rock up with beers, while the women always had the fallback of a box of chocolates, Roses of course. The size of the box was carefully determined by the occasion and the status and relevance of the recipients (the pond was given a twenty buck box!) The pond's married maiden aunt would swoon at the sight of a box, and always kept one handy for the guests who arrived, at least one a decade.

What else?

Well while the pond was away, several Tonys came out to play.

The pond was particularly drawn to the savvy Savva's assessment in the Nine rags Abbott’s ineptitude meant he didn’t last two years as PM. Now he’s back, with four new slogans (*intermittent archive link).

Inter alia:

...Abbott came prepared with four new slogans. Stripped to the bare bones, or down to the budgie smugglers if you prefer, they were: stop taxes, demonise migrants, wreck the planet and only ever wave one flag.
OK, so he didn’t say that exactly. That’s my interpretation of what he said, given 75 per cent of his plan is built on culture wars over patriotism, welcomes to Country, migration and climate change, and the other 25 per cent is a scare campaign on tax, a formula unlikely to regain old heartland seats including the one he lost in 2019.

Indeed ...

And Tony Bleagh hovered back into view, as the pond squinted at its phone and read a cracking Crace:

‘Worry no longer, I am back’ – Tony Blair’s Why I Have Always Been Right About Everything, digested by John Crace

Inter alia:

...Politics is about power. And since I left No 10, the UK has become a second-class global power. So we need to stick close to the US. We need to be partners, not in opposition. Donald Trump is a great guy when you get to know him. Probably the best president since George W Bush. Someone who will be fully worthy of his Nobel peace prize. Just as I treasure the replica one I awarded myself. No one has done more to stop the wars he started.
Have I mentioned that I am the only Labour prime minister to have won a full second term? Not that I am in any way needy
I am deeply honoured to be a member of Trump’s Board of Peace along with many others from the world’s most eminent list. Keir made a huge mistake by not joining the US in bombing Iran, because it can never be wrong not to go to war along with the US. Can it? There were weapons of mass destruction. I’m sure of it. There has to have been, we just haven’t found them yet.
It is also time to rethink our relationship with Europe. Now is not the time to relitigate Brexit. That ship has long since sailed. Instead, what we should do is become much more powerful than Europe and then get the EU to come to us begging to join the UK. And we can only do this if we deregulate everything I once regulated, and grasp the benefits of AI. I won’t say here what the benefits of AI are, mainly because I don’t know what they are, but all my tech bro pals are making shedloads of money, so it has to be a good thing.
We also need to rethink the way we do politics at home. Voters want politicians who are prepared to crash into brick walls. To challenge the very orthodoxies for conventional. Have I mentioned before that I am the only Labour prime minister to have won a full second term? Not that I am in any way needy. Or condemned to the purgatory of all yesterday’s men. Just that I feel obliged to answer the call when the country I quite like, though not as much as the US and China, is in need.
The change needed will be radical. First we have to get rid of all workers’ rights. No country ever achieved economic growth by worrying about them. We have to accept that if some people are broke then that is a price worth paying. Likewise, Labour needs to realise the welfare bill is far too high. There must be an end to a culture of state support. And maybe we should think about getting rid of pensions altogether. If people don’t have the capability to set up their own global institute then they deserve every misfortune that comes their way.

Indeed, and what a hoot from a man doing his best to resemble the Joker...

And so on, and what is it with Tonys, how do they always end up sounding like prize loons of the first water?

'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. (in full here).

And so to another note on life in the 'Gong surrounded by raucous cockies, perhaps chortling at the two Tonys ...

The pond has undergone a lifestyle change, what with the escarpment looking like the Tamworth hills on steroids.

As a result, with unpacking still to be done, and order restored to the world, (fat chance), the pond isn't that keen on getting up early to check out the reptiles and do a full survey of their follies.

Instead the pond thought it might step gingerly back into the swamp by inviting people to enjoy a morning tea with just one reptile: Kinkara (if only you could find it - perhaps Bushells or Griffiths, née Robur, as subs?), scones with blackberry jam and cream fresh from the cow, just like the 1950s ... which approximates the picket fence times of the reptile hive mind.

But when the pond dived back in, it was appalled and astonished to see that somehow the reptiles had managed to get even worse over a few short weeks. 

It was a veritable den of disrepute, a swamp of mugwumps...

How could the pond stick to just one reptile, when the rag had transformed into the the perfect embodiment the One Nation paper of choice, what with Pauline filching all her best forms of bigotry from their insightful analyses? (Climate change isn't real, it's all the fault of migrants, and what's this vax crap?)

Of course, the reptiles still performed the duties required to be the Australian Daily Zionist News (henceforth ADZN).

This weekend Julie held up that flag for all to see ...

Blaming and vilifying Jews – it’s as easy as ABC
A week full of strange and hypocritical cultural moments shows how institutions have applied a dangerous double standard when Jewish people are targeted.
By Julie Szego

But the real marvel was the way the reptiles had lurched towards One Nation, what with Pauline being the perfect embodiment of everything the Murdochians had campaigned for over the years.

Unsurprisingly, the MAGA-cap-donning Dame Slap was front and centre with the shift ...

No wonder voters want Hanson when AHRC spouts such lunacy
Our institutions are now so infested with the radical ideology once seen only at university ­orientation weeks that One Nation seems like the logical ­answer to many.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Dame Slap spent many words explaining why Pauline was right about everything, before concluding ...

...The Coalition failed completely, over many terms, to do anything about the ABC thumbing its nose at mainstream Australia. Hanson’s rise in the polls suggests a desperate yearning among voters for someone who will at least try to put the cleaners through the taxpayer-funded mess of government bodies who seem to regard mainstream Australia with contempt. Nobody knows if Hanson will have any more success than the Coalition at hosing out the radicals feasting on the public teat. But increasing numbers seem to think she can’t do any worse, and she just might do better. “Worth a shot?” they ask.

Indeed ...

But the most astonishing effort was performed by the Ughmann, with a truly bizarre comparison, a descent into mugwumpery of the first water, such that even the pond's partner noticed ...

The header: Australia’s new reformation is a growing revolt against a detached governing elite; Australia’s woke elites have sparked a backlash, just as the Catholic Church’s Curia did in 1517.

The remarkable caption featuring that uncanny likeness: The rise of One Nation is not simply a rebellion against the political class. It is a revolt against the permanent governing caste of progressive elites that inhabits the state and federal bureaucracies, universities, courts, commissions, NGOs and much of the media. Like the Curia of old, this clerisy sees itself as the arbiter of modern morality.

Talk about an exact match. How could the pond have missed it? 

The died orange hair, the glowering black eyes, the whimsical, mischievous look dancing on the lips.

There's even a hint of black in both their garbs, though Pauline has updated her gear to reflect a Manichean dance between black and white, good and evil, without any shades of grey. (Possibly they also share similar thoughts on international banking conspiracies).

Best to slip in that reference to a heresy, so the pond could get down and dirty with the Ughmann in full blown stupid Xian fundamentalist mode.

What a irresistible theological marvel he is ...

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
The question was probably never seriously debated by 15th-century Catholic theologians, but it neatly satirises a Church that is so absorbed in Byzantine theological and legal disputes that it lost the trust of the people it claimed to serve.
An institution-wide infection of legalism, self-interest and intellectual arrogance had spread through what is known as the Curia, the vast permanent bureaucracy that advises popes, interprets doctrine and enforces orthodoxy to this day.
But alas, as the century turned, it was a dangerous time for a complacent clerisy.
Europe had been brutalised by famine, plague and the Hundred Years’ War. The Church had endured a schism that produced three popes. Labour shortages and heavy taxation weighed down societies struggling to recover from generations of turmoil.
The symbolic nadir of the Church’s decline was the sale of indulgences, a cash-for-salvation racket run by clerics more intent on filling their coffers than tending their flocks.
Rage grew in the hearts of a people who lacked the language to describe their plight and the means to escape the suffocating atmosphere of oppression.
Into this cocktail of discontent, the dissident Augustinian theologian Martin Luther hurled his Ninety-Five Theses, demolishing the notion that forgiveness could be bought and damning a Church that had abused its spiritual authority.
Luther also harnessed a new technology, the printing press, spreading his ideas at unprecedented speed, giving voice to a rage that had brewed for generations and unleashing the revolution that was the Protestant Reformation.

Lordy lordy, did that seminary get into his head, and screw his mind forever, or what? 

The reptiles decided to compound the madness with another snap celebrating the WASP way of life... Martin Luther, the original rebel against institutional repression. Picture: News Corp

As for the actual scribbling, there's no need to comment. 

It's simply too bizarre, too surreal, and is the sort of drivel that would have André Breton or Jean Cocteau rolling Jaffas down the aisle. ("L'oiseau chante avec ses doigts.")

Luther’s true genius was as a master communicator. His pamphlets were laced with coarse language and dripped with sarcasm, ridicule and fury. He mocked popes, humiliated bishops and treated scholars with contempt. He translated elite failure into the language of ordinary people, and they loved him for it.
The Church’s response was to declare its unimpeachable authority in the slogan Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus: outside the Church there is no salvation. Luther’s revolutionary riposte was: Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide, Scripture alone, faith alone.
Luther argued that the institution held no monopoly on truth. The people did not need the clergy to interpret the Bible when they could read it for themselves.
The Reformation was not a revolt against a single pope, bishop or king. It was a decision to demolish institutional repression. It was a rage against the machine.
There are echoes of that revolt in what looms as the reformation of Australian politics. The rise of One Nation is not simply a rebellion against the political class. It is a revolt against the permanent governing caste of progressive elites that inhabits the state and federal bureaucracies, universities, courts, commissions, NGOs and much of the media. Like the Curia of old, this clerisy sees itself as the arbiter of modern morality.

Now what did the pond say about going full Hansonite, or full Killer Creighton of the IPA? You know, vax, masks, and how to cultivate a plague (waiter, a little hantavirus if you please):

In a deep irony, Covid unmasked the secular Curia. For more than two years Australians were exposed to the unfiltered instincts of the governing caste and the experience left a vivid mental scar on many. Experts, bureaucrats and regulators authorised absurd interference in daily life while insisting every decision, no matter how draconian or irrational, was based on “science” and for our own good. Choice was not an option.
The Curia spits out orders. It is impervious to argument because there is no one to argue with. It never pays for its mistakes. It rarely explains itself and never apologises. Dissent is evidence of ignorance or bigotry and there are objective punishments for subjective crimes.
It decides. You comply.

Oh dear, it's that seminary thing all over again, as the reptiles did their best to join RFK Jr. in the hunt for a racoon penis ... Covid testing at Sydney airport in 2021: an example of the secular Curia’s unmasked interference in daily life. Picture: Getty

Measles, polio, whatever? Just live with it. What matter if a few of the herd are culled?

Even better, what if we cull the entire planet?

For a long time, the Curia pursued the impossible goal of Covid Zero. Now it demands Net Zero. As the energy analysts at Doomberg like to say, zero is an emotional number. Our secular Curia is deeply attached to a zero-sum game that will deliver zero jobs, zero growth and zero measurable benefit for the planet. It also has zero chance of becoming a genuinely global policy, which is the only way it can materially affect the climate.
No matter. Decarbonisation targets are set and pursued with bloody-minded determination as ends in themselves because they are a faith. The assumptions are never revisited, the premises are never challenged and every agency of government exists to reinforce the creed in a profound institutional betrayal of the people.
But there is a revolution stirring in the regions, where vast wind farms, transmission lines and the bureaucratic contempt shown to local communities are breeding a fierce resentment. When the suburbs eventually draw the link between wind and solar and higher power prices, the politics of this transition will turn toxic.

The pond should note a conflict of interest here. 

The pond's new (hopefully temporary) residence had, to the pond's surprise, solar installed, and so the very first bill showed the pond handsomely in the black.

But none of that for coal-loving reptiles, as yet again the reptiles trotted out a snap designed to instil fear and terror in the hive mind... Rural Australia’s landscape reshaped by the secular Curia’s Net Zero agenda. Picture: Supplied

All that did was remind the pond of a conversation with a cocky who explained that sheep actually enjoyed the shelter solar panels provided.

Enough of the destruction of the planet, it's time for a little transphobia, as only a reptile bigot of the narrow-minded kind can do.

Usually the pond would trim this sort of bigotry, but hey, it's the Ughmann, so let the bigotry flow...

Elsewhere, the Curia pursues its other passions in decisions that mock reason.
Reading Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr Anna Cody’s defence of her role in relegating biology to a technicality conjured images of a cabal of scholastic theologians counting angels on the head of a pin.
Cody could have mounted the perfectly respectable argument that no one should be discriminated against because they identify as transgender. Instead, she makes a more radical leap. She argues that a change of gender on a government document overturns the biological reality of sex written into every cell of the human body.
Cody concedes that a trans woman cannot become pregnant because she is biologically male but, in perfect legalese, argues that an employer might mistakenly attribute a uterus to the job applicant, perceive the possibility of pregnancy and deny that person a job. That would constitute discrimination.
The problem with Cody’s argument is not that it is simplistic. It is that it is so legalistic that it elevates classification above reality.
This is not a minor matter. It strikes at the roots of reason itself. If sex is erased, if a legal designation can outweigh a biological reality, then words no longer describe the world as it is. They become instruments for reshaping it. Many ordinary people instinctively understand that something has gone wrong. They know reality is being bent to fit an ideology but are powerless to change it. This breeds frustration and resentment.
It is a symptom of a wider institutional pathology. Increasingly, our bureaucracies, universities, courts and commissions begin with an ideological objective and then construct baroque intellectual frameworks to justify it. The debate is no longer about what is true. It is about constructing arguments to support what the clerisy has deemed to be true.
Anyone who objects is gaslit as starting a culture war when they are simply returning fire. The war began when institutions set about redefining long-settled understandings of sex, identity and nation without seeking public consent.
No one was asked. No one got a vote. One day, Australians were told that a man could become a woman, that three flags were better than one, that our history was shameful, and that disagreement was a hate crime.
But the culture wars are only one front in a far larger war. The deeper problem is a state that grows relentlessly while the private economy that sustains it struggles under its weight. More taxes beget more officials and more agencies that impose more rules, regulations and interference.
Eventually people begin to ask a dangerous question: who exactly is serving whom? If the purpose of government is to serve the people, why does it increasingly feel as though the people exist to serve the government?
And if the only way to get change is to start a revolution, then dangerous choices begin to look rational.

You see? It's exactly the same conclusion as Dame Slap ...

...increasing numbers seem to think she can’t do any worse, and she just might do better. “Worth a shot?” they ask.

Rational? Worth a shot? The reptiles are going all in ...they're more than Pauline curious, they're ready to celebrate a woman who espouses their notions on epidemics, climate science, transphobia and other splendid policies...

How could the pond stop there?

Have another scone. (The best meal the pond can recall ever having was having fresh baked bread, with nicely blackened crust, hot straight from a bush wood-fired oven, with hand-picked, home-made blackberry jam, and cream straight from the cow, separated out and nicely thickened. Not likely with Barners in the kitchen).

In the before times, Sunday was always prattling Polonius day, and he too was deep into the perils of Pauline ...

The header: Pauline Hanson’s surge in polls makes fools of sneering lefties; The ABC’s sneering dismissal of Sky News meant it completely missed the historic wave of voter anger driving One Nation’s rise.

No need for a caption for that snap. The parallels were simply too obvious, the identity already established by the Ughmann ...

The pond has always fancied itself as a Polonial whisperer and just knew that by the end, Polonius would establish that it was all the fault of the ABC (though to be fair, the old dotard gave that game away in the header):

It’s a time of advancing polls and retreating sneers.
Writing in the Australian Financial Review on June 2, election analyst John Black, a former Labor senator for Queensland, had this to say: “On Monday’s Redbridge Poll, taken after a federal budget which has slugged small business and investors, the Coalition parties would lose every House of Representatives seat they now hold – but their preferences could elect Pauline Hanson as prime minister.”
There would be an almighty shock if the Liberal Party and the Nationals held no seats in the House of Representatives after the next election. But perhaps a bigger shock would be if a second-term Labor government were replaced by One Nation. With, possibly, Pauline Hanson as prime minister and Barnaby Joyce as her deputy.
Sure, the next election is not due until May 2028. However, on primary votes, One Nation is scoring 31 per cent on Redbridge, 27 per cent on Fox & Hedgehog, and 29 per cent on Sky News Pulse/YouGov. This compares with Labor at 28, 29 and 26 per cent and the Coalition at 20, 25, and 20 per cent respectively.
The authoritative Newspoll is awaited with interest when it next appears in The Australian. For the moment it is clear that, unlike a year ago, One Nation is likely to be a key player in determining which party will prevail in a couple of years’ time.
And that’s why members of the left intelligentsia, who self-indulgently regard themselves as “progressive”, have had to desist from sneering at Hanson and her team. With support for One Nation at about a third of Australians, Hanson has to be taken seriously by critics and supporters alike.

Taken seriously? Like mad King Donald?

Nah. If the country wants to go to hell in a handbasket, the pond reserves the right to keep laughing all the way. 

So instead of this sort of snap of a toad in action... Election analyst John Black, a former Labor senator for Queensland.

... the pond will always go the 'toon ...

Unlike the Lutheran Ughmann and the MAGA-cap-donning Dame Slap, there was a little tremulous fear in Polonius's scribbling, as he looked around for others to blame ...

There are exceptions, to be sure. For example, Nine newspapers columnist Peter FitzSimons posted on June 2: “I repeat: One Nation is a circus, Senator Hanson is the ringmaster, and Barnaby Joyce the clown. #Discuss.” This is undergraduate hyperbole. Whether you agree with them or not, Hanson and Joyce are among the best communicators in Australian politics.
As I wrote in these pages on May 30, the surge in support for One Nation occurred over the Christmas holiday period. In mid-November Newspoll registered the One Nation primary vote at 15 per cent. By early February, it had risen to 27 per cent.
In between, the terrorist attack took place at Bondi, aimed at the Jewish Australian community, a part of Australian society. This was the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil. And it was followed by the return of what have been called the “ISIS brides”. Reminding all Australians that there are some radical Islamist individuals in our midst who do not – or perhaps did not – accept the values of democratic Australia.

Actually there are plenty of reptiles around who'd settle for an authoritarian government, just like the Murdochians at Faux Noise ... Australia’s worst terrorist attack at Bondi preceded the return of ‘ISIS brides’.

Now note how, in the following litany, how Polonius conveniently leaves out the onion muncher's one true love and provider of funds, Hungary ...

It’s true that the increase in support for the populist One Nation is consistent with what is happening in such Western democracies as Britain, France, Germany, Italy and more. A large number of citizens of such nations, especially those outside the inner city, believe their standard of living is declining and that their elected leaders are not interested in their plight. In part, they maintain, this reflects too large an immigration intake.
John Howard’s memoir, Lazarus Rising (HarperCollins, 2010), contains a perceptive chapter titled “Pauline Hanson”. He recounts how, in 1996, Hanson won the former Labor seat of Oxley in Queensland with a massive swing. She benefited from being on the Liberal Party ticket – despite the fact that shortly before the election, Hanson had been disendorsed for inaccurate comments she made about Australian Aboriginals.
On September 10, 1996, Hanson made her first speech in the House of Representatives. This contained the infamous statement: “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians” who, Hanson said, do not assimilate. She also claimed that Indigenous Australians were not the nation’s most disadvantaged group. Howard was critical of Hanson with respect to both statements. But he acknowledged that she “echoed community sentiment” on many issues such as multiculturalism.

Or is that reptile sentiment, as the reptiles flung in a snap of one villain for the hive mind to hiss and boo ... Nine newspapers columnist Peter FitzSimons.

And so the chastened Polonius admits to an error. 

Perhaps he too should get on the Pauline gravy train...

At the time, I wrote that, in his capacity as prime minister, Howard could have been more confrontational in this approach to Hanson. However, with hindsight, I believe his approach was essentially correct.
Hanson’s instant success was followed by total failure. As the editors of The Rise and Fall of One Nation (QUP, 2000) wrote: “Pauline Hanson’s One Nation was a shooting star that blazed spectacularly across Australia’s political skies during 1997 and 1998 before crashing to Earth in 1999.”
But Hanson came back and she learnt a lot along the way. In Lazarus Rising, Howard spoke respectfully of Hanson as an “Aussie battler who had run a fish-and-chip shop in Ipswich”. He mentioned her “faltering manner” when speaking on occasions. But Howard saw this as part of Hanson’s popular appeal. These days Hanson’s faltering manner when speaking is a thing of the past.
On February 23, ABC TV Media Watch presenter Linton Besser referred to Hanson as a “one-time peddler of fish and chips from Ipswich”. It’s unlikely that he will continue with such intellectual snobbery.

Why? If listening to Pauline sometimes feels like being in a fish and chips shop in Tamworth in the 1950s, why not remark on the phenomenon? Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson. Picture: Tom Parrish

And so to establishing that it's all the fault of the ABC, while celebrating Sky Noise down under (still no re-brand?)

ABC types at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster are also known to sneer at what they call “Sky News After Dark”. Meaning when the subscription television’s opinion programs commence at 5pm (AEST).
If ABC journalists got out more (as the saying goes), they would understand the impact of Sky News – before and after dark – within Australian society. Over recent years, Hanson has appeared regularly on Sky News and spoken directly to Sky subscribers, as well as Sky News Regional (which is free to air) viewers.
Unlike the ABC, Sky News presents contesting views. On the voice referendum, Chris Kenny (for Yes) disagreed with Andrew Bolt (for No). Currently, Paul Murray is in One Nation’s corner while Peta Credlin is in the Coalition’s corner.
The tendency of the ABC to dismiss Sky News led to a situation whereby it missed a big story in Australian politics. Namely, the growing disenchantment of many Australians with politics – particularly after the Bondi massacre on December 14.
On the current figures, the short-term political outcome will turn on the distribution of preferences – which all parties will take seriously. One Nation may, or may not, falter.

What a bold prediction to end on ...

May, or may not, whatever the future may be, que sera, sera ...

The pond was so enchanted that it plunged a week back in time, because the ancient dodderer had taken up the same topic ...

The header: Polls, preferences unseat traditional political prophecies; Redbridge’s bombshell poll predicts One Nation as Australia’s opposition, yet the pollster’s own track record raises serious doubts about the prediction’s reliability.

The caption: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is benefiting from the support of voters who are disappointed with the major parties. Picture: Richard Dobson

The pond was still haunted by that uncanny resemblance spotted by the Ughmann. How had the pond missed it?

Spitting images ... as Polonius turned to that vexatious poll that turned the reptile universe on its head:

A problem with insightful sayings is that they soon become cliches due to overuse. I was reminded of this last Saturday when the front page of the AFR Weekend ran a story titled “Is This Our Political Future?”. At least there was a question, I suppose.
The reference was to a Redbridge Group/Accent Research MRP poll that declared what the House of Representatives would most likely look like if an election were to be held now. An MRP poll occurs when a national survey is combined with demographic data from previous elections on a seat-by-seat basis.
The Labor Party was ahead on 76 seats, followed by One Nation on 53 seats, the Coalition on 12 and Others on nine. The poll of some 6015 voters was held between April 29 and May 14, with most of the research being undertaken before the May 12 budget.
In itself, the timing should have alerted some of the crystal-ball gazers in our midst. The Newspoll conducted on May 13-15 revealed that the 2026 budget was rated worst for the economy in recent Australian history – exceeded only by Labor’s 1993 budget.
No one knows how a similar poll would look if it were held in the two weeks after Jim Chalmers’ budget. Kos Samaras, director of the Redbridge Group, was interviewed by ABC TV 7.30’s presenter Sarah Ferguson last Monday.
Asked to describe the scale of the result the Redbridge poll had picked up, Samaras replied: “We’re clearly seeing a collapse of the Coalition. The medium result for them in terms of seat count is about 12. And One Nation’s clearly snatching up the bulk of the seats from the Coalition and a portion of the Labor base as well.”
Ferguson put it to Samaras that he was talking about One Nation becoming the official opposition. To which the reply was “that’s right”. He went on to suggest that Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor would lose his seat of Hume in NSW and frontbencher Andrew Hastie would be defeated in his Perth seat of Canning.

Is it all the fault of the ABC? 

They're clearly guilty, but strangely Polonius didn't drive the point home. So the ploughed past the next illustration in a state of nervous anxiety, wondering what Polonius might do with this ABC perfidy, interviewing a heretic ... Asked to describe the scale of the result the Redbridge poll had picked up, Kos Samaras replied: ‘We’re clearly seeing a collapse of the Coalition.’ Picture NCA NewsWire / Aaron Francis

Luckily Polonius was not for turning, and this is where another 'maybe' or 'maybe not' construction came in terribly handy, as it has done for seers and prophets down the ages...

Well, maybe they will. Or maybe not. For Samaras was asked another question. Namely, what would happen if the Liberals and the Nationals increased their primary vote by a few points? The Redbridge pollster responded: “That’s right, if they improve their primary vote by about 3 or 4 per cent or 5 per cent they would save them a lot of these seats … well in excess of 20 seats if the figure is 5 per cent.”
The special post-budget Newspoll, commissioned by The Australian, has the primary vote as follows: Labor 31 per cent, One Nation 27 per cent, the Coalition 20 per cent, Greens 12 per cent and Others 10 per cent.
If the Coalition were to win back votes from One Nation to the extent that if its candidates get ahead of Pauline Hanson’s party, then its candidates can win seats off the back of One Nation’s preferences – presuming that One Nation preferences the Coalition ahead of Labor, the Greens and independents.
When preferential voting was introduced in the House of Representatives before the 1919 election, it favoured the non-Labor parties. This was the case into the 1950s and 1960s, when the Coalition benefited from preferences from the Democratic Labor Party, the members of which had broken away from, or been expelled from, the Labor Party.
However, since the emergence in more recent times of the Democrats for a while and then the Greens, preferential voting has primarily benefited Labor. Now, the Greens will always put Labor ahead of the Coalition and One Nation. But if the latter two parties can arrange a preference deal, preferential voting will benefit both.
The task of the Coalition – under the leadership of Angus Taylor and the Nationals’ Matt Canavan – is to build up its primary vote. It’s a difficult task since One Nation is benefiting from the support of voters who are disappointed with the major parties.

Still no major carry-on about the ABC, but the reptiles managed to dig up a snap of that Orbán tragic, the onion muncher ... Newly elected Liberal Party federal president Tony Abbott. Picture: Getty Images

He's baaack ...

Polonius kept on brooding, and amazingly managed to forget about the ABC...

Writing in Nine newspapers last Monday, George Brandis (who, once upon a time, was associated with those Liberals who presented as moderates) commented: “Taylor’s budget reply speech could have been given by John Howard or Peter Costello, steeped as it was with the Liberal Party’s core values.”
The appointment of Tony Abbott as Liberal Party federal president puts the organisation’s best communicator in a prominent role and is likely to assist with fundraising. And Canavan is the best-equipped National to challenge One Nation’s Hanson and Barnaby Joyce.
It’s not impossible for the Liberals to win back a seat or two from the teals – particularly Bradfield on Sydney’s north shore. After all, a lot of teal voters will not be all that impressed with Labor’s broken promises on capital gains tax and negative gearing.
Allegra Spender is a fine, intelligent politician. But the teal member for Wentworth in Sydney’s eastern suburbs has had scant input with her taxation policies. After all, the teals have only six seats in a 150-seat parliament.
Minor parties and independents usually only have real influence in the Senate. Hence the proposal by some teals to form a political party of sorts – seemingly with the encouragement of Malcolm Turnbull.
The former Liberal Party prime minister enjoyed his occasional (soft) interview on ABC Radio National last Monday and, once again, used the occasion to criticise the Liberal Party. But he advanced no proposal to revive the teals or establish a new party.
In any event, the next election is a long way off. It’s possible that One Nation will continue to surge. It’s possible that the Coalition parties will hold on. It’s possible that Labor will continue as the dominant party despite its low primary vote. No one knows.
It’s much the same with Redbridge. In 2024, Redbridge-Accent conducted an MRP poll between October 29 and November 20 – around six months before the May 2025 election. It estimated the Coalition would win between 64 and 78 seats, Labor between 59 and 71 seats and the Greens between three and five seats. The final result was Labor 94, Coalition 43 and Greens just one. Enough said about political prophecy.

Oh the onion muncher will help in so many ways ...

And here's what the pond really missed while being off air. 

The 'toons, there should have been 'toons. Looking at the 'toons on a phone is like looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope with the Ughmann ...

Take it away infallible Pope and immortal Rowe. Celebrate the return of the onion muncher ...

And now, as the pond mangled a couple of infallible Popes, the originals in full as a reminder of great times... sure to come again...