The pond really began to scrape the bottom of the reptile barrel as it attempted to find a little reptile-related cover for its Melbourne junket.
With coverage of the lizard Oz impossible, the pond was forced to revert to little Timmie Bleagh, but anything's better than offering up the Bolter.
The pond banned the Bolter long ago, and nothing has happened which would lift the ban.
On the other hand, the pond hadn't thought of Tim Blair for a long time. He was such a lightweight that he only occasionally turned up in the pre-lizard Oz specialisation pond era.
The pond remembers that little Timmie had a terrible time at the ABC ...
The program - an initiative of the then Managing Director Jonathan Shier - ran from June to September 2001, when it was scrapped due to low ratings. Salusinszky subsequently complained that "we were given a tiny office, containing one desk and one phone". (Their office space was no worse than is provided to other specialist programs). (here)
Much as early exposure to fur, leather or plastics can result in fetishes, this left a deep Freudian scar in little Timmie's psyche, and thereafter he became a Don Quixote, forever tilting at ABC windmills.
He also became devoted to lost causes ...
For years little Timmie fought a rear guard action against those dreadful bulbs that threatened his cherished tungsten pets.
This is the result of a quick search, a reminder of his light bulb jihad at its peak ...
Back in the day, little Timmie made his name as a blogger when blogging was still a thing, and every reptile had to have one, and News Corp even financed a few.
Little Bleagh was infamous for routinely getting it wrong.
One moment came when he decided to do battle with Media Watch and David Marr, with a flag the basis for the feud.
Luckily the transcript can still be found in full at Trove here, with this the end piece the culmination of a yarn about a flag allegedly buried in Iraq...
It was part of that tormented quest by Bleagh to punish the ABC wicked ...
Flags, light bulbs, what a dedicated crusader he was...
These days he's just a dutiful hack, hacking it out for the Daily Terrorist, and you guessed it - deep sigh or groan - in the pond's curated examples, it's more Pauline.
The pond thinks that it's gone way above the odds to prove that the Hansonification of News Corp is real.
In this outing, Bleagh (so unfortunate to share the name with that sexed-up dossier rat) explained why Pauline was all the go:
The header: Tim Blair: Left sees common sense as a conspiracy; Besides shaking up the major parties, Pauline also causes leftist paranoia; my own explanation for One Nation’s rise is a little simpler. It’s that Australians are tired of being lied to by the major parties and Australia’s political class
The caption for the AV distraction:
High Steaks with Pauline Hanson
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Not more PREMIUM content and the alternative illustration saved in the intermittent archive didn't inspire the pond to reach for its shekels-laden purse.
Eek, she turned chef, as Bleagh turned effusive ...
Then something changed. It’s still changing now.
By mid-October, just five or so months after the election, One Nation’s polling had leapt to double figures.
That number, Macquarie University’s Professor Shaun Wilson wrote at the time, was “high enough to challenge the Greens as Australia’s third-largest party in polling terms”.
“If this result was replicated at an election, it would put One Nation in a position to win House of Representative seats.”
Astonishing. But why not aim higher?
The reptiles then slipped in a cartoon, not the sort the pond usually features ... Warren Brown cartoon for June 2, 2026. One National Pauline Hanson
Luckily Timmie did the right thing and kept the outing to a tabloid short 3 minute read, as he marvelled at Pauline being the future:
This is all proving too much for ex-Labor strategist turned Redbridge director Kos Samaras. Even before the latest One Nation approval spike, Samaras and his nervous colleagues deduced that an old-fashioned global conspiracy was afoot.
“What’s actually happening,” wrote Samaras last month, is that “a sophisticated, transnationally-networked information operation has spent years cementing Pauline Hanson as ‘one of us’.”
He's such a wag, and so there was a waggish visual moment ...Behind the scenes as Redbridge's pollsters try and figure out One Nation's appeal, or a scene from the cult TV classic, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?
Brilliant, and Pauline's brilliant too, and giving lefties paranoia, and isn't it all about owning the libs and that bloody ABC which was so cruel to him way back when, leaving scars that can never be erased ...
“Cartoons don’t get scrutinised the way normal political ads do,” Samaras darkly explained. “They get shared. Laughed at. Quoted at the pub. They become the in-joke and once you’re in on the joke, you’re in the tribe. That’s the trick.”
Kos Samaras needs a holiday.
Redbridge researcher Alex Fein seems similarly jittery, claiming of Hanson: “The depth of the parasocial relationships that voters have now formed with her cannot be overstated. This is an authoritarian-style influence apparatuses of a kind we know well from overseas.”
A transnationally-networked information operation! An authoritarian-style influence apparatuses! Besides shaking up the major parties, Pauline also causes leftist paranoia.
Time for a worshipful snap of the new reptile heroine and "warrior queen" (thank you Joe): One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. Picture: Richard Dobson
Little Timmie sometimes purports to be a deep thinker, and he knows the reptile litany, and he chanted it in the same way that one might chant the responses in a Latin mass ...
It’s not just the little lies, of the sort you expect from all politicians. It’s big lies, massive ones, such as:
Coal is expensive. Renewable energy is cheap. Jihadists are our friends. Australians aren’t taxed enough. Blokes can have babies. The UN knows what is best. Nuclear energy is dangerous. Diversity makes us stronger. Wages should always be set above demand. Housing regulations are a touch on the light side. Questioning immigration is racist. Colonisation is bad and multiculturalism is good – although you can’t have the latter without the former. Climate change is our problem to fix. And so on.
Concerns about these issues weren’t implanted by any transnationally-networked information operation. Australians have been rightfully worried about all of them for decades. Yet our political class has scorned those Australians. The Coalition signed us up to net zero, and even now, with One Nation consuming its core vote, the Coalition won’t withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Turnbull’s ghost haunts his party still.
Meanwhile, Labor is led by someone unable to make any decision at all without self-interested political analysis. Fifteen people were slaughtered on Bondi Beach, and the PM actually dithered over a royal commission.
The man views mass murder through a political prism. He does the same with basic biology. Albanese was asked last week by the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas if he supported reintroducing women to the Sex Discrimination Act. The stonewalling began. “I’m not engaging in culture wars here,” the PM said. Albanese dodged and ducked three follow-up questions before offering this telling line: “I haven’t seen the Coalition stuff.” Because that’s what he needs in order to compose a response. He needs a political framework.
Finally, softly, Albanese said this: “It’s important that women’s spaces be available for women.”
He got there at last.
Yet One Nation got there a lifetime ago.
In Albo-land, Labor would always succeed by taking down the Liberals. But if Australians can’t find a fit-for-purpose opposition that is ready-made and waiting to go, it turns out they’ll build one themselves.
One Nation may not yet be a finished product, but all the raw materials are there.
Yes, all that remains is for it to be fashioned into shape by News Corp and what a fine party they and Gina will have.
Have a break, because the pond reckons this will be still going down while the pond's away:
Now on with bonus Timmie, though regrettably the bonus was also about Pauline.
By this time, the pond was completely over the reptile infatuation with her, but summoning up what remaining strength the pond had, it was time to dive in.
The header: Tim Blair: Here’s to Hanson’s ever-helpful hater mates; Unable to see that the things they hate about One Nation are the same things that many Australians love, cranky leftists have turned their anti-One Nation movement into a great big Elect Pauline Project, writes Tim Blair.
The caption: Pauline Hanson creates history as support for One Nation now leads Labor for the first time in Newspoll, Anthony Albanese criticises Barnaby Joyce and the opposition parties. Plus, Donald Trump storms out of a sit-down interview with NBC.
Again the intermittent archive had an alternative illustration ...
...but the pond found it hard to get excited, especially as little Timmie trawled over the same ground as all the other reptiles.
The pond began to wonder if Pauline might just become a tungsten light bulb, another little Timmie enthusiasm:
One Nation has achieved this in the most cost-effective way possible. Rather than spending huge sums itself on promotions and campaigns, One Nation is relying on its leftist enemies to get the word out and drum up support.
They’re doing this for free, God bless ‘em. Unable to see that the things they hate about One Nation are the same things that many Australians love, cranky leftists have turned their anti-One Nation movement into a great big Elect Pauline Project.
Here, for example, is eternal ABC activist and current X commentator Quentin Dempster’s fever-dream version of One Nation’s platform: “Frack, drill, open cut coal; deport/ban Muslims; restore landlords’ neg-gear/CGT slush; open slather gambling; paywall for ABC; axe Family Court; ‘work choices’ 2.0, burn Aboriginal flag.”
How little Timmie loves to hate the haters, being not too shabby a hater himself.
How the ABC must regret inflicting that scar on him so early in his career, leaving him shattered and bitter... Pauline Hanson is detested and sneered at the by the left, but their hatred only fuels her support. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian
Those memories of the evil ABC came bubbling back to the surface like the witches' brew in Macbeth:
Many similarly embraced One Nation’s opposition to an increased minimum wage – a stance characterised by Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth as horribly anti-worker.
A paywall? How noble he is. So deeply scarred, he might have called for its privatisation or defunding, but a paywall would put it in the same situation as News Corp, desperately scrabbling for punters, and not succeeding that well.
The next caption took on Timmie's words... Dopey Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth is unable to comprehend that the lowest paid workers in the country will earn even less if employers can’t afford to hire them, which is why Pauline Hanson has opposed increasing the minimum wage. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Oh yes, she's a worker's dream, and Gina loves her for it ...
Straight out of the Uncle Elon playbook, what a fine time will be had Dogeing the ABC and SBS ... fulfilling little Timmie's lifelong dream (and maybe tungsten bulbs can make a comeback).
That’s because Hanson knows the lowest paid workers in the country will earn even less if employers can’t afford to hire them. She also knows that attacking average Australian employers runs counter to working class ambition.
Modern Labor is increasingly class-bound and ideologically rigid. By comparison, Hanson is reviving the spirit of Bob Hawke’s Accords. “There’s a give and take in employment,” Hanson told Sky News a week or so ago, “and people have a right to employ who they want to.”
Again, bring it on. And bring on more of the left’s elitist sneering, which just keeps driving Middle Australia towards One Nation.
Another ex-ABC chap, Barrie Cassidy, lately portrayed inner-city voters as too sophisticated for Pauline’s team. “They’re young, they’re better educated, they’re multicultural,” Cassidy said. “That is not fertile ground for One Nation.”
Dammit, not another ABC chappie, and even worse an Ex one, and never mind that little Timmie Bleagh was something of an Ex himself, Ex-ABC journalist Barrie Cassidy (with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, right) is a fervent Hanson hater. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Little Timmie was - surprisingly - pleased that vulgar educated youff might be rallying to the cause (other reptiles held their noses at such a notion):
(Cassidy is of course a famously inaccurate analyst of non-traditional political shifts. Back in November 2016, as counting began in that year’s US presidential election, Cassidy grandly declared: “Trump cannot win. The nightmare is over.”)
Hanson is definitely a nightmare for ex-Department of Immigration file sorter Abul Rizvi. Referring sarcastically to One Nation’s call for locally trained medicos, Rizvi wrote in February: “All those One Nation types who left school at 15 could easily have become doctors and nurses. Everyone knows that!”
As it happens, my mother left school at 15 and became a nurse. She’s now a One Nation type – and a figure of scorn for tax-enriched Canberra ponces. An X reply nailed it: “Telling people they’re stupid for wanting to vote for Hanson will work really well I’m sure.”
And then after berating the ponces, little Timmie Bleagh broke into the satirical wit for which he's justly famous:
But the contest isn’t done yet, not with the next federal election so far away. If One Nation wishes to further increase their polling advantage, they need to activate the arts warriors.
An announcement along these lines might do the trick:
“Australian art is too vital and too beautiful to be administered by government. One Nation will liberate artists from government’s choking grip and allow them to create visions, sounds and spectacles worthy of awe and admiration.
“The arts funding machine in Australia, inflicted on us for decades by all the major parties, has generated masses of expensive rubbish but very little actual art. It has turned artists into bureaucrats whose talent is not expressed through image or song but via grant applications, paperwork, required criteria and approved politics.
“One Nation will abolish arts funding and erase the arts ministry. Those calling themselves artists may protest. In time, however, art itself will thank us.”
That’ll get them going. Let the crazy-framed arts administration glasses glow with indignation and the big dangly earrings rattle with rage. One Nation’s got some votes to harvest.
Big dangly earrings? The pond supposes it's a variation on Joe's derisive yowl about pearl-clutching, but not by much.
The final extended y'artz metaphor left the pond wondering what might be the sort of big-selling art that little Timmie cherished.
There came a tungsten light bulb moment:
Say no more, a perfect encapsulation of the sort of philosophically deep art that's at one with Gina, little Timmie and the thugby league-infested minds of the Daily Terrorist readership ...
And now, as John Oliver might say, this ...because the pond reckons this will also be still hanging around like a bad smell ...
