Despite a flurry of lizard Oz teaser trailers, the good oil from the bromancer and Dame Groan is there to be found ...

 

First a housekeeping note: the pond must head off to the big smoke again, and so perforce will have to leave a place holder in place tomorrow, in lieu of proper lizard Oz herpetology studies. Hopefully the pond will escape a Sydney mugging and return to normal duties the following day.

Now carry on with wild abandon.

Lately the lizard Oz seems to have turned into the Geoff Chambers show.

There he was again early in the morning, top of the digital page ma, with an EXCLUSIVE and a Commentary...

Luckily the intermittent archive was to hand ...

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: Left-leaning voters not so spooked on China threat
Partisan divides are emerging in the electorate despite Beijing’s increasing aggression towards Australia.
By Geoff Chambers

Geoff was bitterly disappointed by this, so he chambered yet another round, what with the war with China by Xmas a long standing, highly prized and favoured reptile jihad:

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Apathy, ‘Beijing blindness’ are not options
The threat to Australia posed by Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army has never been greater.

Teaser trailers should entice correspondents into those reptile chambers, at least those with nothing better to do...

Splendid reptile stuff, and with the war on China taken care of, another favourite theme was given the Pike treatment ...

EXCLUSIVE
Bowen splurges $4.2m on five-star Fiji resorts for COP talks
Chris Bowen’s department sets aside $4.2m to reserve luxury Fiji resorts for COP delegates
Foreign bureaucrats attending the climate change meeting will be treated to beachfront resorts and golf courses – all on the Australian taxpayer’s tab.
By Elizabeth Pike

Liz piked him good and hard ...

So Pauline had dropped off the reptile jihad charts? The fixation might be failing?

What a pity...

All well and good, but the pond takes its foreign affairs and climate science advice from the bromancer. 

Sadly, in his welcome return he showed the same apathy as left-leaning and university educated voters by ignoring China and focusing on the couch molester who is inclined to be aroused by suggestive, provocative ice cream eating.

The header: Critics have misread JD Vance. Don’t rule him out in 2028;What an astonishing figure Vance is, surely the most unlikely and distinctive personality to be Veep since Theodore Roosevelt.
The caption for the snap: JD Vance speaks at the 128th Air Refueling Wing Hangar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Picture: Scott Olson / Getty Images

Where some see an ambitious, deeply weird loon, the bromancer was entranced, bedazzled by the couch molester and his magnificent theology.

After all, if one can resort to Satan's site:

Let the bromancer help JD put that recalcitrant papal tyke in his place:

As the US-Iran war races up the escalation ladder, one thing that has failed is the peace deal Vice-President JD Vance negotiated. The memorandum of understanding was simple. Vance explains it much better than Donald Trump does. Iran was to open the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping in exchange for sanctions relief. Then Washington and Tehran would subsequently try to negotiate an agreement on nuclear issues.
The deal failed not because of Vance, but because Iran, instead of opening the Strait of Hormuz, fired on commercial shipping. Which makes it bizarre that in a three-hour podcast with Joe Rogan, Vance went out of his way to criticise America’s ally, Israel, for allegedly spending money on a public diplomacy/social media campaign to criticise the deal as too soft on Tehran. Incidentally, the lobbyist involved swears he never campaigned against the MOU, only against Iran.
In any event, any money Israel spends trying to influence US opinion is a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars Arab countries spend similarly.
Vance’s remarks are even more surprising given that in his new book, Communion, Vance records that his murdered Christian friend, Charlie Kirk, was gravely concerned that young American men were becoming anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

There came a certification that established the couch molester as being one of the UFC people, always ready for a rumble in the heathen jungle...US vice president JD Vance has appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast. Picture: YouTube

Why he's a veritable young Ted, a sort of outdoor type for the ages, compelling if you happen to be a bromancing bro ...

But let’s leave Iran and remark what an astonishing, and oddly compelling, figure Vance is, surely the most unlikely, diverse and distinctive personality to be Veep since Theodore Roosevelt occupied that office more than a century ago. I’ve just finished reading Communion, which recounts how Vance lost the evangelical Christian faith of his childhood, was for some years atheist, and came back to Christianity through Catholicism. Oddly enough, Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, charted an exactly parallel but opposite journey. Pence was brought up Catholic, lapsed into atheism and came back to belief as an evangelical Christian.

As a dedicated tyke, the bromancer is right behind JD, and might even be inclined to be a little Peter Thiel curious ...

I interviewed and profiled Pence at length in my book, How Christians Can Succeed Today, and have no doubt of the depth and sincerity of his Christianity. Having read Communion, I feel the same about Vance.
I can’t believe how vituperative many reviews of Communion have been. For this is a brilliant, absorbing and challenging book, with only one big flaw. It has very little politics (that’s not the flaw). Mostly, it’s the story of Vance’s struggle to get to belief, to possess an attitude of life’s biggest questions that is meaningful and sustainable, and to lead a decent life. Vance’s previous book, Hillbilly Elegy, was one of the great memoirs, as good as Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father, but with deeper sociological insights.
Vance squarely faces the many times he hasn’t done the right thing. There’s nothing false or humble/brag in his self-accusations: “In my life, too, getting drunk and acting like a jerk had filled the void left by God.” Vance’s personal search for God is a quest for decency, and for understanding.
As he later observes: “Human nature is one of contradictions: of the animal merging with the divine … The secular view was that consciousness and civilisation were a sort of accident of evolution … The creation story (in Genesis) tells us that we are both animal and divine on purpose – a purpose, to be fair, we can’t fully understand.”
This is a rich book. Vance has read deeply in Christian scriptures, and especially in Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and the dazzling scholar Rene Girard, who unpacked the secrets of human desire and the need for a scapegoat in the context of the story of Jesus. And of course Vance is also influenced by CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. None of this is fake. Vance has clearly internalised so much of it.

Indeed, and if only the Catholic church wasn't so stupid, and had appointed a stupid pope, why JD himself might stand as a profound guide to Catholic theology, and Catholic school students be made to read the new JD bible, JD Vance has written a new book, Communion, about his path back to faith

JD has had his troubles ...not least the way he helped kill off one pope ...

Vance's new book published June 16, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, chronicles his conversion to Catholicism and his Easter 2025 meeting with Pope Francis is featured prominently. The Catholic vice president uses the story to open up his reflections on the perceived tensions between his views on migration and the Vatican's moral teaching. The pope died the following day of a stroke and cardiovascular collapse.
But while details of that meeting are sparse, the vice president is sharply critical of his meeting the previous day with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, and other Vatican diplomats, describing their discussion of migration as "too abstract to be helpful."
After what he described as a "substantive" conversation on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Vance said the subsequent discussion on migration was "unsettling" because Vatican officials did not make any specific requests.
"Here I was, the most senior Catholic in the United States government, and the Vatican seemed unwilling to move its moral guidance past the point of trite platitudes," he wrote. (NCR here)

Speaking of trite platitudes, the bromancer had plenty of his own ...

As I say, I can’t understand the determined, vicious hostility with which the book has been so much received. I’d recommend the first 200 pages without hesitation. Vance links his beliefs to the culture around him, and the breakdown of key institutions, but his religious belief is not essentially a matter of the culture wars.
Vance honours all the Christian denominations. But he’s found his home in the Catholic Church: “The Christian tradition was so rich, the Bible so big and difficult to master, that I began to see the structure of Catholicism as a benefit, not a burden. That the Church spoke with literally thousands of years of tradition behind it, that it had long-established processes for evolving doctrine and responding to new realities …”
He explores the role of doubt in faith: “No matter what we see, we are all tempted by doubt. The Peter whom Jesus pulled out of the sea is the same Peter who denied Christ three times shortly before His crucifixion.”
Most of the last third of the book is about politics but only in a very general way. Vance is inspired by Catholic social teaching, especially the balanced view of the social reality of humanity described in Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), the historic encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891.
Vance relates this all to his own life. The therapeutic idea that he could blame his own shortcomings on childhood abuse and dislocation was profoundly unappealing. It robbed him of agency and denied his own moral responsibility. His gratitude to his grandmother, his love of his wife, radiate from the page. He embraces the Catholic practice of confession – it offers him reflection on his own shortcomings, genuine personal responsibility for them, and forgiveness. This is certainly not for everyone, but it’s not nothing.

Inspired by social teachings? The ones about shooting all furriners on sight?

Not nothing? Comes a fly in the bromancer ointment, Donald Trump and JD Vance salute during a ceremony at Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. Picture: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

There's simply no avoiding him ...

Finally the bromancer had to bite the mad King Donald bullet with a mild remonstrance, a gentle billy goat butt, only to provide a masterly retort, a JD supporting epic billy goat butt ...

The one glaring omission in Vance’s book is how he reconciles this genuine Christianity with serving in the Trump administration. There is a reasonable defence of this, I think. Democrats, at least as much as Republicans, have made a mess of America. There was a solid case for thinking Trump a less bad alternative than Kamala Harris at the last election. Therefore, trying to make the best of Trump is an ethically reasonable response.
Nonetheless, Vance certainly sometimes goes too far down the Trump road. Yet his versatility is astonishing. In his podcast with Rogan half an hour is spent on the niceties of caged fighting, half an hour on Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories, half an hour on whether aliens are demons, and so on. Lots of four-letter words. Yet mostly Vance is moderating Rogan, jovially pointing him to reality. Vance is quite different in his appearance on The View, responding politely, patiently, reasonably and convincingly to five vocal, hostile women.
But to see the best of Vance, watch his hour-long conversation with Bishop Robert Barron of Word on Fire. A brilliant, subtle, hopeful dialogue on faith, purpose and society.
Is it a strength or a weakness that Vance is so at home in such contradictory environments? He’s presently unpopular. But he may yet resemble his boss in being protean, persistent, limitlessly energetic, easily underestimated, always formidable. Don’t rule Vance of out for 2028 just yet.

Strangely the bromancer ignored not just the war with China by Xmas, but the coming of Andy ...

That was left to the malignant Magnay, sounding very Iron Lady Margie about idle munificence...

Time to put up, now Mancunian is in Downing Street
Scaring away businesses won’t help prop up the extraordinary welfare situation, where large families on benefits have more disposable income than schoolteachers.
By Jacquelin Magnay
Europe Correspondent

Day 1 and the rats were in the street ...

Sadly the pond had to pass by, but the intermittent archive abided and that's surely enough.

The intermittent archive also took care of ancient Troy ...

Breaking with history: why this ALP conference will be different
Labor’s national conference will be a highly stage-managed event with little debate, even less dissent, and an emphasis on unity.
By Troy Bramston
Senior Writer

Keeping to teaser trailers left just enough room for Dame Groan, present to remind Australians that they were deeply stupid...

 ...and would certainly be rooned by Xmas ...

The header: End of an era: How we fell from exceptional nation to outpost of mediocrity; All those years of hard-fought reforms, of accepting the important trade-offs, were simply forgotten.

The caption for the uncredited collage showing a gaggle of Tory heroes: Former Liberal leaders Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and John Howard.

Sheesh, the pond couldn't believe it.

There the pond was thinking that all the promotional work for nattering "Ned's" tome had been done and dusted, and straight up front the old biddy put in a plug for it ...

I have been reading the excerpts of Paul Kelly’s new book, The Twilight of Exceptionalism, with great interest. But it did occur to me that instead of using the noun “twilight”, I might have been inclined to use “end”.
Kelly’s book covers the period of the federal Coalition government between 2013 and 2022. In that time, we had three prime ministers, each very different from the other. It was a time of monumental lost opportunity, of parties that couldn’t quite figure out their common mission.
It’s worth outlining what Australia’s exceptionalism involved. Both the Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello governments take the credit for this outcome. By and large, it was a long period of outstanding policy, of careful economic management and unparalleled outcomes. Annual economic growth rates in the high 3s and into the 4s were common. Productivity growth averaged above 2 per cent per year. The change to per capita incomes moved Australia up the world league ladder, with Australia’s GDP per person exceeding all the G7 countries apart from the US by the middle of the 2000s.
When it came to budgetary policy, the results were truly remarkable. As Peter Costello points out: “By 2004, after seven cash surplus budgets, the commonwealth government was debt-free in net terms. No other comparable Western country got anywhere near that, not the US, the UK, the Europeans, the Japanese.”

To match Dame Groan's carry on, the reptiles slipped in another reminder to buy the book before it hits the remainder shelves, Paul Kelly speak at the book launch for The Twilight of Exceptionalism in Sydney. Picture: John Feder / The Australian

Now on with the important business of revising history and explaining why we're all rooned ...

In August 2006, the Financial Times editorial concluded: “Australia continues to live up to its much overused sobriquet, the lucky country. But as the OECD observes, a big reason for its good fortune is that it has been adept at making its own luck.” The fact Australia was feted at international economic forums was no surprise.
The election of the Abbott government came after the chaotic years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. Plenty of poison pills were left by Labor, representing a real challenge for any incoming government. Some of these pills were dealt with – abolishing the absurd mining tax and bringing illegal migration under control by turning back the boats. But when it came to economic policy, the outcomes were extremely disappointing.
Promises not to cut spending in key program areas stymied the Abbott government from the start. It was a time that spending on the misconceived Gonski school funding model and the NDIS could have been reined in, with future expenditures locked into sustainable trajectories. We are now paying a very high price.
The fact Joe Hockey as treasurer pushed for the abolition of the debt ceiling – and succeeded – was more than passing strange. Having promised fiscal restraint, this action made no sense. It has relieved future treasurers from the worry of having to argue the case for expanding the debt ceiling.

The reptiles spared no expense and wheeled out some lavish artwork by Emilia, which the pond had mistaken as a tonal AI rendering, John Howard and Peter Costello. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella.

What an excellent evocation of a lying rodent and a man without the ticker.

End times devotees then got exactly what they wanted, so they could embark on their day knowing that it was all futile ...with all that nonsense about climate science central to the ruination ...

Twenty years on from zero net debt, we are now on the hook for $600bn of net government debt, with gross debt fast approaching the trillion-dollar mark. It is surely ironic that the commonwealth’s biggest asset is the Future Fund.
After the disaster of the 2014 budget – the only “achievement” was a temporary income tax surcharge on the highest earners – the Coalition simply dropped the ball on fiscal management.
Some key ministers began to argue debt and deficits didn’t matter, and the voting public quickly absorbed the new messaging. With inflation seemingly under control – this had a great deal to do with the goods deflation associated with expanding exports from China – the old trade-offs seemed to have vanished.
Measures to deal with climate change took a central role, with Abbott being the prime minister when Australia signed on to the Paris climate agreement. Under Malcolm Turnbull, climate change assumed an even higher priority, with a series of interventions put in place. They included the commissioning of the disastrous Snowy 2.0, which was seen as a giant battery that could underpin the shift to renewable energy. Note also that it was the Coalition government that first introduced the Safeguard Mechanism, which is effectively a carbon tax on our largest industrial emitters.
To be sure, there was some pushback to the attention being given to climate change – who can forget Scott Morrison bringing a lump of coal into parliament?

Who could forget it? Was there ever a better example of a profound insight into climate science?

Strangely the reptiles decided to ignore that as a visual illustration, and decided to go full boring...Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull at the conclusion of Question Time in the House of Representatives. Picture: Sam Mooy / AAP Image

Dame Groan seemed to be showing weird signs of a yearning for the clap happy SloMo ...

But come 2021, Morrison had become convinced the Coalition would lose the election unless his government adopted the position of net zero by 2050. Coupled with some debatable arguments that Australia would face high tariffs imposed by climate-compliant countries and be starved of international capital, the cabinet went along with the change. The Nationals, whose instincts were to oppose the motion, were rewarded with the promise of billions of dollars of compensation.
At the same time, Covid played havoc with the budget as government spending went from $478bn in 2018-19 (24.5 per cent of GDP) to $654bn (31.3 per cent of GDP) in 2020-21. Of course, a great deal of this spending was unavoidable given the uncertainties surrounding the severity and course of the pandemic. The decisions by some of the states to impose prolonged lockdowns also forced the hand of the federal government.
But having grown accustomed to very low rates of inflation, the Coalition massively underestimated the danger of igniting inflationary pressures, particularly in the context of frozen supply chains. Many of the programs that were initiated at that time were both badly designed and badly implemented.
The HomeBuilder program, for instance, led to a surge in building costs that continued well after the pandemic had ceased to be a problem. The JobKeeper program was far too generous and allowed firms that didn’t meet the criteria to keep the assistance.

Oh dear, so it was actually the clap happy one that set the country on the road to ruin? That surely deserves a snap ...Scott Morrison speaks during a press conference.

Tears streaked down Dame Groan's weathered visage - bonjour tristesse - as she pounded out her last gobbet of doom ...

There was never any indication given by the government that the temporary financial assistance given to households and businesses would need to be repaid. Research undertaken by world-renowned economist Greg Kaplan has established that this failure to foreshadow repayment in the US contributed to the price level rising by some 16 per cent. There is every reason to think a similar conclusion applies here.
Exceptionalism was replaced by sloppy thinking and mediocrity. Handing out favours, spending more on programs, putting everything on the tab – this was the modus operandi of the Coalition government when it was voted out in 2022. All those years of hard-fought reforms, of accepting the important trade-offs in managing the budget and the ever-looming threat of inflation, which is the ultimate tax – they were simply forgotten.
The Labor government is arguably much worse as it focuses almost entirely on redistributing our shrinking wealth. But the rot had set in when it won the 2022 election. Productivity growth is barely above zero and real wages are where they were in 2012. From top of the pops to clear laggard in less than 20 years – it is a very sad story.

So sad, such tristesse ...

If only Dame Groan could look on the bright side, and the opportunities all around us, as Wilcox showed her how to do it ...

It turns out that everything is currently an odyssey ...

So why haven't the reptiles gone all in on the fully woke show that's ruining the planet?