In which ancient Troy sets the pace, there's yet another nuking of the country, "Ned" flogs a tome, and Dame Groan embarks on a snake-bashing day ...

 

A little housekeeping: the pond will be in the big smoke tomorrow morning, so the pond will not be keeping company with the reptiles, but given the way the pond's penultimate post attracted a measly two comments, it's likely nobody will much care. 

Those who do can head off to the intermittent archive for their reptile fix, and hopefully the pond will be back in business on Thursday.

Meanwhile, on with the entertainment ... with ancient Troy coming at ya ...

The header: Taylor’s lurch to the right will lead Liberal Party to extinction; At a time of existential crisis for the Liberals, Angus Taylor has taken the party backward since he became leader in February.
The caption for the collage, as Emilia strikes again: Pauline Hanson, Anthony Albanese and Angus Taylor. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella. Sources: iStock

The only reason the pond decided to spend quality time with ancient Troy - a bigly four minutes - was to settle the vexed question of the lettuce.

Would the lettuce have to come out of retirement to stage yet another gladiatorial contest with an incumbent?

It took ancient Troy a long time to get there, but eventually he did...

Invitations for the Conservative Political Action Conference in October have gone out. They feature Liberal leader Angus Taylor flanked by Nationals leader Matt Canavan and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. There it is, the image suggests, the future three-party coalition of conservatives seeking to govern Australia.
“Angus Taylor. Pauline Hanson. Matt Canavan,” the invitation from the far-right CPAC says, enticing supporters to come to Brisbane. “Different lanes of the same movement, in the same room, pointed at the same goal: changing the government and getting Australia back on course.”
This association is toxic for the Coalition. To be linked with the far-right xenophobic, nativist, populist Hanson as part of her movement at the same place with an identical purpose is ruinous branding for the once mainstream centre-right party. What on earth is Taylor thinking? There is good reason Sussan Ley avoided CPAC like the plague.
The Liberal Party risks being devoured by One Nation if it does not seek to defeat the Hanson party. Taylor seems to miss this fundamental point even though the evidence is blindingly obvious. The rise in support for One Nation has come mostly at the expense of the Liberal and National parties. Unless the Coalition fights One Nation, it will be replaced by One Nation.
At a time of existential crisis for the Liberals, Taylor has taken the party backward since he became leader in February. His MPs are openly questioning the party’s strategy, philosophy, policies and image. He lost a safe seat – Farrer – and thus presides over a smaller party than the one he inherited. He’s losing Jonno Duniam from the frontbench. And the Liberal Party is tanking in the polls.

Sheesh, that doesn't sound at all positive for the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...Angus Taylor atthe (sic) LNP Conference in Brisbane. Picture: John Gass

Rowing against the tide and conventional reptile wisdom - hadn't Polonius himself blessed the beefy boofhead as the right sort of chap as recently as Sunday?- ancient Troy carried on with his litany of despair ...

The Coalition primary vote has fallen to another diabolical record low of 17 per cent, according to Newspoll. This is a political party in its death throes. Labor, for all its ups and downs in and out of government, has never reached that low in more than 40 years of Newspoll. The Liberal Party resembles a minor party, on the fringes, polling not much higher than the far-left Greens.
The political circumstances, however, could not have been more favourable for Taylor. He was given the gift of Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers breaking iron-clad election promises on negative gearing, capital gains tax and trusts, facing a huge public backlash and forced to retreat, yet the Liberal leader could not capitalise on it.
When Taylor toppled Ley, his promise was that he would do better than her. Approaching six months on, Taylor is floundering and performing worse than his predecessor. Nobody knows what the party stands for under his leadership: he has failed to define the party’s purpose or craft new policies. He is a terrible communicator. That was evident when he could not state that he supported multiculturalism.
His colleagues, including deputy Jane Hume, had no problem supporting a multicultural Australia. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said at the weekend his LNP government supports multiculturalism. What message does Taylor’s stumbling equivocation send to migrant communities that have deserted the Liberal Party at recent elections?

Cue a snap of malevolent Melissa ...Melissa McIntosh holds a press conference in the Mural Hall at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Ancient Troy continued, inconsolable ...

The party’s dire position prompted calls for a “rebrand” from Liberal frontbencher Melissa McIntosh. This cannot be interpreted any other way than a critique of the party and its leader. But McIntosh is right.
The party does need to rediscover what it stands for, what its purpose is and who it wants to represent. As she said, it goes beyond image to values, policy and strategy.
The party seems to have given up on reclaiming previously safe seats in Liberal heartlands from the teals. Tim Wilson had luck on his side when he regained Goldstein at the last election but winning back other seats held by teals seems to be a low priority. Yet this is where the party’s shrinking membership and donors still predominantly live.
While it is highly unlikely the Liberal Party can return to government without winning back seats lost to independents in multiple states, it is unlikely to survive as a major political force unless it takes on One Nation strongly.
Yet senior Liberals are refusing to rule out preference deals with One Nation or power sharing in a coalition government. So rattled is the Liberal Party that MP Tony Pasin, a close colleague of Taylor, went public urging a deal with One Nation to carve up the seats they will target and “work hand-in-glove” to defeat Labor. This is the three-way conservative coalition in all but name.

At this point the pond became confused, because the reptiles introduced a snap of ...NSW Minister for Transport David Elliott

... while ancient Troy dubbed him a "former NSW minister".

Whatever, it led to a gloomy conclusion:

If Taylor does not have enough problems or know how to deal with them, another has lobbed in his inbox: the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption’s Operation Rosny, an inquiry that will, among other things, examine electoral donations and branch stacking in the already dysfunctional NSW division of the Liberal Party.
Former NSW minister David Elliott said Taylor should resign over his relationship with Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney, a close ally and fundraiser for Taylor, who has stepped aside during the investigation. Taylor dismissed Elliott’s allegations as “nonsense”. Senior Liberals say they are worried what will be uncovered and who will be implicated.
Meanwhile, Andrew Hastie stands in the wings. The Liberal leader-in-waiting has signalled he is up for the fight against One Nation. He has the cut-through Taylor lacks and says he will not be intimidated by “a relentless campaign of personal attacks” over possibly being called as a witness in the war crimes trial of Ben Roberts-Smith. Taylor was never going to be the messiah for the Liberals. The party has started to consider alternatives. The clock is ticking on his leadership.

Not a ticking clock, ancient Troy, it sounds like the lettuce must come out of retirement. Say the word, and it's ready to do battle ...

What's remarkable is that this dirge of despair comes as the government does its best to give the beefy boofhead a break.

Not to worry, Tuesdays at the lizard Oz always feature stale offerings from aged hacks, and the pond is keen to freshen up the algae-laden waters with fresh insights.

Come on down a certain Cristina Talacko, who has never appeared in the pond before.

A little reheating is necessary, because she was out and about yesterday in the hive mind, but hey, she's one of those "we need to nuke the country to save the planet" types, and the pond is always keen to celebrate the genre.

First a word of introduction.

Christine can be found at the Mothers for Nuclear site - no, the pond didn't invent that name, it really does exist - with this her pitch.

Nuclear energy is one of the safest, most heavily regulated technologies in existence. Its carbon footprint is as low as wind and lower than solar. And the next generation of reactors, smaller, faster to build, and even safer, is already on the horizon.

Ah, the horizon.

And she could be found furiously scribbling for the AFR on a couple of occasions, both saved by the pond to the intermittent archive.

Australia toys with its own ‘Why Nations Fail’ moment on energy
It’s dangerous when institutions are captured by their own storyline. Faith in renewables has become an identity, and that’s a lot harder to tweak than policy.

There tended to be a certain sameness to the offerings and the rhetoric.

Inter alia ...

A decade ago, leaders might have claimed ignorance. Today, globalisation and real-time information remove that excuse. Around the world, advanced economies treat energy as strategic infrastructure – the foundation of economic competitiveness and national sovereignty. Crucially, they are adjusting course where reality demands it.
Germany is the most striking example. Once the global champion of renewables-first strategy, Germany now faces some of the highest electricity prices in the OECD and is being forced to strengthen gas and capacity mechanisms to stabilise the grid. Germany is the future Australia is walking toward – only Australia still has time to change direction.
Other countries have already shifted. France is investing €52 billion ($92 billion) to expand nuclear capacity and secure long-term competitiveness. South Korea reinstated nuclear expansion after its phase-out weakened energy security and threatened heavy industry. Japan is restarting reactors and locking in long-term LNG supply because its economy cannot function without firm power. The United Kingdom is investing in both large reactors and small modular reactors to ensure future baseload. The United States is approving record LNG export infrastructure to support allies and domestic industry, while revitalising nuclear through production tax credits.
The pattern is clear: nations that secure affordable, firm, reliable energy prosper; nations that treat energy as ideology decline.

And again ...

Net zero is the right destination, but the road we’re on is broken
Australia must learn from the global reset already underway. We need an all-technologies approach that prioritises performance over ideology.

...Australia is phasing out coal, but what is replacing it? Intermittent renewables cannot run a modern economy alone. And so, gas is filling the gap. The Australian Energy Market Operator projects gas generation will need to increase by 14 per cent by 2030 to maintain grid reliability as coal retires. Gas peaked plants, gas capacity investments, gas purchase contracts – not temporary, but structural. That is not an energy transition; that is greenwashing fossil dependence.
At the same time, we continue to ban nuclear energy, the only zero-emissions technology capable of providing reliable baseload power at scale. Australia is the only G20 nation with a ban on nuclear energy.
Yet while we block nuclear, the rest of the world is shifting.
In June 2023, Sweden’s parliament changed its energy target from “100 per cent renewable electricity” to “100 per cent fossil-free electricity”, explicitly reintroducing nuclear as central to achieving industrial competitiveness and energy security. The UK is doubling down on nuclear with its £20 billion ($40.3 billion) Great British Nuclear program. The US passed the ADVANCE Act in July 2024 with overwhelming bipartisan support, accelerating advanced reactor development and unlocking over US$100 billion in private capital for next-generation nuclear projects.
Japan has restarted nuclear reactors. Canada is building modular reactors. Poland is transitioning directly from coal to nuclear. The Philippines, Ghana and Kenya are preparing nuclear programs as part of their decarbonisation strategy.
France, which already generates approximately 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear, announced a program to build six new EPR2 reactors with an estimated investment of €52-67 billion ($92-$118 billion), affirming nuclear as essential to its climate and energy independence goals. South Korea reversed its nuclear phase-out policy in 2022, returning nuclear to the centre of its energy strategy.
These are not reckless nations. These are pragmatists who understand physics.
It’s time for Australia to do the same, to design a transition that is real.
That means putting people, nature, and national security back at the heart of climate policy. It means embracing every technology that works, instead of clinging to a single narrative. It means measuring success by outcomes: lower emissions, lower bills, stronger ecosystems; not by construction targets or political slogans. Above all, it means restoring integrity to a debate that has drifted dangerously far from evidence.
Net zero is still the right destination. But the road we’re on is broken.
Australia must learn from the global reset already underway. We need an all-technologies approach that prioritises performance over ideology. We need to stop confusing megawatts built with emissions reduced. And we need to stop sacrificing nature in the name of saving it.

There's more on the full to overflowing intertubes, but the pond will consider the introduction compleat, because with that track record, it was almost inevitable that Cristina would find a natural home amongst the reptiles, and so it came to pass:

The header: Australia’s energy policy is living in its own private Idaho; Australia is the energy outlier: an isolated continental grid, no neighbour to lean on and a legal ban on the one firm zero-carbon technology the rest of the world is racing to deploy.

The caption for the snap of the renewables heel, who clearly needs to think a lot harder (sorry, no human credit for that remarkable collage, so perhaps it was AI, devouring resources with the enthusiasm of a raptor): Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen.

Cristina spent a bigly 4 minutes explaining why she wanted to nuke the country to save the planet:

Which advanced economy plans to power itself by 2050 overwhelmingly with variable wind and solar – no nuclear, no interconnection to a neighbour’s grid, no great rivers left to dam?
Yes, Australia.
I spend much of my time inside other countries’ energy transitions, and every flight home arrives with a 1980s soundtrack: the B-52s’ Private Idaho – “living in your own private Idaho, underground, like a wild potato”. A state of sealed windows, where the echo passes for the world. It is an apt description of Australian energy policy in 2026.

Actually, if the pond might briefly interrupt, sealed windows are now all the go.

A remarkable number of the pond's relatives and acquaintances are investing in the design and building of their own private Passivhaus (passive house if you insist).

The concept has a detailed wiki listing, and the Australian government produced a site dedicated to the notion.

This was the pitch for insulation and sealing doors and windows and so on ...

The Passive House concept initially met some resistance in Australia because some people believed that it was only suited to a cold northern European climate. This idea was dispelled by the rapid uptake of Passive House ideas in China, where entire precincts are being built to Passive House standard in all climates, from cold to hot and humid.

Sorry, the pond didn't mean to interrupt, and perhaps it's too bold to suggest that maybe a different metaphor might have been used, for fear of otherwise sounding like a serve of half-baked musical rhetorical chips.

Do go on, open the window, ruin the seal, and spend a bucketload more on your energy ...

Now open the window. The world has changed. Denmark, the poster child with renewables above 80 per cent of its electricity – a fifth of it from burning biomass – is wired into Norwegian hydro and Swedish nuclear, and last year ended a 40-year ban on nuclear power. Germany spent roughly €500bn on the Energiewende, continued to burn coal, imported French nuclear electricity through the winter, and is openly rethinking its approach. Finland gets 40 per cent of its electricity from nuclear and in 2022 its Green Party became the first in the world to formally back the technology.
Norway and Iceland run on hydro and geothermal. Spain and Portugal discovered in April last year, in Europe’s largest blackout, what a stressed grid can do in 15 seconds. The United Arab Emirates built four nuclear reactors from a standing start in just over a decade. Every other G20 economy – the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Canada, France, Britain, India – is building or restoring nuclear alongside renewables.

Of course this will be extremely familiar to students of the reptiles, who love to feature snaps of nuked countries, because it makes them shiver with delight at their naughtiness ... The cooling towers of the nuclear power plant in Grafenrheinfeld, Germany, on August 16, 2024, shortly before their controlled demolition. Picture: Daniel Peter / AFP

Apart from breaking assorted seals, Cristina has a concrete propensity for banal words, perhaps because necessity isn't always the mother of invention:

Necessity is the mover. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turned energy policy into security policy overnight; AI rewrote the demand curve, with the International Energy Agency expecting data centre consumption to roughly double to 945 terawatt hours by 2030.
The response has been concrete. Thirty-one countries have pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. The World Bank lifted its decades-old financing ban; the Asian Development Bank followed. About 70 reactors are under construction. Italy legislated its return four decades after walking away; Belgium repealed its phase-out. And the most data-driven companies did their own maths: Microsoft is restarting Three Mile Island, Google has contracted small modular reactors and Amazon is targeting five gigawatts of new nuclear.
Against this trend, the outlier is Australia: an isolated continental grid, no neighbour to lean on and a legal ban on the one firm zero-carbon technology the rest of the world is racing to deploy.

Then came another unfortunate metaphor:

The psychology of the Australian cocoon is worth understanding. 

Actually if the pond might be so bold, cocoons are actually a jolly good idea. 

As well as being protective, nature uses these structures to maintain a constant, regulated microclimate, buffering external temperature shifts and retaining moisture.

We should all be so lucky:

Silkworm cocoons are important biological materials that protect silkworms from environmental threat and predator attacks. Silkworm cocoons are able to provide significant buffer against temperature changes outside of the cocoon structure. We present our investigation of the thermal insulation properties of both domestic and wild silkworm cocoons under warm conditions. Wild cocoons show stronger thermal buffer function over the domestic cocoon types. Both the cocoon walls and the volume of inner cocoon space contribute to the thermal damping behaviour of cocoons. Wild silkworm cocoons also have lower thermal diffusivity than domestic ones. Calcium oxalate crystals affects the thermal behaviour of wild silkworm cocoons, by trapping still air inside the cocoon structure and enhancing the thermal stability of the cocoon assembly. The research findings are of relevance to the bio-inspired design of new thermo-regulating materials and structures.

The pond shrugged its way out of its cocoon as Crista continued:

Politicians committed so fully to one pathway that questioning it means questioning themselves. A heavily subsidised industry depends on the pathway continuing. Consultants are paid to make the chosen path look workable, not to challenge whether it should be chosen at all. Inside such a room, consensus feels like evidence. The cocoon is warm because everyone inside is paid to keep it warm.
Consider where our own pathway is taking us. Snowy 2.0 was sold by Malcolm Turnbull in 2017 as a $2bn project before a completed business case had tested the claim. At the 2023 reset, it became a $12bn project. Last month, the Auditor-General found “significant deficiencies” in its management, while independent estimates put the direct cost closer to $20bn and the all-in cost, including transmission and financing, as high as $42bn.

At this point, the reptiles introduced a favourite whipping boy, Malware, and never mind that he was the sort of doofus who set out to destroy the internet on the onion muncher's orders, Malcolm Turnbull during a visit to Snowy Hydro in Cooma. Source: Alex Ellinghausen /Fairfax

It's all familiar stuff, and it's a fair bet that with this outing Cristina would find a home with the beefy boofhead and Ted:

The hydrogen and the wind stories are no better. The flagship Queensland hydrogen project, once valued at more than $12bn, has collapsed. Origin, Fortescue and Woodside have all walked away from major hydrogen ambitions. And this year’s budget quietly redirected $1.3bn from clean-energy programs it once trumpeted, including $1bn from Hydrogen Headstart. The Illawarra offshore wind zone has no feasibility licence. A Hunter offshore wind proposal, the 2GW Novocastrian project off Newcastle and Port Stephens, failed to proceed after Equinor withdrew and the developers declined the federal feasibility licence. Moonlight Range was refused. Proserpine was shelved. The transition is being slowed by finance, approvals, transmission and communities who don’t want to host turbines.
Meanwhile, the Capacity Investment Scheme has taxpayers underwriting 40GW of renewable and storage capacity, supporting about $73bn of investment, with the key contract terms largely hidden from public view. Frontier Economics puts comparable transition costs above $600bn, while the Australian Energy Market Operator’s headline figures remain a planning estimate, not a single audited national bill. No government has yet put a clear, whole-of-system cost in front of the Australian people.
Security tells the same story. AEMO’s final 2026 blueprint concedes under “constrained delivery” Australia reaches 75 per cent renewables by 2030, not 82 per cent. Project costs are assumed to rise by 30 per cent, transmission is delayed and coal remains in the system until nearly 2050.

How did the pond know that Cristina was a winner? 

Why the reptiles interrupted with Lloydie of the Amazon, dedicated climate science fudger, explaining to petulant Peta how we'll all be rooned (and still no rebrand!).... The Australian’s Environment Editor Graham Lloyd says the cost of Australia’s energy transition will be ‘much larger’ than the AEMO estimated $128 billion. “The real figure on what it’s going to cost is much, much larger than 128 billion,” Mr Lloyd told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “Modelling that was done by Frontier Economics has put it at about $650 billion.”

Eeek, windmills, eeek ravaging solar, and the coins, oh the despairing coins, heaped and scattered..

Cristina insisted that she must keep up with her song metaphor:

Then there are people. Households were promised power bills $275 lower. Instead, more than $5bn in rebates has been used to hold bills down temporarily, and once those rebates were exhausted the Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded out-of-pocket electricity costs rising 37 per cent in the year to February. Governments are negotiating rescue packages for smelters. Industrial leaders warn that Australian energy costs are far above those in competitor countries and manufacturers are leaving, taking sovereign capability with them.
The song Private Idaho carries its own warning – a deadly radium clock ticking at the bottom of the pool. Ours ticks in plain sight: coal retiring on a fixed schedule, the energy demand wave arriving on someone else’s, capital allocating now to jurisdictions that kept their options open. None of this requires betting the house on nuclear; renewables, storage and grid modernisation remain essential. It requires something more modest and more radical: lift the ban, commission a genuine full-system cost study and let the options compete on evidence, in public, with the numbers on the table.
“Get out of that state you’re in” is no longer a lyric. It is a deadline.
Cristina Talacko is co-founder and chief executive of GLOW Strategies.

Is it wrong for the pond to want to stay in a Passivhaus or snuggle into a cocoon? At least that way the pond could avoid all the reptile braying about the weevils of renewables and the joys of nuking the country to save the planet.

Apparently Cristina has yet to catch up with a favourite reptile ploy, explaining why doing anything was useless and much too expensive ... and anyway, was there much wrong with the world, apart from the odd record heat wave?

Trust Lloydie of the Amazon blathering away on Sky Noise down under to explain it to her in a few choice words ...

Sure can. The Australian’s Environment Editor Graham Lloyd says Australia’s emission reduction targets will do “absolutely nothing” to reduce global emissions. (Sorry, the pond doesn't usually link to News Corp, but it's easy enough to find).

So according to ancient reptile lore, there's absolutely no point in nuking the country, or doing much of anything else, and we may as well keep on with clean, dinkum, pure, innocent virginal Oz coal, because it's all existentially pointless. Enjoy your coming summer...

As for the alternatives this day, the reptiles made a big fuss at the top of the page early in the morning.

Naturally the pond went there, because these days the reptiles are increasingly obsessed with the past, what with current realities not offering much joy ...

Imagine the pond's despair to discover it was just "Ned" nattering away ... and there were only two minutes of natter. 

Such a wretched offering and in such small portions...

It turned out it was just a book promo, and best despatched in three gobbets ...

Oh no, not the Lehrmann matter yet again. (Hadn't he failed yet again?)

Will the pond be lining up for a copy, to hear a tired, old, irrelevant fart blather to another tired, old, irrelevant fart? Not likely, hopefully a street library will provide, and in the meantime, the cover will suffice...

There were a few alternatives this day ...

How Australia became NIMBY capital of the world
When the NIMBY reflex can stop a family’s extension and a piece of infrastructure, it’s stopped being about genuine grievance and become sport.
By Julianna Burgess
Contributor

Ben, in lieu of the bromancer, was packing it in his usual way ...

China says missile test was routine. Pull the other one
Australia’s run of security agreements with Pacific nations are closing off China’s options to establish a military base in the region.
By Ben Packham
Foreign affairs and defence correspondent

All that's well and good, but how could the pond forget it's Dame Groan Tuesday? Holding her back until last was just a tease, a playful troll.

On with the groaning ...

The header: Why Labor’s pro-union IR agenda is a productivity killer; How the PM can keep a straight face telling us he doesn’t condone the behaviour of the CFMEU is anyone’s guess.
The caption for the snap of two heels: Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers on the campaign trail. Picture: Mark Stewart / NewsWire

Dame Slap spent a bigly four minutes announcing we'll all be rooned by Xmas, for the squillionth time, but she introduced something of a variation.

She went back to union bashing roots, taking to the task like Homer Simpson on snake-bashing day. 

As well as being all the fault of Jimbo, there were other flies in the pudding...

Over the years, I’ve written a great deal about industrial relations. But in recent times it’s simply become too depressing to spend time on the subject.
The retrograde changes that have been made since Labor secured office in 2022 have been entirely politically motivated, rewarding its trade union partners – some would say masters. They are completely unrelated to increasing productivity, improving employee-employer relations or securing win-win outcomes.
Like a covetous teenager, the Australian Council of Trade Unions and several other influential trade unions have set down a “must have” list of gifts. The Labor government has worked through the list, ticking each one off as they are made law or delivered through the tribunal system.
By right, Jim Chalmers should have raised strenuous objections to these productivity-sapping initiatives, which now mean any annual GDP growth above 2 per cent is essentially impossible, lest the rate of inflation accelerate. But the Treasurer has a very skewed view of the workings of the labour market.
He was happy to be convinced that labour’s share of national output had been artificially suppressed under the Coalition government and measures to increase it were both justified and economically harmless. For this reason, he’s fully supported higher mandated wages set by the Fair Work Commission.

Naturally the reptiles flung in an AV distraction from Sky Noise down under - still no rebrand! - but the pond finds it hard to get past that spelling of "Jaimee" ...​Sky News host Jaimee Rogers criticises Labor’s alleged plan to amend industrial relations laws to favour unions. “It creates an exemption under discrimination law, allowing the Commonwealth to give preference to businesses with union enterprise agreements when awarding government support,” Ms Rogers said.​“Why should a company's relationship with a union have anything to do with whether it receives taxpayer-funded support?​“Shouldn't the best project win?​“If these decisions will genuinely deliver better value for taxpayers, then publish the criteria.​“Let the public see who benefits and why.​“Because if there is nothing to hide, there should be nothing to fear from transparency.”

Dame Groan continued to rage, and the pond let her, in the hope that it might at last winkle out a comment or three ...

If he had done his homework – or been properly advised – Chalmers would have learnt that the fall in the observed labour share is a worldwide phenomenon that is about changes to technology and forms of employment, including the shift to independent contracting.
He would’ve also learnt that the forces of supply and demand apply no less in the labour market, and the key to higher real wages is growth in productivity.
Let’s run through some of the economically damaging changes the Albanese government has made to the law and regulation of industrial relations. The first cab off the rank is the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, a key demand of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union and other unions.
Notwithstanding the assertion of the then minister, Tony Burke, that the ABCC had been ineffective in dealing with the industrial relations problems in the construction industry, the fact that the unions were so keen to see it gone is telling. At the margin, the ABCC constrained the most egregious union behaviour, partly because of its powers to compel witnesses to testify.
This was payback. Big time. How the PM can keep a straight face telling us he doesn’t condone the behaviour of the CFMEU is anyone’s guess. Sure, the union has been put into administration. But reading the ongoing revelations, it’s clear the union continues to operate in a largely unconstrained fashion. The infiltration of criminal elements into the industry is probably irreversible.

Time for another heel, Tony Burke addresses the House of Representatives before the winter recess. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh / Getty Images

And so to wander back in time, because - amazing scenes - Juliar is going to be trotted out by the groaner...

Having ruled out any return to multi-employer bargaining prior to the 2022 election, Labor quickly broke this promise by introducing several changes to the Fair Work Act that made agreements between several employers in the same industry entirely possible.
Clearly, the aim of the unions is to pick off the easiest target within an industry sector, gain concessions and then spread them across as many employers as possible.
It’s the antithesis of the model of enterprise bargaining envisaged by Paul Keating all those years ago, but also by Julia Gillard when she was the minister for workplace relations.
The same job, same pay was another example of payback, this time for unions operating in the mining industry. To achieve what flexibility was possible under Gillard’s legislation, several companies developed a model of having a core workforce covered by an enterprise agreement and a secondary workforce sourced from labour hire companies or internally.
The result of the new provisions on same job, same pay has been very significant increases in the remuneration for some workers, particularly in mining. The change has imperilled the viability of some operations, but the high commodity prices have cushioned the short-term effects.
Over the longer term, there is no doubt it has made Australia a much less desirable place to invest in the resource industry. This has been made clear by the leaders of some of our biggest mining companies. The US and South America are now seen as preferable investment locations.
We have also seen small businesses caught up in a new definition of casual work as well as being swamped by claims for unfair dismissal. They have also been impacted by very generous increases awarded each year in the national wage case.

The pond distinctly remembers that in Juliar's day, she was rooning the country by Xmas, and a chaff bag was urgently needed, but it now seems like she's living rent free in the hive mind, and provides a handy club for the present ... as Dame Groan relentlessly returned to the past, like some aged mariner in an old folks' home, Julia Gillard addresses the parliament

That led Dame Groan to a final gobbet of ruination and damnation, and the pond wondered if this might be a new template for fulminations and foamings ...

Just as mad King Donald had dragged commie swine back from the 1950s, might not fear of all powerful, all conquering unions rooning the country become a new reptile meme? (And never mind that unions are pretty toothless, remember, they're in league with the guvmint!):

The needs of workers have dominated as a criterion over employers’ capacity to pay, a position egged on by the submissions lodged by the federal government. Under the most recent decision, award wages were increased by 4.75 per cent, with even higher increases for the lowest-paid workers. The Reserve Bank is now expressing some unease about the growth in wages, although the Treasurer doesn’t see the dangers.
In the meantime, the FWC has simply been mandating higher rates of pay for aged care and childcare workers, which are way beyond the scope of employers to fund short of massively increasing fees. The government is now using taxpayer funds to co-fund these wage rises, which is a complete fiscal folly.
Having failed twice to persuade the FWC to eliminate junior rates of pay in key awards, a stacked panel finally decided this year in favour of the unions. This decision will again hit small businesses particularly hard as junior rates of pay are phased out for workers aged between 18 and 20 in retail, fast food and pharmacy.
Just recently, a new clause in the legislation was slipped through without any serious parliamentary scrutiny to allow government procurement to discriminate in favour of companies with union enterprise bargaining. This government simply shows no shame in handing out favours to the unions. Let’s not forget union membership is less than 10 per cent in the private sector. What can’t be won through recruiting members can always be obtained from tame politicians.
As the Productivity Commission notes: “Australia’s labour productivity growth is going from bad to worse. Labour productivity fell by 0.6 per cent in the March quarter and over the year to March has grown by only 0.3 per cent. Australia’s labour productivity appears stuck at the levels we settled into after the Covid pandemic.”
There’s no doubt that the backward slide in the regulations in industrial relations is a major contributor. Just don’t expect any remedial action from this government.

But could we at least have a 'toon in our despair?

And this to set the scene ...

... because mad King Donald has done it again ...