In which only "Ned" makes the cut, but there's plenty of fish heads for those wanting to ferret in the intermittent archive bin ...

 

The pond on its return from the big smoke discovered that the lizard Oz had turned itself into a book publicity campaign, with nattering "Ned" imagining that he was some kind of Haberman/Swan down under, worthy of being top of the digital hive mind, ma ...

...except that it concerned that epic dropkick and clap happy loser, Slo Mo, in his Covid days (waiter, put on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue).

The pond gave a deep, wearied sigh...

The header: Scott Morrison’s mea culpa on Covid error that contributed to election rout; Scott Morrison concedes his legal fight against WA’s border closure contributed to the Coalition’s 2022 election loss, adding he now believes the policy was the right call.

The caption for the tedious uncredited collage, heralding a tedious foray into the past: Former prime minister Scott Morrison concedes his legal challenge against former WA premier Mark McGowan’s border closure was a political ‘disaster’.

Who cares? Who gives a FF?

Why did the pond bother? 

Well perhaps someone is curious about the book, and wants just the lowlights as a way of avoiding an actual inspection of the tedious tome itself...

Former prime minister Scott Morrison concedes his mistake in the Covid crisis, saying his legal campaign against the closure of the West Australian border was a political “disaster” and reveals he has changed his mind about the border policy of WA’s then Labor premier Mark McGowan.
In his interviews for my book The Twilight of Exceptionalism – The Liberal and Conservative Era 2013-22, Mr Morrison said he now believed closing the WA border was a sensible move – although his opposition at the time was critical in Labor winning four seats in WA, allowing the West to underpin the Albanese majority at the 2022 federal election.

This is what the reptiles are hoping will make punters unleash their precious shekels? Seems so ...

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In typical clap happy fashion, SloMo cunningly explained it wasn't his fault, it wasn't really anything to do with him, he just went along with the mob ...

Mr Morrison initially supported Clive Palmer’s High Court action that claimed Mr McGowan’s closed borders – which lasted 697 days – were in breach of section 92 of the Constitution guaranteeing free movement between states.
The former PM said he had been encouraged to take action by two WA colleagues, Mathias Cormann and Christian Porter. “It was a massive mistake. But Mathias and Christian advised me to do it,” he said. “Greg (Hunt) said to exercise caution, but he was a lone voice. At the start there was no pushback from any Western Australians in our cabinet.
“But I knew within a short time it was a disaster. I went to work with Mark (McGowan) to fix it. I can’t blame the Labor Party for using that against me. I mean, why wouldn’t they? And I don’t hold it against Mark either. So yes, it was a disaster. I don’t think we would have lost as many seats in WA as we did.”

This morose, maundering wander through the past is what the reptiles hope will trigger sales? Seems so, because they slipped in a massive snap of the cover, The Twilight of Exceptionalism by Paul Kelly is out on Tuesday July 14

The pond shrank it to the right size ...

The pond is supposed to give a flying fig about all this? (Use your own curse words, but beware the google bot):

The then Assistant Minister to the PM, Ben Morton, a West Australian, said: “The impression left was that the prime minister was saying that Western Australia had got it wrong. The people were never going to accept that. I went to work to get the decision reversed but it was too late. The issue was being presented as Palmer versus the entire state with Morrison on Palmer’s side.”
While Mr Morrison later withdrew, the damage had been done. It was Mr Morrison’s worst mistake in the politics of Covid because it had the most lethal direct impact – turning WA from a Liberal stronghold into a Labor on at the election that destroyed the Morrison government.
But Mr Morrison’s reassessment goes far beyond the High Court case. He now agrees with Mr McGowan’s decision on the border, an extraordinary rethink.
“I have a different view now. In the first few weeks and months of the pandemic we didn’t really talk about borders,” he said. “We had closed the international border, but what did that mean internally?
“We didn’t give that enough thought because, ultimately, I think the West Australian border made a lot of sense. It didn’t disrupt the national economy. The border was in a remote area. The borders between Victoria and NSW and between NSW and Queensland were a completely different issue.”
Mr McGowan ensured his state remained remarkably Covid-free and without most of the restrictions imposed on other states. At the 2021 state poll he turned the West into a de facto one-party state and for a long time enjoyed an approval rating above 90 per cent, a success unmatched anywhere in our political history.

Could it get any more tedious? Of course it could, bring in comrade Dan, though some might get a snort, a giggle or a laugh out loud moment at the thought of SloMo being "a professional" ...

As a professional, Mr Morrison respected the political skill of both Mr McGowan and Victorian premier Daniel Andrews but his treatment of Mr Andrews was seen as too soft by both his treasurer Josh Frydenberg and health minister Mr Hunt.
Mr Frydenberg said: “The problem was that he (Morrison) thought he could work with Daniel Andrews, but every time Andrews saw an opportunity to whack Morrison, he did. There was no quid pro quo. You saw that whether it was on the vaccine rollout, social restrictions, or funding programs where Victoria always wanted more money. The premiers whacked the federal government if it suited their domestic politics.”

What an astonishing revelation, worth repeating ...

The premiers whacked the federal government if it suited their domestic politics.

Who'd have thunk it?

Why the pond will have to do an extraordinary rethink of the relationship between the states and the feds, as the reptiles slipped in a snap ... Police officers and Royal Australian Navy personnel stop drivers on the West Australian border during the pandemic. Picture: AAP

Want further evidence that "Ned's" tome (the pond uses the word advisedly) isn't up to snuff?

Attacking Mr Andrews’ policies that put Victoria in a massive cumulative lockdown, Mr Hunt said: “There was no explanation for the curfew. There was no explanation for the 5km rule. There was no real explanation for a children’s playground being taped off. No medical advice was ever provided on these measures.
“We accepted that Victoria went into hard lockdown because they completely lost control of their contact tracing, but we didn’t accept individual measures which were at odds with our medical advice. It was clear many of these were (the) premier’s decisions or Victorian cabinet decisions taken without medical advice but for control or other purposes.
“We need to put in place protocols to make it difficult for premiers to do this again.”

Hunt? The name is vaguely familiar, perhaps we need to put protocols in place to ensure he never appears again.

The next caption repeated what had already been written, Scott Morrison, right, was accused by some in his cabinet of being too soft on then Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, left. Picture: Getty Images

Woulda, coulda, shoulda ...

Mr Morrison believed one of the worst instances of premiers acting for political, not health, reasons was their compulsion to close schools as there was no advice to this effect from chief medical officer Brendan Murphy.
“Our very strong view was that schools should not be shut. There was no medical evidence to support it. This was being driven by the state teachers’ federations – it was about teachers’ health, not children’s health. I said in national cabinet, ‘Brendan (Murphy) is here. He’s telling you there’s no medical reason to shut schools, so why are you doing it?’ I said: ‘You have every right as premiers to make the decisions you want, but you don’t get to go out and make up health advice. Don’t pretend that’s why you’re doing this’.”
Claims by many conservatives that Mr Morrison should have waged a political campaign against the premiers and brought them under control are fatuous. Mr Morrison’s former chief of staff, John Kunkel, said: “The federation did not permit that. Yet the media encouraged this thinking and the populist conservatives encouraged it. They promoted themselves. They weren’t serious commentators on Morrison.”
The Twilight of Exceptionalism – The Liberal and Conservative Era, published by Melbourne University Press, is out on July 14.

The pond apologises. That's not the glorious big splash the pond was hoping to make on its return ...

On the upside, at least "Ned" helped the pond avoid yet another sampling of the Australian Daily Zionist News...

I’ve seen less Jew-hatred in Muslim countries
After almost three decades as an Israeli diplomat, I’ve never seen such levels of antisemitism as I’ve witnessed in Australia.
By Hillel Newman

Well he would say that, wouldn't he, and so would the lizard Oz echo chamber, with a patented EXCLUSIVE that simply regurgitates Newman's piece ... two for the price of one ...

EXCLUSIVE
Australia the worst country I’ve seen for antisemitism, says Israeli envoy
Australian antisemitism worse than in Muslim nations, declares Israel’s top diplomat
Hillel Newman has called the nation’s antisemitism scourge significantly worse than the two Muslim countries where he was previously ambassador.
By Richard Ferguson

Just a way of making a living, eh Fergo?

That old saw came out for another dance ...

“When people march and chant ‘From the river to the sea’, they are calling for the annihilation of the state of Israel. That is a sign.”

The problem?

If even Benji is deeply anti-Semitic,  if he's calling for the annihilation of Israel, then Israel has a real problem ...

As for the rest of the rabble, Dame Slap was still hanging around like a bad smell ...

Shag, marry, kill?’ Sorry folks, I’m with Albo on this one
Let’s play an experiment, ladies: Keating, Hawke, Rudd. If I were to say to you ‘shag, marry, kill’ you’d probably have an answer straight off the bat. I certainly do.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Spoiler alert. She isn't really with Albo, she slags him off every which way, but the pond will leave yesterday's droppings to the intermittent archive.

If the pond wanted fun with Albo, it'd settle for the infallible Pope ...

And if it wanted a female columnist being witty, it would settle for a serve of Marina Hyde. Mad King Donald's World Cup follies, Taylor getting hitched, and so on, and what's not to like?

Heck while the pond is at it, cutting reptiles dead like a Becky Sharp, why not send Miles off to the cornfield ...

The real reason the CCP hates America
The CCP does not fear America itself, but the ideals it represents – ideals capable of inspiring the very people the party seeks to control.
By Miles Yu

American ideals? On what mad King Donald part of the planet is Miles living?

The pond was titillated enough to sample Miles and see how he dealt with mad King Donald's reinvention of "American ideals", and could only come up with this ...

Donald Trump flies over the 60-foot high faces of (from left to right) Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln carved into the granite in Marine One at Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Picture: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

That's it? That's the sole mention of mad King Donald in a treatise on newly minted American ideals?

A mention in a caption for a snap?

And it got worse, ending with this blather, entirely out of sorts with the currently disunited States, ruled by a grifter and a con artist ...

...It is the idea that free societies flourish through openness, liberty, equality and consent of the governed, while dictatorships survive only through coercion, censorship and fear.

You guessed it. Mr Yu was inside the Bezos tent, a rag much reduced by a billionaire's whims ...

Miles Yu is director of the China Centre at the Hudson Institute. This article was first published in The Washington Post

Sorry, you must do much better, Mr Yu, before the pond pays any attention to you ...

Desperate stuff, and the pond also ruled out Alex...

Australia needs to stop snubbing TAFE for universities
Employers are crying out for occupational skills that are taught in a TAFE classroom rather than a university lecture theatre.
By Alex White

Why?

Alex White is chief executive of the Victorian TAFE Association.

Well he would scribble that, wouldn't he?

Lastly the pond had to rule out Eric ...

Defining moment’: Telstra outage a bigger problem for CEO
Cracks in the network have put Telstra’s high-cost, premium reputation on the line.
By Eric Johnston
Associate Editor

Why? The notion that Telstra has a premium reputation was too bizarre to contemplate...

Did Eric entirely miss that recent yarn, Telstra, Optus and TPG forced to publish new mobile coverage maps?

Despite living barely 10 minutes west of the largest inland city in New South Wales, Uranquinty residents have long struggled to get the major telcos to understand just how bad their mobile reception is.
"We had a telco executive come out once to discuss the issues we were having with reception and he was sitting on the back verandah of one of our homes and was challenged to call the owner of the home," Deb Bewick recalled.
She said he was "surprised" when he could not make the call so close to Wagga Wagga.

Tell the pond about it. Sitting in the Sydney-Melbourne train is like being in a Faraday cage, at its most effective at blocking all signals around Wagga Wagga.

So being in Sydney with no phone yesterday was just more of the same.

Again the pond apologies for the dismal crock of reptiles on parade this day.

If the pond had had its druthers, it would have been featuring a version of le stylo-plume, courtesy the immortal Rowe ...

Or better still, Nige and Pauline...

The pond is looking forward to Nige v. Count Binface, with little England making a great attempt to upstage mad King Donald in the entertainment stakes ...

A postscript:

Speaking of Pauline and monoculture, as some do, the pond was vastly relieved yesterday at the chance to drop in to Sydney's Chinatown, which has had some bigly changes since the pond last made a visit ...

There were inexplicable visual mysteries, with this sighting in Kimber Lane ...

There were also signs that 'monoculture' never had a chance. 

The pond and partner attended a Thai restaurant, and discovered we were of totally unique origins ... of some 50 or so in the diner, we were the only visible signs of a non-Asian heritage, at least until another couple turned up, and we became only slightly unique.

Elsewhere on our wanderings we reverted to being totally unique.

Strolling around the markets felt like being in an Asian outpost, and nothing wrong with that, because it was invigorating, if at times disconcerting when seeing the sort of games that distracted the younglings. 

And if you happen to be wandering around the markets (a long way from ancient Paddy's markets times) and you need a script filled at 8 pm, there was a franchise pharmacy open, with an adept, attentive pharmacist at hand. The pond suspects she might have been of Vietnamese descent, but only because she was a parishioner at St Josephs, a Catholic church just up the road from the pond's old digs.

In short, it's too late for the monoculture brigade, unless they happen to plan mass deportations of an ICE kind, and the pond can't imagine the country standing for it, because the Thai meal was good, and the markets a great place to acquire a lucky cat, and we all need a bit of luck sometimes...

Now back to that entertainment, free for all to enjoy ...

 

 Is it wrong to also enjoy the suffering?